Ethnicity and Identity in Ancient Israel

i
viii
Ethnicity and Identity
in
Ancient Israel
Prolegomena to the Study of Ethnic Sentiments
and Their Expression in the Hebrew Bible

Kenton L. Sparks

Eisenbrauns
Winona Lake, Indiana
1998

iii
 ç 1998 by Eisenbrauns.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sparks, Kenton L.
Ethnicity and identity in ancient Israel : prolegomena to the study of
ethnic sentiments and their expression in the Hebrew Bible / Kenton L.
Sparks.
p. cm.
Rev. ed. of the author’s thesis (University of North Carolina—Chapel
Hill, 1996).
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN 1-57506-033-7 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Ethnicity in the Bible. 2. Bible. O.T.—Social scientific criticism.
3. Jews—Identity—History. I. Title.
BS1199.E84S63 1998
221.8u3058—dc21 98-44816
CIP

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.†‰
 To Clive Staples Lewis
(1898–1963)

Though he died in the year of my birth,

the fruit of his work freed me from a wearisome agnosticism.
viii
 Contents

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Israel’s Ethnic Identity: Issues and Problems 6
The Role of Ethnicity Studies 16
2. Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context . . . . . . . . . 23
Ethnicity and Identity in Neo-Assyria 25
Ethnicity and Identity in Archaic and Classical
Greece 51
Ethnicity and Identity in Egypt 75
Summary 91
3. Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Israelite Identity and the Merneptah Stele 95
The Song of Deborah (Judges 5) 109
Summary and Conclusions 122
4. Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Ethnicity and Identity in Hosea 126
Ethnicity and Identity in Amos 168
Ethnicity and Identity in Isaiah of Jerusalem 194
Summary: Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian
Period 213
Excursus: Core and Periphery in the Assyrian Period—A
Proposal 219
5. Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy . . . . . . . . . . 222
Deuteronomy 225
Excursus 1: The Tribal List in the “Blessing of Moses”
(Deuteronomy 33) 267
Excursus 2: The Deuteronomistic History 272
Jeremiah 274
Summary: Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean
Monarchy 283

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viii Contents

6. Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285

Ezekiel 286
Deutero-Isaiah 305
Summary: Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period
and Beyond 314
7. Summary and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
The History of Israelite Ethnicity 320
Tribal Organization in Ancient Israel 325
The Forefather Traditions of Ancient Israel 326
Implications for Ethnicity Studies 328
The Task That Remains 329
Theological Reflections 330

Index of Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333

Index of Scripture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
 Abbreviations

AB Anchor Bible
ABD Anchor Bible Dictionary
ACEBT Amsterdamse Caheirs voor Exegese en Bijbelse Theologie
AEL M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature
AfO Archiv für Orientforschung
AJA American Journal of Archaeology
AJSL American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literature
AnBib Analecta Biblica
ANET Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 3d ed. (ed. J. B. Pritchard)
AOAT Alter Orient und Altes Testament
ARAB Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylon (ed. and trans. D. D.
Luckenbill)
ATD Das Alte Testament Deutsch
BA Biblical Archaeologiest
BARev Biblical Archaeology Review
BASOR Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research
BBB Bonner Biblische Beiträge
BDB Brown, Driver and Briggs Hebrew Lexicon
BHS Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (ed. K. Ellinger and W. Rudolph)
Bib Biblica
BibOr Biblica et Orientalia
BR Biblical Research
BT The Bible Translator
BZAW Beiheft zu Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
CAD The Assyrian Dictionary of the University of Chicago
CAH 3 Cambridge Ancient History, 3d edition
CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly
ConBOT Coniectanea Biblica, Old Testament Series
Dtr Deuteronomistic History
DD Dor le Dor
EDB Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (forthcoming)
ER Encyclopedia of Religion (ed. by M. Eliade)
ErIsr Eretz-Israel
EA El Amarna
FRLANT Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen
Testaments
HAT Handbuch zum Alten Testament
HKAT Handkommentar zum Alten Testament

ix
x Abbreviations

HSM Harvard Semitic Monographs

HSS Harvard Semitic Studies
HTR Harvard Theological Review
HTS Hervormde Teologiese Studies
HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual
ICC International Critical Commentary
IEJ Israel Exploration Journal
JANES Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society
JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society
JARCE Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
JCS Journal of Cuneiform Studies
JEA Journal of Egyptian Archaeology
JJS Journal of Jewish Studies
JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies
JNSL Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages
JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
JSOTSup Supplements to the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
KAT Kommentar zum Alten Testament
KHAT Kurzer Hand-commentar zum Alten Testament
LCL Loeb Classical Library
LdÄ Lexikon der Ägyptologie
NCBC New Century Bible Commentary
OBO Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis
Or Orientalia
OrAnt Orients antiquus
OTL Old Testament Library
OTS Oudtestamentische Studiën
PRU Le Palais royal d’Ugarit (eds. C. F. A. Schaeffer & J. Nougayrol, Paris)
REJ Revue des études juives
RIMA Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Assyrian Periods
RIME Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Early Periods
RLA Reallexikon der Assyriologie
SB Sources bibliques
SBL Monographs Society of Biblical Literature Monograph Series
SBLDS Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series
SAA State Archives of Assyria (Helsinki)
SSEA Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities
SBT Studies in Biblical Theology
SBT2 Studies in Biblical Theology, Second Series
SEÅ Svensk Exegetisk Årsbok
SJOT Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament
SSEA Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities
TLZ Theologische Literaturzeitung
TRE Theologische Realenzyklopädie
 Abbreviations xi

TB Tyndale Bulletin
TWAT Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Alten Testament
UF Ugarit-Forschungen
UUA Uppsala Universitets Arsskrift
VT Vetus Testamentum
VTSup Supplements to Vetus Testamentum
WBC Word Biblical Commentary
WMANT Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament
YNER Yale Near Eastern Researches
ZAH Zeitschrift für Althebräistik
ZAW Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
ZDPV Zeitschrift des deutschen Palästina-Vereins
viii
 Preface

This monograph is a thoroughly reworked version of a dissertation

completed under the direction of John Van Seters at the University of
North Carolina–Chapel Hill in spring of 1996. I have added a new
chapter on the early sources (the Merneptah Stele and the Song of
Deborah) and have reconsidered a number of more subtle issues. But
the essential trajectory of the work remains the same as in the original.
For the most part, I have attempted to approach the text from a “mini-
malist” perspective, in part because I find it to be a heuristically valu-
able enterprise and in part because of certain sympathies that I share
with the so-called “minimalist school.” But the results of my analysis
suggest to me that there is a good bit more that can be gleaned from
the Hebrew sources than some of the minimalists are wont to admit.
As will become clear, I have attempted to integrate into my work
some of the research done in the field of ethnicity studies, an effort that
has proved very profitable in many instances. I am, however, unable
participate in the post-modern discourse that prevails in that field of
study because I strongly disagree with its most fundamental notion,
namely, that our realities are nothing more than linguistic construc-
tions that do not—in fact, cannot—correspond with a world that is
“out there.” Although I respect the erudition of so many scholars that
share the post-modern perspective and acknowledge some of the im-
portant contributions that have emerged from the post-modern dia-
logue, about the more virulent brands of post-modernism I can only
say with the apostle Paul, favskonteÍ eπnai sofoi; ejmwravnqhsan.
One issue that was recently raised to me, too late for discussion in
this volume, is the problem of ethnic mechanism: how did the ancients
explain the obvious transference of physical and cultural features from
one generation to the next? Benjamin Braude expressed it to me via
email in this way, “Unconciously, I feel, you have adopted modern no-
tions of biological inheritance. To transfer the modern concept of eth-
nicity to a pre-Mendelian and pre-Darwinian world is to neglect the
fundamental differences between the old and new concepts of inheri-
tance.” I believe that he was particularly concerned with language like

xiii
xiv Preface

“genetic heritage,” which in his view necessarily assumes modern no-

tions about the mechanism of phenotypical transference. In my view,
such language does not presume such a modern perspective, and I can
stress here that by “genetic” I mean: “pertaining to the origin or devel-
opment of something,” as one popular English dictionary defines it.
But I do feel that he raises an important issue that I have not dealt with
and which requires additional attention at some future point.
As is generally the case with works such as this, those who deserve
my thanks are numerous. Most of the intellectual assistance was ren-
dered by my Doktorvater, Professor John Van Seters, who has proved
himself to be an ideal mentor. Thanks are also due to Professor Jack
Sasson, who served on my dissertation committee and also counseled
me during parts of the revision process. The other committee mem-
bers, Profs. David Halperin, Laurie Mafley-Kipp, and Carl Ernst, pro-
vided valuable feedback as well. Words of appreciation are due
especially to those that lent a hand well beyond what is normally ex-
pected in such efforts, particularly in the cases of Dana Pike (BYU),
Philip Stadter (UNC Classics), and Janet Johnson (Oriental Institute,
Chicago). The whole effort ultimately goes back to a conversation with
Hector Avalos, now at Iowa State University, who provided me with an
initial bibliography that got things started. To all of these, and espe-
cially to my fellow graduate students at UNC, many thanks.
So far as publishers go, the scholarship, flexibility, and profession-
alism of Jim Eisenbraun and his staff has been enumerated by others
on countless occasions, and here I can only reconfirm these acclama-
tions. Special thanks should be extended to my copy-editor, Bev
Fields, who did all that she was able—short of rewriting the piece—to
make the volume free from grammatical infelicities and from rhetorical
ambiguity.
Special thanks are reserved for my family and for my family of
faith. The members and staff of my home institution, Providence Bap-
tist Church, have been supportive in so many ways during the revision
process and this has been a special source of encouragement. Even
more important has been the life-long encouragement of my Mom and
Dad and also of my brother, Caelius Secundus. But my surest debts
have been accrued to my wife, Cheryl, and my two daughters, Emily
and Cara Ellen. One of the most amazing things about life is that they
have already canceled those debts, just as was done for me more com-
pletely so long ago by the one who receives this concluding word: Soli
Deo Gloria!
 Chapter One

Introduction

When we speak of ethnicity, we bring into view a particular kind

of sentiment about group identity wherein groups of individuals view
themselves as being alike by virtue of their common ancestry. It is
something of a truism to point out that ethnicity has played an impor-
tant role in the history of Judaism, both in the postbiblical era and
prior to it. 1 In this case it is the early historical period that is of interest
to me, specifically the period of Israelite history before the exiles re-
turned to Palestine in 538 b.c.e. The reason for this interest is twofold.
First, in virtually every discipline of the humanities there seems to be a
general unhappiness with the superficial way that scholars have han-
dled the issues of culture and identity. More specifically with respect to
ancient Israel, recent biblical scholarly activity—both literary and his-
torical—has raised serious doubts about the supposed origins and an-
tiquity of Israelite ethnicity. 2 So there is a growing consensus that these
issues need to be revisited. But before we address them in detail, a
more thorough-going definition of ethnicity is in order.
Ethnicity has been called an “extraordinarily elusive concept” that
is “very difficult to define in any precise way,” 3 and by way of illustra-
tion we need look only at two definitions to show, first, that both are
heuristically difficult to employ, and second, that they are not the same
kind of definitions. If the reader will brook a bit of telescoping from
1. M. G. Brett, “Interpreting Ethnicity,” in Ethnicity and the Bible (ed. M. G.
Brett; Biblical Interpretation Series 19; Leiden: Brill, 1996) 11; H. G. M. Williamson,
“The Concept of Israel in Transition,” in The World of Ancient Israel (ed. R. E. Clem-
ents; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) 141–61.
2. See, for instance, M. Skjeggestad’s “Ethnic Groups in Early Iron Age Palestine:
Some Remarks on the Use of the Term ‘Israelite’ in Recent Research,” SJOT 6 (1992)
159–86.
3. T. Parsons, “Some Theoretical Considerations on the Nature and Trends of
Change in Ethnicity,” in Ethnicity: Theory and Experience (ed. N. Glazer and D. P.
Moynihan; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975) 53.

1
2 Introduction

the Dictionary of Race and Ethnic Relations, according to E. Cashmore

ethnicity is:
. . . the term used to encapsulate the various types of responses of
different groups . . . the ethnic group is based on a commonness of
subjective apprehensions, whether about origins, interests or future
(or a combination of these) . . . material deprivation is the most fer-
tile condition for the growth of ethnicity . . . ethnicity may be used
for any number of purposes, sometimes as an overt political instru-
ment, at other times as a simple defensive strategy in the face of
adversity. 4
We may profitably compare this definition with the one adopted by
F. W. Riggs, who has concluded that ethnicity involves:
. . . an ascriptive, genetically self-perpetuating mode of social rela-
tions treated as an alternative to, or complement of, other forms of
social organization, in the context of a larger society. 5
If we examine these two definitions closely, the resulting comparison
brings (among other things) two important differences to the surface.
First, while some theorists view the concept of common ancestry—
kinship—as an essential component of ethnic identity (Riggs), this is
not a requirement of ethnicity as defined by Cashmore, and it is this
theoretical contrast that points us to the second difference between the
two. 6 Ethnic theorists in the tradition of Cashmore are especially inter-
ested in the problems faced by peripheral groups when they experience
the oppressive dominance of other sociopolitical modalities and also in
the effects that this peripheral experience has on identity. Because com-
mon ancestry may or may not figure in the “basic group identity” of
the subjects they study, 7 the concept of common ancestry would be a

4. E. Cashmore, Dictionary of Race and Ethnic Relations (3d ed.; London: Rout-
ledge, 1994) 106.
5. This definition is taken directly from F. W. Riggs (ed.), Ethnicity: Concepts and
Terms Used in Ethnicity Research (International Conceptual Encyclopedia for the Social
Sciences 1; Honolulu: COCTA, 1985) 4.
6. For an introduction to the theoretical discussion about kinship, see R. Fox,
Kinship and Marriage (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology 50;
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
7. I am referring to H. Isaacs’s well-known summary of the fundamental compo-
nents of group identity. See his “Basic Group Identity,” in Ethnicity: Theory and Experi-
ence (ed. N. Glazer and D. P. Moynihan; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975)
29–52.
 Introduction 3

particularly limiting factor for these theorists. On the other hand, al-
though Riggs no doubt shares many theoretical concerns with Cash-
more, his definition stands more closely to the questions raised by the
literature of ancient Israel, particularly the question of how Israel’s con-
cept of a common genealogical ancestry originated and how this ances-
tral tradition developed and changed over the course of time. So my
work is of a somewhat different character than what sometimes goes on
in the field of ethnicity studies, especially in its “politically-motivated”
garb. This does not mean that the observations and “assured results” of
that field’s research are irrelevant to my work, as will become clear. But
it does mean that my definition of ethnicity, with its primary interest
in notions of common ancestry, is semantically narrower than—but
certainly within—the broader definition of ethnicity used by Cash-
more and others. One might say that we are examining ethnic groups
that meet Cashmore’s definition and that also use kinship as an orga-
nizing principle of group membership or as a model for conceptualiz-
ing other groups. Or to put it in terms of the data from the Hebrew
Bible, we are researching ethnic kinship when it serves as: (1) a concept
of sociocultural integration (“we are the children of Abraham”); (2) as a
tool for sociocultural delimitation (“they are not children of Abra-
ham”); and (3) as a model for explaining the origins of other peoples
(“they are the children of Lot”).
Returning to the thorny problem of definition, most theorists
would in large measure agree with the general parameters offered by
F. Barth, that ethnicity is a social boundary that partitions population
groups on the basis of one or more of the following distinctions:
(a) genealogical characteristics; (b) cultural traits such as language, reli-
gion, customs, shared history; and (c) inherited phenotypical charac-
teristics, 8 with the first of these three being the primary carrier of ethnic
sentiment. Certain “anchors” or “ethnic markers” appear in conjunc-
tion with these “ethnic sentiments” (distinctive identities rooted in
perceived genealogical connections between people) and become the
primary indicators of those who are in an ethnic group and those who
are outsiders. 9 These anchors can range from the obvious physical
8. F. Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969).
9. We must be careful to distinguish between cultural characteristics and ethnic
markers. For instance, when D. Edelman suggests that we might use architecture, pot-
tery, or site layout as Israelite “ethnic markers,” she implies that these features func-
tioned in Israelite society as symbols of their ethnic identity. But it seems to me that, in
4 Introduction

characteristics that we more readily associate with ethnic identities,

such as skin tone, to more subtle types of markers, such as the ability
to participate in the community’s in-group discourse. Similar anchors
help to define cultural boundaries in general, but one must take care
not to confuse ethnicity with the closely related term culture. When we
speak of culture, we should think about groups of people who share
common intragroup systems, behavior patterns, language, and, gener-
ally speaking, a specific territorial unit. 10 When attention is given to
this definition of culture, it becomes clear that ethnic behavior is al-
ways one aspect of culture but that a given culture may or may not ex-
hibit pronounced displays of ethnic behavior. 11 Some confusion may
arise here because the terms “culture” and “ethnic group” have become
largely synonymous within the Geisteswissenschaften, but this situation
should not obscure the fact that culture is semantically broader than
ethnicity as I have defined it, so that, contrary to some work already
done, the archaeological identification of a given material culture can-
not easily demonstrate that the culture displayed ethnic sentiment and
behavior. 12 Ethnic sentiment and behavior is closely related to (but

the event that we find ourselves able to distinguish Israelite pottery from Canaanite
pottery, it would probably be more precise to view it as a characteristic of Israelite cul-
ture, since we have no idea that the Israelites would have viewed pottery as a symbol of
their common identity or as a feature that distinguished them from Canaanites. See
D. Edelman, “Ethnicity and Early Israel, in Ethnicity and the Bible (ed. M. G. Brett;
Biblical Interpretation Series 19; Leiden: Brill, 1996) 42–7.
10. This is something of an oversimplification, since there are various categories
that may fall under the rubric of the term culture. Here I am thinking specifically about
culture as an object of study for those in the field of cultural anthropology and ethnog-
raphy. For a summary of the issues involved in defining the term culture and the variety
of referents related to the term, see S. J. Knudson, Culture in Retrospect (Boston: Wave-
land, 1985) 84–95.
11. For instance, any attempt to isolate and identify ethnic groups with the ar-
chaeological data is (very nearly) doomed to failure because distinctive pottery types
and other similar kinds of evidence cannot tell us whether ethnic ancestry served an
important role for the modality in question. In the end the archaeological data only
isolates peripheral sociocultural modalities that may or may not have embraced ethnic
sentiments. For a recent attempt to isolate and identify cultural groups through ethno-
archaeology, see G. Emberling, Ethnicity and the State in Early Third Millennium Meso-
potamia (Ph.D. diss, University of Michigan, 1995).
12. Note especially the work of T. Özgüç, excavator at Kültepe, who has pointed
out that without the cuneiform texts and seal impressions the Assyrian merchant com-
munities there are not archaeologically distinguishable from their Hittite hosts (“An
Assyrian Trading Outpost,” Scientific American 208 [1963] 101–2). Recent studies that
 Introduction 5

hardly synonymous with) culture because the latter does not necessar-
ily include social identities that are rooted in a perceived genealogical
connection between the group’s members.
As one might guess, there is a healthy debate surrounding the issue
of how ethnic sentiments arise, and the various perspectives on the
subject have been conveniently summarized by R. Thompson. 13 Some
would argue that ethnic behavior is innate and biological while others
would view it more as a product of specific sociohistorical circum-
stances. 14 A somewhat different but related theoretical debate pits
those who view ethnicity as a natural extension of kinship (“primordi-
alists”) against those who consider ethnicity to be a tool used to further
political and economic interests (“instrumentalists”). We will pick up
this issue a little later, but for now we may state that everyone seems to
agree that the emergence of ethnic sentiments and the social bound-
aries that they produce are related to the question of “otherness” that
has received so much recent attention. 15 The most frequently cited ex-
ample of “the other” as a human experience is the response of the colo-
nial West to the cultures it encountered as the European presence

attempt to focus on isolating ethnic groups in the ancient Near Eastern context fail
precisely because they are identifying cultural distinctives rather than evidence of eth-
nic sentiment. See W. G. Dever, “Cultural Continuity: Ethnicity in the Archaeological
Record and the Question of Israelite Origins,” ErIsr 24 (1993) 22–33; K. A. Kamp and
N. Yoffee, “Ethnicity in Ancient Western Asia during the Early Second Millennium
B.C.: Archaeological Assessments and Ethnoarchaeological Prospectives,” BASOR 237
(1980) 85–104.
13. Richard H. Thompson, Theories of Ethnicity: A Critical Appraisal (New York:
Greenwood, 1989). See also the very useful volume by M. Banks, Ethnicity: Anthropo-
logical Constructions (London: Routledge, 1996).
14. In her recent study Edelman leaves the impression that the biological model
has been rejected by ethnicity scholarship, and this is not the case. Rather, some of the
more recent theorists are emphasizing the genesis of ethnic sentiments only within spe-
cific kinds of circumstances, and this is not the definitive conclusion of ethnicity stud-
ies but rather one view within a rather factious debate. See Edelman, “Ethnicity and
Early Israel,” 25–26.
15. See especially the following: Charles H. Long, “Primitive/Civilized: The Lo-
cus of a Problem,” and “Freedom, Otherness and Religion: Theologies Opaque,” Signi-
fications: Signs, Symbols and Images in the Interpretation of Religion (Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1986) 79–96, 185–99; J. Z. Smith, “What a Difference a Difference Makes,”
“To See Ourselves as Others See Us”: Christians, Jews, “Others” in Late Antiquity (ed.
J. Neusner and E. S. Frerichs; Scholars Press Studies in the Humanities; Chico, Calif.:
Scholars Press, 1985) 3–48. See also the entertaining critique of scholarship’s preoccu-
pation with “otherness” by P. W. Kroll, “Us and Them,” JAOS 113 (1993) 457–60.
 6 Introduction

spread into new regions. This prompted Western societies to establish

clear social and cultural boundaries between themselves and the “new”
peoples. 16 These boundaries included strong ethnic sentiments that
naturally followed from the West’s genealogical conception of a world
populated by the posterity of Noah’s sons, Ham, Shem, Japeth. At cer-
tain points, Westerners became so preoccupied with preserving an eth-
nic identity distinct from these new peoples that polygenesis became
popular. 17 Now I do not wish to belabor the rather obvious fact that
new and different stimuli (as in “the other”) often elicit interesting re-
sponses from human beings, nor is it my goal to catalog the imperial
West’s encounter with the rest of the world. Rather, apart from the ap-
parent connection between “otherness” and the issue of ethnicity, the
more important connection between “otherness” and ancient Israel is
the extent to which, in a given case, “the other” represented a concrete
referential entity (as in “ancient Israel really fought the Canaanites”) or
a socially constructed entity (that is, “the Canaanites were the literary
opponents of Israel”). As one might imagine, scholars tend to line up
on either side of this question, and I will certainly take a look at this
and related issues before my work is done. But at this point there are
more pressing introductory issues that will have to be addressed.

Israel’s Ethnic Identity: Issues and Problems

Israelite ethnicity represents a special problem in biblical studies at
this point. In decades past, the “American school” in the Albright tra-
dition, 18 the “German school” in the Alt tradition, 19 and the “Socio-
16. Edward Said provides a useful analysis of this process in Orientalism (New
York: Vintage, 1979).
17. B. G. Trigger, A History of Archaeological Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1989) 111–12. By polygenesis I am referring to the belief that various
ethnic groups were created separately by the deity and were not, therefore, genetically
related.
18. See, for example, W. F. Albright, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan (London:
University of London Press, 1968; reprint, Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1978)
and F. M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1973).
19. For Alt and scholars accepting his amphictyonic model of early Israel, the
tribal groups involved stood in opposition to native Canaanite peoples: “These neigh-
bors were the inhabitants of Palestine before the Israelite settlement. We shall refer to
them here, for the sake of brevity, as the Canaanites, without distinguishing between
the different elements in the population” (Alt, Essays on Old Testament History and Re-
ligion [Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968] 125).

Spread is 9 points long

 Introduction 7

logical school” associated with G. E. Mendenhall 20 could, despite their

important differences, suggest a Sitz im Leben for the emergence of Is-
raelite ethnic sentiments. For the American school, the Israelites repre-
sented the conquering outsider who, upon entrance into Palestine, met
a foreign culture that could be viewed as ethnically distinct from Israel.
In the case of the German school, the popular “amphictyony hypothe-
sis” suggested a united Israel that stood over against the surrounding
peoples, again a context of “otherness” suitable for ethnic sentiment to
emerge. 21 For Mendenhall and Gottwald, the original opposition pit-
ted village dwellers against residents of the Palestinian city-states. How-
ever, literary studies of the Hebrew text and archaeological work in
Palestine have raised considerable problems for all of these paradigms
over the last few decades.
With respect to the amphictyonic context, one of the first system-
atic criticisms of the hypothesis came in G. Fohrer’s 1966 article, 22
which pointed out that the book of Judges portrays a number of dis-
parate tribes rather than a previously unified Israel and that Dtr’s pic-
ture of Saul’s rise shows little evidence of an “all Israel” sentiment.
Furthermore, the idea of an early covenant was motivated, Fohrer sug-
gested, more from theological interest in covenant than from unques-
tionably early textual evidence. A more thorough criticism of the
amphictyony was published in C. H. J. de Geus’s Tribes of Israel, 23
which reiterated a number of Fohrer’s arguments but made two impor-
tant additions: (1) “amphictyony” is a misnomer, since an amphicty-
ony was not a strictly religious but a political institution; and (2) no
20. G. E. Mendenhall, “The Hebrew Conquest of Palestine,” BA 25 (1962) 66–
87; idem, The Tenth Generation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973);
N. K. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel,
1250–1000 B.C. (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1979).
21. For a discussion of the Greek evidence, see F. Cauer, “Amphiktyonie,” Pauly-
Wissowa Real-Encyclopedie 1 (1894) 1904–35; J. M. Cook, The Greeks in Ionia and the
East (London: Thames and Hudson, 1962); J. Penrose-Harland, “The Calaurian Am-
phictyony,” AJA 29 (1925) 160–71; R. de Vaux, The Early History of Israel (Philadel-
phia: Westminster, 1978) 697–700.
22. G. Fohrer, “Altes Testament: ‘Amphiktyonie’ und ‘Bund’?” TLZ 91 (1966)
801–16, 893–904.
23. C. H. J. de Geus, The Tribes of Israel: An Investigation into Some of the Pre-
suppositions of Martin Noth’s Amphictyony Hypothesis (Studia Semitica Neerlandica 18;
Assen: Van Gorcum, 1976); for a very brief outline of important criticisms, see M. L.
Chaney, “Ancient Palestinian Peasant Movements and the Formation of Premonar-
chic Israel,” in Palestine in Transition: The Emergence of Ancient Israel (Sheffield: Al-
mond, 1983) 41–44.
8 Introduction

early central cult or shrine (around which the Israelites unified) can be
isolated in the sources. In defense of the amphictyony hypothesis, von
Rad had suggested that, despite the apparent lateness of Deuteronomic
thought, early credal statements from the amphictyonic period could
be isolated within the later Dt/Dtr corpus. 24 But this argument has
been soundly dismissed by B. Childs, W. Richter, and others, who
point out that these creeds are too colored by Deuteronomistic influ-
ence to be unquestionably early. 25 In sum, there is no longer convinc-
ing evidence for an early amphictyonic Israel and, therefore, such a
context for the appearance of a distinct, Israelite ethnic identity can no
longer be confidently maintained. 26
The conquest model as a context for the emergence of ethnic Israel
has faced a similar fate, not only because of the literary problems that
we have already mentioned (i.e., that there is no early united Israel) but
also because of recent archaeological work. First, archaeological studies
have failed to uncover evidence for a unified conquest of Palestine that
could be connected with a group of Israelites. As J. M. Miller has
noted, “were we dependent upon archaeological and other non-biblical
evidence alone, we would have no reason even to suppose that such a
conquest ever occurred.” 27 True, there is evidence of widespread de-
struction associated with Late Bronze Age Palestine, but this evidence
24. Particularly Deut 6:20–24 and Josh 24:2b–13. See G. von Rad, “The Form
Critical Problem of the Hexateuch,” The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays
(trans. E. W. T. Dickens; Edinburgh: London: Oliver and Boyd, 1966).
25. B. S. Childs, “Deuteronomic Formulae in the Exodus Tradition,” Hebräische
Wortforschung: Festschrift zum 80. Geburtstag von Walter Baumgartner (VTSup 16;
Leiden: Brill, 1967) 30–39; W. Richter, “Beobachtungen zur theologischen Systembil-
dung in der alttestamentlichen Literatur anhand des ‘kleinen geschichtlichen Credo,’ ”
in Wahrheit und Verkündigung: Festschrift M. Schmaus (2 vols.; ed. W. Dettloff et al.;
Munich: Schoningh, 1967) 1.175–212.
26. For other arguments against the amphictyony hypothesis, see H. I. Irwin, “Le
sanctuaire central Israelite avant l’établissement de la monarchie,” RB 73 (1965) 161–
84; A. D. H. Mayes, Israel in the Period of the Judges (Naperville: Allenson, 1974);
H. M. Orlinsky, “The Tribal System of Israel and Related Groups in the Period of the
Judges,” OrAnt 1 (1962) 11–21; R. de Vaux, “Le thèse de l’amphictyonie Israélite,”
HTR 64 (1971) 415–36. A recent article by H. E. Chambers has suggested that ancient
Sumerian “leagues” might provide the comparative context for an original Israelite am-
phictyony at Shiloh. But this proposal is based on the flawed suggestion that the biblical
sources reflect such an amphictyony, which is not the case (“Ancient Amphictyonies, Sic
et Non,” Scripture in Context II: More Essays on the Comparative Method (ed. W. W.
Hallo, J. C. Moyer, and L. G. Perdue; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1983) 39–59.
27. J. M. Miller, “Israelite History,” in The Hebrew Bible and Its Modern Interpre-
ters (ed. D. A. Knight and G. M. Tucker; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985) 11.

Spread is 9 points long

 Introduction 9

cannot be uniformly characterized as the result of military action, and

the sites show no correlation to the biblical sites conquered in Dtr. Be-
cause of this situation, some scholars now choose to begin their Israelite
histories with later, more concrete periods, such as the United Monar-
chy. 28 The questions raised by the archaeological evidence extend be-
yond the question of the conquest to later periods in Israel’s history
because, to this point, the evidence derived from the sources has failed
to provide any clear distinction between a supposed Israelite material
culture and competing material cultures that might be identified with
other ethnic groups. 29 Even those who might attempt to identify cer-
tain early settlement features as “Israelite” must admit that “defining a
distinctively ‘Israelite’ material culture is a difficult venture.” 30
Despite support in some quarters, the “peasant revolt” model of
the sociological school has also been heavily criticized. From a theoret-
ical standpoint, the model is informed by a modern sociological
scheme that is of highly questionable value, particularly in its tendency
to use comparative “ideal types” in the analysis of quite disparate social
and historical contexts. 31 Another major problem with the theory is its

28. For example, J. A. Soggin, A History of Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Westmin-

ster, 1984). There are a growing number of scholars who question the referential status
of Israel’s United Monarchy, but I cannot agree with their skepticism. For a recent dis-
cussion and defense of its referential status, see G. N. Knoppers, “The Vanishing Solo-
mon: The Disappearance of the United Monarchy from Recent Histories of Ancient
Israel,” JBL 116 (1997) 19–44.
29. See chapter three of G. W. Ahlström’s Who Were the Israelites? (Winona Lake,
Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1986). Supporting this position are most theorists. See also
N. Lemche, Early Israel: Anthropological and Historical Studies on the Israelite Society be-
fore the Monarchy (VTSup 37; Leiden: Brill, 1985) 386–406; J. M. Miller and J. H.
Hayes, A History of Ancient Israel and Judah (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986) 72;
Soggin, A History of Ancient Israel, 361–64.
30. A. Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible: 10,000–586 b.c.e. (New York:
Doubleday, 1992) 353. See also I. Finkelstein, The Archaeology of the Israelite Settle-
ment (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1988) 27–28.
31. For a brief example of this sociological philosophy in action, see N. K. Gott-
wald, “Early Israel and the Canaanite Sociological System,” Palestine in Transition: The
Emergence of Ancient Israel (ed. D. N. Freedman and D. F. Graf; Sheffield: Almond,
1983) 25–37. In this article Gottwald, aware of criticisms that European medieval feu-
dalism is unsuitable for comparative purposes, attempts to position Canaanite society
within an “Asiatic mode of production model” developed by Marx and Engels. The
speculative nature of the endeavor is reflected by the fact that this model assumes a ba-
sic socioeconomic correlation between Indian, Chinese, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and
Islamic societies, a perspective that is intuitively simplistic and that has been much
criticized in Said’s monograph, Orientalism.
 10 Introduction

questionable use of the Hebrew sources. Although there are some cor-
respondences between the peasant revolt model and the biblical text,
B. Halpern has correctly pointed out that there is very little agreement
between them. 32 The sociological school is also generally careless with
the biblical sources—on the one hand ignoring biblical testimony that
does not fit the scheme and on the other uncritically accepting evi-
dence when it does. The model also requires that the Hapiru of the
Amarna letters and the emergence of Israel represent the same phe-
nomenon, which in the first place is a much-debated problem, 33 in the
second place erroneously assumes that the biblical sources come from a
very early period, and in the third place fails to recognize that, as I will
show, the development of the term yrb[ (‘Hebrew’) is probably to be
associated with the late biblical period many centuries after the
Amarna period (see below, pp. 245–248).
But by far the most scathing criticism of the sociological school is
that it has utterly failed to comprehend the ecological situation in Pal-
estine during the period in question, though it is at this point that the
sociological school has tended to be most confident. 34 Finkelstein
points out that Gottwald’s assumptions about rainfall, settlement pat-
terns, irrigation and agricultural technology, animal husbandry, and
material culture can all be proven erroneous. This is primarily because,
as he put it, “Gottwald’s fundamental error is that he took a body of
data from North Syria at the beginning of the second millennium and
applied it, without the slightest reservation or hesitation, to the Land of
Israel at the end of the second millennium—heedless to the totally dif-
ferent geographical and historical settings involved.” 35 But all of this
said, the fundamental problem with the sociological school (as with so
many discussions about the “origins” of Israel) is that it holds to the
now questionable assumption that the biblical narrative traditions
about early Israel—particularly the pentateuchal J/E sources—are quite
old and that these sources provide us with an ancient account of Israel’s
second-millennium emergence in Palestine. It is precisely this, among
other things, that must be addressed before our work is done here.
32. B. Halpern, The Emergence of Israel in Canaan (SBLMS 29; Chico, Calif.:
Scholars Press, 1983) 7.
33. See especially Weippert’s criticism in The Settlement of the Israelite Tribes in
Palestine: A Critical Survey of Recent Scholarly Debate (2d ed.; SBT 28; Naperville, Ill.:
Allenson, 1971) 63–74.
34. Finkelstein, The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement, 306–14.
35. Ibid., 309; see also comments by Lemche, Early Israel, 162.

Spread is 6 points long

 Introduction 11

Because of the serious questions surrounding the amphictyonic

hypothesis, the conquest model, and the peasant-revolt theory, we are
left without a convincing historical context that could produce or fos-
ter ethnic distinctions between ancient Israelites and other groups. The
question then remains how and why ethnic sentiments became such a
powerful form of identity in ancient Israel. Furthermore, the matter is
complicated by the fact that, despite an overarching concern for ethnic
identity in the Hebrew sources, the sentiments are not uniform in
character, as several examples show. While certain sources are preoccu-
pied with the patriarch Abraham, Jacob dominates the discussion in
early prophetic literature. In the case of Israel’s twelve-tribe ancestry,
the biblical picture is clouded by the fact that tribal combinations vary
in both name and number in the materials. And why do some texts
urge foreigners into Israel’s religious fold and others exclude them from
the community? How do we explain Abraham’s relationship with
Hagar when we juxtapose it with Ezra’s rejection of foreign women? In
other words, we must remember that the problem is not limited to the
nature of “Israel” and how its ethnic boundaries were defined but with
“Israelites” (and “Judeans”) and how their various definitions of ethnic
identity played out on the stage of history.
Although the three reconstructed contexts—conquest, peasant re-
volt, and amphictyony—have provided the ground from which Israel-
ite distinctiveness supposedly emerged, the supposed demise of these
historical theories is only now beginning to affect our views of Israelite
identity and of the origins of its ethnic sentiment. For the most part,
scholarship has continued to assume the essentially ethnic nature of an-
cient Israel, primarily because the fundamental statement of Israelite
ethnic identity, the patriarchal narratives, is thought to reflect very an-
cient circumstances. But the assumption that the pentateuchal sources
are very early has been strongly challenged, beginning especially with
the efforts of J. Van Seters and H. H. Schmid in the mid-seventies. 36
The writings of these scholars, which propose that the tetrateuchal
sources are rather late, were at first viewed as eccentric but have now
36. H. H. Schmid, Der sogenannte Jahwist: Beobachtungen und Fragen zur Pen-
tateuchforschung (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1976); John Van Seters, Abraham in
History and Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975). See also the some-
what different contribution of T. L. Thompson, The Historicity of the Patriarchal Nar-
ratives: The Quest for the Historical Abraham (BZAW 133; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1974).
Subsequent works by these and other scholars only seem, in my opinion, to raise even
more questions.
12 Introduction

gained greater support than was anticipated at the time. Since then, the
pentateuchal narratives, or at least many of the pentateuch’s compo-
nents, have been increasingly viewed as literary products from the late
monarchy, the exile, or even from the Persian era. And even if one is
not fully convinced of such a late date for the materials, D. A. Knight is
certainly correct that “it is now difficult to hold to an early date with
unshaken confidence.” 37 Neither an amphictyonic context, nor the
conquest model, nor a supposed patriarchal age can be established with
any certainty, and so they cannot serve as a stable context for the emer-
gence of a distinct ethnic identity in ancient Israel.
As in the case of Israelite literature and history, the religion of an-
cient Israel is being conceptualized with new paradigms. In decades
past, both the “American school” in the Albright tradition 38 and the
“German school” in the Alt tradition 39 could, despite their important
differences, endorse the idea that the Israelites stood in contrast to
Canaanite religion. But presently the observation of M. Coogan that
Israelite religion “should be viewed as a subset of Canaanite religion” is
becoming the rule rather than the exception. 40 M. Smith echoes this
sentiment that “the varied forms of Yahwistic cult [reflect] Israel’s
Canaanite background.” 41 Recent archaeological finds, such as the dis-
coveries at Kuntillet Ajrud and Deir ºAlla, 42 and our growing under-

37. D. A. Knight, “The Pentateuch,” The Hebrew Bible and Its Modern Interpreters
(ed. D. A. Knight and G. M. Tucker; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985) 281–22.
38. For example, see Albright, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan; Cross, Canaanite
Myth and Hebrew Epic.
39. For Alt and those accepting his amphictyonic model of early Israel, the tribal
groups involved stood in opposition to native Canaanite peoples: “These neighbors
were the inhabitants of Palestine before the Israelite settlement. We shall refer to them
here, for the sake of brevity, as the Canaanites, without distinguishing between the dif-
ferent elements in the population” (see Essays on Old Testament History and Religion,
125).
40. M. D. Coogan, “Canaanite Origins and Lineage: Reflections on the Religion
of Ancient Israel,” in Ancient Israelite Religion (ed. P. D. Miller; Philadelphia: Fortress,
1987) 115–6. Similarly, in the same volume (pp. 249ff.) J. Holladay’s “Religion in Israel
and Judah under the Monarchy: An Explicitly Archaeological Approach” suggests that
we should conceptualize Israel as fundamentally similar to the other Syro-Palestinian
states nearby.
41. M. S. Smith, The Early History of God (San Francisco: Harper, 1990) 146.
42. There is a very large body of literature that addresses the finds at Kuntillet
Ajrud and the related finds at Khribet el-Qom. A good starting place is W. G. Dever,
“Asherah, Consort of Yahweh? New Evidence from Kuntillet Ajrud,” BASOR 255
(1984) 21–37. A more recent work is S. A. Wiggins, A Reassessment of “Asherah ”: A
 Introduction 13

standing of other features such as cults of the dead 43 suggest that this
trend is not misguided. Just as the newer conceptions of Israelite litera-
ture have raised questions about Israel’s ethnic distinctiveness so also
the net result in the realm of Israelite religion seems to be that Israelite
religion is, in many respects, “Canaanite” religion, or perhaps better,
“West Semitic religion.” These circumstances in essence raise the ques-
tion of how one should speak properly of the “Israelites” in contrast to
the “Canaanites” and other peoples in the region.
Clearly then, the present situation in the study of Hebrew litera-
ture, Syro-Palestinian archaeology, and Israelite religion runs counter
to the standard contexts that older scholarship has suggested for the
emergence of an ethnically distinct Israel. Nevertheless, the very
sources that we are wont to question contain some of the most pro-
nounced expressions of ethnic sentiment that human literature has
produced. An attempt to clarify this paradoxical situation must neces-
sarily break with the three dominant conceptual models of Israel’s eth-
nic distinctiveness (amphictyony, conquest, peasant-revolt) and begin
to ask new questions of the materials. If we cannot get a clear picture of
Israelite origins and hence of its nascent sense of identity, then a better
set of queries should set aside the somewhat misguided preoccupation
with Israel’s nebulous origins and focus on the more tangible literary
sources and historical periods. Our interrogatories in this task are
three: (1) What varieties of ethnic sentiment and definition played im-
portant roles in ancient Israel’s literature? (2) What does the literary
discussion tell us about the origin and history of these identities?
(3) What roles do other modes of identity (e.g., religious, political,
etc.) play in relation to the various conceptions of ethnic identity?
As I pursue these three questions I will be guided by three sets of
data and their relationship to each other. First, it is necessary that a
theoretical base be established with respect to ethnic studies proper.

Study according to the Textual Sources of the First Two Millennia b.c.e. (AOAT 235;
Neukirchener-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1993). Regarding Deir ºAllâ, see J. A.
Hackett, The Balaam Text from Deir ºAlla (HSM 31; Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1980).
43. T. J. Lewis, Cults of the Dead in Ancient Israel and Ugarit (HSM 39; Atlanta:
Scholars Press, 1989); B. B. Schmidt, Israel’s Beneficent Dead: Ancestor Cult and Necro-
mancy in Ancient Israelite Religion and Tradition (Forschungen zum Alten Testament
11; Tübingen: Mohr, 1994). Schmidt’s work was recently reprinted by Eisenbrauns
(1996).
14 Introduction

This should provide the necessary ground rules that will circumscribe
and give shape to my work, especially with respect to the kinds of is-
sues that are brought to the materials in question. On the other hand,
what I am proposing is to use only those conclusions from ethnic stud-
ies that enjoy the broadest base of support. I will studiously avoid using
“off the shelf ” theoretical models offered by ethnicity studies to accom-
plish my task, since such models are themselves subject to the concrete
data presented by the evidence and are inevitably based on some hotly-
debated presuppositions. Second, a comparative base of materials must
be collected and evaluated, this being accomplished through both pri-
mary and secondary sources that address ethnicity and ethnic issues
among Israel’s ancient neighbors. Specifically, I am thinking here
about Egypt, Assyria, and Greece. Finally, these first two corpora of
data must be integrated with my primary research base, which is com-
posed of the materials available to us from the Hebrew Bible along
with a few extrabiblical sources.
Due to the complexity of these sources and the difficulties that ac-
company their use in historical reconstruction, it is necessary that I
briefly explain the strategy that will guide my examination of the
archaeological and biblical sources. Although I will refer to the archae-
ological evidence when relevant, the difficulties associated with ethno-
archaeology dictate that my point of departure will be the Hebrew text,
since it is, despite obvious limitations, our best window into the an-
cient Israelite context. 44 The assumptions that will govern my han-
dling of these biblical materials are as follows. The “new orientation”
in biblical studies has its appeal for a number of reasons. 45 To defend
this position fully here is unnecessary, but I can offer a brief synopsis to
explain its attractiveness. One perplexing issue in scholarship of the
Hebrew Bible during the last few decades has been the enigma of von
Rad and Noth: scholarship has tended, in a contradictory way, to em-
brace both Noth’s tetrateuch and von Rad’s hexateuch simultaneously
by agreeing that the first four books of the Hebrew Bible stand apart
from Dt/Dtr and yet also agreeing that the first four books cannot exist

44. Classicists face a similar archaeological problem in their ethnic research. See
J. M. Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1997) 128–9.
45. The “new orientation” views the Hebrew historical works, basically the Pen-
tateuch and Dtr, as later works that might tell more about the period in which they
originated (the late monarchy and the exilic period) than about Israel’s earlier history.
 Introduction 15

without Dtr’s conquest narrative. A very natural way to account for

this has been suggested by Van Seters, who argues that Dt/Dtr existed
first, followed by the addition of J and then P (he eliminates the Elo-
hist). 46 In this scenario, J and P never existed without the conquest
narrative, and the literary distinctions between J[E?]P and Dt/Dtr are
preserved.
There are, of course, other solutions that have been suggested to
address these problems, and the works of Rendtorff and Blum, among
others, come immediately to mind. 47 And of course the nature of Dtr
has been very much questioned in recent years, including its very exis-
tence, and so the simple sketch that I have offered above is not in-
tended to stake out a position. Rather, the major point here is that the
supposed antiquity of the pentateuchal sources (if indeed they are
sources) has now been questioned from several directions, so that the
dating and nature of the those sources must now become another ele-
ment within our continuing debate. As a result, it is methodologically
questionable to begin a traditiohistorical inquiry with the pentateuchal
materials. The more appropriate starting place is with the sources that
can be dated with greater certainty, or at least with relative certainty.
Our primary and most substantive sources would naturally become the
eighth-century prophetic collections of Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah, to be
followed chronologically with the materials in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Deu-
tero-Isaiah, and so forth. Deuteronomy can also be added to the list,
since its association with the late Judean monarchy is secure (although
it is important to recognize that it contains older materials). There re-
main several sources that are of unquestionable antiquity, namely the
Merneptah Stele and the Song of Deborah, and I would be misguided
to address the question of Israelite ethnicity apart from them.
I have come to view this work as “prolegomena” rather than as a
complete analysis of ethnic sentiments throughout the history of Israel.
46. The status of the “Elohist” document and its implications for the dating of the
pentateuchal traditions is not always fully appreciated. Any appraisal of E must con-
clude that we have only a few fragments of the source, and it is certainly debatable that
the source exists at all. Without an E source, we no longer possess “Northern” (E) and
“Southern” (J) versions of the pentateuchal stories, and it precisely these versions that
have for so long implied to us that the traditions hark back to the United Monarchy.
47. E. Blum, Die Komposition der Vatergeschichte (WMANT 57; Neukirchen-
Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1984); Studien zur Komposition des Pentateuch (BZAW
189; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1990); R. Rendtorff, Das überlieferungsgeschichtliche Problem
des Pentateuch (BZAW 147; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1977).
16 Introduction

From a literary standpoint, an extended analysis of ethnicity in the

tetrateuchal traditions and in the Deuteronomistic History will not be
offered. From the historical perspective, with the exception of a few
brief comments on the postexilic period, my work will end with the
exile. Nevertheless, I think that the implications of my work are sub-
stantial for both the excluded literary sources and for the postexilic pe-
riod which it does not cover.

The Role of Ethnicity Studies

Concerning my first task, that of establishing a theoretical base
from ethnic theory, attention must be given to three separate issues
within ethnic studies: focus, paradigm, and terminology. The question
of focus refers to the various foci of ethnic behavior that can absorb
one’s theoretical attention. By foci I mean, for instance, that theorists
interested in political aspects of ethnicity will be preoccupied with an
analysis of the associated political structures, while theorists interested
in the psychological aspects of ethnicity will concern themselves with
the inner realities of ethnic affiliation, the human psyche. In this case I
am interested in ethnic identity as a corporate experience of the Israel-
ite community/communities, both in terms of the ethnic ideas that
most Israelites shared and also in terms of the ideas that separated them
into distinct ideological parties. I am particularly interested in how eth-
nicity became an important component of Israelite national identity
when, as I will show, ethnicity appears to have played a relatively minor
role in the national identity of the surrounding ancient Near Eastern
states. But because ethnic identity is often intertwined with other
modes of identity—for instance, religious identity—our discussion
cannot elude these aspects of identity. So while our primary concern
will be ethnic identity, especially as it relates to national identity, three
commonly related modes of identity will necessarily fall within the
purview of this study: the political, the religious, and the sociocultural.
This effort will necessarily be clouded by two facts: first, that our
sources are often the work of one person (and hence one perspective),
and second, by the fact that the sources may reflect only one of several
competing communities or parties within ancient Israel. There is pre-
cious little that can be done about this source limitation, but an aware-
ness of it may prevent us from taking speculative turns and from
making unwarranted assumptions.
 Introduction 17

The preliminary discussion of paradigm and terminology can be

handled together. The question of paradigm in relation to ethnic stud-
ies is a sticky one, in part because the field is presently influenced by
rather strong sociopolitical motivations that (in my view) often pre-
empt objective scholarship. 48 Despite my personal convictions about
the questions of race, ethnicity, and social justice, I do not think that
our discussion of theoretical paradigms can be debated at the level of
social consciousness that permeates the field. Such a discussion requires
that we offer value judgments based on our economic, religious, philo-
sophical, and anthropological assumptions, and this would itself re-
quire several monographs to address and defend. I have no intention of
entering the discussion at that level. But this problem aside, the ques-
tion of paradigm has ethnic theorists in quite a debate about which
conceptual models successfully account for the origins of ethnic senti-
ment and explain or predict ethnic behaviors. Some theorists argue
that ethnic sentiments originate as an extension of kinship, some main-
tain that they originate in “oppressive” social contexts, and still others
adhere to a geographic paradigm. 49 On another level there is the de-
bate between the “primordialists” and the “instrumentalists” over
whether ethnic sentiments are an avoidable social outcome. 50 All of
this needs to be addressed.
While I whole-heartedly agree that attention must be given to
theoretical issues, I have not adopted any particular “system” of ethnic
behavior, despite the fact that R. Thompson has enthusiastically criti-
cized theoretical eclecticism. 51 True, no one can argue with the point
that a holistic theory of ethnic behavior is a suitable ideal, but I am un-
comfortable with approaches that tend to overburden the heuristic side
of the model-data dialectic—and this is precisely what seems to hap-
pen when theorists adopt a particular ethnic model. In the discussion
below I will provide one example from the anthropological data (the
48. I say this with all due respect to scholars who doubt the possibility of objec-
tive scholarship. But to them I must say that the question is not whether we can actu-
ally succeed in our efforts to be objective but, rather, should we make the effort to be
objective nonetheless?
49. For a summary of the various paradigms, see Riggs, Ethnicity: Concepts and
Terms Used in Ethnicity Research 30–37; Thompson, Theories of Ethnicity.
50. This debate can be put in other terms: “ascriptive theorists” versus “situation-
ists,” or “genetics” versus “environment.” See Riggs, Ethnicity: Concepts and Terms Used
in Ethnicity Research, 11–29.
51. Thompson, Theories of Ethnicity, 1–19.
18 Introduction

Tiv kinship tradition) to illustrate the difficulties that are associated

with choosing a particular model of ethnic behavior and also the rea-
sons for the methodological debate. This methodological disagreement
among ethnicists can hardly be solved in a cross-disciplinary work such
as mine; eclecticism seems entirely appropriate, provided that one does
not, in his or her eclecticism, embrace two or more contradictory prin-
ciples. Thus I hope to take up several theoretical conclusions with
which most agree and to utilize these within an eclectic paradigm. The
reader might cry “foul” rather quickly, given that my work seems al-
ready to have adopted Riggs’s definition of ethnicity over Cash-
more’s, 52 but the two definitions are in fact quite similar and differ
mainly on this point: whether kinship is an integral part of ethnicity,
and to this I am saying “yes.” But this hardly breaks my commitment
to eclecticism, and I believe that the reader will find that the method-
ological principles outlined below stand, not alongside the definition
of ethnicity that I have adopted, but as a clarification of it.
To begin, we should first recognize that ethnicity is one of the
many varieties of human behavior and is perceptible only in certain
cultural contexts. For instance, if a particular a group should take ac-
tion against a perceived threat, this action would be understood as
“ethnic” only if the group’s action were related to their ethnic senti-
ment. Since F. Barth’s seminal work, anthropological thinking has
moved away from ethnicity defined as a cultural unit to ethnicity as the
organizing principle of that unit, with these organizing principles usu-
ally called “ethnic boundaries.” 53 This implies that our comprehension
of a given ethnic community is achieved primarily as we come to iden-
tify its discursive strategies of self-definition and also as we understand
the devices it uses to distinguished itself from other communities.
Second, ethnicity as we have defined it here is a phenomenon of
genetic perception, that is, it includes the idea that the group in some
way shares a common ancestry, and this is quite apart from the ques-
tion of whether the individuals in the group are actually related. 54 In

52. See pp. 1–2, but for convenience repeated here: “Ethnicity involves an ascrip-
tive, genetically self-perpetuating mode of social relations treated as an alternative to,
or complement of, other forms of social organization, in the context of a larger society”
(Riggs, Ethnicty: Concepts and Terms Used in Ethnicity Research, 4).
53. Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries.
54. Although the genetic component is deemed essential by most sources, the
confusion associated with the definition of ethnicity is evident from W. Sollors’ article,
 Introduction 19

this respect, ethnicity would seem to be an extension of kinship, but I

would not necessarily limit it in this way as some would. 55 Unlike this
genetic component of identity, other factors, such as language, culture,
religion, and history contribute to but are not, alone, indicators of eth-
nic sentiment. 56 These other features often complement and contrib-
ute to ethnic modes of identity (or vice versa, ethnicity to them), which
means that our discussion cannot move very far from these other as-
pects of identity. It is precisely for this reason that my title reads “eth-
nicity and identity.”
Third, ethnic sentiments do not arise in a vacuum but as distinctive
behaviors in contrast to other social groups, and both the members and
nonmembers usually recognize these sentiments. 57 This distinctive
identity is intensified (and some would say created) by competition, 58
either between ethnic groups or between an ethnic group and other so-
cial modalities. In particular, Wallerstein has argued that imperialist,
colonial structures tend to create ethnic groups in order to justify ex-
ploitation of them. 59 This contention that imperialism creates ethnicity

which states that ethnicity is “differentiation based on nationality, race, religion, or lan-
guage.” See “Literature and Ethnicity,” Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups
(ed. S. Thernstrom; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980) 648.
55. In the work of P. L. van den Berghe, for example, ethnicity is fundamentally
an extension of kinship behavior, and this is a genetically induced reality (The Ethnic
Phenomenon [New York: Elsevier, 1981]). See also C. Geertz, “The Integrative Revolu-
tion: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States,” The Interpretation of
Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973) 255–310; E. Shils, “Primordial, Personal, Sa-
cred, and Civil Ties,” British Journal of Sociology 8 (1957) 130–45.
56. Although Harold Isaacs’s now famous article on “group identity” suggests that
a number of these items are integral to the establishment of ethnic identity (“Basic
Group Identity”) 29–52.
57. I say “usually recognize” because ethnic sentiments can arise in a number of
different combinations. For example, early ethnographers classified newly encountered
peoples along the ethnic lines inferred from Genesis 10, and this was quite apart from
any ethnic sentiments that the new peoples themselves may have had.
58. As all scholars would agree. See especially Susan Olzak’s Dynamics of Ethnic
Competition and Conflict (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992); M. Banton, Ra-
cial and Ethnic Competition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
59. I. Wallerstein, The Capitalist World-Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1979). See also his earlier work, The Modern World System: Capitalist Agricul-
ture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York:
Academic, 1974); for a discussion of this theory and the suitability of its application to
ancient societies, see K. Ekholm and J. Friedman, “Capital Imperialism and Exploi-
tation in Ancient World Systems,” in Power and Propaganda: A Symposium on Ancient
20 Introduction

is much debated in ethnicity studies and is closely tied to a question

that we have already raised, the question of primordial and instrumen-
tal theories of ethnicity.
A brief digression into the anthropological data is sufficient to
bring some order to this debate about core, periphery, primordialism,
instrumentalism, and the like. Some time ago L. Bohannan offered her
genealogical study of the Tiv people of northern Nigeria. 60 Although
for some theorists the mere fact that they were “studied” will make the
Tiv subject to Western imperialism, the historical and sociocultural
context makes it quite inappropriate to describe the Tiv as a colonial
subject on the periphery of an overbearing core civilization. Yet the Tiv
have a very pronounced notion of kinship and ethnicity, as is reflected
by their belief in a common ancestor (named Tiv), by their conception
of eponymous ancestors for each segment of Tiv society, and by their
use of genealogy to explain Tiv relationships with non-Tiv tribes
nearby. 61 The kinship links defined by the Tiv genealogies are rela-
tively important because they define who the Tiv can marry, who will
help in time of need, who can bewitch them, and who can protect
them from witchcraft. Tiv genealogies are relatively stable but can ex-
hibit marked fluidity when it becomes necessary to match the genealo-
gies to changing circumstances. In such cases Tiv ethnicity is not so
much instrumental (used to effect changes in political and economic
status) as it is useful to reinforce or explain changes that have already
taken place. On the other hand, on one occasion Tiv elders appear to
have invented a genealogical relationship between two groups for the
purpose of avoiding participation in a border conflict, and this is very
much in keeping with the instrumental model of ethnicity.
This example is sufficient to demonstrate that we cannot limit eth-
nicity to imperial core/periphery contexts (as Wallerstein suggests) and

Empires (ed. M. T. Larsen; Mesopotamia 7; Copenhagen: Akademisk, 1979) 41–59;

S. N. Eisenstat, “Observations and Queries about Sociological Aspects of Imperialism
in the Ancient World,” Power and Propaganda, 21–33.
60. L. Bohannan, “A Genealogical Charter,” Africa 22 (1952) 301–15. A. Mala-
mat recognized the relevance of Bohannan’s research for our study of ancient Israel in
“Tribal Societies: Biblical Genealogies and African Lineage Systems,” Archives europé-
ennnes de sociologie 14 (1973) 126–36.
61. W. R. Smith observed similar uses of female eponyms among the Arabians.
See Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1885) 27–34.
 Introduction 21

also that we unduly simplify our theoretical problems when we try to

choose between primordial and instrumental ethnic models. The pri-
mordialists are right that kinship structures, and frequently ethnicity
with them, are extremely common social modalities that can hardly be
explained as mere “instruments” of socio-economic manipulation.
They are instead the natural result of human affections for family and
the extension of these affections to those who are (or appear to be) like
us. 62 But there is also little doubt that these kinship models are fre-
quently manipulated or created for ulterior (instrumental) purposes,
and in the absence of compelling evidence one way or the other it is
only proper that we recognize both the primordial and the instrumen-
tal aspects of ethnicity. 63 Turning again to Wallerstein’s core/periphery
thesis—although I cannot agree with it all the way, I can agree with the
premise that ethnicity arises, or at least becomes more salient, in the
context of multicultural contact and also with the notion that ethnic
sentiments intensify when “peripheral” groups live under the domina-
tion of a powerful “core” civilization.
Leaving aside the Tiv example and returning to our discussion of
essential ethnic principles, the fourth principle that we should empha-
size is that phenotypical characteristics 64 often play an important role
as ethnic indicia used to make ready judgments about individual group
membership (although we should stress that numerous other indicia
are possible). Such indicia are to be distinguished from criteria, which
are used to define the boundaries of group identity (= “ethnic bound-
aries”). Although we have said this, it is generally agreed that pheno-
typical characteristics cannot have played an important role in
distinguishing Israel from the surrounding West Semitic peoples, par-
ticularly from any supposed “Canaanites” or “Amorites,” and this re-
minds us to examine the evidence for more subtle types of indicia and
also to note any difficulties that we have in recognizing them. Such a

62. For other helpful discussions of kinship, see M. Fortes, The Dynamics of Clan-
ship among the Tallensi (London: Oxford University Press, 1945); H. I. Hogbin, Kin-
ship and Marriage in a New Guinea Village (London: Athlone, 1963); G. K. Nukunya,
Kinship and Marriage among the Anlo Ewe (London: Athlone / New York: Humanities,
1969); E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Kinship and Marriage among the Nuer (Oxford: Claren-
don, 1969);
63. With respect to ethnic origins, my feeling is that the primordial character of
ethnicity is primary and the instrumental character secondary.
64. I.e., inherited physical features.
 22 Introduction

difficulty might imply the absence of ethnicity (or at least of intense

ethnicity) because functional indicia are necessary ingredients in the ef-
fort to preserve or emphasize ethnic distinctiveness.
Fifth, to the extent that it is possible, ethnicity must be considered
in its political, social-structural, and economic setting to be fully ap-
prehended, with special care given to the issue of its relation to social
and class structures. This is a natural inference from the observation
that various kinds of competition contribute to and intensify ethnic
sentiments because politics and economics are frequently (some would
say always!) the causes of group competition. This is particularly rele-
vant for any inquiry into Israelite society because class struggles, in par-
ticular, show up at numerous points in the biblical evidence.
And finally, as ethnic theorists frequently point out, ethnic identi-
ties are highly fluid, and attention must be given to the kinds of
changes that occur in a given, concrete historical situation. These
changes take place according to several recognized patterns, as summa-
rized by D. Horowitz. 65 On the one hand, differing social groups may
join by either of two types of assimilation: “amalgamation” or “incor-
poration.” On the other hand, existing groups may differentiate, creat-
ing new social and cultural units, as in the case of “division” or
“proliferation.” 66 But as M. M. Gordon has pointed out, we must
guard against the assumption that these four dynamic processes neces-
sarily effect a change in group ethnicity, since similar social patterns
can be observed quite apart from ethnicity itself. 67 Moreover there are
many types of changes that can take place within an ethnic group that
do not correspond to any of these terms or patterns, particularly when
in-group changes are made to preserve the status quo in the face of in-
creasing pressures on group identity. Consequently, the issue of ethnic-
ity is a complicated one, and this is all the more true when we realize
that it is but one of many products (and ingredients!) of the complex
dialectic through which cultures make individuals and individuals cre-
ate culture. This is a human process that scholars of every discipline are
apt to struggle with for a long time to come.
65. D. Horowitz, “Ethnic Identity,” in Ethnicity: Theory and Experience (ed.
N. Glazer and D. P. Moynihan; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975) 111–140.
66. One might illustrate these patterns with the following formulas: “amalgam-
ation” (A+B = C); “incorporation” (A+B = A); “division” (A yields B+C); and “prolif-
eration” (A yields A+B).
67. M. M. Gordon, “Toward a General Theory of Racial and Ethnic Group Be-
haviors,” in Ethnicity: Theory and Experience, 84–110.

Spread is 6 points long

 C h a p t e r Tw o

Ethnicity and Identity in

Israel’s Ancient Context

The range of anthropological and sociological materials from

which comparative data might be drawn is considerable. In the previ-
ous chapter, I believe that a sufficiently broad theoretical base—itself
tied to these extensive sources—was established to serve as a general
framework against which to evaluate the present study. This general
theoretical summary of the data is of limited use, however, in a detailed
comparative endeavor, and it is for this reason that I will now provide a
more thorough examination of materials from three of Israel’s ancient
neighbors: Assyria, Egypt, and Greece. Given the many potential alter-
natives, my choice of comparative sources requires some explanation.
Assyria and Egypt were chosen because Palestine, and Israel with it, lay
on the periphery of these two great centers of civilization. The Egyp-
tian and Assyrian materials therefore do us a twofold service in that
they tell us not only about Egyptian and Assyrian identity but also
about the perspective of these peoples regarding Israel and its environs.
Assyrian texts are of particular importance because many of our He-
brew sources originated during the period in which Neo-Assyrian
dominance was emerging in the Levantine region.
Greece is another matter and is of importance for different reasons.
Archaeologists of both classical and oriental stripe have become in-
creasingly aware that the exchange of ideas between East and West was
much more active in the ancient world than previously supposed. Al-
though scholars have gradually become aware that this exchange took
place prior to the collapse of Mycenaean civilization and, of course,
during the relatively late Hellenistic period, they have been hesitant to
discuss how soon contacts were restored in the aftermath of the Myce-
naean age. The evidence has been carefully evaluated by W. Burkert,

23
24 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

who has shown that contacts between the Greeks and Phoenicians in-
creased markedly during the eighth century b.c.e. and afterward. 1 Al-
though there is very little evidence of direct cultural exchange between
Israel and Greece during this period, Israel’s close ties to Phoenicia—
linguistic, cultural and economic—represented a potential avenue of
influence from the West. Furthermore, if one adheres to or is open to a
somewhat late dating of the pentateuchal sources, then much of Israel’s
literature was composed during the eighth, seventh, and sixth centuries
b.c.e., and this is precisely the period in which Greek contacts with
the East mushroomed. 2 As we will see, the Greek and Hebrew sources
share many common elements that are either less prominent in or
missing from the other ancient Near Eastern materials.
The textual witnesses from these three ancient contexts are quite
extensive, so our discussion must be limited to several representative
samples. One of the curious features of Israel’s ethnicity is that, at least
in the later historical periods, it was linked with Israelite national and
religious identity. Given this feature, a helpful parameter is that our
comparative texts ought to reflect a state perspective (or at least reflect
on state perspective). In the case of Assyria, the most natural selections
would then come from the royal inscriptions and king-lists, with the
king-list tradition being especially important because it leads to a dis-
cussion of some important Old Babylonian evidence for ethnicity in
ancient Mesopotamia. The same kinds of materials would seem to be
appropriate for our study of Egyptian identity, but two modifications
are necessary. First, the perspective of the Egyptian king-list tradition is
quite close to the perspective of the royal inscriptions and, unlike the
Assyrian king-lists, it will not lead us to any new data that is particu-

1. W. Burkert, Die orientalisierende Epoche in der griechischen Religion und Litera-

tur (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1984) . Burkert’s work is also available
in translation as The Orientalizing Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1992); See also O. Murray’s recent edition of Early Greece (2d ed.; Cambridge: Har-
vard University Press, 1993) 80–101; G. Markoe, “The Emergence of Orientalizing in
Greek Art: Some Observations on the Interchange between Greeks and Phoenicians in
the Eighth and Seventh Centuries b.c.,” BASOR 301 (1996) 47–67; D. Harden, The
Phoenicians (London: Thames and Hudson, 1963) 24, 55–56, 84, 192–93. A some-
what different but very interesting study is Israel and Hellas by J. P. Brown (BZAW 231;
Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995).
2. Cultural exchange between Greece and Israel’s coastal neighbor, Phoenicia, was
especially active during the period between 750 and 650 b.c.e. (Murray, Early Greece,
80–101).
 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 25

larly relevant to our study. 3 Second, by all accounts one of the more
important texts relating to Egyptian identity is the Middle Kingdom
“Tale of Sinuhe,” particularly because it brings Egyptian and Asiatic
identity into close literary quarters. Therefore we will add this Egyp-
tian literary piece to our study.
The concept of “national identity” is something of a problem in
Greece, since the notion of a Greek nation is not relevant during the
archaic and classical periods that interest me. The Histories of Herodo-
tus, however, are very much concerned with the problems of politics
and national conflict; I can think of no better source for our inquiry.
The thoughtful reader who is interested primarily in Israel will no
doubt characterize Herodotus as a rather “late” source, chronologically
speaking. But I will introduce my discussion of Herodotus with several
earlier Greek texts and in the process hope to show that the so-called
“father of history” is a suitable representative of earlier periods in Greek
literary history.

Ethnicity and Identity in Neo-Assyria

To foreshadow the results of this portion of my work, I would like
to state at the outset that one of the more important features of the As-
syrian materials is how little they reflect ethnic sentiment on the part of
the Assyrians, either in terms of their own identity or in terms of their
conceptions about other groups. If we must attach labels to Assyrian
identity in the form of the modalities that we have discussed already,
then it would be most accurate to describe it as a religious and political
identity. The Assyrian aim was to construct a sense of identity for itself
and for its imperial subjects in which its national policies seemed
“right” and, in doing so, the Assyrian ruling class hoped to motivate its
subjects to cease their resistance to its expansionist program. 4 After we
have looked at a number of relevant texts, I will attempt to describe
how these modes of identity promoted this effort, and I will also at-
tempt to explain why ethnic sentiments are missing within the texts.
The texts are handled chronologically, with the first selection dating to

3. For a discussion of the Egyptian king-lists, see D. B. Redford, Pharaonic King-

Lists, Annals and Day-Books (SSEA Publication 4; Mississauga, Ontario: Benben, 1986).
4. M. Liverani, “The Ideology of the Assyrian State,” Power and Propaganda: A
Symposium on Ancient Empires (ed. M. T. Larsen; Mesopotamia 7; Copenhagen: Aka-
demisk, 1979) 297–317.
26 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

the ninth century, from the reign of Assurnaßirpal, and the last selec-
tion dating to the seventh century, from the reign of Assurbanipal. 5

Assyrians and Non-Assyrians in the Days of Assurnaßirpal II

(883–859)
When Assurnaßirpal began his reign, the core area administered di-
rectly from the Assyrian capital included seven nearby provinces and
comprised about 75 miles square, about half of which was either
mountainous terrain or unirrigated territory. 6 The text that interests
me is from the king’s annals, Year 2, and describes the rebellion of “As-
syrians,” along with their governor and the “land of Nirbu,” in a region
just northwest of this core territory. The most relevant feature of the
text for our purposes is that it outlines some of the criteria that were
used to distinguish Assyrians from other surrounding peoples. 7
The first example differentiates the rebel Assyrians (nisê matAssurai )
from their cohorts, the ‘troops of the land of Nirbu’ ( ßabê sa matNirbi ),
which raises the question of how such a distinction was made in a re-
gion outside of Assyria proper, where geography was useless as a distin-
guishing criterion. Contextually speaking, the Assyrians mentioned are
rebel inhabitants of the city of Halzi-luha, their governor being Hulai.
They were Assyrians by virtue of the fact that Shalmaneser I had settled
Assyrians in the region several centuries earlier. The rebellion was met
in the characteristic way: Assurnaßirpal gathered his armies, traveled to
the region, set up a statue of himself, took supplies from nearby

5. One might argue that Neo-Assyrian epistolary texts would provide a better
window into Assyrian identity, but this is not the case. We are interested primarily in
ethnicity as a component of national identity, and this is best examined in the monar-
chic inscriptions. Furthermore, S. Parpola has convincingly shown that the epistolary
corpus adds little to our inscriptional evidence. See his “Assyrian Royal Inscriptions and
Neo-Asyrian Letters,” in Assyrian Royal Inscriptions: New Horizons in Literary, Ideologi-
cal and Historical Analysis (ed. F. M. Fales; Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente, 1981) 117–42.
6. A. T. Olmstead, History of Assyria (New York: Scribners, 1923) 81.
7. I am following D. D. Luckenbill’s translation from Ancient Records of Assyria
and Babylon [hereafter ARAB ] (2 vols.; Chicago: University of Chicago, 1926–27)
1.145–48. For text with transliteration, see E. A. W. Budge and L. W. King, Annals of
the Kings of Assyria (2 vols.; London: Longmans, 1902) 1.288–98. See also A. K. Gray-
son, Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC: I (1114–859 bc) (RIMA 2; Tor-
onto: University of Toronto Press, 1991) 200–202. For a discussion of the chronology
of the inscriptions, see W. de Filippi, “The Royal Inscriptions of Assur-naßir-apli II
(883–859 b.c.e.): A Study of the Chronology of the Calah Inscriptions,” Assur 1
(1977) 123–69.
 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 27

peoples (in this case, from those of Isala), and then proceeded with the
destruction of city. The “Assyrian” identity of the people did not pro-
tect them from the usual cruelties that awaited rebel vassals:
Hulai, their governor, I captured alive. Their corpses I formed into
pillars; their young men and maidens I burned in the fire. Hulai,
their governor, I flayed, his skin I spread upon the wall of the city of
Damdamusa [a royal city in the region]; the city [of Halzi-luha] I
destroyed. . . .
Joining in the rebellion were the non-Assyrian people of Nirbu, who
received a similar punishment:
Many captives from among them I burned with fire, and I took liv-
ing captives. From some I cut off their hands and their fingers, and
from others I cut off their noses, their ears, and their fingers, of many
I put out the eyes. I made one pillar of the living, and another of
heads, and I bound their heads to posts round about the city.
The punitive measures taken against the Assyrians of Halzi-luha were
therefore comparable to the punitive measures taken against the non-
Assyrian people of Nirbu. In the case of rebellion, it would seem, there
was no distinction between the Assyrian and non-Assyrian.
The question of Assyrian identity is here linked to the origins of
the particular group of people in question, that is, to the cities or
regions that kings had previously colonized with Assyrian people. 8
This of course begs the question somewhat, since we know nothing
about the original group settled in Halzi-luha by Shalmaneser. How-
ever, it is clear that groups surrounding Assur were viewed as non-
Assyrian, which implies that the distinction between Assyrians and
non-Assyrians was partially related to the supposed origins of the local
population. If this was so, then a vital component of Assyrian identity,
at least among groups distant from Assyria proper, was the recognition
that a group had been settled amid foreigners by Assyrian imperial pol-
icy. And as a corollary of this, a vital component of Assyrian identity at
home would have been the necessity and importance of spreading, via
conquest and settlement, an Assyrian presence throughout the known
world. So we should conclude that Assyrian identity, at home or

8. There is a very valuable study of Old Assyrian imperialism and colonialism in

M. T. Larsen, The Old Assyrian City-State and Its Colonies (Mesopotamia 4; Copen-
hagen: Akademisk, 1976).
28 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

abroad, was closely related to the idea of dynastic rule and the imperi-
alist expansion of the empire. 9
A second reference to the nisê matAssurai occurs after the conquest
of Nirbu by Assurnaßirpal when he traveled to the nearby city of
Tusha. 10 The city had apparently seceded in sympathy with Governor
Hulai, so that Assyrians in the Tusha region were forced farther north
into the environs of Shuprê (south of Lake Van). 11 In classic imperialist
fashion, Assurnaßirpal restored the city (ana essute aßbat), erected an
image of himself along with a victory inscription, constructed a palace
for himself, and fortified the city with a new foundation and wall. Dis-
enfranchised Assyrians, who had withdrawn to the environs of Shuprê
to find food, were resettled by Assurnaßirpal in Tusha and provided
with foodstuffs and other resources from the land of Nirbu. In the case
of Tusha, then, we see quite different population patterns than in the
previously discussed city of Halzi-luha. In Halzi-luha, the city itself
was viewed as Assyrian, having been established long ago by Shal-
maneser. But in Tusha, the Assyrian population represented a military
and bureaucratic minority that fled from the city’s non-Assyrian in-
habitants during the rebellion. 12 However, the difference between
population patterns in Halzi-luha and Tusha should not obscure the
obvious fact that in both cases the term nisê matAssur carries the same
sense: new additions to the regional population via Assyrian imperial
policy.
While it appears clear enough that the texts distinguish between
Assyrians and non-Assyrians and that this distinction hinged on the
Assyrian origins of the former, certain features in the royal inscriptions
9. A policy driven perhaps as much by commercial interests as by ideological
perspectives. For the suitability of the term imperialism with respect to Assyria, see R. J.
van der Spek, “Assyria and History: A Comparative Study of War and Empire in As-
syria, Athens, and Rome,” The Tablet and the Scroll: Near Eastern Studies in Honor of
William H. Hallo (ed. M. E. Cohen et al.; Bethesda, Md.: CDL, 1993) 263–64.
10. In this second case the gentilic form is not used, but I see no reason to make
anything of it.
11. Olmstead, History of Assyria, 88.
12. The difference may also center on the formal distinction of citizenship. The
best textual example comes from Sennacherib’s annals, which distinguish between citi-
zens of Babylonian cities and other groups within those cities: “The Arabs, Arameans,
and Chaldeans, who were in Uruk, Nippur, Kish, etc., together with the citizens of
those cities responsible for the revolt (adi dumu.meß ali bel hitti ).” See CAD N/1 315
and D. D. Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib (OIP 2; Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 1924) 25.
 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 29

modify this perspective. From the time of Tiglath Pileser I (1114–1076

b.c.e.) until Sargon II (721–705 b.c.e.), a stereotyped phrase was used
of the non-Assyrian peoples who succumbed to Assyrian rule: ‘with
the people of Assyria I considered them’ (ana/itti nisê matAssur amnû-
sunuti ). Assurnaßirpal (883–859 b.c.e.) used a somewhat different
phrase in his inscriptions, ‘I considered them with the people of my
land’ (= ana nisê matîa amnu), 13 but it is difficult to suggest that this
phrase is meaningfully different, since the older stereotyped phrase re-
surfaces after his reign. Although the first texts that we examined knew
of the distinction between Assyrians (nisê matAssur) and non-Assyrians,
this tendency to use inclusive language in describing the non-Assyrian
shows that the barriers that separated the two were quite permeable.
One should properly deduce that ana/itti nisê matAssur amnûsunuti was
not only a formula that extolled imperial expansion but also an invita-
tion to cultural assimilation—to embrace the Assyrian way. But this
inclusive tendency should not be associated with the Neo-Assyrian
epoch as a whole, as our examination of Sargon II’s royal inscriptions
will show.

Foreigners in the Eyes of Sargon II (721–705)

Several features in Sargon’s royal inscriptions make them a uniquely
valuable source for the study of Assyrian identity. 14 They reflect a time
after Samaria had succumbed to Assyrian rule and when Palestine’s en-
virons began to feel more direct pressure from Assyrian imperialism. In
addition to their excellent literary quality, the texts offer a number of
opportunities to probe into the issues of ethnicity and identity, particu-
larly into the issue of how the Assyrians viewed the peoples they con-
quered. Also significant is the fact that Sargon’s annalists were the last to
use the stereotyped phrase ana/itti nisê matAssur amnûsunuti, so that the

13. Budge and King, Annals of the Kings of Assyria, 1.181, 195, 217. The change
in terminology used by Assurnaßirpal might reflect a new tendency to distinguish be-
tween Assyrian and non-Assyrians.
14. One related (but hard to appraise) difficulty is that Sargon II is usually viewed
as a usurper, seizing the throne from his predecessor, Shalmaneser V. The major evi-
dence for this is: (1) the obscurity of Sargon’s rise to power; (2) he called himself Sar-
gon, after the founder of the dynasty of Akkad; and (3) he founded a new capital at
Dûr-Sharrukin. However, these circumstances could equally well by explained if Sar-
gon II was one of Shalmaneser V’s brothers. Cf. G. Roux, Ancient Iraq (2d ed.; New
York: Penguin, 1980) 287.
30 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

reign of Sargon represents a transitional period in the development of

Assyrian identity. Three texts will be examined, one each from the “Let-
ter to Assur,” from the Nineveh prism inscriptions, and from the Dûr-
Sharrukîn cylinder inscription. I will also discuss the terms Hittite and
Amorite, focusing primarily on the history of the terms and their use in
the inscriptions.
Among the four main forms of Assyrian royal inscriptions is the
“letter to the god.” 15 This subgenre is the least attested of the four, and
its most famous example is Sargon’s “Letter to Assur.” The text in-
cludes an interesting ethnographic notice that is quite unusual within a
royal inscription. The text is dated to the eponym of Istar-dûri, 714
b.c.e., and describes the peoples of Zaranda, an Urartian district, as
follows:
The people who live in the district are without equal in all of Urartu
in their knowledge of riding-horses. For years they had been catching
the young colts of (wild) horses, native to this wide land, and raising
them for the royal army [of Urartu]. But they are not caught as far
over as Sûbi, a district which the people of Urartu call Mannean
country, nor are their herds seen there. They do not saddle them, but
(whether) going forward, turning to one side, or turning around, (as
the tactics) of battle require, they are (never) seen to break the yoke
(i.e., to become separated from their team). 16
The text reminds one much more of Herodotus’s Histories than it does
of Assyrian literary traditions. 17 This glimpse into the author’s perspec-
tive demonstrates that Assyrian scholars probably harbored much more
interest in the customs and practices of Assyrian imperial subjects than
we might suppose on the basis of extant Neo-Assyrian texts. 18 And,

15. A. K. Grayson, “Assyrian Royal Inscriptions: Literary Characteristics,” Assyr-

ian Royal Inscriptions: New Horizons in Literary, Ideological and Historical Analysis (ed.
F. M. Fales; Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente, 1981) 36.
16. Luckenbill, ARAB 2.84.
17. This similarity has also been noted by A. L. Oppenheim, “The City of Assur,”
JNES 19 (1960) 133–47.
18. Another example of such ethnographic interest is found in Sennacherib’s pal-
ace reliefs, which depict in illustrations how Judean commoners wrapped their heads in
turbans. See M. Wäfler, Nicht-Assyrer neuassyrischer Darstellungen (2 vols.; AOAT 26;
Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1975) 1.67. On foreign depictions during
the reign of Assurbanipal, see J. Reade, “Ideology and Propaganda in Assyrian Art,”
Power and Propaganda: A Symposium on Ancient Empires (ed. M. T. Larsen; Mesopota-
mia 7; Copenhagen: Akademisk, 1979) 329–43.
 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 31

although it would be quite unwarranted to extrapolate from this short

text the existence of an Assyrian “Herodotus,” 19 the text suggests that
other ethnographic materials probably existed in the Neo-Assyrian
libraries, despite the fact that so few examples have come our way. This
alerts us to the somewhat limited perspective that we gain from the
sources at our disposal, especially in our attempts to understand how
Assyrians viewed the various peoples around them.
Despite these limitations, the royal inscriptions do provide us with
a window into the Assyrian view of the ancient Near East and its peo-
ples. One example comes from Sargon’s prism inscription at Nineveh,
which probably mirrors the Assyrian view of Western Asia that was
current during his reign:
The wicked Hittites . . . the kings of the lands of Piliste (Philistia),
Iaudi (Judah), Edom, Moab, who dwell by the sea, payers of tribute
[and] tax to Assur, my lord , (they sent) numberless inflammatory
and disdainful (messages) to set them at enmity with me, to Pirªu,
king of Egypt, a prince who could not save them, they sent their pre-
sents (bribes) and attempted to gain him as an ally. 20
In comparison with the other royal inscriptions, there is nothing par-
ticularly unusual about the text’s description of these Western nations.
They are collectively referred to as “Hittites,” which at once shows us
that Assyrians viewed the West, at least discursively, as more homoge-
nous than Westerners themselves did. In one sense this demonstrates
how misleading evidence can be, since our Assyrian source claims that
the Judeans were Hittites. The fact that these Hittites are also described
as “wicked” is another matter that I will address in a moment. Al-
though we might venture to identify the Levantine nations listed here
as ethnic entities (at least in some cases), for the Assyrians these nations
were political modalities ruled by “kings,” and this is, after all, the pre-
dominant notion of Assyrian identity in the sources at our disposal. So
the Assyrians have not gone very far in their efforts to understand these
foreign peoples, and this brings us to an important issue.
If we know that the Assyrians have erred in joining these diverse
groups under the rubric of a single name, it is important to ask this:

19. The uniqueness of Herodotus lies in the unusual combination of various

genres in his work, including ethnography, genealogy, mythology, and history. The
road from ethnography to Herodotus may therefore be quite a long one.
20. Luckenbill, ARAB 2.105.
 32 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

Why did they “carelessly” link these nations together with the “Hittite”
label? An answer to this question requires a brief digression into some
related issues. In the Assyrian view of things, the “Hittites” in our text
shared a common status as vassals, in this case rebel vassals who were
under revenue obligations. There is a sense in which these tax obliga-
tions contributed to the cultural assimilation of non-Assyrians: ‘Trib-
ute, tax, I imposed upon them as upon Assyrians’ (= biltu maddattu kî
sa Assuri emssunuti ). 21 However, the idea that imperial subjects became
“fully Assyrian” through taxation is mitigated by the strong negative
language used by the inscription to describe these “wicked Hittites.”
Furthermore, the phrase in Sargon’s annals, biltu maddattu kî sa Assuri
emssunuti, is at variance with the old stereotyped phrase used in the an-
nals of his Assyrian predecessors, ana/itti nisê matAssur amnûsunuti. The
new phrase and its employment of simile (kî ) seems to reflect a dis-
course strategy aimed at generating firmer boundaries between Assyr-
ian identity and that of its vassals. 22 B. Oded has pointed out that after
Sargon II, the phrase ana/itti nisê matAssur amnûsunuti disappeared
entirely from the inscriptions of Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Assur-
banipal. 23 Oded explains this phenomenon as follows:
The impressive victories of Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon II, in the
course of two generations (745–705), gradually fostered a sense of
superiority of the Assyrian people over other nations. The old ideol-
ogy of Assyrian domination of the whole world, sar kissati sar kibrat
erbettim, started to become an apparent reality during the eighth
century b.c. . . . This deep-rooted feeling of superiority led to a
sterner attitude towards deportees, and sharpened the differentiation
between Assyrians (mârê/nisê kurAssur) and non-Assyrians. . . . This
is, we believe, one of the underlying reasons for the disappearance of
the formula itti nisê matuAssur amnûsunuti. 24
This evidence suggests that the reign of Sargon represented a transition
in the Assyrian perspective of its imperial subjects. Prior to Sargon, the
inclusive phrase ana/itti nisê matAssur amnûsunuti was commonly used
21. Ibid., 2.2.
22. Although the new phrase is used in Sargon’s annals, his other inscriptions
tend to use the stereotyped phrase, ana/itti nisê matAssur amnûsunuti. See, for instance,
in the inscription published by C. J. Gadd, “Inscribed Prisms of Sargon II from Nim-
rud,” Iraq 16 (1954) 179. See also the “Letter to Assur,” in Luckenbill, ARAB 2.98
23. B. Oded, Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire (Wies-
baden: Reichert, 1979) 81–91.
24. Ibid., 89–90.

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 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 33

in the annals. But during his reign, although this phrase was retained
in some royal inscription, it was used alongside the new and more dif-
ferentiating phrase, biltu maddattu kî sa Assuri emssunuti. Following
Sargon’s reign, phrases that equate imperial subjects with Assyrians are
lacking entirely and were replaced with a marked tendency to describe
conquered peoples as foreign booty or as a source of corvée labor (e.g.,
sallatis amnu, nisê mâsâte kisitti nakiri, hubut qasti, sitti nisê . . . sallatis
amnu). 25
So, returning to our original question, it comes as no surprise, that
Sargon would describe a number of disparate entities with the same
“Hittite” terminology. In the view of eighth-century Assyria, the
smaller nations to the west were nothing more than a group of inferior
vassals, and to make them discursively all of a kind was very easy and
very convenient. This is certainly one part of the explanation for the
Assyrian tendency to speak of the “wicked” and “evil” Hittites, or to
describe the Hittites as “plotters of iniquity” who “did not fear the
name of the gods.” But this cultural contempt for vassals and this liter-
ary sense of convenience does not entirely explain the “Hittite” rheto-
ric of the annals. It is still important to ask why the name Hittite was
chosen to serve in this way and also whether there is any truth to the
Assyrian notion that these Hittite groups, despite their differences,
shared common cultural connections that might have “fooled” the As-
syrians into thinking of them as a single group.
The lands of Hatti and Amurru are basically synonymous in Sar-
gon’s annals and describe a region west of Assyria that stretched from
Asia Minor to Egypt, north–south, and from the Euphrates to Pales-
tine, east–west. The very general employment of these two terms reveals
a later development of each, since in earlier times Hatti referred to
the empire of the Anatolian Hittites and Amurru variously referred
to the “West” in general, or to nomadic groups in the Syrian desert,
or to the second-millennium kingdom of Amurru in central Syria. 26

25. Ibid., 90.

26. For a summary discussion of the terms Hittite and Amurru in the ancient
Near Eastern sources, particularly in the Neo-Assyrian sources and in the Old Testa-
ment, see J. Van Seters, “The Terms ‘Amorite’ and ‘Hittite’ in the Old Testament,” VT
22 (1972) 64–81. For a catalogue of the evidence on the Amorites, see R. Zadok, “On
the Amorite Material from Mesopotamia,” The Tablet and the Scroll: Near Eastern Stud-
ies in Honor of William W. Hallo (ed. M. E. Cohen et al.; Bethesda: CDL, 1993) 315–
33; A. Haldar, Who Were the Amorites? (Monographs on the Ancient Near East 1;
Leiden: Brill, 1971).
 34 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

This means that in the Neo-Assyrian sources, the “land of the Hittites”
and the “land of Amurru” represented, not ethnopolitical designations,
but general archaic designations employed to simplify references to the
vast array of western social and political modalities.
On the basis of what we have been saying, it would at first seem
that the terms “Amorite” or “Hittite” denoted very little in terms of
specific cultural characteristics or qualities, and it is for this reason that
we catch ourselves criticizing the Assyrians for their lack of cultural
sensitivity. But there are reasons to believe that the Assyrians attached
more concrete notions to the terms Amorite and Hittite than we might
at first suppose, primarily because they associated a number of com-
mon features with the peoples of this region. The Assyrian sources con-
sistently refer to the language of the Hittites and Amorites, a notion
that obviously fails to comprehend the various dialectal differences but
that nonetheless correctly groups together the West Semitic tongues.
The Hittites were known for their shipbuilding and seafaring, so that
Tyrians, Sidonians, and Cypriote sailors were all, despite their differ-
ences, “Hittite people.” 27 Likewise, certain architectural styles were
considered quite worthy of Assyrian imitation, being labeled as the
‘Hittite pattern’ (tamsil ekal matHatti ) rather than the ‘Assyrian pattern’
(episti matAssur ki). 28 We also know that, despite their differences, much
of the West shared a cultural affinity in the areas of lifestyle, religious
tradition, and political modalities. These linguistic and cultural simi-
larities, coupled with the fact that these people were “outsiders” living
in the same general region west of Assyria, suggests that the Assyrian
perspective of the “Hittite” and “Amorite” was more specific and
stereotyped than we might suppose. By joining together various groups
under the rubric Hittite, the Assyrians gradually created a “rhetorical
other” that shared a language, lived in a common region, and followed
common cultural patterns, and this is quite apart from our perspective
that these generalizations about “Hatti” were quite misleading. That
the “Hittites” were not a homogenous cultural unit is obvious; less ob-
vious is whether the Assyrians tended, nonetheless, to perceive them as
such.
Up to this point, the Neo-Assyrian materials have revealed that
Assurnaßirpal, Sargon II, and their followers sometimes distinguished
27. Luckenbill, ARAB 2.145.
28. I am of course refering to the bît-hilâni structures mentioned often in the
royal inscriptions (for example, Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 132–33).

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 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 35

Assyrians from non-Assyrian and at other times rhetorically joined

them as a single unit. But in either case, there is an assumed Assyrian
identity from which one is either distinguished or to which one is
joined, and this raises the question of how we should understand the
Assyrian identity that this entire discussion has been presupposing. A
text from Sargon’s Dûr-Sharrukîn cylinder inscription will help us
fashion a clearer view on this question:
Peoples of the four regions of the world, of foreign tongue and diver-
gent speech, dwellers of mountain and lowland, all that were ruled
by the light of the gods, the lord of all, I carried off at Assur, my
lord’s command, by the might of my scepter. I unified them (made
them of one mouth) and settled them therein. Assyrians, fully com-
petent to teach them how to fear god and the king, I dispatched to
them as scribes and sheriffs (superintendents). The gods who dwell
in heaven and earth, and in that city, listened with favor to my word,
and granted me the eternal boon of building that city and growing
old in its midst. 29
The task given Sargon by Assur was to unify the world, to make peo-
ples of “divergent speech” a people “of one mouth.” The text speaks
clearly about this as a process of cultural assimilation, which included
the deportation of foreigners to Assyria, where they became people “of
one mouth,” and also the dispatching of Assyrian leaders and teachers
to conquered regions so that they might “fear god and the king,” that
is, be good citizens. 30 The text depicts two levels of assimilation based
on a uniquely Assyrian sense of identity that was founded, not on eth-
nic sentiments, but on certain fundamental criteria of community
membership. For those transplanted in Assyria, this would have in-
cluded acquisition of the Akkadian language (probably symbolic of
cultural assimilation as a whole), but for all peoples in the empire, the
primary requirement was political assimilation: reverence for the god
Assur and for his high priest (sangû), the king. 31 This assimilation
29. Luckenbill, ARAB 2.65–66.
30. The social status and position of deportees within their homeland was not
uniform, as Oded has shown. Deportees included those of the royal house, landown-
ers, agricultural workers, craftsmen, scholars, artisans, businessmen, etc. Generally
speaking, these deportees were considered “freemen” and were not used as force labor,
although this pattern changed somewhat during and after the reign of of Sargon II. See
Oded, Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, 75–115.
31. Note well the comment of Liverani (“Ideology of Assyrian Kinship,” 301):
“. . . it would be incorrect to speak of the Assyrian king as a ‘non-absolutist’ in so far as
36 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

process was encouraged during most of Assyria’s history. It was only

after Sargon II that Assyria forged so great a rift between itself and its
imperial subjects as to eliminate the idea that non-Assyrians might be-
come Assyrians. 32 But this rift must have been discursive and highly
rhetorical, and we should assume that assimilation processes contin-
ued much as they had in earlier periods of Assyrian history.
Although the texts that I have examined show that the most out-
standing feature of Assyrian identity was its preoccupation with politi-
cal and monarchic concerns, the prominence of political identity
should not distract us from the possibility that ethnic sentiments may
have played a minor role in the Assyrian conception of identity. Specif-
ically, I am thinking of the Mesopotamian phrase black-headed men,
which turns up in one of Sennacherib’s undated building inscriptions:
The queen of the gods, the goddess of procreation . . . watched over
my conception, while Ea provided a spacious womb, and granted
(me) keen understanding, the equal of Master Adapa’s. Assur, father
of the gods, brought in submission to my feet the whole race of
blackheaded men, raised aloft my head to be ruler of land and people,
gave me a righteous scepter which enlarges my land and put into my
hands an unsparing sword for the overturn of my enemies [italics
mine]. 33
According to Luckenbill, the term ‘blackheaded men’ (ßalmat qaqqadi )
in this inscription is referring not to men in general but to Assyrians. 34
He does not give a reason for this analysis, but I would guess that he
has been influenced by the term itself, which tends to conjure up ideas

he acts in the name and stead of the god Assur, since Assur is precisely the hypostasis of
the Assyrian kingship.” Liverani is certainly correct in part, but he seems to miss the
point that each monarch has successively inherited the Assyrian tradition from the pre-
vious regimes and so becomes as much a product of the tradition as he (and his party)
were creators of it.
32. I am thinking here about the tendency to view conquered peoples as slave
labor and booty. See Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 28, 38, 52, 95, 117;
R. Borger, Die Inschriften Asarhaddons: Königs von Assyrien (AfO Beiheft 9; Graz: Pub-
lished by the editors, 1956) 20, 59, 106, 116; A. C. Piepkorn, Historical Prism Inscrip-
tions of Assurbanipal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1933) 53, 70; M. Streck,
Assurbanipal und die letzten assyrischen Könige bis zum Untergange Niniveh’s (3 vols.;
Vorderasiatische bibliothek 7; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1916) 2.44, 88. See also Oded’s dis-
cussion in Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, 56–58, 81–99.
33. Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, 117.
34. Ibid., 130.
 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 37

related to phenotypical characteristics and thus to ethnic conceptions

of identity. The phrase originated with the Sumerians, and they used it
regularly in descriptions of themselves. 35 But even in the ancient Su-
merian context it cannot have served a purely ethnic role, since it could
equally well refer to humanity as a whole:
Father Enki . . . on the earth he set up cities and hamlets, multiplied
the Black Heads, supplied them with a king for “their shepherdship,”
raised him high for “their princeship,” and made the king go out to
all the lands as a steady light [italics mine]. 36
This precludes the idea that the phrase itself had ethnic connotations.
In the Neo-Assyrian documents, it is best to understand ßalmat qaq-
qadi, not as a reference to discrete groups within Mesopotamia, but as
an ancient archaic term for the people of Mesopotamia. 37 Despite the
obscurity of the term’s etiology, it appears that, just as Sargon II
reached back into history and identified with the ancient Sumero-
Akkadian figure of Sargon the Great, so too the Assyrians seem to have
viewed themselves as the descendants of the Sumerians, the “black-
head peoples.” Whether they understood themselves as political de-
scendants or as ethnic descendants is a another matter, but the former
seems much more likely.
To summarize, although the annals clearly distinguish between As-
syrians and non-Assyrians, the textual evidence shows that for most of
the nation’s history these foreigners could become “Assyrians” through
cultural assimilation. At the very least, they could become “Assyrians”
through political assimilation when they submitted to the sovereignty
of the Assyrian overlords. In the latter case, it would seem that they
were “counted with the people of Assyria” but that they also retained a
certain cultural independence that distinguished them from the Assyr-
ians living in their midst, as reflected in the texts from Assurnaßirpal II.
The only prospect for an ethnic component in Assyrian identity is their
use of the ancient Sumerian designation, the black-headed people. It is
now clear, however, that this was probably not an ethnic term but a
general reference to the Mesopotamian peoples.

35. S. N. Kramer, The Sumerians (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963)

285–86.
36. S. N. Kramer and J. Maier, Myths of Enki, the Crafty God (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1989) 87.
37. CAD S 75–76.
38 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty (680–669)

Despite the bellicose impressions of imperial ideology in the an-
nalistic sources, the primary formal mechanism of Assyrian expansion
was the treaty, both its text and its ceremonial accoutrements. 38 Politi-
cal deals were often struck with foreign rulers or pro-Assyrian “would-
be” rulers, and in many cases this preempted the need for military ac-
tion. 39 The oaths (adê nis ilani ) administered in these ceremonies are
recorded in Esarhaddon’s vassal treaties, along with the names of some
of those who took the oath. The vassals swore allegiance to Esarhaddon
and to Assurbanipal and were prohibited thereby from concluding
similar treaties with Assyria’s competitors. They also accepted the obli-
gation to report acts of treason and promised to protect the treaty
document itself. These promises were made in the context of the ritual
event and in the presence of divine witnesses, who would enact the ap-
propriate curses for a lapse in vassal fidelity. As has been noted by
S. Parpola and R. Frankena, these formal features are very similar to
those found in the eighth-century Sefîre treaties and also in the book
of Deuteronomy. 40
Esarhaddon’s succession to the throne was among the more diffi-
cult in Assyrian history, and it is not surprising that he attempted to
preclude similar problems for his son, Assurbanipal. Assurbanipal
records this effort in the Rassam Prism, which dates to the eponym of
Shamash-daninanni, that is, sometime between 644 and 636 b.c.e.
The text reads:

38. For a related study on other peaceful strategies used by the Assyrians (in this
case after military conquest, however), see B. N. Porter, “Conquest or Kudurrus? A
Note on Peaceful Strategies of Assyrian Government,” The Tablet and the Scroll: Near
Eastern Studies in Honor of William W. Hallo (ed. M. E. Cohen et al.; Bethesda: CDL,
1993) 194–97.
39. S. Parpola and K. Watanabe (eds.), Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths
(SAA 2; Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press, 1988) xxiii.
40. See R. Frankena, “The Vassal-Treaties of Esarhaddon and the Dating of Deu-
teronomy,” OTS 14 (1965) 122–54. For the bulk of these texts, see D. J. Wiseman, The
Vassal-Treaties of Esarhaddon (London: The British School of Archaeology in Iraq,
1958). See also new and closely related texts published by A. K. Grayson, “Akkadian
Treaties of the Seventh Century B.C.,” JCS 39 (1987) 127–59. S. Parpola, Neo-Assyrian
Treaties and Loyalty Oaths, xxx. The diffinitive publication of the Sefîre texts is J. A.
Fitzmyer, The Aramaic Inscriptions of Sefîre (BibOr 19; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Insti-
tute, 1967). I understand that there is a new edition of Fitzmyer’s work, but I have not
yet seen it.
 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 39

Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, the father who begot me, respected the
word of Assur and Bêlit-ilê (the Lady of the Gods), his tutelery (di-
vinities), when they gave the command that I should exercise sover-
eignty; in the month of Airu, the month of Ea, the lord of mankind,
the twelfth day, an auspicious day, a feast day of Gula, at the sublime
command which Assur, Bêlit, Sin, Shamash, Adad, Bêl, Nabû, Ishtar
of Nineveh, queen of Kudmuri, Ishtar of Arbela, Urta, Nergal,
Nusku, uttered, he gathered together the people of Assyria, great and
small, from the upper to the lower sea. That they would accept (lit.,
guard) my crownprinceship, and later my kingship, he made them
take oath by the great gods, and (so) he strengthened the bonds (be-
tweeen them and me). 41
Although the Assyrian monarchs often concluded vassal treaties with
new subjects, in the case of this succession treaty, all subjects of the em-
pire were included. We cannot be certain about the antiquity of this
succession tradition, but we do know that Esarhaddon was not the first
to do this for his crown-prince. His father Sennacherib appears to have
done the same for him in 683–682 b.c.e. 42 Although the stock of
Neo-Assyrian treaties that predate Sennacherib is scant, it would not
be surprising to find that this tradition dates back to the eighth century
or even earlier. The treaty renewal ceremony probably served two pur-
poses, the first being a show of solidarity and strength to preempt
thoughts of rebellion during the tenuous succession period. But just as
important was the symbolic gathering of peoples “from the upper to
the lower sea.” One of the primary roles of the Assyrian monarch was
that of a warrior-king who was charged both with preserving and also
with extending the sovereign domain of Assur to the “ends of the
earth” (see below, pp. 41–42). The assembly of vassals described in this
text demonstrates that the Assyrian vision of Assur’s universal domi-
nance was becoming a reality. And the Assyrians would be followed in
this imperial ideology by the Babylonians, who would in turn be fol-
lowed by the Persians. 43
M. Weinfeld has pointed out that ancient Near Eastern terms for
treaty and pact concentrate in two semantic fields, oath/commitment
and grace/friendship, both of which are commonly present in ancient

41. Luckenbill, ARAB 2.291.

42. For a discussion of this text, see S. Parpola, “Sennacherib’s Succession Treaty,”
JCS 39 (1987) 160–78.
43. See ANET 307, 316–17.
 40 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

treaty texts. It is interesting that the latter semantic field is lacking in

Esarhaddon’s treaties and in other seventh-century Neo-Assyrian trea-
ties while, on the other hand, our earlier, less-complete sources reflect
both semantic fields. 44 Furthermore, it is only in these seventh-century
treaties that vassals are required to accept Assur as god: “In the future
and forever Assur will be your god, and Assurbanipal, the great crown
prince designate, will be your lord.” 45 Taken together, these facts reflect
a more hostile stance toward imperial subjects than in previous periods
of Neo-Assyrian history, which is not surprising in light of what we
have discerned from the sources thus far, namely, that following Sar-
gon II, there was a decidedly negative turn in the way that Assyrians
viewed their imperial subjects.
Another interesting feature of the text is Assurbanipal’s claim that
“the people of Assyria, great and small, from the upper to the lower
sea,” were summoned to this succession ceremony. Who were these
‘people of Assyria’ (nisê matAssur)? I have pointed out that the sources
after Sargon II tend to discursively separate Assyrians and their non-
Assyrian subjects, so that one would at first expect that “people of As-
syria” would be used in a restrictive sense; but this is not the case. The
texts usually cited as relevant are the treaty texts unearthed at Nimrud
in 1955, which include fragments of at least nine separate vassal trea-
ties concluded by Esarhaddon with cities to the east and northeast of
Assyria proper. 46 S. Parpola has argued, I think correctly, that these
text are only a small part of the puzzle, since these texts actually reflect
newly acquired vassals rather than a loyalty oath imposed on the whole
empire. The situation that Assurbanipal’s text describes included not
just these new vassals, but all political modalities under Assyrian domi-
nation. The not-so-surprising fact is that, while elsewhere Sennacherib,
Esarhaddon, and Assurbanipal discursively excluded imperial subjects
from the cultural entity they called “Assyria,” Assurbanipal felt free to
include them when the objective was to portray the extent of Assyrian
domination. This semantic juggling is evidenced by the fact that Assur-
banipal calls his subjects the “people of Assyria” while the associated

44. Weinfeld, “Covenant Terminology in the Ancient Near East and Its Influence
on the West,” JAOS 93 (1973) 190; Parpola and Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties and
Loyalty Oaths, xviii.
45. Ibid., 44.
46. For the complete texts, see Wiseman, The Vassal-Treaties of Esarhaddon.

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 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 41

texts from Esarhaddon’s treaties distinguish between the ‘citizens of As-

syria’ (d u mu matAssur) and the ‘foreigners’ (d u mu matsanitim). 47

Borders and Boundaries in the Days of Neo-Assyria

Given the imperialistic bent of Assyrian rulers, it is not surprising
that a preoccupation with borders and boundaries can be discerned in
the Neo-Assyrian materials. 48 Many texts highlight the expansion of
Assyrian imperialism and control, in some cases, as in this text from
the reign of Assurnaßirpal, enumerating borders in a style reminiscent
of the Hebrew sources (cf. Deuteronomy 3):
Assurnaßirpal . . . subdued (the territory stretching) from the oppo-
site bank of the Tigris to Mount Lebanon and the Great Sea, the en-
tire land of Laqû, (and) the land Suhu including the city Rapiqu. I
brought within the boundaries of my land (the territory stretching)
from the source of the River Subnat to the passes of Mount Kirruru
(and) to the land Gilzânu, from the opposite bank of the Lower Zab
to the city Tîl-Bâri which is upstream from the land Zaban, from the
city Tîl-sa-Abtâni to the city Tîl-sa-Zabtâni, (and) the cities Hirimu
(and) Harutu (which are) fortresses of Kardunias. Finally, I have
gained dominion over the entire extensive lands of Nairi. 49
This concern for political boundaries is actually evidence of a certain
agenda that the Assyrian monarchs had adopted for themselves, namely,
the effort to extend Assyrian influence to the ends of the earth. 50 And
there is strong evidence that, late in Neo-Assyrian history, its monarchs
began to see this agenda realized:
The Birªai I brought in submission to my feet. The Meseªans and Te-
means, the Sabeªans, the Haiappeans, the Badaneans, the Hatteans,

47. Parpola and Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths, 37, 42. The
two groups are distinguished by their identities but are presented on equal footing as
potential rebels.
48. M. Liverani has provided an extended theoretical discussion about the issue of
borders and boundaries in the ancient Near East in Prestige and Interest: International
Relations in the Near East ca. 1600–1100 b.c. (History of the Ancient Near East 1; Pa-
dova: Sargon, 1990) 33–112.
49. See Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium bc, I (1114–859
bc), 320.
50. P. Garelli, “L’État et la légitimité royale sous l’empire assyrien,” Power and
Propaganda: A Symposium on Ancient Empires (ed. M. T. Larsen; Mesopotamia 7;
Copenhagen: Akademisk, 1979) 319–28, esp. 323.
 42 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

Idibaileans . . . which are on the border of the lands of the setting

sun, whom no one knew of, and whose abode is far off. . . . 51
The king of Meluhha (Ethiopia), who in the midst of . . . an in-
approachable region . . . whose fathers since the far-off days of the
moon-god’s time (era), had not sent messengers to the kings of my
fathers, to bring their greetings . . . brought him [the fugitive Ia-
manî) before me into Assyria, (after) a most difficult journey. 52
Upêri, king of Dilmun, who lives . . . like a fish 30 bêru (“double
hours”) away in the midst of the sea of the rising sun, heard of Assur
. . . and sent him gifts. And seven kings of Iaª, a district of Iatnana
(Cyprus) whose distant abodes are situated a seven days’ journey in
the sea of the setting sun, and the name of whose land, since the far-
off days of the moon-god’s time (era), not one of the kings, my fa-
thers who (ruled) Assyria and Babylonia, had heard, (these kings)
heard from afar, in the midst of the sea, of the deeds which I was per-
forming in Chaldea and the Hittite-land, their hears were rent, fear
fell upon them . . . gold, silver, furniture . . . they brought before me
. . . and they kissed my feet. 53
Guggu (Gygus), king of Lydia, a district of the other side of the sea, a
distant place, whose name, the kings, my fathers, had not heard, As-
sur, the god, my creator, caused to see my name in a dream. “Lay
hold of the feet of Assurbanipal, king of Assyria and conquer thy foes
by calling upon his name.” Upon the day that he beheld this vision,
he dispatched his messenger to me. . . . From the day that he laid
hold of my feet, he overcame, by the help of Assur and Ishtar, the
gods, the Cimmerians, who had been harassing the people of his
land, who had not feared my fathers, nor had laid hold of my royal
feet. 54

It is quite evident that from the Assyrian perspective the dream of king-
ship over “the four corners of the world” was becoming a reality during
the reigns of Tiglath-Pileser III, Sargon II, and afterward. Kings from
“distant lands,” from the very edges of the world, had “kissed the royal
feet,” kings and kingdoms of which previous Assyrian kings had no
knowledge. Assur and his sangû, the kingly high priest, now ruled the

51. From Tiglath-pilerser III’s inscriptions (Luckenbill, ARAB 1.293).

52. From Sargon II’s inscriptions (ibid., 2.32).
53. Ibid., 2.36.
54. From the inscriptions of Assurbanipal (ibid., 2.298).

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 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 43

entire world. 55 This period of tremendous Assyrian optimism and un-

precedented domination of the Near East is the same period from
which our earliest Israelite prophetic works come. So our discussion of
the early prophetic materials must presuppose that both Israel and
Judah were functioning as “peripheral” communities under the “core”
domination of the Assyrian empire. Even if one does not agree with the
Wallerstein School’s claim that this core/periphery situation creates
ethnic sentiments, the ethnic theorists are quite right when they tell us
that among peripheral groups any existing ethnic boundaries tend to
become more solid and sentiments of distinction more intense. If eth-
nic sentiments did exist among eighth-century Israelites, we would
therefore expect them to become quite pronounced in the early pro-
phetic literature.
There was a time, of course, when Assyria’s geographical bound-
aries were not so far-reaching, and I should not leave the topic of “bor-
ders and boundaries” without some mention of the well-known
“Synchronistic History” from the end of Adad-nerari III’s reign (810–
783 b.c.e.). The text is a narration of Assyro-Babylonian relations
from the reign of Puzur-Assur III (fifteenth century b.c.e.) until that
of Adad-nerari III. In the account, the author argues that an ancient
border had long existed between Assyria and Babylon and that each
Babylonian encroachment of this territory had ended in Assyrian vic-
tory. As A. K. Grayson has noted, the most obvious historical context
for the work is immediately after the death of Adad-nerari III, when a
weakened Assyria was threatened by Urartu in the north and Babylon
to the south. 56 Although the text is clearly based on original inscrip-
tions of Assyrian kings and is careful to mention only Assyrian kings
who had dealings with Babylon—thus contributing to the perceived
legitimacy of the document—in the final analysis, it is clear that the
author is quite selective with the data and at points fabricates Assyrian
victories out of Assyrian defeats. The idea that Assyria and Babylon
shared a long-standing border agreement recorded on a frontier stela

55. See comments by M. T. Larsen, “The Tradition of Empire in Mesopotamia,”

in Power and Propaganda: A Symposium on Ancient Empires (ed. M. T. Larsen; Mesopo-
tamia 7; Copenhagen: Akademisk, 1979) 90–91.
56. For text and discussion, see A. K. Grayson’s Assyrian and Babylonian Chroni-
cles (Texts from Cuneiform Sources 5; Locust Valley, N.Y.: Augustin, 1975) 50–56,
157–70.
44 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

between the two states was an invented tradition, one that the Assyr-
ians were more than happy to ignore a few decades later.

The Assyrian King-Lists

To preempt any speculation on the reader’s part, I can report that
we will not find much evidence of Assyrian ethnicity in its king-list tra-
dition, and this conforms with the evidence that we have already exam-
ined from the royal inscriptions. On the other hand, I have alluded
already to the fact that certain features of the Assyrian king-lists make
them a thoroughfare to the discussion of ethnicity during the Old
Babylonian period, and this probably comes as no surprise. No exami-
nation of ethnicity in the ancient Near East would be complete with-
out discussion of the Old Babylonian evidence, especially when this
evidence has commonly been associated with the ethnic character of
ancient Israel. 57
According to W. Röllig, the Assyrian king-lists (AKL) come to us
in three formal varieties (A, B, and C), and it is the so-called “A” variety
that interests us, primarily because it includes genealogical features that
are not found in the synchronistic tradition (B) or in the simple list tra-
dition (C). 58 R. R. Wilson has been relatively successful in identifying
the modus operandi behind the composition of the list and also in re-
constructing the text’s form-critical and intertextual relationships with
other list traditions, particularly the Babylonian king-lists (BKL) and
the Genealogy of the Hammurabi Dynasty (GHD). 59 The earliest ex-
emplar of the AKL-A text tradition dates to the tenth century, 60 and its
last major witness was composed in 722 b.c.e. 61 The text is divided

57. See, for instance, A. Malamat, Mari and the Early Israelite Experience
(Schweich Lectures; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), esp. 27–52; Gottwald,
The Tribes of Yahweh, 293, 435–42; J. T. Luke, Pastoralism and Politics in the Mari
Period: A Re-examination of the Character and Political Significance of the Major West
Semitic Tribal Groups of the Middle Euphrates, ca. 1828–1758 b.c. (Ph.D. diss., Univer-
sity of Michigan, 1965) 4–5; G. E. Mendenhall, “The Hebrew Conquest of Palestine,”
BA 25 (1962) 66–87;
58. W. Röllig, “Zur Typologie und Entsetehung der babylonischen und assyr-
ischen Königslisten,” lisan mithurti: Festschrift Wolfram Freiherr von Soden (ed. M. Die-
trich and W. Röllig; AOAT 1; Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker, 1969) 265–77.
59. Wilson, Genealogy and History in the Biblical World, 86–114.
60. E. Nassouhi, “Grande Liste des rois d’Assyrie,” AfO 4 (1927) 1–11.
61. I. J. Gelb, “Two Assyrian King Lists,” JNES 13 (1954) 209–30.
 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 45

into four sections, but I am interested primarily in the first portion of

the text that registers the earliest kings of Assyria:
Tudiya, Adamu, Yangi, Kitlamu, Harharu, Mandaru, Imsu, Harsu,
Didanu, Hanu, Zuabu, Nuabu, Abazu, Belu, Azarah, Ushpiya, Api-
ashal—Total: 17 kings living in tents. 62
Rather than discuss this excerpt at length, I would prefer to focus our
attention on just one of its component features, that according to the
list Hanu was one of the earliest Assyrian kings who lived during a no-
madic period of Assyria’s early history. The reference to Hanu, like the
other names in this first section of AKL-A, does not follow the genea-
logical convention (“PN son of PN”) used in most of the text but in-
stead lists the names without any notice of their relationship to each
other. 63 The names in this first section of the list were of much greater
antiquity than in the other sections of the list, and the scribe(s) that
composed AKL-A no doubt lifted them from an earlier source that
lacked the genealogical notations. This being the case, some time ago
J. J. Finkelstein raised the question whether this Hanu could be profit-
ably connected or related to the much earlier Heana (or Hana) tribal
groups that are so well known from the Mari documents of the Old
Babylonian period. 64 In a detailed comparison of AKL-A with the Old
Babylonian GHD, which also mentions the name Heana, Finkelstein
identified several correspondences between AKL’s list of “kings who
lived in tents” and the earliest names listed in GHD, for instance,
Mandaru (= ma-da-ra), ˇudiya (= tu-ub-ti-ya), Yangi (= ya-am-qú-us),
Didanu (= di-ta-nu), and so forth. While the similar names argue that
a common source or tradition lay behind the two documents, this
should not distract us from the fact that the two texts diverge from
each other in a number of important respects. However, these differ-
ences will become clear only if we leave Neo-Assyria for a brief foray
into the Old Babylonian period, a context separated from our first ex-
emplar of AKL-A by nearly a millennium.
The so-called “Genealogy of the Hammurabi Dynasty” would be
more properly cited as the “Genealogy of Ammißaduqa,” who was the

62. ANET 564.

63. With the exception of Apiashal, who is made out to be the son of Ushpiya in
section two of the list.
64. J. J. Finkelstein, “The Genealogy of the Hammurapi Dynasty,” JCS 20 (1966)
95–118.
 46 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

great-grandson of Hammurabi. Equally imprecise is our identification

of the text as a genealogy, since it is actually a “kinship list” that in-
cludes no genealogical formulas whatsoever. Its presumed status as a
genealogy stems from the fact that the list includes (for the most part)
the kith and kin of Hammurabi, and it is this kinship feature that has
prompted scholars to connect it with the notion of genealogy. While it
is superficially similar to texts from the Mesopotamian king-list tradi-
tion, its intrinsic genre is rather different from AKL-A. Unlike most
ancient Near Eastern king-lists, which were composed to provide his-
torical legitimation for monarchic officeholders, GHD functioned in
an entirely different sphere as the invitation list for Ammißaduqa’s
kispum ceremony, in which he offered food and libation to his deceased
relatives. 65 It seems that a similar list stood behind the first few sections
of AKL-A, which were likely composed for S amsi-Adad to legitimate
his usurpation of the Assyrian throne. 66 This would account for the
similarities between GHD and this section of AKL-A, since both were
composed during the Old Babylonian period and shared Amorite ori-
gins. 67 The kispu ritual has been much discussed and we will not ex-
plore it any further here (although we should remind ourselves that
this ancestor cult has been connected with certain aspects of Israelite
religion). More important for our purpose is the kinship aspect of the
text, which we can explore by returning to our Hanean example.
We know from the Mari documents that the Haneans were an im-
portant component within the sociocultural context of that city-state,
both as assimilated village dwellers and also as part of the seminomadic
population in its territorial periphery. 68 We also know that they were
but one of several well-known sociocultural entities living in the Old
Babylonian context that used kinship structures as an important in-
65. The inclusion of “all persons from East to West,” as well as the Gutians, dem-
onstrates that the ceremony hoped to include every “shade” that might create trouble
for the family dynasty, and this was quite apart from the question of whether these
groups were members of Ammißaduqa’s dynastic tradition (Malamat, Mari and the
Early Israelite Experience, 99).
66. The first few sections of AKL-A include: (1) 17 nomadic kings; (2) 10 ances-
tor kings; (3) 6 early kings; (4) 6 Old Assyrian Kings; (5) the usurper S amsi-Adad.
67. M. T. Larsen, The Old Assyrian City-State and Its Colonies, 34–40. Larsen is
summarizing a number of conclusions culled from Finkelstein, Landsberger, and
Kraus, whose works we will refer to as we go along.
68. M. Anbar, Les tribus amurrites de Mari (OBO 108; Freiburg: Universitäts-
verlag / Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991) 77–82, 209–16.

Spread is 6 points short

 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 47

strument of political and social organization. 69 In the case of the Hane-

ans this included segmented kinship structures of seven to nine distinct
clans and a common identity as Hanean “brothers.” 70 Most relevant for
our inquiry is the fact that GHD seems to have conceptualized these
Haneans as the progeny of a single eponymous forefather, He-a-na, as
it did in the case of other groups mentioned in its list of early dynastic
“rulers.” This is at variance with AKL-A, in which the names were un-
derstood as dynastic kings only, no doubt because the tribal connec-
tions were long forgotten by the Neo-Assyrian period. But returning to
the Old Babylonian context, it is somewhat difficult to identify the
source of the eponymous figures listed in GHD, whether we should
view them as scribal inventions or as traditions inherited by the scribe
from the tribal groups themselves. The fact that the Haneans made ex-
tensive use of kinship structures and that they viewed themselves as
“brothers” makes the second option more likely, in my view, and the
comparative data certainly lends support to this conclusion (see my
discussion of the Tiv people in chapter 1 above).
The fact that this ethnic data is connected with the royal dynastic
tradition suggests one way that ethnic sentiments might become associ-
ated with a national sense of identity. Specifically, it suggests that when
rulers or peoples rise to power they will naturally tend to carry with
them any preexisting ethnic sentiments and affective notions of kin-
ship. In the case of the dynasty of Hammurabi, this included a special
sense of connection with the ethnic Haneans and also with the “Amor-
ites,” who were probably viewed as an ethnic entity as well (if we may
extrapolate from the Hanean evidence). 71 These observations about
ethnicity in the Mari context are satisfactory for my purposes, and if
the reader wishes to explore it further, I would recommend the work of
M. Anbar that I have already cited. But in doing so I would caution
that, although certain theoretical paradigms mentioned in chapter 1
might suggest that the core/periphery context of ancient Mari created
the nearby ethnic communities that we are discussing, such a conclu-
sion is premature, because the origins of the tribal groups themselves is
hotly debated. On the other hand, the documentary evidence certainly

69. Ibid., 77–157. Other examples include the “Bini-Yamina,” “Bini-Simªal,” and
“Sutûm.”
70. Ibid., 80–83.
71. See GHD lines 29–30.
48 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

shows that tensions were often high between the urban culture of Mari
and these ethnic cultures on its periphery, 72 and it was no doubt this
sense of ecological and political competition that intensified the ethnic
sentiments of the groups and thereby made them so visible to us in the
ancient textual evidence.
There is another example from the same second-millennium time
frame that brings some refinement to our discussion of Assyrian iden-
tity. In the inscription of a certain Puzur-Sin (ca. 1700 b.c.e.), 73 the
Assyrian monarch disparaged Samsi-Adad I (and his deposed dynasty)
as “a man of foreign seed, not of Assyrian blood,” which was no doubt
a swipe at the usurper’s Amorite origins. The broken state of the text
makes the translation of “seed” somewhat speculative, but even in
Grayson’s more careful (and accurate) translation, the essential message
is the same: the Amorites were “a foreign plague, not of the flesh of the
city of Assur.” This discursive strategy is markedly different from what
we see in Neo-Assyrian texts and, unlike the king-list tradition, it lays
stress quite clearly on the ethnic pedigree of the ruler rather than on his
status as the legitimate royal heir. In this respect, the text is unusual
(we might even say idiosyncratic) and we should probably ask why its
sentiments appear to be a rather isolated case in the context of the As-
syrian literary corpus. To speculate a bit, for theorists that espouse
Wallerstein’s core/periphery model of ethnicity the answer would be
fairly straightforward: it was a context of political competition between
the “core” Amorite dynasty and the “peripheral” Assyrians that created
this ethnically charged polemic, with the appeal to ethnic kinship be-
ing a suitable instrument in the effort to fuse political support for the
Assyrian side of the controversy. When the Assyrian political hege-
mony eventually became more secure, its core status gradually elimi-
nated the instrumental importance of ethnic sentiment, particularly
among its more elite classes. To continue in the theoretical vein, this
situation also reminds us of A. D. Smith’s thesis that nation-states fre-

72. As reflected in M.2802, which describes Yahdun-Lim’s expedition against the

Bini-Yamina and the Haneans.
73. This text provides the only evidence that the otherwise unknown Puzur-Sin
ruled Assyria and that he did so by deposing a successor of Samsi-Adad I. For a discus-
sion of the identity of Puzur-Sin as well as a text and translation of his inscription, see
B. Landsberger “Assyrische Königsliste und ‘dunkles Zeitalter,’ ” JCS 8 (1954) 31–33;
A. K. Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Third and Second Millennium bc (to 1115 bc)
(RIMA 1; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987) 77–78.
 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 49

quently begin as ethnic communities. 74 But our resources for recon-

structing this early period of Assyrian history are somewhat limited,
particularly with respect to the question of ethnicity and its relative im-
portance, and this means that we are in no real position to say categor-
ically whether the circumstances behind this text lend genuine support
to the theories of either Wallerstein or Smith. Nevertheless, although
in historical terms we cannot confirm (or, I think, disconfirm) that the
Assyrians actually shared “blood ties” in some meaningful way during
the Old Assyrian era, our text confirms that at least some people from
this early period believed that they did.
Returning again to the Neo-Assyrian period, I have already re-
marked in passing that the AKL-A phrase, “17 kings living in tents,”
points to the Assyrian notion that its earliest kings were nomadic.
What is interesting about this is that the evidence we have examined
above confirms that the second-millennium Haneans, as well as a
number of other groups listed in the early section of AKL-A, turn out
to have been nomadic (or seminomadic) just as AKL-A has suggested.
That AKL-A seems to have preserved this nomadic tradition is some-
what remarkable, given the long chronological interval that separated
the Neo-Assyrian context from the Old Babylonian tribal groups. 75
There can be little doubt that this nomadic “tent-tradition” was sub-
jected to reinterpretation during its historical trek between the two
time frames, and it seems that in the Neo-Assyrian context it probably
connoted a model of social progress from an early nomadic life to a
relatively urban context (for the monarchs, at least). But the unavoid-
able necessity of reinterpretation during the tradition’s history in no
way detracts from the important observation that the Mesopotamian
scribal tradition can transport meaningful (though distorted) sociolog-
ical information over a rather long time period.
To summarize our discussion of the Assyrian evidence, the Assyr-
ians had forged a national identity based on imperialistic expansion of
the kingdom of the god Assur and his high priest, the king. This na-
tional identity was, of course, political and monarchic rather than eth-
nic, and it was forged at the expense of many non-Assyrians in the
74. A. D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1986) 129–52.
75. Landsberger long ago suggested that the Grundstock of the text tradition orig-
inated during the time of Samsi-Adad I (“Assyrische Königsliste und ‘dunkles Zeit-
alter,’ ” 109).
50 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

ancient Near East. On the one hand, boundaries could represent the
successful expansion of the empire and, at other times, as in the Syn-
chronistic History, the concept of boundary was used to protect the
nation in its weakness. During the course of Assyria’s history, great
pride was often taken in the process of making non-Assyrians become
Assyrians through territorial expansion and political control. As the
texts from Assurnaßirpal reveal, there was a perceived difference be-
tween the new imperial subjects, those “counted as Assyrians,” and true
Assyrians more closely associated with Assyrian politics, rule, and cul-
ture, but this distinction did not preclude the use of the term Assyrian
to refer to these new subjects. However, as the Assyrian goal of univer-
sal domination seemed to become reality, that is, during and after the
reign of Sargon II, the concept of new Assyrians seems to have waned
and been replaced with a more negative view of imperial subjects, so
that derogatory expressions like wicked Hittites began to appear and
imperial subjects became booty, not Assyrians. It was during this period
of Assyrian hubris that Israel’s early prophetic literature appeared. Any
analysis of these Israelite materials must account for the influences such
an oppressive force must have exerted upon the authors of the Hebrew
literature.
Assyrian preoccupation with the origins and preservation of king-
ship and with the expansion of monarchic rule absorbed much of its
literary attention. This is not to say that Assyrians had no interest in a
topic like ethnography or that they were unaware of ethnic concepts of
identity. A few scattered sources, some of which I have mentioned
(Sargon’s “Letter to the God” and Sennacherib’s palace reliefs), show
that such an interest did exist within the Assyrian scribal community.
However, this interest seems to have been precluded and truncated by
monarchic interests, so that the formal attention given to such inquiry
was minimal. As we will see, this was not the case in Greece.
Only in the case of the second-millennium monarch Puzur-Sin did
we find any evidence of Assyrian ethnicity, and this single example was
multiplied when we expanded our comparative materials to use some
of the Old Babylonian evidence. In the GHD and in the ethnographic
data that we derive about tribal groups from the Mari texts, it is clear
that the second-millennium context included many instances of ethnic
awareness among both peripheral groups and also among the monar-
chic rulers. The most interesting point is that this ethnic awareness was
not preserved in the royal inscriptions of the Amorite monarchs but
 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 51

rather in a ritual list associated with the kispu ceremony, which demon-
strates that ethnicity can play an important role within one’s identity
and still remain quite apart from one’s sense of national or political
identity.

Ethnicity and Identity in Archaic and Classical Greece

I have chosen Herodotus’s Histories as the primary source material

for exploring the notions of ethnicity and identity in ancient Greece.
One might fault this because Herodotus’s fifth-century date is some-
what distant, chronologically speaking, from most of Israel’s literature.
As the growing penchant for comparative anthropological data shows,
however, chronological proximity is by no means a prerequisite for
comparative significance. Moreover, Herodotus is not so distant from
the Hebrew sources when one considers the possibility that much of
the biblical text is later than usually supposed and when it is acknowl-
edged that Herodotus is a suitable representative of those who pre-
ceded him—particularly Homer, Hesiod, and Hecataeus—because his
work is nearly a compendium of their various genres and interests. It is
because of this motley, form-critical appearance that, before I turn to
questions of ethnicity and identity in Herodotus, I will offer a few in-
troductory comments on the genre, literary features, and historicity of
the Histories. A primary goal of this introduction will be to determine
whether the work’s ethnographic sections provide accurate information
about other peoples or, on the other hand, furnish mainly hellenized
representations of them. If the latter is the case—and I will argue that
it is—then the materials from Herodotus will serve us most adequately,
not as a witness to various foreign identities, but rather as a representa-
tive of Greek notions about identity and ethnicity.
In spite of my caveat about our preoccupation with chronological
proximity, I suppose that it is significant for us to determine the extent
to which we might expect features in Herodotus to provide a direct ex-
planation for features in the Hebrew Bible (or vice versa). So before I
introduce our study of Herodotus, the onus is upon me to show more
convincingly that he is a suitable representative of the older Greek ma-
terials, and, therefore, of the historical periods that are closer to the
time in which many of our Hebrew sources were composed. I must
also suggest the cultural path that these traditions may have followed
52 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

on their trek from Greece to Israel. All of this can be done through a
brief examination of Homer, Hesiod, and Hecataeus.

The Predecessors of Herodotus: Homer, Hesiod, and Hecataeus

For many classical scholars, the story of Greek historiography be-
gins with Homer’s epics, 76 and this is because there is a certain organic
connection between the epic tradition and the historiographers, par-
ticularly Herodotus. 77 There are a good many things that we could say
about the epics, but if we want to examine the supposed connection
between Homer and Herodotus, I would suggest that we start with this
question: what Homeric purposes lay behind the composition of the
Iliad and how do they compare with those of Herodotus? Certainly
one purpose was to provide a good story for the entertaining bards of
ancient Greece. Hornblower has directed us to two excerpts from the
Iliad, however, that suggest a more serious motive for this epic compo-
sition. In the first example Achilles sings about “the glorious deeds of
men,” and in the second Helen explains to Hector that trouble had be-
fallen her “so that in times to come we may be sung about by people
yet unborn.” 78 While we cannot expect a transparent purpose state-
ment in epic poetry of the sort we might find in historiography, these
comments certainly stand close to the stated aims of Herodotus: “so
that things done by man [will] not be forgotten in time.” 79 So the ge-
neric differences that separate Homer from Herotodus cannot be trans-
lated into entirely disparate purposes, for the two writers shared very
similar interests in the human past and in preserving it for posterity.
They were interested in history.
Not only do their purposes overlap to an extent, but Homer’s
scope of interest is also similar to that of Herodotus. The two major
concerns of the Iliad and the Odyssey are warfare and genealogy, and
these are also important themes in the Histories of Herodotus. On the

76. Along with most classical scholars, I am presuming a “unitarian” position re-
garding Homer and the epics, that is, that he was the author of both the Iliad and its
sequel, the Odyssey. See “Homer,” The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature (2d ed.;
ed. M. C. Howatson; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) 283.
77. See, for instance, S. Hornblower’s introduction to Greek Historiography (ed.
S. Hornblower; Oxford: Clarendon, 1994) 7–9.
78. Ibid., 7; Cf. Iliad 9.189, 6.357. See also in the Odyssey 8.580: “that there
might be a song for those yet to be born.”
79. Herodotus Histories 1.1.
 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 53

other hand, as we will see, while the connections between genealogy

and ethnicity are made very explicit in Herodotus, this simply is not
the case in Homer, a fact that has caused Hall in a recent study of
Greek ethnicity to devote very little attention to him. 80 Nevertheless,
Hall does see in the poet a subtle awareness of ethnicity, and I think
that we can both explain the paucity of ethnic concepts in Homer and,
if we read between the lines, identify discrete instances of ethnicity in
his epic tales.
The paucity of ethnic genealogies is best explained by the fact that
Homer is preoccupied with the pedigree of his characters, and in this
regard the ethnic origins of Odysseus (that he is by lineage from the
city of Ithaca) are of much less interest than the fact that he was the son
of Deucalion and grandson of Zeus. 81 Because of this, Homer’s gene-
alogies are primarily linear and familial, and they are not used as tools
for establishing the origins or collective nature of ethnic entities. But
when Odysseus warned Penelope not to inquire about his “race” and
“native land,” and then later, when he finally explained to her that “by
lineage he came from Ithaca” and that “his own father was Laertes”—
all this does seem to imply an ethnic understanding of Ithacan identity.
Similarly, Telemachus says, “of Ithaca I am by birth, and my father is
Odysseus.” 82 And in 6.35 Nausicaa, daughter of King Alcinous, is re-
minded that she has “suitors in the land, the noblest of all the Phae-
cians, from whom is thine own lineage.” These texts seem to connect
collective identities (Ithacans, Phaecians) with ancestral lineage, and
when this connection is made, we are dealing with ethnicity. So while
ethnicity was not a preoccupation of Homer, this eighth-century
source provides subtle evidence that ethnic modes of identity were al-
ready current during the early Greek archaic period. But there is at
least one example of ethnicity in Homer that is not subtle—the figure
Hellen. There can be little doubt that he was already the eponymous
ancestor of the Hellenes that figure so prominently in Homer’s work,
and this tradition was subsequently picked up by later authors, as we
will see.
When we consider the Hesiodic corpus, more pronounced ex-
pressions of Greek ethnicity appear, particularly in the later “pseudo-

80. Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity, 42.

81. Cf. Odyssey 24.269 and 19.116, 164–89.
82. Odyssey 15.267
54 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

Hesiodic” Catalogue of Women. But before turning to the Catalogue,

we should briefly discuss Hesiod’s Works and Days and his Theogony.
The introductory portion of Works and Days speaks of mortal history
as comprised of five successive races, and while this conception is not,
strictly speaking, ethnic in the common sense of the term, it does re-
flect the tendency to explain human identity in terms of ancestry and
lineage. 83 But we should recognize that the agricultural concerns of
Works and Days are not of the sort that would emphasize ethnic is-
sues. Thematic concerns also appear to have precluded ethnic con-
cerns in Hesiod’s Theogony. But while the poem does not discuss
human genealogies, it is very interested in divine genealogies. Geneal-
ogy and kinship are therefore not in the least foreign to Hesiod’s
work. And the fact that these genealogical concerns have natural af-
finities with ethnicity is confirmed by the Catalogue of Women, which
was composed as a sequel to the Theogony and features pronounced
notions of ethnicity.
The Catalogue of Women was composed at least a century after He-
siod, during the sixth century b.c.e., and has accordingly been dubbed
“pseudo-Hesiodic.” According to Hall, this text is the real starting
point for any serious study of Greek ethnicity because it provides a se-
ries of genealogies that trace the Hellenic race back to a common an-
cestor. 84 The most noteworthy example comes from a fragment that
says, “from Hellen the war-loving king sprang Dorus and Xuthus and
Aeolus,” to which we may add a recently discovered fragment that
makes Xuthus the forefather of “Akhaios and Ion.” That is, Hellen was
the forefather of the Dorians, Aeolians, Achaians, and Ionians, among
others. 85 This use of ethnic eponymy is a part of the tradition that He-
rodotus and later Greek writers inherited (and used), and it is also
quite close to what we see at certain points in the Hebrew Bible.
Hall has done us a great service in sorting out the history of
Greece’s genealogical tradition, and I refer the reader to his study for

83. Works and Days, 110–80. Here and elsewhere, our study of the Hesiodic cor-
pus is based on H. G. Evelyn-White’s translation in the Loeb edition, Hesiod: The Ho-
meric Hymns and Homerica (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982).
84. Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity, 42.
85. See fragment 4 in the Loeb edition of the Catalogue. This is labeled fragment
9 in M. L. West’s text, and the newly discovered text he labels fragment 10. See The
Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: It’s Nature, Structure and Origins (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1985).
 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 55

more detail on the subject. 86 In sum, what he describes is the process

by which the genealogical tradition was often edited (or new elements
invented) to support certain political and social agendas. On the one
hand, we can point to what Hall calls aggregative tendencies in Greek
ethnicity, which sought to connect various peer groups with each other
and in doing so created the tradition that the various Greek peoples
stem from a common ancestor, Hellen. 87 In this sense Hellenic geneal-
ogy was etiological and sought to explain the ethnic order by means of
an evolution from ethnic homogeneity to ethnic diversity. On the
other hand, we can speak of oppositional ethnicity, in which traditions
were modified to distinguish one group from other Greeks or from
barbarian populations. A case in point is Athens, which found it expe-
dient to trace its lineage back to the Ionians, and then later on, during
the sixth-century reforms of Kleisthenes (and at a time of anti-Ionian
sentiment), replaced their Ionian forefathers with eponymous heroes
and a new “tribal” structure. 88 During the fifth century, when their
claim to the land took an autochthonous turn, one of these eponymous
heroes, the earth-born Erekhtheus, became a much more prominent
figure in the Athenian origin tradition. So ethnicity played a very im-
portant role in ancient Greek identity.
How early can we date these ethnic traditions and how directly can
we connect them with Herodotus? According to West, the genealogical
tradition behind the Hesiodic Catalogue dates no later than the eighth
century b.c.e., 89 and Hall’s conclusion that an ethnic consciousness is
already present in our earliest sources from the eighth and seventh cen-
turies squares with this perspective. Moreover, Hall suggests that these
ethnic demarcations probably became rather pronounced during the
eighth century, when a new sense of identity was emerging with the
concept of “citizen” communities. 90 So there is evidence of the ethnic
tradition in the eighth-, seventh-, and sixth-century sources. It is un-
fortunate that the genealogical work of Hecataeus of Miletus is lost to

86. There is also a very detailed study of Greek genealogy by Broadbent, but her
primary focus is in the direction of royal and family genealogies rather than Greek eth-
nicity and identity (M. Broadbent, Studies in Greek Genealogy [Leiden: Brill, 1968]).
87. On the oppositional and aggregative character of Greek ethnicity, see Hall,
Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity, 47.
88. Ibid., 53–54.
89. West, Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, 1–11, 164.
90. Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity, 58–59, 65.
 56 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

us, since he was the immediate predecessor of Herodotus and would

have served as a partial bridge to the earlier period. But even in his ab-
sence there are many connections between Herodotus and the ethnic
traditions and tendencies of the Homeric and Hesiodic materials, and
it is a safe assumption that the ethnic traditions passed from the early
archaic sources through Hecataeus (and others) to Herodotus. Thus
there are many reasons to believe that the ethnic traditions in Herodo-
tus are representative of the earlier archaic period, and I believe that
this makes the comparative value of Herodotus more attractive—if we
can be convinced that there are sufficient reasons to postulate a path of
cultural exchange between archaic Greece and ancient Israel.
The argument for this path of exchange may be summarized as fol-
lows: I have already mentioned Burkert’s study, which confirms a
marked increase in the contacts between the Greeks and Phoenicians
during the eighth century b.c.e. and afterward. 91 Now we have recently
been warned by J. C. Waldbaum that, while pottery sherds and the like
can confirm ongoing trade patterns, these patterns do not necessarily
translate into an active cultural exchange. 92 There are nevertheless sev-
eral reasons for postulating a cultural connection between Israel and
Greece during the archaic period. First, we know from both historical
and prophetic texts that Israel had extensive contacts with the Phoeni-
cians, and this was no doubt facilitated by their proximity to each other
and by their common language. This means that we can establish Phoe-
nicia as a possible arbiter of the process of cultural exchange, since the
Phoenicians had on-going relations with both Greece and Israel. 93 Sec-
ond, as Penglase’s recent study demonstrates, there were extensive cul-
tural exchanges between the Near East and Greece during the archaic
period, because Homer and Hesiod reflect strong influences from the
Near Eastern traditions. 94 Whether this influence moved in both direc-
tions and in equal magnitudes is difficult to say, but it certainly makes
West-to-East influence more probable. Third, and perhaps most impor-
tant, not only have we confirmed extensive economic trade between
Greece and Phoenicia but we also have an eighth-century Phoenician
91. Burkert, Die orientalisierende Epoche in der griechischen Religion und Literatur
(= The Orientalizing Revolution).
92. J. C. Waldbaum, “Greeks in the East or Greeks and the East? Problems in the
Definition and Recognition of Presence,” BASOR 305 (1997) 1–18.
93. Ibid., 4.
94. C. Penglase, Greek Myths and Mesopotamia: Parallels and Influence in the Ho-
meric Hymns and Hesiod (London: Routledge, 1994).

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 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 57

text from Karatepe that reflects an awareness of Greek traditions about

the founding of the Danunian royal dynasty by a certain cpm, which
Gibson has profitably compared to the Greek tradition about a seer
named Mopsos who was associated with the same region. 95 It is some-
what unclear what is going on in the text and how it relates to the Greek
traditions, and Gibson is very cautious to avoid drawing hasty conclu-
sions. But it does provide tentative evidence that Greek ethnic and royal
traditions were know to those using the Phoenician language. What all
of this implies is that although there is very little evidence of direct cul-
tural exchange between Israel and Greece during the archaic period,
Israel’s close ties to Phoenicia—linguistic, cultural, and economic—
represented a potential avenue of cultural influence from the West. But
I would caution that these circumstances will make it very hard to prove
that Greek–Israelite similarities stem from one influencing the other,
since this circumstance might equally arise because of their common in-
fluence from the Phoenicians.

An Introduction to Herodotus
In classical antiquity, Herodotus became known as the “Father of
History,” a title that has doggedly followed him up to the present,
when his work is generally regarded with great admiration. To encapsu-
late his work within the genre of history is somewhat misleading, since
his work includes features from other genres of the period, particularly
genealogy, mythology, and ethnography. 96 Before we discuss why his
work displays this curious combination of literary features, I want
briefly to explore questions that arise from Herodotus’s own statement
of purpose in the Histories.
What Herodotus the Halicarnassian has learnt by inquiry is here set
forth: in order that so the memory of the past may not be blotted out
from among men by time, and that great and marvelous deeds done
by Greeks and foreigners and especially the reason why they warred
against each other may not lack renown. 97
95. J. C. L. Gibson, Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions (3 vols.; Oxford: Clar-
endon, 1971–82) 3.44.
96. C. W. Fornara lists the standard designations used by classical scholarship for
genres closely related to history (The Nature of History in Ancient Greece and Rome
[Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983] 2–45).
97. Herodotus Histories 1.1. Here and elsewhere, all quotations are taken from
the A. D. Godley’s Loeb translation, Herodotus (4 vols.; LCL; Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1982).
 58 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

Here and elsewhere, Herodotus indicates that the reader ought to

believe what he has to say, often asserting that extensive research lies
behind his claims. In this sense, he claimed to be doing something akin
to what modern historians do: to evaluate critically various sources and
lines of evidence and to arrive at a conclusion about what probably
happened.
Scholars have tended to believe that Herodotus did this rather
well, but this was not always the case. In antiquity, Herodotus had ac-
quired the reputation of being “unreliable, biased, parsimonious in his
praise of heroes, and mendacious.” 98 Such bad press came from the
likes of Thucydides, Aristotle, Cicero, Josephus, Plutarch, Manetho,
and Libanius. 99 He has especially been criticized for his “lack of scien-
tific spirit” and his “gullibility.” 100 It was a little over a century ago that
two scholars with ties to our own period joined the ranks of these
ancient writers. 101 Nevertheless, this perspective on Herodotus has
generally been ignored until D. Fehling’s comparatively recent study
reopened the debate. Fehling claimed that in only one case could he
verify an authentic source behind Herodotus’s work. 102 Unlike those
before him, Fehling did not examine the external evidence and then
test Herodotus’s account against it. Instead, he argued that the internal
features of the Histories themselves discredit Herodotus. For instance,
Herodotus writes:
I saw there a strange thing . . . the bones of those slain on either side
[the Persians vs. the Egyptians] in this fight scattered separately . . .
the skulls of the Persians are so brittle that if you throw no more than
a pebble it will pierce them, but the Egyptian skulls are so strong
that a blow of a stone will hardly break them. And this, the people
said (which I for my own part readily believed), is the reason for it:
the Egyptians shave their heads from childhood, and the bone thick-

98. J. A. S. Evans, Herodotus (Boston: Twayne, 1982) 162–63.

99. See Aristotle Poetica 23; Cicero de Legibus 1.1.5; Josephus Contra Apion 1.3;
Libanius Against Herodotus; Manetho Against Herodotus; Plutarch, On the Malignity of
Herodotus; Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War 1.20–21.
100. B. Baldwin, “How Credulous was Herodotus?” Greece and Rome 11 (1964)
167.
101. A. H. Sayce, The Ancient Empires of the East: Herodotus I–III (New York:
Scribner’s, 1884); H. Panofsky, Quaestionum de historiae Herodoteae fontibus pars prima
(Ph.D. diss., University of Berlin, 1885).
102. D. Fehling, Die Quellenangaben bei Herodot (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1971) 110.
This volume is now available in English as Herodotus and His Sources (ARCA Classical
and Medieval Texts, Papers, and Monographs 21; Leeds: Francis Cairns, 1989).

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 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 59

ens by exposure to the sun. This is also the reason why they do not
grow bald; for nowhere can one see so few bald heads as in Egypt. 103
To this text Fehling responds (and I must agree) that it is clear that
both observations Herodotus makes cannot have a basis in reality. 104
He claims to be an eyewitness to something that simply cannot be true.
Similarly, R. Rollinger has examined Herodotus’s description of
Babylon, particularly his depiction of its fortifications, riverworks,
bridges, and city gates. He finds that there is little correlation between
the Histories and the archaeological data. Furthermore, Rollinger has
found that those who would assert the reliability of Herodotus’s Baby-
lonian account—P. Panitschek, for instance—are often guilty of using
Herodotus as a basis for their reconstruction of ancient Babylon, so
that their assertions are actually circular and turn out to compare He-
rodotus with Herodotus rather than Herodotus with the archaeological
record. 105 Rollinger’s conclusion is that Herodotus was not very famil-
iar with Babylon and, in my view, it is fair to say that his observations
and also those of Fehling are rather important for our evaluation of
Herodotus.
W. K. Pritchett has recently taken up a defense of Herodotus’s ve-
racity, particularly in his response to Fehling. However, in doing so he
has failed to offer a serious challenge to Fehling’s arguments. Pritchett
criticizes Fehling because he “openly scorns at citing archaeological and
topographical publications,” but this shows that Pritchett has failed to
appreciate Fehling’s central argument, which claims that it is the evi-
dence within the Histories that raises questions about Herodotus’s reli-
ability. 106 Furthermore, in his handling of the text cited above (He-
rodotus Histories 3.12), Pritchett counters Fehling’s arguments by pos-
tulating that Egyptians were of black heritage, the Persians of white
heritage, and that “physical anthropologists . . . put some stock in the
thickness of the skull in racial classifications [italics mine].” 107 Pritch-
ett’s argument cannot be sufficient, since it is based on questionable
103. Herodotus Histories 3.12.
104. Fehling, Die Quellenangaben bei Herodot, 23.
105. R. Rollinger, Herodots babylonischer Logos: Eine kritische Untersuchung der
Glaubwürdigkeitsdiskussion an Hand ausgewählter Beispiele (Innsbrucker Beiträge zur
Kulturwissenschaft 84; Innsbruck: Instituts für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität
Innsbruck, 1993) 92. Cf. P. Panitschek, Babylon bei Herodot und Ktesias (Ph.D. diss,
University of Graz, 1986) 1–22.
106. W. K. Pritchett, The Liar School of Herodotus (Amsterdam: Bieben, 1993) 10.
107. Ibid., 29–30.
60 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

anthropological data and because, even if there were some osteological

distinctions between Egyptians and Persians, it hardly seems likely that
Egyptian skulls would be impervious to a serious blow while Persian
skulls were easily pierced by “pebbles.”
Despite my sympathy for the arguments put forth by Rollinger and
Fehling, I agree with Pritchett that Fehling fails to account for some of
the more important secondary literature and that, on occasion, he is
also guilty of excessive “rationalism.” 108 Moreover, the blanket skepti-
cism that Rollinger and Fehling espouse is perhaps unwarranted. 109
A. B. Lloyd’s commentary on Herodotus presents a good deal of evi-
dence that, especially in terms of Egyptian chronology, Herodotus
worked from actual sources and that he made a serious effort to recon-
struct the past. 110 Likewise, J. M. Balcer has compared Darius’s auto-
biography from the Bisitun texts to Herodotus’s parallel description in
the Histories. In the end, Balcer has concluded that Herodotus’s work
“is a collection of Persian and Egyptian tales, myths, fables, and other
stories, reworked by Herodotus into Ionian prose, and influenced by
East Greek rationalism.” 111 Thus, in both the Persian and Egyptian
narratives (which have come to be viewed as Herodotus’s least trust-
worthy accounts) there is evidence that he made a serious effort to per-
form the task of a historian. But all of this said, the question that
remains is why such a serious effort to uncover the truth was so often
colored by liberties taken with source material and by occasional ten-
dencies toward invention.
P. Levi has postulated an answer to this question by suggesting that
Herodotus was a story-teller by profession, a collector of anecdotes and
tales. 112 This profession was common in the classical world, and Levi’s

108. Ibid., 12–14, 16. So, for instance, Pritchett criticizes Fehling’s conclusion
that local traditions cannot survive through several generations when scholaship is un-
der the spell of a “Romantic movement.”
109. For instance, compare Fehling’s comments on Herodotus Histories 2.104
with the observations of A. B. Lloyd’s commentary on the same text (Herodotus, Book
II: Commentary 99–182 [3 vols.; Études préliminaires aux religions orientales dans
l’Empire romain 43; Leiden: Brill, 1975–88] 3.21–25).
110. Ibid., 185–94.
111. J. M. Balcer, Herodotus and Bisitun (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1987) 12. Bal-
cer’s conclusions are in agreement with the previous work of D. Hegyi, “Historical Au-
thenticity of Herodotus in the Persian LOGOI,” Acta antiqua academiae scientarium
hungaricae 21 (1973) 73–87.
112. P. Levi, A History of Greek Literature (New York: Viking, 1985) 153–66.
 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 61

hypothesis makes sense of the Histories, because the most consistent

feature of Herodotus’s work was his desire for a good story. Because of
this, truth and invention, myth and history provided equally appropri-
ate material for his work. Whenever history served this purpose, He-
rodotus could be counted on to tell us about it. However, it seems that
he was equally willing to sacrifice the truth for a good story. 113 And it
must be remembered that even when Herodotus does give us “the
truth,” Balcer is right that his most serious efforts are thoroughly col-
ored by his Greek identity. In sum, with respect to our inquiry about
ethnicity and identity, we should probably expect to find the perspec-
tives of Herodotus in the Histories more often than the perspectives of
the various peoples with whom he supposedly had contact.

The World of Herodotus

The definitive work in the area of ethnicity and identity in He-
rodotus was authored by F. Hartog, who argued that Herodotus’s per-
spective was greatly influenced by his conceptual model of the
world. 114 Although Hartog examined the Histories in earnest, several
observations escaped his attention, and several potential subjects were
left unexplored. Because of this, I offer here a brief discussion of the is-
sue. My discussion is particularly interested in Herodotus’s under-
standing of regions to the extreme southwest (Ethiopia), east (India),
and north (Europe) of the Greek homeland.
Herodotus seems particularly aware of the world’s extremities, say-
ing that “the distant parts of the world . . . have those things which we
deem best and rarest,” in this case referring to the copious amounts of
gold found in the north of Europe (3.116). As in this northern ex-
treme, so too the Indians, who dwell at the “sunrise of all the nations
of Asia,” and the Ethiopians, who dwell toward the sunset, have gold

113. This would account for the mottled literary character of Herodotus’s work
compared to the much more consistent historical works of his near contemporaries,
Thucydides and Xenophon.
114. F. Hartog, The Mirror of Herodotus: The Representation of the Other in the
Writing of History (The New Historicism: Studies in Cultural Poetics 5; Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1988) 12–33. W. K. Pritchett, whom I have already men-
tioned in connection with D. Fehling, is equally critical of Hartog. However, once one
becomes convinced that Herodotus is as much a storyteller as a historian, then Pritch-
ett’s arguments are not persuasive.
 62 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

in abundance. The Indians and Ethiopians lived in hot, desert regions

and were “black-skinned.” Herodotus does not suggest a climatic rea-
son for this (as does Hippocrates) 115 but surmises that both the Indi-
ans’ and the Ethiopians’ genital seed was “not white like other men’s,
but black like their skin.” 116 Ethiopians, that is, black-skinned peoples,
lived not only southwest of Asia but also to the extreme east of Asia, in
a region that Herodotus identified as the seventeenth province of Per-
sia. As Herodotus explains it, these Ethiopians differed from those of
Africa only in “speech and hair,” with the former having straight hair
and the latter being “woolly-haired.” 117 The Asian Ethiopians appar-
ently lived nearer to India than to Africa, since India lay in the twenti-
eth province of Persia and African Ethiopia lay to the south of Egypt,
the fifth province. Thus, we see that the extremities of Herodotus’s
world, to the south, west, and east, were populated by black-skinned
groups, ethnic groups in the sense that Herodotus understood their
identity, at least with respect to their phenotypical characteristics, an
identity associated with genetic heritage.
To the north of Herodotus’s homeland lay Europe, which included
the Scythians and a number of strange and exotic groups farther north.
Scythia stood at the edge of this extremity, serving as a boundary be-
tween Asia and the northern limits, while its schematic counterpart,
Egypt, stood between Asia and the southern extreme in Ethiopia. The
Scythians were the “youngest of all peoples” and the Egyptians the old-
est. 118 For Hartog, this means that Scythia and Egypt were “antitypes”
in Herodotus’s understanding of the world. However, a closer inspec-
tion reveals that Herodotus’s perspective was not as schematically con-
sistent as Hartog suggests, since Scythia clearly lay on the periphery of
the world and Egypt most certainly did not. On the contrary, the
Scythians did not reflect the stability of Egypt but the multifarious
character of other peripheral peoples. Both the Indians and Scythians
were nations (eqnoi) on the periphery, and each was characterized by
diversity, particularly due to the fact that in each group some lived as
nomads and others did not. 119 Just as there were ‘many Indian nations’

115. Hippocrates Airs, Waters, Places 13–17.

116. Herodotus Histories 3.101.
117. F. M. Snowden, Before Color Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks (Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1983) 46; Herodotus Histories 7.7.
118. Hartog, The Mirror of Herodotus, 28; Herodotus Histories 2.2; 4.5.
119. Herodotus Histories 3.98–99, 4.18–20.

Spread is 3 points long

 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 63

(esti de polla eqnea Indown), so too there were nomadic Scythians,

sedentary Scythians, and even “Royal Scythians.” 120 However, despite
the differences among them, the Scythians remained a people ethni-
cally distinct from those nearby: ‘to the north dwell the Blackcloaks,
who are of another and not of Scythian stock’ (allo eqnoÍ kai ou
Skuqikon).
One of the more interesting features of Herodotus’s ethnographic
work is his attempt to describe regions beyond the periphery of
Scythia, India, and Libya. His narration of Ethiopian culture mentions
little about the regions beyond them—not even a confession of igno-
rance. In comparison to this, Herodotus seems rather uncomfortable
describing the peripheral regions beyond Scythia, India, and Libya:
As far as India, Asia is an inhabited land; but thereafter all to the east
is desert, nor can any man say what kind of land is there. (4.40)
These then are the most distant parts of the world in Asia and Libya.
But concerning the farthest western parts of Europe I cannot speak
with exactness. . . . (3.15)
Above the Royal Scythians to the north dwell the Blackcloaks . . .
and beyond the Blackcloaks the land is all marshes and uninhabited
by men, so far as we know. (4.21)
Aristeas . . . visited the Issedones [north and east of Scythia]; beyond
these . . . dwell the one-eyed Arimaspians, beyond whom are the
griffins that guard gold, and beyond these again the Hyperboreans,
whose territory reaches to the sea. Except for the Hyperboreans, all
these nations ever make war. . . . (4.13)
In that country [beyond Libya] are the huge snakes and the lions,
and the elephants and bears and asps, the horned asses, the dog-
headed men and the headless that have their eyes in their breasts, as
the Libyans say, and the wild men and women. . . . (4.191)
In these texts Herodotus seems quite aware that his quest for under-
standing faced formidable obstacles. If one agrees that he was indeed a
storyteller as much as a historian, then it should come as no surprise
that the paucity of his sources about these distant regions did not pre-
vent him from offering rather lengthy descriptions of them. Because
Herodotus lacked first-hand sources from these regions, it makes sense
120. The Royal Scythians represented a group that deemed all other Scythians as
“their slaves.” They were supposedly the “best” and “most in number” among the
Scythian groups.
64 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

that his lengthy narrations about the peoples therein would reflect
much more his own cultural expectations than any concrete realities. If
this is so, then we should expect that his descriptions of peripheral peo-
ples will display a certain rhetorical pattern. And this, as I will show, is
precisely how the evidence unfolds.

The Rhetoric of “Otherness” in Herodotus

F. Hartog, whose work I have already mentioned, has thoroughly
investigated the Histories’ portrayal of foreign peoples, particularly the
rhetorical patterns and rationale that guided Herdotus’ descriptions of
them. However, because his work was limited to Herodotus’s descrip-
tion of the Scythians, there are certain patterns within the Histories that
Hartog does not address. I am thinking at this point about Herodotus’s
propensity to tell us that peripheral peoples practice (a) cannibalism,
(b) human sacrifice, (c) sexual perversion and promiscuity, (d) nomad-
ism, and (e) strange cultic rites. In his descriptions of such practices,
Herodotus tends to provide, as J. Z. Smith has noted, the “observer’s
vision without apparent analytical mediation.” 121 My view is that this
analytical silence is more of a rhetorical device than an early example of
epoché. We are as much dismayed by Herodotus’s seeming objectivity
as we are aghast at the described cultural faux pas. When Herodotus
writes that the Indians “have intercourse openly like cattle,” he reveals
implicitly his appraisal of Indian social mores, that they are the mores
that one more readily associates with animals than with people. So it is
hardly appropriate to begin our study of Herodotus with the notion
that he tended to be “objective,” especially in light of recent studies
that argue for the strong influence his own identity exerted on his
work. 122 And with these introductory comments out of the way, we
can begin our discussion of Herodotus’s ethnographic work, starting
with the place of “cannibalism” in his history.
Of the Indian peoples, Herodotus writes that “when any of their
countryfolk male or female are sick, a man’s closest friends kill him . . .
though he denies that he is sick, yet they will not believe him, but kill
121. J. Z. Smith, “Adde Parvum Parvo Magnus Acervus Erit,” in Map is Not Terri-
tory: Studies in the History of Religions (Leiden: Brill, 1978) 247.
122. W. Burkert, “Herodot als Historiker fremder Religionen,” in Hérodote et les
peuples non-grecs (ed. G. Nenci and O. Reverdin; Entretiens sur l’antiquité classique,
35; Vandoeuvres-Genève: Hardt, 1990) 1–39; J. Gould, “Herodotus on Religion,” in
Greek Historiography (ed. S. Hornblower; Oxford: Clarendon, 1994) 91–106.
 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 65

and eat him (3.99).” Likewise, when an Issodeone father dies, “all the
nearest of kin bring beasts . . . and having killed these and cut up the
flesh, they cut up also the dead father . . . and set out all the flesh
mingled together for a feast (4.26).” The name of the Androfagoi
(‘man-eaters’), a people to the north of Scythia, is self-explanatory and
provides an additional example of cannibalism among the groups that
the Histories describes for us (4.106). These three groups—the Indians,
Issodeones, and “Man-eaters”—share a common status as peripheral
peoples, and it is not a coincidence that they are viewed as cannibals,
while Assyria, Greece, Persia and Egypt are free of the practice. For
obvious reasons, cannibalism is used in the Histories as a stereotyped
characteristic of peripheral, uncivilized peoples. One might argue that
Herodotus is only citing his sources and that he held no such stereo-
typed view of the periphery, but it seems rather clear that, whether
from Herodotus or from his cultural milieu, there was a decided ten-
dency in Greek thought to view marginal peoples in this way.
Within the broad scholarly pursuit that we call “History of Reli-
gions,” it is a common observation that cannibalism is often closely re-
lated to human sacrifice, with both practices evoking a natural horror
among “outsiders.” 123 This close association is maintained in the Histo-
ries, which are as likely to portray marginal peoples as sacrificing hu-
mans as they are to point out that they also ate them. Herodotus writes
of the Scythians, Getae, and Tauri peoples, respectively:
Of all their enemies that they take alive, they sacrifice one man in
every hundred, not according to their fashion of sacrificing sheep and
goats, but differently. . . . They pour wine on the men’s heads and cut
their throats . . . they carry the blood up on the pile of sticks and pour
it on the scimitar . . . they cut off all the slain men’s right arms and
hands and throw these into the air. . . .
Once every five years they choose by lot one of their people and send
him as a messenger to [the god] Salmoxis . . . and this is their man-
ner of sending . . . three lances are held by men thereto appointed;
others seize the messenger to Salmoxis by his hands and feet, and
swing and hurl him aloft onto the spear-points. If he be killed by the
cast, they believe that the god regards them with favor; but if he be
not killed, they blame the messenger himself, deeming him a bad
man, and send another messenger in place of him whom they blame.

123. D. Carrasco and K. A. Read, “Human Sacrifice,” ER 6.515–23.

66 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

Among these, the Tauri have the following customs: all ship-wrecked
men, and any Greeks whom they take in their sea-raiding, they sacri-
fice to the Virgin goddess . . . after the first rites of sacrifice, they
smite the victim on the head with a club . . . they then throw down
the body from the cliff whereon their temple stands, and place the
head on a pole. 124
When it is recognized that human sacrifice is, by definition, the
ritual killing of a human being, then several of the above incidents of
cannibalism may be added to these three examples of human sacrifice,
creating a final list of Indians, Scythians, Issedones, Getae, and Tauri—
all participants in the cult of human sacrifice—all peripheral peoples
within Herodotus’s conceptual model of the world. The core civiliza-
tions, represented by Persia, Egypt, and Greece, were quite excluded
from this cultic activity (with the fleeting exception of Iphigenia) and
are to be distinguished from the uncivilized peoples of the earth’s ex-
tremities. Interestingly, several classical scholars have noted that in
Greek thought cannibalism was also associated with the primeval pe-
riod of human history. 125 This may indicate that, for Herodotus, the
contemporary uncivilized peoples represented a “survival” from the
primeval period.
In the Histories, uncivilized peoples practiced cannibalism and hu-
man sacrifice; they also practiced various forms of sexual perversion
and promiscuity. Of the Agathyrsi and Nasamones, Herodotus writes,
“Their intercourse with women is promiscuous,” and of the Indians,
Machlyes, and Auseans, he says that they “have intercourse openly like
cattle.” Gindane women proudly displayed anklets that marked the
progress of their promiscuity (4.176). Similarly, the Histories tell us
that Amazon women were prone to wander about so that young Scyth-
ian men might lay hold of them. When this occurred, “the woman
made no resistance but suffered him to do his will . . . she signed with
the hand that he should come on the next day to the same place.” 126 So
we see that Scythians were apt to commit rape, and the Amazons were

124. For these descriptions of the Scythians, Getae, and Tauri, see Herodotus
Histories 4.62, 72; 4.93–94; 4.103.
125. S. Blundell, The Origins of Civlization in Greek and Roman Thought (Lon-
don: Croom Helm, 1986) 186; W. K. C. Guthrie, In the Beginning: Some Greek Views
on the Origins of Life and the Early State of Man (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1957) 95.
126. Herodotus Histories 3.101; 4.104, 113.
 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 67

inclined to like it. 127 Generally speaking, the practices of these periph-
eral peoples were weighed against Greek mores and found wanting.
Rape was a crime, but the Scythians committed the crime. Normal
women struggle against a rapist, but the Amazons asked for more. Sex-
ual intimacy was for the bedroom, but Indians performed the act in
public view. From the perspective of Herodotus and his thought world,
the peripheral peoples were quite barbarous in their sexual promiscu-
ity, just as they were in their cannibalism and sacrificial cult.
Peripheral peoples are cannibals, practice human sacrifice, and par-
ticipate in sexual promiscuity. They are also nomads. To the north,
Scythia was partially nomadic, and the Massagetae, Budinin, and
Man-eaters were nomads. To the south and west were found both Lib-
yan and Ethiopian nomadic groups. In the east, some Indians were no-
madic, and various groups (genea, aristoi) on the Persian periphery—
the Dai, Mardi, Dropici, and Sagartii—were also nomadic. 128 This
mode of life was, of course, distinct from the settled life of Greek civili-
zation and was associated with more primitive peoples. It is interesting
that, among the four Scythian origin traditions Herodotus knew, it was
the nomadic origin tradition that he preferred. It is probably not a co-
incidence that Herodotus viewed the Scythians both as the youngest of
peoples and as nomadic in origin. This probably stemmed from his
theoretical understanding that nomadism represented an early stage in
the development of human civilization, a perspective that is not unlike
what we saw in the Assyrian king-list tradition.
The final point to be made in this portion of my work concerns He-
rodotus’s depiction of cultic rites and religion. Both W. Burkert and
J. Gould have pointed out his tendency to focus on the cult as the pri-
mary expression of religion, as it was in Greece, so that in the Histories
he frequently fails to appreciate the religious subtleties of his ethno-
graphic subjects. 129 So after listing the deities that the Scythians ac-
knowledged, Herodotus proceeded to point out that the Scythians
generally avoided building shrines and altars and that they also eschewed
libations and burnt offerings (4.59–60). I. M. Linforth recognized long

127. Hartog argues that this scene is “in no sense one of rape” because the Ama-
zons do not resist. However, this reading of the text misses the point: the Scythians
think it rape, but the Amazons enjoy it (F. Hartog, The Mirror of Herodotus, 221).
128. Ibid., 194.
129. Burkert, “Herodot als Historiker fremder Religionen,” 4–5; Gould, “He-
rodotus on Religion,” 98.
 68 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

ago that the exceptional feature of the Scythian pantheon (and of all the
“uncivilized” pantheons in the Histories) is that it included so few deities
in comparison with the Greek pantheon. 130 In other words, Herodotus
was chiefly concerned with pointing out the unusual characteristics of
the non-Greek cults. This is why he tells us that the Hyperboreans sac-
rifice “wheat-straw” (4.35) and that the Libyans “cut the victim’s ear off
and throw it over the house” (4.188). So we see that in the Histories, the
general rule was that the cult of the peripheral peoples differed markedly
from standard Greek practice. In the event that this general rule did not
hold, an explanation was required. For instance, although the city of
Gelonus was situated in the midst of the Budini people and claimed by
them, this did not square well with the fact that the Geloni followed
Greek fashion in their images, altars, and festivals. Herodotus therefore
tells us that the Geloni were, after all, Greeks:
the Greeks call the Budini too Geloni; but this is wrong. . . . For the
Geloni are by their origin Greeks, who left their trading ports to set-
tle among the Budini. They speak a language half Greek and half
Scythian.
In their religious life as well as in all other aspects of life, the pe-
ripheral peoples had proved themselves to be, at least in Herodotus’s
eyes, uncivilized. And when the cultic activities of these peripheral peo-
ples paralleled the features of the more advanced cultures, as was the
case with the Geloni, the explanation could only be that they origi-
nated in a more civilized context.
Aside from the features I have pointed out—cannibalism, human
sacrifice, sexual promiscuity, nomadism, and cultic irregularity—the
Histories are replete with descriptions of cultural “barbarism.” For in-
stance, the Indians and Budini, who are guilty of all of the vices above,
are also vulgar in that they “eat raw flesh.” The Scythians are similarly
crude when they drink the blood of their war victims. As S. Blundell
has noted, this reflects the Greek attitude that cooking was responsible
“for the human race’s rise from unruly cannibalism to their present
condition of urban association.” 131 Such descriptions of uncivilized
barbarism stand in stark contrast to Herodotus’s description of the

130. I. M. Linforth, “Greek Gods and Foreign Gods in Herodotus,” University of

California Publications in Classical Philology 9 (1926) 6–7.
131. Quoting from Athenaeus Deipnos 14.660–61. See also Blundell’s related dis-
cussion in The Origins of Civilization in Greece and Roman Thought, 165–86.

Sperad is 9 points long

 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 69

quite civilized Egyptians, as illustrated by this quotation from the

Histories:
They are beyond measure religious, more than any other nation; and
these are among their customs; They drink from cups of bronze,
which they cleanse out daily; this is done not by some but by all.
They are especially careful ever to wear newly-washed linen raiment.
They practice circumcision for cleanliness’ sake; for they set cleanli-
ness above seemliness. . . . [With respect to the priests] sacred food is
cooked for them, to each man is brought every day flesh of beeves
and geese in great abundance. 132

The Origins of Peoples in Herodotus

One of the more important components in a group identity an-
swers the question of how and when the group originated. The Histo-
ries’ most extensive inquiry into this question is found in Book 4 (4.1–
12), where Herodotus explores the various theories of Scythian origins.
He identifies the sources of these four competing origin traditions as
(1) the Scythians, (2) the Black Sea Greeks, (3) Aristeas of Proconne-
sus, and (4) an unnamed logoÍ. Given the problems that I have cited
in my introduction to Herodotus, it becomes difficult to know
whether these represent authentic sources or fabrications, and I must
again caution that we are more apt to learn about the perspective of
Herodotus than of any supposed Scythian sources. This is certainly the
case with the Scythian account, which begins in a peculiar fashion.
According to the Scythians, says Herodotus, their forefather, Tar-
gitaus, was a son of Zeus. This is of course an unlikely claim for the
non-Greek Scythians to make, although it is possible that here He-
rodotus has interpreted the chief Scythian deity as Zeus. But even if
this was the case, it shows how quickly Herodotus resorted to repre-
senting foreigners in categories more in tune with his Greek identity. 133
The Scythian source claims that Targitaus fathered three sons—Li-
poxaïs, Arpoxaïs, and Colaxaïs—who were in turn the forefathers of
the four Scythian clans (genoÍ). 134 As F. Hartog has noted, the curios-
ity in this arrangement is that the youngest son, Colaxaïs, turned out
132. Herodotus Histories 2.37.
133. Despite my point here, G. Dumézil has argued that certain features of the
story do reflect authentic Indo-European sources. See his Romans de Scythi et d’allen-
tour (Bibliotheque historique; Paris: Payot, 1977) 172. It would seem that here, as else-
where, Herodotus’s work is a combination of authentic traditions and Greek ideology.
134. This three-son pattern is common in both Greek and Israelite literature.
70 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

to be the forefather of the royal clan of Paralatae. 135 As we might ex-

pect, this cannot have happened under the usual circumstances and
was instead prompted by a divine choice of Colaxaïs over his brothers.
The will of the gods was made known by the fact that Colaxaïs alone
was permitted to take hold of the golden implements that “fell down
from the sky.” This divine preference for the younger son over the
older ones is a motif found elsewhere in Herodotus (cf. 4.10, 8.137)
and reminds us of the Jacob/Esau story and of other traditions in the
Hebrew Bible. As I have said, it is difficult to know where the Scythian
source ends and Herodotus begins in this tradition, but whatever we
may make of it, Herodotus claimed not to believe it: emoi men ou
pista legonteÍ (4.5). But this should not divert our attention from
the fact that genealogical traditions played an important role in the
work of Herodotus.
The second origin tradition, told by Greeks living near the Black
Sea (4.8–10), claimed that Scythian origins should be sought in the
person of Heracles, a claim not so distant from the Scythian claim
when it is remembered that Heracles was a son of Zeus. If we assume
that there is some truth behind the Scythian tradition, then we might
construe this as a Greek effort to weaken the Scythian pedigree by re-
placing Zeus with Heracles. Moreover, this tradition is much less flat-
tering than the first one. According to this tradition, Heracles had
intercourse with a creature, “half damsel and half serpent,” in return for
information about his missing livestock. Once again, three sons re-
sulted from this union, and the youngest, Scythes, became the epony-
mous ancestor of the settled Scythians. The two older brothers became
the forefathers of the nomadic Scythian groups. Despite the peculiari-
ties of this origin tradition, it shares several things in common with the
Scythian version, no doubt a result of the Greek tendency to introduce
their own mythology into regions where they settled. 136 First, in both
cases the youngest son’s position superseded that of his older brothers
because of divine intervention, in this story by the intervention of
semidivine Heracles. Second, in both traditions an important compo-
nent of identity was ethnic sentiment, since the claim in each case was
that the Scythians originated from a common genealogical stock. But

135. Hartog, Mirror of Herodotus, 21.

136. W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus (reprint; 2 vols.; Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 1989) 305.
 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 71

perhaps most important is that both traditions paint the Scythians as

autochthons and therefore as having a unique claim to their homeland.
Taken together, these similarities suggest that we are perhaps dealing
with a somewhat distorted Scythian story about their own origins fol-
lowed by a Greek reworking of the same by the Black Sea Greeks. But
we are really in no position to test out this theory.
At this point we should distinguish among several aspects of kin-
ship that are reflected in these first two Scythian origins traditions. In
the first place, both of the traditions place an emphasis upon genealogi-
cal pedigree, so that the people of Scythia are legitimated by their di-
vine (Zeus) and semidivine (Heracles) origins. 137 As is well known, this
kind of genealogical interest is widely attested in many cultures, Meso-
potamia and Egypt being no exceptions. 138 However, while in Meso-
potamia and Egypt this pedigree was used primarily to validate royalty
and the priesthood, in the traditions cited by Herodotus the pedigree
was extended to the people as a whole. This brings us to a second kind
of kinship that is closely connected with ethnicity. In this case kinship
is used by etic observers (outsiders) to provide an ethnographic expla-
nation for both the origins of other cultural entities and also for the
intercultural relationships that characterize those groups. So, for in-
stance, from the Greek source we learn not only that the people of
Scythia originated as the sons of Scythus but also that the close rela-
tions between these sedentary Scythians and the nomadic groups
nearby stem from their common connection with Heracles. As the
comparative materials show, this etic use of genealogy appears primar-
ily when the “scholars” of a given (usually literate) culture contemplate
and speculate about the origins and histories of other peoples. 139 We
do not want to suggest that this kind of etic genealogical activity is
found only among literate cultures, as our Tiv example in chapter 1
shows (p. 20). But in the case of Greece we have numerous and lengthy
literary sources that illustrate a strong propensity to use ethnic kinship
to explain both Greek and non-Greek origins. 140

137. For a discussion of genealogical pedigree, see B. A. Van Groningen, In the

Grip of the Past: Essay on an Aspect of Greek Thought (Leiden: Brill, 1953) 47–61.
138. R. R. Wilson, Genealogy and History in the Biblical World (YNER 7; New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1977) 54–55, 132–35.
139. Ibid., 18–55; West, The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, 11–30.
140. Note the use of “Graecus” as the forefather of Greece in the Catalogue of
Women, 1–3.
72 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

As C. W. Fornara has pointed out, the kind of ethnographic inter-

est that we see in Herodotus is invigorated by specific historical con-
texts, particularly when, as in the case of archaic and classical Greece, a
culture is experiencing frequent contacts with other peoples through
imperial expansion or increasing trade. 141 This means that serious eth-
nographic literature is the product of several important cultural and
historical factors which make the number of contexts that can give rise
to it somewhat limited. It is profitable to ask why ethnographic work
prospered in Greece but not in the Assyrian sources that we have exam-
ined. In a few isolated cases, the Assyrian materials do exhibit a degree
of scholarly ethnographic interest. Therefore we would be amiss, I
think, to believe that Assyrians were less “inquisitive” than the Greeks.
It is perhaps more correct for us to postulate that, because much of
Assyria’s scribal activity took place in a monarchic context, the monar-
chic concerns precluded the development of a full-blown ethnographic
genre in Mesopotamia. This is not, of course, because the Assyrians
produced only annalistic pieces. Rather, it stems from the fact that,
although the annals were the most appropriate place to deal with
Assyria’s new imperial subjects, their thematic preference for royal
achievement left no room for ethnography. On the other hand, the
historiographic products of Greek literary activity were almost cer-
tainly intended, at least in the case of Herodotus, for the consumption
of the “common folk,” and this meant that the thematic choices of He-
rodotus were constrained only a little. There can be little doubt that
this is what permitted his numerous ethnographic digressions.
Although the ethnographic genre came to the fore only in the fifth
century b.c.e., I have already pointed out that Greek interest in eth-
nography and genealogy was much older than this and harked back to
the eighth-century influences of Hesiod and Homer. 142
The remaining Scythian origin traditions are quite different from
these first two, which were primarily genealogical. According to Aris-
teas of Procannesus, says Herodotus, Scythian origins stemmed from a
forced migration. The Arimaspians displaced the Issedones, who in
turn displaced the Scythians, so that the Scythians forced the Cimme-
rians out of their homeland. Although Herodotus did not think much
141. Fornara, The Nature of History in Ancient Greece and Rome, 12–16.
142. Ibid. Homer reveals an interest in foreign lands, while the Hesiodic corpus,
particularly in the Catalogue of Women, concerns itself with genealogies, forefather tra-
ditions, and the like.
 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 73

of this migration tradition, he tells us that “there is yet another tale, to

the tradition whereof I myself do especially incline (4.11).” This tradi-
tion is also a migration tradition and goes as follows. The Scythians
were a nomadic people who inhabited Asia. When pressed in war by
the Massagetae, the Scythians migrated across the river Araxes and dis-
placed the Cimmerians. Several lines of evidence seem to have contrib-
uted to Herodotus’s preference for this tradition over the others. First,
Herodotus noted the presence of certain geographical and cultural fea-
tures in the Scythian territory that bore the name Cimmeria. This re-
veals that the tradition is clearly etiological and seeks to explain in one
fell swoop both the presence of the Scythians and the supposed Cim-
merian features in the same region. Second, while Herodotus identified
his sources for the other origin traditions as either Greek or foreign, of
this last tradition he says, “I have now related this other tale, which is
told alike by Greeks (Ellhnwn) and foreigners (Barbarwn) (4.12).”
Herodotus seems to have preferred this origin tradition because it was
derived from opposing sources, and although this seems a quite sen-
sible conclusion, we have already pointed out that Herodotus has
confirmed an impossible tale on the basis of opposing Persian and
Egyptian sources (see Herodotus Histories 3.12 and above, pp. 58–60).
In that case, and perhaps here as well, the best explanation may be the
invention of sources rather than the use of authentic source traditions.
But putting aside the question of the tradition’s authenticity, it is im-
portant to recognize that the migration tradition described here should
be distinguished from another type of migration that is often found in
the Greek sources. Although in this story the Scythian migration was
forced by the Issedones and Massagetae, the other type of tradition is
an autonomous migration. The autonomous migration traditions are
associated with the origins of higher cultures, as in the case of the
Phoenicians, who settled in their Levantine homeland after an overseas
migration (Histories 1.1). Similar migration traditions are a common
element in the classical literary traditions and also in the biblical
sources. 143
In his discussion of Scythian origins, Herodotus considered two dif-
ferent types of origin traditions: genealogical origin traditions and mi-
gration traditions. While the genealogical tradition is readily identified

143. See J. Van Seters, Prologue to History (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox,

1992) 211–12.
 74 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

with ethnic sentiments, it seems quite probable that the migration tra-
ditions are equally ethnic in scope, since they presume the same group
of Scythian people. But more specifically, both types of origin tradi-
tions were part of a larger attempt to provide ethnographic data to the
reader, albeit couched in the storytelling rhetoric of Herodotus, and
similar kinds of literary activity were characteristic of Greek literature
well before the Histories. Although there are some similarities between
these Greek traditions and the Old Babylonian evidence that we have
examined, the Greek material contrasts sharply with our Neo-Assyrian
sources, which leave questions of ethnography and ethnic genealogy
largely unexplored.

Defensive Military Leagues in Herodotus

Although we have raised serious questions about the amphictyonic
hypothesis for early Israel’s origins, the Greek amphictyonies neverthe-
less share some similarities with the biblical account of early Israelite
history. Two texts from the Histories are suitable representatives of this
“league” tradition, one an effort to repel Persian invaders and the other,
more akin to the amphictyonies, to protect a newly established cult
shrine. The texts read as follows:
The Scythians, reckoning that they were not able by themselves to
repel Darius’s army in open warfare, sent messengers to their neigh-
bours, whose kings had already met and were taking counsel, know-
ing that a great army was marching against them. Those that had so
met were the kings of Tauri, Agathyrsi, Neuri, Man-eaters, Black-
cloacks, Geloni, Budini, and Sauromatae. (4.102)
. . . but the twelve cities aforesaid glorified in this name [Ionian], and
founded a holy place (iron) for themselves which they called the Pan-
ionion, and agreed among them to allow no other Ionians to use it.
(1.143)
With respect to comparative issues, the most relevant feature of these
texts is numerological. A total of ten groups joined the anti-Persian co-
alition and twelve cities participated in the protection of the holy
site. 144 These two numbers are often associated with social and mili-

144. Fehling notes that both ten and twelve are commonly used by Herodotus.
For his discussion of numerology in the Histories, see Die Quellenangaben bei Herodot,
155–67.

Spread is a line short

 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 75

tary organizations in the Greek sources, the most familiar example be-
ing the twelve-member religious league from sixth-century Delphi. 145
In the anti-Persian coalition, Herodotus uses this “standard” number-
ing scheme even when describing the non-Greek Scythians, Tauri, and
others. And if the question occurs to us why the Ionian league should
choose to include only twelve cities, it also occurred to Herodotus. He
suggested that the Ionians would admit no more cities because “there
were twelve divisions of them when they dwelt in Peloponnesus, just
as there are twelve divisions of the Achaeans who drove the Ionians
out.” 146 The Ionian league was essentially religious, but the name of its
cult site, Panionion (Paniwnion ‘all Ionia’), shows that a central pur-
pose of the arrangement was to promote Ionian unity. These tradi-
tions have many affinities with the traditions in the Hebrew Bible, and
they will be discussed in the following chapter. Although we must
stress that early Israel was probably not an amphictyony, it remains
possible that the similarities between the Greek and Israelite traditions
are not coincidental.
The features that we have outlined in this section of our study in-
clude only selected aspects of the complex thought-world reflected in
the various Greek sources, and for every point that we have made here,
there is assuredly a source one might adduce that would raise questions
about it in some way. Nevertheless, I believe that this sketch of the
properties and emphases in the Histories of Herodotus, along with our
examination of earlier Greek materials, suitably represents some of the
key trajectories in ancient Greek thought about ethnicity. In my view,
it is obvious that, with respect to ethnicity, the Greek (and Old Baby-
lonian) materials stand much closer to those in the Hebrew Bible than
do the sources from Neo-Assyria.

Ethnicity and Identity in Egypt

The contribution of the Egyptian sources to this study are perhaps
less important than one might at first suppose because, during the
Egyptian late period, the period that coincides with much of Israel’s

145. For bibliography on the Greek amphictyonies, see above, p. 7 n. 21. An-
other example of the ten-tribe organization scheme is found in Kleisthenes’ Athenian
reforms at the end of the sixth century b.c.e. See O. Murray, Early Greece, 275.
146. Herodotus Histories 1.145.
76 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

biblical literary activity, Egypt’s political and social climate was trou-
bled. 147 The era of Egypt’s greatest influence on Palestine was well be-
fore most of the biblical materials made their appearance, so one
should expect less direct Egyptian influence than from either Assyria or
Babylon. In fact, the Egyptian presence in the biblical text, excepting
the Exodus event, is very much in the background when compared to
the presence of the Mesopotamian states. Nonetheless, it is quite true
that Egypt maintained a continuing and influential presence in Pales-
tine for most of the region’s history, so much so that A. Mazar has been
able to demonstrate a quite direct correlation between Egyptian success
and the undulating rise and fall of Palestinian civilization. 148 However,
our discussion of Egyptian imperialism in Palestine must keep in mind
the point, ably brought out by P. J. Frandsen, that Egyptian policy was
not uniform in every theater of its influence. While the Egyptians
waged a very successful campaign to exert cultural influence in Nubian
regions, its expansion in Syria–Palestine was devoted more specifically
to economic and political issues. 149
For the most part, this study of the Egyptian sources will focus on
the earlier historical periods, when Egyptian influence in Palestine was
more pronounced. Our first task is an examination of the well-known
Middle Kingdom story about Sinuhe. After this we will study represen-
tative texts from the New Kingdom (especially those of Thutmose III)
and also from later royal inscriptions that bring us relatively close to
the period in which the first Israelite literary prophets worked. We will
complete our review of the Egyptian sources with a few brief com-
ments about the Persian and Hellenistic periods, first because these pe-
riods represent a peripheral sociological experience for the Egyptians,
and second, because the comments will demonstrate that a sense of
continuity existed between earlier Egyptian thought and the thought
of the Persian and Ptolemaic periods. To summarize this in another
147. I regret that repeated attempts to acquire a copy of A. Loprieno’s volume,
obviously relevant to this study, have failed. Perhaps the reader will have more success.
See Topos und Mimesis: zum Ausländer in der ägyptischen Literatur (Ägyptologische Ab-
handlungen 48; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1988).
148. Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible: 10,000–586 b.c.e. (New York:
Doubleday, 1992). See also the historical survey of D. B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and
Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).
149. P. J. Frandsen, “Egyptian Imperialism,” in Power and Propaganda: A Sympo-
sium on Ancient Empires (ed. M. T. Larsen; Mesopotamia 7; Copenhagen: Akademisk,
1979) 167–90.
 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 77

way, in this section I hope to clarify early Egyptian perspectives on

identity via the tale of Sinuhe and then to show that, in subsequent pe-
riods, this Egyptian notion of identity was rather stable, despite its his-
torical permutations.

The Story of Sinuhe

Whether intentional or incidental to the story, the tale of Sinuhe
provides one of the better descriptions of Egyptian attitudes and per-
spectives toward the Asian cultures, and this necessarily has importance
for the whole question of Egyptian identity. 150 Although a fair bit of
work has been done on the various texts and a number of translations
are available including Koch’s relatively new critical edition, 151 with
the exception of a few recent comments from J. Baines, little has been
done to explore the issue of Egyptian identity as revealed in Sinuhe. 152
The value of the story for this purpose is naturally tied to the question
of genre, and there are at least three major schools of thought about
this. For those who embrace a rather straightforward reading of the
text, it is either a genuine autobiographical text about Sinuhe him-
self 153 or a piece of political propaganda in support of Senwosret I. 154
For others it is to be viewed primarily as a piece of narrative fiction
whose ultimate aims are quite beyond the ostensible context of the
story, and this view is preferable to me for several reasons.

150. My discussion is based on Lichtheim’s translation, and the references to

Sinuhe will utilize her line numbers (M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature [3 vols.;
Berkeley: University of California, 1973–80] 1.222–35). For the text, see R. Koch, Die
Erzählung des Sinuhe (Bibliotheca Aegyptiaca 17; Brussels: Fondation Égyptologique
Reine Élisabeth, 1990); and also A. M. Blackman, Middle Egyptian Stories: Part I (Bib-
liotheca Aegyptiaca 2; Brussels: Fondation Égyptologique Reine Élisabeth, 1932).
151. Koch, Die Erzählung des Sinuhe.
152. The study of Baines is of limited use here because his definition of ethnicity
does not feature kinship, as does mine: “Contextualizing Egyptian Representations of
Society and Ethnicity,” in The Study of the Ancient Near East in the Twenty-First Cen-
tury: The William Foxwell Albright Centennial Conference (ed. J. S. Cooper and G. M.
Schwartz; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1996) 355–56.
153. See, for instance, J. W. B. Barnes, “Sinuhe’s Message to the King: A Reply to
a Recent Article,” JEA 53 (1967) 6–14.
154. G. Posener, Littérature et politique dans l’Égypte de la XII e dynastie (Biblio-
thèque de l’École des Hautes Études 307; Paris: Champion, 1956) 87–115. It might
also be suggested that Sinuhe represents propaganda for the “established order” of an-
cient Egypt, but as Baines has pointed out, a similar case can be made for most of
Egypt’s literature (J. Baines, “Interpreting Sinuhe,” JEA 68 [1982] 38).
 78 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

In the first place, the focus of the narrative is not so much Sinuhe
as it is the tragic situation of an Egyptian who is “forced” to leave his
homeland and culture, with special emphasis on the problem of his ex-
ile from society and his reintegration to it. Of course, as the story tells
us, this happened only because Sinuhe has misunderstood the situation
at home and therefore acted rather brashly, which is all the more tragic.
The fact that years of Asiatic assimilation can be expunged by a wash
and a change of clothes (as we will discuss below) certainly points to
the quite fictive character of the story. So we are not dealing with an
autobiography but with a fictive narrative that draws upon the features
of Egyptian funerary autobiographies. 155
Moreover, we are probably not dealing with political propaganda.
Although the importance of the king (and kingship) plays a consider-
able role in the framework of the piece, one can hardly reduce the aims
of its narrative core to a political agenda. If this were its aim, we should
have expected much more from both the departure narrative and the
account of Sinuhe’s return, for these are the points at which the king
could play the most prominent role. But the narrative core of the story
is Sinuhe’s conquest of a difficult Asian territory, and the purpose be-
hind this must be thematically associated with the superiority of Egyp-
tian identity (of which kingship is an important element) rather than
with dynastic rule itself. Furthermore, the fact that the story was prob-
ably composed after the death of the kings involved suggests that its
function was not overtly political. 156 Consequently, in spite of any po-
litical overtones, we should deal with the story as a literary piece com-
posed for other purposes, and I would propose that the primary
purpose was to promote the value of Egyptian identity.
If the story is to exalt Egyptian identity, it must do so by rhetori-
cally contrasting Egyptian and foreign identities, and in this compara-
tive role, the Asiatics serve as the literary foil in our story. The Asiatics

155. Baines’s study of Sinuhe identifies a number of points at which the story de-
parts from the formal character of a funerary autobiography. First, its introduction in-
cludes the death of Ammanemes I. Second, the narrative is not about an achieved
career recounted in a “timeless fashion,” but rather, it ends with a “discreet allusion” to
the death of Sinuhe. Third, the extended narrative character is much more complex
and introspective than the standard funerary texts. Other examples could be men-
tioned (ibid., 31–44).
156. Baines, “Contextualizing Egyptian Representations of Society and Ethnic-
ity,” 355.

Spread is 6 points long

 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 79

of Sinuhe are quite the antithesis of Egyptian identity, as reflected in

these comments from the protagonist himself:
I do not know what brought me to this country; it is as if planned by
god. As if a Delta-man saw himself in Yebu, a marsh-man in Nubia.
No Asiatic makes friends with a Delta-man. And what would make
papyrus cleave to the mountain? 157
The rhetoric of the text focuses on the geographical and physical fea-
tures of the foreign lands and uses them to represent the cultural dis-
tance the separates Egyptians from Asiatics. Egyptians (in this case
“marsh-men”) live in the marshes of the Delta while Asiatics (“barbari-
ans”) live in the mountains. 158 And although the bedouin Lebensart
had little in common with the settled highlanders, in the rhetoric of
Sinuhe both groups become Asiatics (a pattern reminiscent of the As-
syrian tendency to paint all Westerners with “Hittite” colors). The rift
between Egyptians and Asiatics could be expressed in no better terms
than in the words of Sinuhe, that “no Asiatic makes friends with a
Delta-man.” This is a gap that only the narrative would be able to
cross.
Despite the rhetorical and cultural distance, in the story nothing is
more certain than the fact that the Egyptian Sinuhe becomes an Asiatic
nomad and sandfarer. 159 He marries an Asiatic and begets Asiatic chil-
dren. He rules his own tribe (w˙yt), as do his sons after him. 160 He
commands Asiatic troops and “wins the heart” of his fellow Asiatics.
Finally, when his victory over the native champion of Retenu is real-
ized, Sinuhe becomes the most powerful force in the Asiatic theater. 161
So the narrative is not in the least content with the idea that an Egyp-
tian merely “survived” a difficult Asiatic experience, nor is it content
with the notion that Sinuhe was nothing more than an Asiatic peer.
157. Sinuhe, 40–45, 120–25. J. L. Foster properly translates Yebu as ‘Elephan-
tine’. Despite the fact that neither Elephantine or Nubia are in Asia, they represent for-
eign lands and suitably make the point that an Egyptian more properly belongs in an
Egyptian environment (see Foster, Thought Couplets in the Tale of Sinuhe [Berlin: Peter
Lang, 1993] 43).
158. Here the Egyptian term is the more general pdtyw ‘barbarian, foreigner’.
159. In fact, G. Maspero has argued that Sinuhe is a play on the word Sima˙i
(‘son of the North’), because he had resided for a long time in the country situated to
the north of Egypt (see his Les Mémoires de Sinouhit [Cairo: Institut Français
d’Archéologie Orientale, 1908] 154).
160. I will discuss the use of the term w˙yt below.
161. Foster, Thought Couplets in The Tale of Sinuhe, 119.
80 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

Only when Sinuhe became the ruler of his foreign hosts did he become
quite convinced that the angry god who made him an Asiatic would re-
store him to his Egyptian homeland, or, to put it another way, Sinuhe’s
stay in Asia ends when the superior character of Egyptian identity is il-
lustrated by his life success. His victory is essential because, as Baines
has put it, “Sinuhe stood for Egyptians as a whole.” 162
The choice to look homeward at this high point in the narrative is
an important one, for it reaffirms the notion that a modest position in
Egypt is better than an exalted one in Asia. 163 This perspective is rein-
forced, I think, by the narrative treatment of Sinuhe’s departure from
his tribal home. Although we want to believe that he wrestled with
powerful affections for his Asiatic family, the curt description says, “I
was allowed to spend one more day in Yaa, handing over my posses-
sions to my children.” So Sinuhe’s cultural identity as an Egyptian is
much stronger than the natural kinship ties that he shares with the Asi-
atics. Egypt is his home.
The affections of Sinuhe’s heart do not mask his Asiatic appear-
ance, as is given dramatic force in the response of the royal ladies to his
arrival in Egypt:
“Here is Sinuhe, come as an Asiatic, a product of nomads!” She [the
queen] uttered a very great cry, and the royal daughters shrieked all
together. They said to his majesty: “Is it really he, O king, our lord?”
Initially the “victorious” Sinuhe was nothing more than an object of
pity. There seems to be some tension here because, while we get the
impression that the Asiatics were uncouth, sand-covered nomads in
Egyptian eyes, and while Sinuhe’s hymn praises the king as the smiter
of Asiatics, the story has cast the Asiatic friends of Sinuhe in a rather
positive light. We should remember that the story was composed prior
to the Hyksos experience, after which Egypt’s view of Asia became in-
creasingly suspicious, even to a neurotic degree. But in our story there
is room for two camps of Asiatics, those who supported Egyptian rule
(and befriended Sinuhe) and those who resisted Egyptian rule (and
were defeated by him). So we are not dealing with strong antipathies
toward Asiatics but with strong antipathies toward rebellious Asiatics.
At any rate, to our narrator even friendly Asiatics are quite inferior
to Sinuhe’s Egyptian roots, and so his Asiatic status has to be set aright:
162. Baines, “Interpreting Sinuhe,” 37.
163. Ibid.
 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 81

I left the audience-hall. . . . We went through the great portals, and I

was put in the house of a prince. In it were luxuries: a bathroom and
mirrors. In it were riches from the treasury; clothes of royal linen,
myrrh and the choice perfume of the king and of his favorite court-
iers were in every room. Every servant was at his task. Years were re-
moved from my body. I was shaved; my hair was combed. Thus was
my squalor returned to the foreign land, my dress to the Sand-farers.
I was clothed in fine linen; I was anointed with fine oil. I slept on a
bed. I had returned the sand to those who dwell in it, the tree-oil to
those who grease themselves with it.
Here the narrative makes too easy a process that would have been, in
genuine circumstances, more difficult. Although our protagonist ap-
pears to have assimilated to Asiatic culture, which would be necessary
for marrying and rearing children, the narrative treats this foreign ex-
perience in the most superficial way. The markers of Egyptian identity
are cleanliness and refinement, and these are easily reacquired. But
above everything else, reintegration into Egyptian society required the
king’s embrace.
The importance of kingship and of the king’s rule in foreign lands
is evident even in the core narrative about Sinuhe’s stay in Asia. De-
spite the good-natured portrayal of Sinuhe’s Asiatic friends, Asia was
nonetheless a region of foes and a domain to be conquered. He speaks
of the “walls of the ruler,” made to “repel the Asiatics and to crush the
Sand-farers.” Likewise in his praise of the king, Sinuhe says that Pha-
raoh is “the enlarger of frontiers . . . made to smite the Asiatics and
tread on Sand-farers!” This notion of foreign conquest is not just dis-
cursive but is also acted out by our protagonist:
Every hill tribe against which I marched I vanquished, so that it was
driven from the pasture of its wells. I plundered its cattle, carried off
its families, seized their food, and killed people by my strong arm, by
my bow, by my movements and my skillful plans.
In the end, Sinuhe was an Egyptian “vizier” who conquered Asia,
taking territory, booty, and captives in the process. Such was the stan-
dard imperial practice among Middle Kingdom pharaohs, who consis-
tently employed “epithets constructed around claimed victories over
Asiatics.” 164 It is this view of Asia that finally emerged when Sinuhe
said, despite his Asian family and people, that Retenu belonged to the

164. Redford, Egypt, Canaan and Israel in Ancient Times, 77, 71–97.
82 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

king “like his dogs.” Similarly, Senwosret I was extolled as the “throat-
slitter of them that are in Asia.” For Middle Kingdom Egyptians, Asia
represented a peripheral region marked for territorial expansion and
conquest, and it was the king who led the conquest. Assyrian superior-
ity was secured by the god Assur and by his sangû, the king; Egyptian
superiority rested with the god Horus, who was the king.
While it appears that the tale of Sinuhe tells us a good bit about
Egyptian identity, it reflects a somewhat hazy view of Asian social orga-
nization, a circumstance that is easily explained. First, the writer of
Sinuhe may have been much less aware of Asian society than seems to be
indicated by the text. A. H. Gardiner has pointed out that in the tale,
Sinuhe departed through the desert and arrived by land-route to the
one place familiar to Egyptian seafarers: Byblos. 165 What of Lachish,
Gezer, and Megiddo? And why run to the city where he is most likely to
be found? 166 Actually, the story reflects much more familiarity with no-
madic Asian groups on Egypt’s immediate periphery than it does with
conditions in northern Syria. Even in this view, there are points of con-
fusion. Why was Sinuhe sometimes portrayed as an Asiatic bedouin
nomad and, at other times, depicted as a mountain-dwelling, landed
fellow with figs, grapes, wine, honey, and oil? 167 In light of these facts,
the reference to Byblos is more likely a literary device. I must say, along
with Gardiner, that I am skeptical that the writer was very familiar with
the Asian regions to the north and east. Sinuhe’s Asiatic identity is best
understood as the eclectic construction of a scribe who combined a
number of disjointed impressions into one cultural entity.
Nevertheless, whether accurate or not, the tale does present a
rather consistent picture of Asian social organization. Whether speak-
ing of “Asiatics,” “Men of Retenu,” or “Sand-farers,” Sinuhe customarily
tells us that these groups were composed of smaller social units, w˙yt,
and this has traditionally been translated by the term ‘tribe’. There is,

165. The presence of “Byblos” in the original text has been debated. G. Maspero
has argued that the Berlin Papyrus (B) of Sinuhe is superior to the Ramesseum Papyrus
(R), and B appears to read Kpni rather than Kpnj (= Byblos), as in R. However, in all
other cases Sinuhe refers to quite familiar place-names, and the reading Kpni does not
correspond to this pattern of familiarity. Furthermore, Gardiner has shown that R is su-
perior to B both textually and orthographically. See Maspero, Les Mémoires de Sinouhit,
xlii-xliii; A. H. Gardiner, Notes on the Story of Sinuhe (Paris: Champion, 1916) 21–22.
166. Ibid., 167.
167. See Sinuhe, 75–85.
 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 83

of course, an on-going debate about the use of anthropological terms

like ‘tribe’, the most common objection being that such a term cannot
possibly describe the many varied sociological and cultural contexts to
which it is applied. 168 On the other hand, it seems to me that J. W.
Rogerson is quite right when he points out that in English the word
tribe has, from the outset, “designated groups of people whose social
organization was not known.” It seems useless to criticize a term as
“imprecise” when its semantic purpose turns out to be imprecision.
This problem is not, of course, limited to English. The meanings of
hfm and fbv in Hebrew, fulh in Greek, and w˙yt in Egyptian are
equally obscure and for the same reasons. In each case, the terms could
be applied to social organizations about which the authors had quite
limited knowledge. Anthropological terms such as tribe readily appear
when literate cultures attempt to describe little-understood social phe-
nomena within other cultures or, as was the case in Israel and Greece,
when they attempt to describe their remote history. So it stands to rea-
son that we may find it difficult to clarify the tale’s impression of these
‘tribes’, an exercise that we will nevertheless undertake.
First, we can say that in each case the tribal units were led by a
single individual variously represented in the literature as “chief,”
“sheik,” “prince,” or “ruler.” There seems to be a degree of precision
here, since the nomadic mtn (‘sheik’?) who befriends Sinuhe rules one
tribe, while the ‘princes’ of Retenu, both the friend of Sinuhe and his
chief antagonist, are consistently identified as rulers over groups of
tribes. The Egyptian perception of Asian social organization would
therefore seem to include a two-tiered understanding of Asian author-
ity structures: tribes ruled by “sheiks” and groups of tribes ruled by
‘princes’. However, even if this is an accurate assessment of the tale’s
perspective, it is an Egyptian model of Asian society that probably fails
to do justice to the sociological complexities that existed there.
Because the open-ended notion of tribe is commonly associated
with ethnic sentiments, it is natural to ask whether the evidence from
Sinuhe reflects an ethnic understanding of Asian tribal organization.
Sinuhe’s hasty rise to tribal leadership in this foreign context would
seem to argue against such an ethnic understanding of identity, since it
is difficult to imagine an ethnic social modality that would so easily

168. For a summary of the debate, see J. W. Rogerson, Anthropology and the Old
Testament (Growing Points in Theology; Atlanta: John Knox, 1979) 86–101.
 84 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

accept the authority of a foreigner. But we are dealing with a fictive

document, and there are several features in the text that make kinship,
and with it perhaps ethnicity, an important concept in the story’s view
of Asiatic identity. Both Sinuhe and his sons become leaders of their
own tribes, and Sinuhe’s departure from Asia reads as follows:
I was allowed to spend one more day in Yaa, handing over my pos-
sessions to my children, my eldest son taking charge of my tribe; all
of my possessions became his—my serfs, my herds, my fruit, my
fruit trees. 169
Here we have Asiatic social modalities that were controlled by powerful
overlords who perpetuated their family rule along kinship lines. Al-
though in certain respects this stands close to pharaonic notions of
royal succession and inheritance, the fact that each of Sinuhe’s sons be-
came the “master of his tribe” suggests a segmented (as opposed to a
linear) structure. This seems to indicate that the Egyptians fully appre-
ciated the important role of kinship in tribal Asiatic societies (and the
reader will recall that the comparative ethnographic data outlined in
chapter 1 demonstrates the close connection between kinship and
ethnicity).
The ongoing popularity of the story of Sinuhe, which comes to us
from texts as late as the first millennium, suggests that the Egyptian
view of Asiatics found therein probably outlasted the Middle Kingdom.
As is well known, this negative view of Asiatics intensified markedly
during the Hyksos experience that followed the Middle Kingdom’s de-
cline, as seen in this famous quote from Kamose (1550–1524 b.c.e.),
founder of the 18th Dynasty:
Let me understand what this strength of mine is for! (One) prince is
in Avaris, another in Ethiopia, and (here) I sit associated with an
Asiatic and a Negro! . . . My wish is to save Egypt and to smite the
Asiatics!
The “Asiatic” mentioned here is, of course, the last of the Hyksos rul-
ers in Egypt. 170 For nearly a century the Egyptians had suffered under
foreign rule and were now on the verge of ending it. Kamose found it
a noble task to restore self-rule and also to confront the Nubian threat
to the south, thus bringing an end to Egypt’s first “peripheral” experi-
ence. Although it is sometimes contended by ethnicity scholars that
169. Sinuhe, 235–40.
170. See Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, 98–122.

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 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 85

such a core-periphery situation will create ethnic sentiments within

the affected peripheral population, the evidence shows that this did
not occur among the Egyptians in response to the Hyksos experience.
However, as the New Kingdom sources show, the nonethnic bound-
aries that defined Egyptian identity intensified markedly after the
Hyksos experience, and antipathy toward Asiatics, Nubians, and all
foreigners increased proportionally.

Egyptian Identity during the Time of Thutmose III

and Afterward
In turning to Thutmose III, we pass from the Middle Kingdom
through the Hyksos Intermediate period to the imperial epoch of
Egyptian history. Although prior to this period Egypt had engaged in
occasional military operations to the north and east, as J. A. Wilson has
pointed out, the Hyksos experience permanently changed the disposi-
tion of Egypt toward this northern periphery.
The old placid introspection and concentration on matters within
the Nile Valley had been replaced by a vision of effective frontiers far
away in Asia and Africa. It was no longer enough to exhibit to for-
eign countries the superiority of Egyptian culture and thus to harvest
a favorable trade. These foreigners were no longer subjects to be pa-
tronized for their own good and for the good of Egypt; they had
shown themselves to be “rebellious.” Pharaoh must take the time to
teach them effective lessons of discipline in their own lands. 171
The inscriptions of Thutmose III (1479–1425 b.c.e.) are suitable rep-
resentatives of this new strategy which, despite its virulent military
tone, shared a good deal of continuity with Middle Kingdom views of
the Asian perimeter. The perspective of Thutmose III and the quite
thorough sources he has left us may be summarized in two quotations
from his inscriptions: “to slay the countries of the wretched Retenu,”
and “to extend the frontiers of Egypt.” 172 During the Middle Kingdom
and intermediate period, and now during the New Kingdom, the
Egyptians viewed Asiatics as inferior peoples suited for domination.
This sense of continuity should not obscure the obvious effects of the

171. J. A. Wilson, The Culture of Ancient Egypt (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1965) 167. Cf. A. B. Knapp, The History and Culture of Ancient Western Asia and
Egypt (Chicago: Dorsey, 1988) 171; Redford, Egypt, Canaan and Israel in Ancient
Times, 129.
172. ANET 234–35.
 86 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

foreign Intermediate period, however, because the New Kingdom texts

feature a more heated rhetoric toward the “wretched” targets of im-
perial ambition. As Thutmose’s Karnak inscription tells us, not only
Asiatics, but the Shasu “border people,” “Nubians,” “easterners,” “west-
erners,” “highlanders,” and “lowlanders”—all peripheral peoples—were
the objects of Egyptian wrath. 173 We can see that the ideological
boundaries that separated Egypt from its peripheral peoples intensified
markedly after the Middle Kingdom period. For the Tale of Sinuhe,
these boundaries were represented primarily by an attitude of cultural
disdain and comparative superiority. In these New Kingdom texts,
however, cultural disdain has been replaced by an active and aggressive
policy of military annihilation and domination.
While Assyrian successes caused them to view the “Hittites” as
contemptible, it was Egypt’s defeat by the Hyksos that engendered
their hated for “Asiatics.” Despite the different circumstances that
caused the intensification of both Assyrian and Egyptian identities as
distinct from their peripheral territories, there are two notable similari-
ties between the national policies that arose in these disparate contexts.
First, Assyria after Sargon II had conquered most of the known world
and viewed its previous policy of territorial expansion and world domi-
nation as largely realized. This is close to what we see in the Egyptian
sources after the Second Intermediate period. Thutmose III’s promise
“to extend the frontiers of Egypt” was no idle threat, and it was re-
peated in different words on several occasions. As the god Amen-Re
said of Thutmose, “You trod all foreign lands with joyful heart. . . . I
came to let you tread on the earth’s limits . . . for I bestowed on you
the earth, its length and breadth.” 174 The New Kingdom objective was
nothing less than complete control of its periphery, and this periphery
extended symbolically to the ends of the earth.
As this objective was more or less realized, the Egyptians, like the
Assyrians after them, tended to view imperial subjects as sources of
booty and slave labor. Thutmose III enumerates the booty that he cap-
tured, 175 and much larger numbers of captives are attested in New
173. See the poetic portions of Thutmose’s “Political Stela” in Lichtheim, Ancient
Egyptian Literature, 2.37.
174. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, 2.36–37.
175. “Now the army [of his majesty] carried off . . . 1,929 cows, 2,000 goats, and
20,000 sheep . . . 84 children of the enemy and of the princes who were with him, 5
maryanu belonging to them, 1,796 male and female slaves, as well as their chil-
dren . . .” (see ANET 237; Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, 2.34).

Spread is six points long

 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 87

Kingdom texts, as this booty list of Amenhotep II shows: “princes of

Retenu: 127; brothers of princes: 179; Apiru: 3,600; living Shasu:
15,200; Kharu: 36,300; living Neges: 15,070; the adherents thereof:
30,652; total: 89,600 men.” 176 The purpose of these captives, as Thut-
mose III stated, was “to fill (Amun’s) workhouse, to be weavers and
make for him byssos, fine white linen . . . and thick cloth, to trap and
work the fields, to produce grain to fill the granary of the god’s offer-
ing.” 177 Such a policy fostered close contact between Egyptians and
Asiatics, so that a delicately positive shift in perspective is sometimes
noticeable in the sources. As with the Assyrians, who greatly admired
“Hittite” handiwork and architectural design, the Egyptians also, in
spite of their distaste for Asiatics, came to appreciate Asiatic skills in
metalwork, shipbuilding, and construction. 178
The imperialist policy that we have outlined here was followed
throughout the New Kingdom, with lackluster attempts to duplicate it
even in the late period by the likes of Sheshonq (945–913 b.c.e.). 179
The inscriptions of Thutmose III are therefore representative of later
periods in Egyptian history. Subsequent kings down to the end of the
13th century—Amenhotep II, Seti I, Ramses II, and Merneptah, for
instance—harbored the same negative sentiments toward the
“wretched” Asian population.
From Amenhotep II: [the destroyer of ] Naharin, the one that laid
waste Khatte, viol[ator of the] Babylonian [women], the Byblian
maid, the little girl of Alalakh and the old crone of Arrapkha! And
the Takjsians are nothing at all!—really what are they good for?
From Seti I: penetrating into the mass of Asiatics and making them
prostrate, crushing the princes of Retenu . . . the wretched foe who is
in the town of Hamath is gathering himself to many people.
From Ramses II: How can these wretched Asiatics think [of taking]
their [arms] for further disorder?

176. ANET 247.

177. Kurt Sethe (ed.), Urkunden der 18. Dynastie (5 vols.; Urkunden des ägypt-
ischen Altertums 4; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1906–58) 742. English translation from Red-
ford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, 223.
178. W. Helck, Die Beziehungen Ägyptens zu Vorderasien im 3. und 2. Jahrtausend
v. Chr. (2d ed.; Ägyptologische Abhandlungen 5; Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 1971)
356–57.
179. ANET 263–64.
88 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

From Merneptah: The wretched enemy prince of Rebu has fled in

the depth of the night, by himself. No feather was on his head; his
feet were unshod. His women were taken before his face . . . The
great Lord of Egypt is powerful; victory belongs to him. Who can
fight, knowing his unhindered stride? Foolish and witless is he who
takes him on! He who transgresses his frontier knows not for himself
the morrow. 180
This perspective outlasted even these New Kingdom representatives, so
that the much later Piye (753–713 b.c.e.) would claim that “the gran-
deur of his majesty attained the Asiatics and every heart trembled be-
fore him,” even in the unimpressive context of his own struggle to
control Egypt itself. 181 In such a circumstance, this self-edifying re-
mark served only Piye himself, since the Asiatics had long since escaped
the oppressive context of Egyptian rule and were instead facing ex-
treme pressure from Assyrian expansion. Only during the idiosyncratic
reign of Akhenaton (1365–1349 b.c.e.) do we find a universalistic
sentiment that would seem to place Egyptian identity on a par with
Asiatics (= Kharu):
Thou [Atum] didst create . . . the foreign lands of Kharu and Kush
and the land of Egypt, thou hast put every man in his place, thou
hast provided their needs, each one with his food and a reckoned
lifetime and tongues different in speech; likewise their nature and
skin colors are distinguished. 182
Despite Akhenaton’s ideological uniqueness, the text he has left us
suitably represents many other Egyptian texts that use the term ‘Kharu’
(˙·rw) to refer to the Syro-Palestinian region. What makes this interest-
ing is that Kharu (= Hurru) originally derived from the Hurrians who
appeared as part of the Palestinian cultural amalgam near the end of the
16th century b.c.e. and grew to comprise a significant presence in the
region. 183 The Hurrians are perhaps better known as the founders of

180. See the following sources, respectively: Redford, Egypt, Canaan and Israel in
Ancient Times, 301 (cf. W. Helck, “Eine Stele des Vizekönigs W¶r-‡t.t,” JNES 14
[1955] 22–31); ANET 253, 255, 377.
181. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, 3.71.
182. M. Sandman, Texts from the Time of Akhenaton (Bibliotheca Aegyptiaca 8;
Brussels: Fondation Égyptologique Reine Élisabeth, 1938) 94–95.
183. According to Glock’s estimate (based on very slim evidence), the Hurrian
and Indo-Aryan populations of Palestine represented 17 and 22%, respectively
(A. Glock, “A New Taºannek Tablet,” BASOR 204 [1971] 30).
 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 89

Mitanni, the nation-state that prospered between 1500 and 1350

b.c.e. The curious thing is that even before a distinctive Hurrian pres-
ence passed from the historical scene, Thutmose III and Amenhotep II
applied the term Kharu to the Palestinian population in general, as did
their successors. 184 One must conclude, then, that just as in Assyria the
referent of Hatti evolved from the Hittite empire to the more general
regions west of Assyria, so too in Egypt the referent for Kharu moved
from the Hurrian peoples to the more general Syro-Palestinian area.
The importance of this observation rests in the fact that the biblical ma-
terials often speak of the Horites as part of the indigenous population of
Palestine. In light of the Egyptian evidence, this use of “Horite” more
likely reflects a general exonym borrowed by Israelite literature than it
reflects a particular population group within Palestine. By the time the
biblical materials were composed, the original Hittites and Horites had
long since departed from the stage.

Egyptian Identity during the Persian and Hellenistic Periods

Before summarizing our work in this chapter, I think that it would
be useful to take a brief look at the Persian and Hellenistic periods, pri-
marily because of Egypt’s peripheral sociological experience at the
time. We are fortunate to have a recent study of Egyptian identity dur-
ing the Persian period by J. H. Johnson and, as one might expect, the
sources reflect Egyptian and Persian efforts to adjust to each other and
to handle their various cultural and linguistic differences. 185 There is
no evidence, however, that the Egyptians identified themselves ethni-
cally or that the Persians utilized ethnicity in the prosecution of their
imperial efforts. Moreover, although the Egyptian effort to describe the
minority foreign communities dwelling among them is rather frequent
and sometimes heated, even here there no evidence that the Egyptians
conceptualized foreign identity in terms of ethnic genealogy. Instead,
during the Persian period and, as we will see, during the Hellenistic
period, the Egyptians continued in their attempt to restore the tradi-
tional national identity that centered on the person of the king.

184. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, 137.

185. J. H. Johnson, “Ethnic Considerations in Persian Period Egypt,” Gold of
Praise: Studies on Ancient Egypt in Honor of Edward F. Wente (ed. E. Teeter and J. A.
Larson; Chicago: Oriental Institute, forthcoming).
90 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

This spirit of Egyptian self-confidence and distinctive national

identity is clearly typified by the Ptolemaic era “Demotic Chronicle.”
The text is hardly a chronicle and was more properly described by
E. Revillout as prophéties patriotiques. Translation of the text is notori-
ously difficult and interpretation even more so, but several things seem
clear. The text is organized into several “chapters,” each consisting of a
series of oracular statements followed by relevant commentary. The
commentary explains the text in terms of Egyptian political devel-
opments during the period of Persian rule, the Ptolemaic period, and
the brief Egyptian autonomy in between. 186 Theologically speaking, the
text argues that each short-lived king of Egypt failed to adhere to the
divine ordinances (“law”) and subsequently received a truncated tenure
because of it. 187 This dynamic was equally the cause of foreign oppres-
sion under the Persians and Greeks. 188 The chronicler wanted the reader
to believe that he was living under the rule of King Tachos (362–361
b.c.e.) and used vaticinium ex eventu to “predict” a series of events in
Egyptian history. His final oracle, however, predicted the unrealized
hope that Ptolemaic rule would end at the hands of “a man of Heracle-
opolis” who would rule after the Ionians. 189
Despite its Ptolemaic date, the ideas reflected in the chronicle had
their origins in the Persian period, when “each enemy of Persia was au-
tomatically an ally of Egypt.” 190 As the chronicle shows, the Egyptians
abhorred foreign rule of any kind, as much under the Persians and
Greeks as under the Hyksos many centuries earlier. 191 Form-critically,

186. J. H. Johnson, “The Demotic Chronicle as a Historical Source,” Enchoria 4

(1974) 1–3.
187. This is not surprising given that, as Redford points out, the text was pro-
duced by the Egyptian priesthood (Pharaonic King-Lists, Annals, and Day-books, 295–
96). The ideology of the text is very close to that of the Deuternomistic History.
188. C. C. McCown, “Hebrew and Egyptian Apocalpytic Literature,” HTR 18
(1925) 387–92.
189. “Demotic Chronicle” 2.25 in W. Spiegelberg, Die sogenannte demotische
Chronik (Demotische Studien 7; Leipzig: Heinrichs, 1914).
190. F. K. Kienitz, Die politische Geschichte Ägyptens vom 7 bis 4 Jahrhundert vor
der Zeitwende (Berlin: Akademie, 1953) 79.
191. J. H. Johnson has recently argued that the “Chronicle” was “anti-Persian”
but not “anti-Greek.” Her reasoning is that the “Chronicle” was concerned primiarily
with legitimate kingship, not with the problem of foreign domination (Johnson, “The
Demotic Chronicle as a Statement of a Theory of Kingship,” SSEA Journal 13 [1983]
61–72). But these concerns are not necessarily exclusive, as the Deuteronomistic His-
tory shows.
 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 91

the apocalyptic genre of the text has been compared with the book of
Daniel, and for good reason. In each case the prophetic figures pro-
mote confidence in their contemporary message that the “evil” of for-
eign rule would end. Both texts utilized extensive apocalyptic imagery,
with Daniel’s symbolism being somewhat less cryptic. The chief differ-
ence from our vantage point is that Daniel originated in a community
with powerful ethnic sentiments, while the “Demotic Chronicle” does
not, even though some ethnic theorists tell us that ethnic identity arises
in just such an oppressive context. Egyptian identity in the chronicle
was monarchic and nonethnic; while Daniel looked forward to the in-
dependence of his people and the establishment of divine kingship, the
chronicle looked forward to the restoration of native Egyptian king-
ship. Despite this difference, the similarity of genre and argument
shows that two quite disparate modes of identity can function in very
similar ways to create a sense of community and to generate a sense of
distinction between the group and outsiders. With the “Demotic
Chronicle” this chapter has come full circle, since now both Egyptians
and Jews live as oppressed peripheral peoples under the thumb of the
Hellenistic powers.

Summary
Concepts of ethnic identity reflected in the sources we have exam-
ined reveal a general similarity between the Assyrian and Egyptian
sources and, at the same time, a perspective that is quite different from
Greek concepts. The Assyrian and Egyptian sources harbored quite a
negative view of Palestine and its peoples, eyeing them as subjects of
conquest and, many times, as sources of slave-labor. This harsh (and
frequently arrogant) attitude naturally intensified as conflicts with the
peripheral groups heightened and as imperial power over the con-
quered regions increased. Although the pictographic evidence some-
times hints otherwise, rarely do the Egyptian and Assyrian texts reflect
any kind of ethnographic interest, which turns out to contrast rather
obviously with Greek ethnographic interests. For the Egyptians and
Assyrians, identity was political and cultural, not ethnic, and was
linked with kingship, the king’s relationship to the deity, and the de-
ity’s role in extending the national borders and the native empire to the
“ends of the earth.” Palestine became the object of these imperialist
leanings, first under the thumb of Egypt and then, much later, under
92 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context

pressures from the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Palestine therefore endured a

peripheral social experience during both the Egyptian and Assyrian pe-
riods of domination and, if the ethnic theorists are right, it stands to
reason that these periods of oppression should be reflected in any Is-
raelite literature that heralds from the respective periods. The rather
militant circumstances associated with these contexts suggests that we
can expect from Israel a rather severe and reactionary response, with
any existing ethnic sentiments intensifying proportionally.
Two of the Egyptian sources, the story of Sinuhe and the “Satirical
Instruction Letter,” yielded interesting results in our study. The story
of Sinuhe revealed that Middle Kingdom Egyptians probably defined
Asiatic tribal structure in terms of kinship, and this certainly dovetails
with the anthropological evidence examined in chapter 1 and also with
the Old Babylonian evidence examined in this chapter. Egypt’s non-
urban periphery in Asia was like the periphery of Mari, where kinship
played an important role in the organization and structure of the pe-
ripheral societies and (if we can guess about Egypt’s periphery on the
basis of the Mari evidence) where this sense of kinship produced a
corresponding awareness of ethnicity as a broader organizing cultural
principle. In all cases—Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and Greece—the ef-
fort to describe this periphery gave rise to vague “tribal” terminologies,
and this was necessitated by their relatively meager knowledge of the
peripheral modalities in question.
The “Satirical Instruction Letter” depicted the Asiatic region as a
dangerous territory inhabited by giant bedouin, a tradition that should
be compared with similar traditions in the Greek materials and also in
the Hebrew Bible. Because there were, no doubt, differences in physi-
cal stature among some peoples in the ancient world, this characteriza-
tion of the bedouin may have stemmed from collective memories of
actual but exaggerated contacts with “the other,” but it is equally pos-
sible that we are dealing with invented traditions. The major distinc-
tion between this tradition and the Greek/Hebrew tradition is that the
Egyptian giants lived on their territorial periphery, while the Greek/
Hebrew giants lived on their historical periphery.
Greek identity as reflected in our sources was quite distinct from
both of its ancient neighbors, being primarily concerned with ethnic
varieties of social identity and with various standards of “civilized” be-
havior. Greek interest in the surrounding peripheral groups was more
ethnographic than imperialistic, which is why we have quite a nice col-
 Ethnicity and Identity in Israel’s Ancient Context 93

lection of materials that describe foreign traditions, customs, and geog-

raphy. But in spite of the supposed efforts by Greek authors to provide
“objective” reports, these peripheral peoples were frequently described
in standard jargon as nomadic, impious, sexually perverse, ritually
backward, and cannibalistic. In this respect, then, the Greeks thought
little more of peripheral peoples than did Assyria or Egypt. The Greeks
were interested in the origins of these peripheral groups and, generally
speaking, in the origins of humanity and in how these earlier time-
frames made a nexus with the present. Particularly popular were no-
tions that, on the one hand, a “Golden Age” men once enjoyed had
been lost and, on the other hand, that human culture was in a state of
constant progress. Within the various schemes offered to explain hu-
man origins, certain features emerged in the sources, particularly the
belief that the primeval period of history featured super-human figures
(such as giants, demi-gods, and heroes) and that human population
groups originated via eponymous ancestors or territorial migration.
Also relevant for our discussion were the military coalitions described
by Herodotus, whose ten- and twelve-group organization schemes
compare to the tribal organization described in the Hebrew Bible.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of the Greek materials is their
effort to account for the origins of political modalities in terms of eth-
nic ancestors like Dorus, Akhaios, Ion, and the like. The best explana-
tion for this is that the pan-hellenic ideology was a relatively late
development in Greece and as a result, unlike the Mesopotamians and
Egyptians, the Greeks had to frequently wrestle with tension between
their obvious cultural affinities with each other and their nonetheless
frequent conflicts. The use of segmented ethnic genealogies was a use-
ful model that explained both their common heritage and their differ-
ences. Only as common external threats grew, especially from Persia,
did these differences wane to make room for a new sense of collective
Hellenic identity. As I hope the reader recognizes already, our examina-
tion of the biblical materials will show that the Greek materials have
the greatest affinity with the Hebrew Bible.
 Chapter Three

Merneptah’s Stele and

Deborah’s Song

If there is no consensus about the origins of ancient Israel and,

therefore, about a specific historical circumstance that gave rise to its
ethnic distinctiveness, can anything be said about the antiquity of
these ethnic sentiments? How far back can we trace the notion of Is-
raelite ethnicity? We have generally come to expect, in answer to this
question, another extended discussion of the anthropological, archaeo-
logical, demographic, and ecological data from Late Bronze Age Pales-
tine, along with an analysis of the Amarna correspondence and a
treatment of the questions raised by the presence of the Hapiru in Pal-
estine and the shasu nomads in the Negev and Sinai regions. But as is
becoming clear, these sources of data are notoriously difficult to inter-
pret and have given rise to every sort of theory and speculation about
Israel’s ancient history and, along with that, about its ancient ethnic
context. 1 While I would not quibble in the least about the appropri-
ateness of the endeavor to provide a detailed reconstruction of Israel’s
origins and ancient history, the idea of identifying and distinguishing
ethnic groups through the use of mostly archaeological sources—
ethnoarchaeology—remains an important problem. And it is precisely
this that is necessary when one attempts to find Israel in the artifacts.
Therefore, I find it helpful to proceed with an analysis of the most
straightforward early sources about Israel, the Merneptah Stele and the
Song of Deborah, and to carry on the discussion somewhat apart from

1. B. Halpern’s transparency on this point is refreshing: “Under these circum-

stances, any explanation of Israel’s origins will be an exercise in speculation . . . to some
extent self-indulgent: it is less a work of scholarship than of sortition, less a work of his-
tory than of fancy” (The Emergence of Israel in Canaan [SBLMS 29; Chico, Calif.:
Scholars Press, 1983] 81).

94
 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song 95

other materials, keeping in mind that the results of such an inquiry

must ultimately dialogue with other avenues of research. We will begin
with an analysis of the Merneptah Stele followed by an examination of
the Song of Deborah, in each case looking for evidence of Israelite eth-
nic sentiments or, if not that, for evidence of a historical context that
might make some sense of its ethnic sentiment. 2

Israelite Identity and the Merneptah Stele

Broadly speaking, it is probably fair to say that there are two major
schools of thought about the depiction of Israel in the “Israel stele.” On
the one hand, the majority “traditional school,” regardless of its permu-
tations, sees a rather direct link between Merneptah’s Israel and the Is-
rael of the Hebrew Bible. True, there was and is quite a difference in
how the “German School” and the “American School,” for instance,
view the Hebrew Bible, both in terms of its compositional history and
in terms of the referential history that lies behind it. But for virtually
every stripe of scholar the essential antiquity of the biblical traditions
has served as an underlying assumption, and it is precisely this that
makes the equation that links Merneptah’s Israel and the biblical Israel
so appealing and, to many, so self-evident. 3 In recent years the so-
called “minimalist school” has questioned the antiquity of the biblical
traditions, and this has necessarily raised questions about our interpre-
tation of the Merneptah text. If much of the biblical text dates to the
exilic and even post-exilic periods, as is suggested by this school of

2. I will not address the debated Ugaritic text published in 1965 (PRU 5, 97 = RS
18.30), which may refer to Israel. See O. Margalit, “On the Origin and Antiquity of
the Name ‘Israel,’ ” ZAW 102 (1990) 226–27.
3. Among those who see a rather straightforward connection are G. W. Ahlström,
The History of Ancient Palestine from the Palaeolithic Period to Alexander’s Conquest
(JSOTSup 146; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993); R. Albertz, “Israel,” TRE 16.369–79;
R. B. Coote, Early Israel: A New Horizon (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990); W. G. Dever,
“How to Tell a Canaanite from an Israelite,” in The Rise of Ancient Israel (ed.
H. Shanks; Washington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeological Society, 1992) 26–56; M. G.
Hasel, “Israel in the Merneptah Stela,” BASOR 296 (1994) 45–61; K. A. Kitchen,
Ancient Orient and Old Testament (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1966; A. Mazar,
Archaeology in the Land of the Bible 10,000–586 b.c.e. (New York: Doubleday, 1990);
L. E. Stager, “Merneptah, Israel and the Sea Peoples: New Light on an Old Relief,”
ErIsr 18 (1985) 56–64; F. J. Yurco, “Merneptah’s Canaanite Campaign,” JARCE 23
(1986) 189–215.
 96 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song

thought, how can one “connect the dots” between a thirteenth-century

b.c.e. source like the Merneptah Stele and biblical sources written
nearly half a millennium later? Even the earliest of the extrabiblical
texts that mention Israel post-date Merneptah by several centuries. 4 In
such a scenario are we not dealing, practically speaking, with two quite
different “Israels?” 5 Although I am not necessarily espousing here a
minimalist approach, when we heuristically set aside most of the He-
brew narrative sources, as I am attempting to do, then we face the lim-
itation that our oldest remaining sources, primarily the eighth-century
prophets, date some four centuries after the Israel stele. We must avoid
the eisegesis of positing a connection between Merneptah’s Israel and
the biblical Israel when we examine this Egyptian source.
The victory stele of Merneptah dates to the end of the thirteenth
century b.c.e. and was inscribed in two places, on a stele in Merne-
ptah’s mortuary temple (a stele that had previously belonged to Amen-
hotep III) and on a stele in the temple at Karnak. 6 The poetic text is
largely concerned with Merneptah’s victory over the Libyans but near
its end mentions a number of different regions, peoples, and cities, in-
cluding ‘Israel’ ( ysryªl ), and in doing so it provides us with several
clues regarding the nature of this Israel and its relationship to the other
sociopolitical modalities mentioned in the text. The relevant part of
the stele reads as follows, according to L. E. Stager: 7
The princes are prostrate, saying, “Peace!”
Not one is raising his head among the Nine Bows.
Now that Tehenu (Libya) has come to ruin,
Hatti is pacified;
The Canaan has been plundered into every sort of woe:

4. Shalmaneser III’s inscription (ca. 850 b.c.e.; ANET ), the Mesha Stele (ca.
840 b.c.e.; ANET ), and the ninth-century b.c.e. Tel Dan stele fragment published
by A. Biran and J. Naveh, “An Aramaic Stele Fragment from Tel Dan,” IEJ 43 (1993)
81–98.
5. As far as I know, only two scholars discount entirely the relationship between
the Merneptah stele and biblical Israel: Margalit, “On the Origin and Antiquity of the
Name ‘Israel,’ ” 225–37; A. Nibbi, Canaan and Canaanite in Ancient Egypt (Oxford:
DE, 1989). We should not follow Margalit’s suggestion that the text may be read as
‘Jezreel’ instead of ‘Israel’. We are dealing with an ªalep here, not an ºayin.
6. Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature (3 vols.; Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1973–80) 2.73.
7. According to Stager, he is following E. F. Wente’s translation and structure
(Stager, “Merneptah, Israel and the Sea Peoples,” 56–64).

Spread is 6 points short

 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song 97

Ashkelon has been overcome;

Gezer has been captured;
Yanoªam is made non-existent.
Israel is laid waste and his seed is not;
Hurru is become a widow because of Egypt.
As many have done before him, Stager has suggested a hymnic
reading of the text in the hope that it might clarify the rather vague im-
pression that the text gives us concerning the conquered regions. 8 Is
“Canaan” the name of an Egyptian province, a particular geographical
region, or a more general designation for Syria–Palestine? Does
“Hurru” include North Syria only or also the regions closer to Egypt?
Is Israel parallel to Hurru, parallel to Canaan, or an entity within one
of the two (or within both)? 9 These questions and the answers that we
posit for them have determined to a large extent what we think the text
means when it refers to “Israel.”
Apart from the name “Israel,” the term “Canaan” has stimulated
more discussion than any other toponym in the text, so it is perhaps
best to begin with it. How one views Canaan is particularly significant,
because the Hebrew sources frequently pit the Israelites and Canaanites
against each other, and we would like to know the relative antiquity of
these antagonistic sentiments. We are fortunate to have two recent
monographic studies of “Canaan/Canaanite” terminology, by A. Nibbi
and N. P. Lemche, respectively, with each providing a survey of the
second-millennium materials and their use of the terms “Canaan” and
“Canaanite.” 10 Lemche’s work has prompted quite an active debate, so
for the most part we will deal with his thesis and with several responses
to it.

8. For alternative hymnic readings, see G. Ahlström and D. Edelman, “Merne-

ptah’s Israel,” JNES 44 (1985) 59–60; M. G. Hasel, “Israel in the Merneptah Stela,”
BASOR 296 (1994) 45–61.
9. Parallel to Hurru, as Stager suggests here; parallel to Canaan, as suggested by
G. W. Ahlström, “The Origin of Israel in Palestine,” SJOT 2 (1991) 19–34; an entity
within one of the two (or within both), according to F. J. Yurco, “3,200-Year-Old Pic-
ture of Israelites Found in Egypt,” BARev 16/5 (1990) 20–38.
10. N. P. Lemche, The Canaanites and Their Land: The Tradition of the Canaanites
(JSOTSup 110; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991); Nibbi, Canaan and Canaanite in Ancient
Egypt. Despite its many useful observations, Nibbi’s study is particularly weak in its
uncritical handling of the biblical text and also arrives at some rather idiosyncratic con-
clusions, most notably that “Canaan” included the northern coastline of Egypt.
98 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song

With the exception of a few texts from Mari, 11 a report from the
reign of Amenophis II, 12 and a few brief references in texts from Alalah,
most notably King Idrimi’s fifteenth-century autobiographical text, 13
the oldest unambiguous references to “Canaan” and the “Canaanites”
are found in the Amarna Letters, mostly communiqués between Levan-
tine vassals and their Egyptian overlords written during the fourteenth
century b.c.e. 14 According to Lemche, these letters show us that
Canaan was a somewhat amorphous territory with no clearly defined
borders and that, roughly speaking, during this period the most certain
thing that we can say about Canaan is that it was a part of Egypt’s em-
pire in western Asia. 15 W. L. Moran similarly suggests that Canaan lay
“from north to south, between Amurru and Egypt, and from east to
west, between ill-defined borders and the Mediterranean.” 16 The degree
of certainly about the term “Canaan” in the Amarna correspondence
11. Only one published text from Mari mentions the Canaanites, referring to
habbatum and Kinahnum, that is, ‘thieves and merchants?/Canaanites?’ Chronologi-
cally, the text is somewhat isolated from other uses of the term and its meaning in that
eighteenth-century b.c.e. context is somewhat unclear, although Naªaman suggests
that already in this early period we have evidence of “Canaanite” identity. Charpin tells
us that, in addition to this text, there are several unpublished texts from Mari that also
mention Canaanites. See G. Dossin, “Une mention de Cananéens dans une lettre de
Mari,” Syria 50 (1973) 277–82; D. Charpin, “Mari entre l’est et l’ouest: Politique, cul-
ture, religion,” Akkadica 78 (1992) 1–10; N. Naªaman, “The Canaanites and Their
Land: A Rejoinder,” UF 26 (1994) 398.
12. See ANET 246. This text lists a number of captive groups taken by Pharaoh
during a fifteenth-century Asiatic campaign. According to Nibbi, who follows Maisler,
with the exception of the “Canaanites,” all of the groups listed in the source are social
classes of people rather than ethnic or cultural groups. So here the term “Canaanite” is
best understood as a nonethnic category, with the translation ‘merchants’ often sug-
gested. See Nibbi, Canaan and Canaanite in Ancient Egypt, 30–31; B. Maisler [Mazar],
“Canaan and Canaanites,” BASOR 102 (1946) 7–12.
13. S. Smith, The Statue of Idri-mi (Occasional Publications of the British Insti-
tute of Archaeology in Ankara 1; London: British Institute of Archaeology in Ankara,
1949). See translation in ANET 557–58. See also the discussion in M. Dietrich and
O. Loretz, “Die Inschrift der Statue des Königs Idrimi von Alalah,” UF 13 (1981) 199–
269. On the other Alalah texts, see Lemche, The Canaanites and Their Land, 41. To
summarize, the Alalah texts refer to the “city of Canaan” (AT 48), “a son of the land of
Canaan” (AT 181), and “the land of Canaan” (Idrimi’s statue text). This reflects what
is clear from later texts, namely, that there was a region in the Levant called Canaan
whose status as a geographical point of reference was quite stable.
14. See W. L. Moran, The Amarna Letters (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1992).
15. Lemche, The Canaanites and Their Land, 43.
16. Moran, The Amarna Letters, 389.
 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song 99

varies from scholar to scholar, and this has naturally given rise to vari-
ous points of contention. For instance, Lemche notes a particular dis-
agreement between himself and A. F. Rainey: Lemche takes the letter of
Abi-milku from Tyre (EA 151, see text in n. 17 below) as evidence that
Ugarit lay within Canaan, while Rainey views this as unlikely, since, in
a different text from Ugarit, a foreign merchant visiting the city was
called a “Canaanite.” 17 Rainey suspects that Abi-milku was asked by
Pharaoh to report what he had heard from his Tyrian vantage point in
Canaan (istu Kinaºni ) about the surrounding territories (including
non-Canaanite Ugarit), an interpretation which is altogether different
from Lemche’s view. Lemche reads Ugarit as being one of the cities on
a list of Canaanite locales from which Abi-milku was hearing news.
Although to a certain extent I think that the evidence supports
Rainey’s view, especially in light of his recent response to Lemche, 18 if
we set aside the issue of Ugarit, Canaan, and the like, what this kind of
debate actually demonstrates is how difficult it can sometimes be to
understand and pin down the precise meaning of geographical terms
in these ancient texts. 19 According to Rainey and also N. Naªaman,
however, these difficulties with respect to ancient Canaan are not as
pronounced as Lemche supposes; they both argue that the term
Canaan signified a rather clearly defined geopolitical entity during the
second millennium. 20 The primary argument of both scholars is that
second-millennium scribes from various sites were quite familiar with
“the land of Canaan” and with its inhabitants, whom they variously
17. See A. F. Rainey, “Ugarit and the Canaanites Again,” IEJ 14 (1964) 101. The
relevant text from EA 151 reads as follows:
The king, my lord, wrote to me, “Write to me what you have heard in
Canaan.” The king of Danuna died; his brother became king after his death,
and his land is at peace. Fire destroyed the palace at Ugarit; (rather), it de-
stroyed half of it and so hal<f> of it has disappeared. There are no Hittite
troops about. Etakkama, the prince of Qid_u, and Aziru are at war; the war
is with Biryawaza.
18. For his response on this text, see A. F. Rainey, “Who Is a Canaanite? A Review
of the Textual Evidence,” BASOR 304 (1996) 9–11.
19. As noted by Nibbi, “we do not yet have a precise understanding for most of
the names which the ancient Egyptians used for the foreign areas along its ancient bor-
ders: Kharu, Retenu, Naharin and Djahy, to mention only a few” (Canaan and
Canaanite in Ancient Egypt, 7). In light of this, works such as those of A˙ituv can be
very useful but must also be read with a very critical eye (S. A˙ituv, Canaanite Topo-
nyms in Ancient Egyptian Documents [Jerusalem: Magnes, 1984]).
20. Rainey, “Who Is a Canaanite?”; Naªaman, “The Canaanites and Their Land.”
100 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song

identified as “sons of Canaan,” “men of Canaan,” “kings of Canaan,” or,

on occasion, as “Canaanites.” While in certain generic contexts (such as
poetry) one might argue, with Lemche, that these references are
“vague,” “imprecise,” and “ambiguous,” this supposedly “muddy” ter-
minology could not have been very useful in legal, administrative, and
epistolary contexts—and this is precisely where “Canaan” turns up in a
number of places. This makes it very difficult to sustain the argument
that Amarna-age Canaan was nothing more than a vague geographic
convention used by second-millennium scribes. On the other hand,
this whole discussion seems to suppose that a concrete entity like
Canaan can only have existed if we are able to demonstrate that it pos-
sessed firm boundaries and that it existed as a political entity within the
Egyptian empire. This seems entirely unnecessary. Even if the supposed
boundaries of Canaan were obscure in antiquity, as they are to us, in my
view, such a circumstance could hardly have prevented scribes from
knowing where Canaan was and who lived there. That Palestine’s
coastal plain was located in Canaan was not at all affected by the ques-
tion of Canaan’s borders since, wherever they were, the coastal plain
clearly lay within them. To go beyond the obvious geographical status
of Amarna-age Canaan we must ask a different question: was Canaan a
political province of Egypt?
There has been a tendency on this question to follow the lead of
W. Helck, who suggested some time ago that Canaan was the southern-
most province of Egypt’s Asiatic empire, governed from the city of
Gaza. 21 As W. T. Pitard has pointed out, this suggestion is somewhat
speculative because it rests on Helck’s belief that the term rabißu should
be understood as a technical term for ‘governor’, a view complicated by
the fact that it is used quite elastically in the Amarna correspondence
and also by the fact that, as Redford has pointed out, the titles used by
the Canaanite leaders for the Egyptian “supervisors” were simply the
closest Canaanite or Akkadian terms that they could find to designate
an official whose rank was actually unknown to them. 22 Furthermore,
EA 162 appears to include Amurru within Canaan, and this too is at
variance with the proposal of Helck, who suggested that Amurru, like
21. Helck, Die Beziehungen Ägyptens zu Vorderasien, 246–55.
22. W. T. Pitard, Ancient Damascus: A Historical Study of the Syrian City-State
from the Earliest Times until Its Fall to the Assyrians in 732 b.c.e. (Winona Lake, Ind.:
Eisenbrauns, 1987) 59–60; D. B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992) 201.
 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song 101

Canaan, was an Egyptian province. 23 But these problems should not

distract us from other evidence that might support the thesis that
Canaan was an Egyptian province, provided that in examining this evi-
dence we avoid a potential snare. That Egypt controlled Canaan in the
Amarna period is not to be doubted, or that it had garrisons and admin-
istrative centers in the region. 24 But one cannot necessarily equate
Egyptian rule in Canaan with Canaan’s provincial status, as is fre-
quently done. 25 This is because provincial rule implies to many scholars
that we are dealing with a clearly defined district, with a relatively com-
plex administrative bureaucracy, and with a name (in this case Canaan)
used by imperial rulers to designate the particular district. Such provin-
cial entities are created with a view to organizing and integrating con-
quered territories into the political matrix of the imperial power, in this
case Egypt. But as the Amarna correspondence shows, the Pharaohs do
not appear to have harbored much concern about preserving either the
political structure or the social order in Canaan, with most of the re-
gional power being wielded by local city-state kings. 26 So perhaps we
ought to consider Egypt’s “occupation of Canaan” rather than Egypt’s
“province of Canaan.” In light of this, the question of Canaan’s
Amarna-age provincial status should be approached with caution.
There are two important texts that suggest that Canaan may have
been an Egyptian province, but special problems accompany both of
them. In the first instance, it has been suggested for some time, most
recently by Rainey, that a letter from Alashia (EA 36:15) includes the
phrase pihati sa kinahi ‘the province of Canaan’. 27 Moran argues
against this for several reasons, first, because it requires reading the wa
sign as pi- (in pi-ha-ti ) and, second, because the reading ‘Canaan’ is
also dubious in this very broken text. 28 To this Rainey has countered
with evidence from another letter that the wa sign was known to have
a pi- value by Alashian scribes. While this is possible, in my view the
23. See lines 39–41 in Moran, The Amarna Letters, 249.
24. The following discussion is concerned only with the question of Canaan’s
provincial status, not with whether there were two, three, or four Egyptian provinces in
the Asiatic regions occupied by Egypt. For bibliography and discussion on the question
of the Egyptian presence in Asia, see Helck, Die Beziehungen Ägyptens zu Vorderasien,
248; Pitard, Ancient Damascus, 63, and Moran, The Amarna Letters, xxvi.
25. See, for instance, Naªaman, “The Canaanites and Their Land,” 402.
26. Pitard, Ancient Damascus, 63.
27. Rainey, “Who Is a Canaanite?” 7–8.
28. Moran, The Amarna Letters, 109–10.
 102 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song

unfortunate state of the text prevents us from reaching a definite con-

clusion, and Naªaman, Moran, Redford, and Lemche are convinced,
against Rainey, that we are not dealing with evidence of Canaan’s pro-
vincial status in this text. 29 In addition we must also deal with the pos-
sibility that, even in the event that Rainey’s reading of the text is
correct, the “Cypriot” scribe of Alashia might have referred to Canaan
as an Egyptian province without it’s actually being true; a letter from
Egypt or Canaan would be more noteworthy. The Alashia letter is slim
evidence in support of the thesis that Canaan was an Egyptian prov-
ince, especially when the Amarna Letters reflect such a weak Egyptian
hold on Canaan.
The other important text adduced by Rainey in this regard is a
(post-Amarna) judicial report from Ugarit that brings us closer to the
time-frame of Merneptah’s “Israel stele.” 30 According to Nougayrol,
the text tells us about an indemnity payment due to the “sons of Ca-
naan” from the “sons of Ugarit,” a penalty that was probably incurred
when a Canaanite merchant was slain in Ugarit. As Rainey sees it, the
litigant status of Canaan’s citizens in this text necessarily implies that
Canaan was a political entity during the second millennium, despite
Lemche’s arguments to the contrary. The major problem with this
reading of the text is that the text is quite broken and fragmentary, as is
clear from the fact that the word ‘litigation’ (di-ni ?) is a guess. It is also
unclear whether the restitution would have gone to “Canaan” as a pay-
ment from one political entity to another or, rather, to an individual or
town within Canaan. It is quite possible that references to the “sons of
Ugarit” and “sons of Canaan” are nothing more than convenient ways
to avoid minor details of the case, if that is indeed what we are dealing
with. As is now clear, I cannot place much stock in this text and its
supposed value in establishing the political identity of Canaan in the
second millennium. But in spite of my disagreement with Rainey at
certain points, I find that his useful study is certainly right about this:
the city of Ugarit was not in Canaan.
29. Lemche, The Canaanites and Their Land, 29–30; N. Naªaman, The Political
Disposition and Historical Development of Eretz-Israel according to the Amarna Letters
(Ph.D. diss., Tel Aviv University, 1975) 2 [Hebrew]; D. B. Redford, Egypt and Canaan
in the New Kingdom (Beer-Sheva 4; Beer-Sheva: Ben Gurion University of the Negev,
1990) 35
30. The text, RS 20.182 A+B, is published as text 36 in Texts suméro-accadiens des
archives et bibliothéques privées d’Ugarit (ed. J. Nougayrol et al.; Ugaritica 5; Paris:
Geuthner, 1968) 111.

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 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song 103

The evidence for Canaan’s provincial status is not very convincing,

and the Amarna correspondence strongly argues against it. But the fact
is that the word province can easily trap us in a game of semantics that
obscures the results of our discussion. The real point, which I think
Redford brings out nicely, is that: (1) we cannot speak of Egyptian
provinces in the same way that we speak of the Roman Empire and its
provinces; and (2) when the Egyptians referred to their northern em-
pire, they still spoke of “the land of Canaan” or the “land of Hurru”
rather than the “province of so-and-so,” 31 and this makes it is very un-
likely that we are dealing in the second millennium with a monolithic
people called “Canaanites” who lived in a political entity called “Ca-
naan” and who harbored a strong sense of common national identity.
The fact that the residents of Canaan knew that they lived in Canaan
and that, on occasion, someone called them “Canaanites” or “sons of
Canaan” (or that they called themselves by these names) does not
change this.
Our observations have been focused largely on the Amarna age,
but the 19th-Dynasty Merneptah Stele is a bit later than the Amarna
correspondence, and some attention must be given to the question of
how Canaan was understood during the intervening years. Although
the term was used frequently during the period, the use of “Canaan”
terminology remains somewhat ambiguous, as it was in the Amarna
correspondence. One of the more interesting texts from this period is
the well-known Papyrus Anastasi I, sometimes called the “Satirical In-
struction Letter,” in which an Egyptian official belittles a scribal col-
league because of his ignorance of Asiatic regions. 32 According to
Lemche, the text seems to understand “Canaan” somewhat differently
from previous texts, as a more restricted region along the coast of Pales-
tine, and for him it is likely that this same narrow sense is intended by
the use of the term “Canaan” in the Merneptah Stele. This is primarily
because, in Lemche’s view, Merneptah’s “Hurru” was a designation for
the entire Asiatic theater, which would make Canaan the last in a top-
onymic list that leads the reader from Asia to Egypt (that is, Canaan lay
in the southwestern extreme of the Asiatic empire). 33 But the on-going

31. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, 201.

32. ANET 475–79. See also the text and translation in A. H. Gardiner, Egyptian
Hieratic Texts (Literary Texts of the New Kingdom 1; Hildesheim: Olms, 1964) 1–30.
33. Lemche, The Canaanites and Their Land, 47–48.
 104 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song

debate reflected in scholarly discussions of the text shows that this con-
clusion is far from certain.
All of our discussion up to now points in the same direction. The
confusion about Canaan’s boarders and political status shows that
“Canaan” was primarily a geographical designation, and this is pre-
cisely the kind of evidence one expects to find when dealing with geo-
graphical entities: it is very easy to know what lies within them but it is
frequently difficult to find their edges. 34 This also explains why very
few Asiatics (if any) were interested in calling themselves “Canaanites,”
since to do so was to identify only one’s connection with a geographical
region. 35 The natural preference would have been one’s town, city, or
family, and this is precisely the most common convention. 36 It is there-
fore reckless to conclude that there was a national or ethnic modality in
Late Bronze Asia that identified itself as “Canaan” or as “Canaanite.”
On the other hand we can in no way go as far as Lemche does when he
says that the term “Canaanite” “always designated a person who did
not belong to the scribe’s own society or state, while Canaan was con-
sidered to be a country different from his own.” 37 In saying this he
seems to be suggesting that “Canaan” was a scribal technical term for
“the other,” and the evidence does not support this conclusion. The
Asiatics of Palestine knew that they lived within a region that the
Egyptians called “Canaan” and also that the inhabitants of Canaan
were sometimes identified as “Canaanites.” So unless we are prepared
to expect very little from them, we must imagine that they understood
themselves to be, at least in some sense, “Canaanites.”
34. Nibbi agrees with the view that Canaan was geographical rather than political
(Canaan and Canaanites in Ancient Egypt, 59).
35. Rainey suggests that the inhabitants of Canaan did call themselves “Canaan-
ites” and cites as evidence their registration in Alalah as “sons/men from the land of
Canaan.” He comments, “The scribes undoubtedly asked the foreigners where they
came from and each one replied that he was from Canaan.” But this is a speculative re-
construction of their conversation and, even if true, hardly indicates that these men
viewed themselves primarily as “Canaanites.” I should also comment on Rainey’s con-
tention that “the land of Canaan” ought to be understood just like the geopolitical en-
tities of “the land of Mugis,” “the land of Niªi,” and “the land of Amaªe,” since, as he
points out, Canaan occurs in parallelism with them. In my mind it is very difficult to
take this as evidence that Canaan was a nation in the same sense as, say, Alalah’s king-
dom of Mugis (Rainey, “Who Is a Canaanite?” 3–4).
36. Cf. EA 8, 14, 30, 109, 110, 131, 137, 145, 151, 162, 367. As a cursory read-
ing of these texts shows, no one in the Amarna correspondence calls himself a
“Canaanite.”
37. Lemche, The Canaanites and Their Land, 52.

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 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song 105

But beyond the geopolitical and ethnic questions, the question of

how the term “Canaan” should be understood in relation to the other
toponyms in the text is an important one, especially in regard to our
view of Merneptah’s Israel. If we set aside Tehenu and Hatti as less rele-
vant for our discussion, then we are dealing with these toponyms:
Ashkelon, Gezer, Yanoªam, Hurru, and Israel. Fortunately, scholarly
consensus has identified Ashkelon, Gezer, and Yanoªam as city-states
lying within Canaan proper, and this makes our work somewhat easier.
Similarly, there is a consensus that “Hurru” is a term semantically
broader than “Canaan” that refers to the Asiatic theater in general.
Which brings us to Israel. Normally the debate about Merneptah’s
Israel seems to hinge on one of two interpretations. On the one hand,
Israel is sometimes understood as one of four entities within Canaan,
so that Ashekelon, Gezer, Yanoªam, and Israel share a common geo-
graphical space in Canaan. On the other hand, Israel can be under-
stood as a geographical or sociological modality existing alongside the
three Canaanite cities and could therefore be viewed as a “non-
Canaanite” entity. But as we have pointed out already, the continuing
debate stems precisely from the fact that both interpretations of the
text are possible, and in my view there is really no way to assert one
over the other. But this impasse is not particularly limiting from an
ethnic point of view because what we are looking for initially is con-
trasting identity, and there is an additional feature in the text that sug-
gests that Israel’s identity did contrast with some of its neighbors.
As is frequently noted, the Egyptian text provides a determinative
before the name of each toponym, and in every case but one the same
determinative is used. The exception is Israel, which is preceded by the
determinative for “people” instead of “land.” Although the accuracy of
these determinatives has been questioned by some, 38 it appears that
Merneptah’s scribe was rather careful and consistent in his use of deter-
minatives in this unit, 39 and from this we should conclude that he
intentionally distinguished the “people of Israel” from the other mo-
dalities, most notably the city-state populations. Thus, regardless of
whether the scribe viewed Israel as living within Canaan or inland from
it, we should grant that, at least in the eyes of an Egyptian, we have a
context in which a distinctive Israelite identity existed in contrast to the

38. For instance, Ahlström and Edelman, “Merneptah’s Israel,” 59.

39. Hasel, “Israel in the Merneptah Stela,” 52; A. Rainey, “Reply to D. Edelman,”
BARev 18/2 (1992) 73–74.
106 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song

identity of city-state populations in Palestine. The problem, of course,

is that Egyptian terminology frequently joined rather disparate groups
of people within a single rubric for sociological reasons, such as a com-
mon Lebensart, as was the case with various bedouin “Shasu” peoples. 40
Therefore one cannot recklessly assume that these “Israelites” under-
stood themselves, even in general terms, as the single unit that our
scribe perceived. Such a hypothesis needs to be tested, and there is a
way to do it.
Why do scholars tend to believe that the Shasu represent a socio-
logical class rather than a single cultural or ethnic community? There
are two major reasons. The first is that the Shasu people are widely dis-
tributed in a number of rather disparate geographical venues stretching
from the Negev to Syria–Lebanon, and this makes it difficult (but not
impossible) to imagine them as a single cultural unit. 41 The second and
more important reason is the name “Shasu.” Although its derivation is
debated, it is generally agreed that the term comes from either the
Egyptian word ‘to wander’ or the West Semitic root ‘to plunder’. 42 Al-
though the argument for Egyptian origin seems a bit stronger, in my
view, in either case the name “Shasu” probably originated as an ex-
onym used by outsiders to describe the various wandering groups on
the periphery of Egyptian and urban Asiatic culture. It is of course true
that cultural groups sometimes adopt exonyms and begin to use them
when referring to themselves. But it is most likely that the “Shasu” rep-
resent an Egyptian social construct that joins the various Bedouin
groups within an artificially unifying rubric on the basis of their com-
mon lifestyle and dress. One might say, then, that the Egyptians cre-
ated the “Shasu” in much the same way that the Neo-Assyrians created
the “Hittites.”
If we ask similar questions of Merneptah’s “Israel,” what do we
find? First, unlike the Shasu, Israel appears to inhabit a rather restricted
region either in or near Canaan, and this suggests its potential status as
a cohesive cultural unit. The more important question is Israel’s name:
what does it mean and what can it tell us about the people called “Is-
rael”? First, “Israel” is not an Egyptian term and therefore can under
no circumstance be viewed as an exonym of Egyptian origin. It is
40. See W. W. Ward, “Shasu,” ABD 5.1165–66.
41. Ibid.
42. R. Giveon, Les Bédouins Shosou des documents égyptiens (Documenta et Monu-
menta Orientis Antiqui; Leiden: Brill, 1971) 259–64.
 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song 107

clearly West Semitic and must be either a name that Israel used for it-
self or an exonym coined by other West Semites to identify the group
called “Israel.” Scholars are in general agreement that the name “Israel”
is the combination of the theophoric element ‘El’ along with a verbal
form, probably ¶arâ (‘to fight/prevail’) or ¶rr (‘to rule’), but also per-
haps ysr /ªsr (‘to be upright’). Although Hosea (12:4ff.) apparently took
the divine name as the object rather than subject of the resulting con-
struction “He [Jacob] struggles [with] El,” Albright long ago pointed
out that in West Semitic nomenclature the divine element is normally
the subject; that is, we should translate Israel as ‘El persists’, or ‘El
rules’, or something along these lines. 43 Although we might imagine a
scenario that prompted outside groups to coin such a name for Israel, it
is more likely that here we are dealing not with an exonym but with an
endonym, that is, Israel was the name that the people called them-
selves. 44 And it naturally follows from this that Israel represented a
sociocultural unit that shared some common sense of identity. While
this is not very much to go on and affords us very little perspective on
the content and parameters of this early “Israelite” identity, on the ba-
sis of the name itself we would suppose that this identity included a
common sense of religious identity (as El worshipers) 45 and also, per-
haps, a propensity for warfare.
If Merneptah’s Israel did share a sense of common identity, as
seems to be more probable than not, then it is quite possible that the
people of Israel expressed this polarity, rhetorically speaking, as a polar-
ity between “Israel” and their neighbors, the inhabitants of “Canaan.” 46
Such cultural differentiation suggests that our rather early poetic source
reflects a context in which ethnicity could have emerged or intensified

43. W. F. Albright, “The Names ‘Israel’ and ‘Judah’, with an Excursus,” JBL 46
(1927) 151–68. For other possibilities, see also the interesting, if controversial, study
by Margalit, “On the Origin and Antiquity of the Name ‘Israel,’ ” 225–37.
44. Exonyms generally focus on some distinguishing feature of the named group
as viewed from the “etic” perspective (the outsider’s point of view). Especially frequent
in these names is a focus on geographic distinctiveness (as in the case of the Sea-peoples
described in Egyptian texts) or on cultural distinctiveness, as seen in the case of the
Shasu, a name coined with reference to their nomadic lifestyle (if Egyptian in origin) or
to their vandal tendencies (if West Semitic in origin).
45. By way of example, note the Ishmaelites, who appear in the Hebrew Bible as a
sociocultural entity and also as devotees of El/Yahweh.
46. Especially given the propensity, identified by Lemche, for other people in the
region to call them “Canaanites.”
108 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song

as an Israelite mode of identity. But the text is too brief and sketchy to
serve as proof of Israelite ethnicity in twelfth-century Palestine. So
while I must generally agree with K. van der Toorn’s assertion that
“there is no proof ” of the ethnic unity of the inhabitants of the hill
country during the Early Iron Age, I cannot agree with his conclusion
that we have “no evidence” [italics mine] of religious unity among
them. 47 The probable use of the name “Israel” by the people of Israel
can reasonably imply two things: both a common cultural identity and
a shared devotion to the god El. I would state, therefore, that a judi-
cious evaluation of Merneptah’s text does provide some evidence that a
sociocultural unity existed among a people called “Israel,” and it also
seems that it included common religious sentiments. Even after saying
this, we must nevertheless entertain one other possibility.
The present skepticism about an early Israelite tribal confederation
makes me hesitant to raise the issue, because I do not want to appear to
be “looking” for a tribal confederation in our text. It is clear, however,
that my presumptions about the sociocultural status of Merneptah’s
“Israel” rest on two key points—on the scribe’s use of the determinitive
for “people” and the conjunction of this evidence with the endonymic
status of the name “Israel.” These assumptions are reasonable but not
beyond suspicion. If the Egyptian scribe was not clear on the nature of
the entity he called “Israel,” knowing only that it was “different” from
the surrounding modalities, then we can imagine something other
than a sociocultural Israel. It is possible that Israel represented a con-
federation of united, but sociologically distinct, modalities that were
joined either cultically or politically via treaties and the like. This inter-
pretation of the evidence would allow for the unity implied by the
endonymic evidence and also give our scribe some latitude in his use of
the determinitive. Although this interpretation is possible, I think it
less likely than the sociocultural interpretation that I have outlined
above.
There is one additional piece of evidence that ought to be dis-
cussed before we move our attention to the Song of Deborah. Several

47. Van der Toorn’s volume is contradictory on this point: he suggests that Mer-
neptah’s Israel “constituted a group of nonurbanized people named presumably after
their eponymous ancestor, Israel,” i.e., Early Iron Age Israel was an ethnic community
(K. van der Toorn, Family Religion in Babylonia, Syria and Israel: Continuity and
Change in the Forms of Religious Life [Studies in the History and Culture of the Ancient
Near East 7; Leiden: Brill, 1996] 185, 281).
 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song 109

years ago, F. Yurco, on the basis of cartouche evidence, made the now
well-known observation that the reliefs accompanying Ramesses II’s
treaty text at Karnak should probably be associated with his successor,
Merneptah. 48 The reliefs depict four battle scenes, three including
walled cities and one open-terrain battle scene. In addition, one of the
walled cities is labeled Ashkelon. From this Yurco concluded that the
reliefs correspond to the four antagonists on Merneptah’s stele, namely,
Ashkelon, Gezer, Yanoªam, and Israel, with Israel represented in the
open-terrain battle scene. D. Redford has offered a modification of this
reading in which he preserves the association of the reliefs with
Ramesses but views them as the inspiration behind Merneptah’s ficti-
tious victories. 49 In this scenario, Merneptah’s “Israel” might well be
associated with the “Shasu” depictions left behind by the scribes of
Seti I and Ramesses II. 50 While all of this is somewhat speculative, it is
true that, if there is a connection between the relief depictions and
Merneptah’s stele, then the depictions would provide pictorial evidence
for the sociocultural distinctions that the text already suggests between
Israel and the nearby city-states of Canaan.

The Song of Deborah (Judges 5)

As in the case of the Merneptah Stele, there is a strong tendency to
find characteristics of Israel in the Song of Deborah that are not neces-
sarily there—namely, a united league of tribes who are covenanted
with Yahweh and each other in defense of a central cultic shrine. The
problem with this reading is that, apart from a few objections to the
contrary, this song is often regarded as the oldest text of the Hebrew
Bible and should not necessarily be read in light of the other texts that

48. See F. Yurco, “Merneptah’s Palestine Campaign,” JSSEA 8 (1978) 70; idem,
“3,200-Year-Old Picture of Israelites Found in Egypt,” 20–38.
49. Ahlström takes the Amada Stele as evidence that Merneptah’s conquests were
not literary fictions (Who Were the Israelites? 38). On the Amada Stele, see R. O.
Faulkner, “Egypt: From the Inception of the Nineteenth Dynasty to the Death of
Ramses III,” CAH, volume 2 / part 2: The Middle East and the Aegean Region c. 1380–
1000 b.c. (3d ed.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970) 234.
50. For a complete explanation, see D. Redford, “The Ashkelon Relief at Karnak
and the Israel Stela,” IEJ 36 (1986) 188–200. For more on the Shosu and Israel, see
R. Giveon, Les Bédouins Shosou, 267–71; van der Toorn, Family Religion, 283;
M. Weippert, “Semitische Nomaden des zweiten Jahrtausends: Über die der ägypti-
schen Quellen,” Bib 55 (1974) 265–80, 427–33.
 110 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song

depict a united Israel and reflect a strong covenantal ideology. On the

other hand, I have little sympathy for the so-called “criteria of dissimi-
larity” so often employed in New Testament research and consequently
do not feel that it is incumbent upon us to force a contrast between
Deborah’s Israel and Israel as depicted in the remaining portions of the
historical books and the Pentateuch. We should, nevertheless, begin
with a clear notion of what might reasonably be derived from the song
as an independent source before we proceed to consider how it might
“connect” with other sources in the Hebrew Bible.
As I have said, there is a strong consensus that Judges 5 is rather
old, but this has not always been true. Around the turn of the century
M. Vernes argued, on the basis of supposed Aramaic influence and late
features in the Hebrew of the text, that the Song of Deborah (SDeb)
was an archaized piece produced no earlier than the fifth century
b.c.e. 51 So, for instance, in 5:7 the song twice employs the relative
pronoun –v≤, rather than rva, a feature common in late Biblical and
Mishnaic Hebrew. Similarly the term μm[ (‘peoples’) rather than μ[ in
5:14 is explained as a late form resulting from Aramaic influence. G. F.
Moore commented soon afterward that Vernes did not offer sufficient
grounds for dating the song late and for good reason. In the case of –v≤,
for example, it has long been thought that the form is rather archaic in
the Northern Hebrew dialect and was used alongside rva in all peri-
ods of the language (otherwise, the use of –v≤ was a rather foolish blun-
der for an otherwise very effective archaizer). 52 The contention that
various words were influenced by or dependent upon late Aramaic is
equally questionable. 53 The word μm[, for instance, occurs not only in
late Aramaic but also in the much earlier Aramaic Sefire Treaty, 54 and
the possibility that the dialect of the Northern Kingdom was influ-
enced by the nearby Arameans seems quite likely. 55 Vernes did not ex-
51. M. Vernes, “Le Cantique de Débora,” REJ 24 (1892) 52–67, 225–55.
52. G. F. Moore, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Judges (ICC: Edin-
burgh: T. & T. Clark, 1895) 131, 144–45; J. A. Soggin, Judges (OTL; Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1981) 87. It is often commented that –v≤ is probably archaic and closely
related to the Akkadian sa and the Phoenician va. See especially the very useful study
of G. Bergsträsser, “Das hebräische Präfix v,” ZAW 29 (1909) 40–56.
53. See the summary by B. Lindars, Judges 1–5 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1975)
214–15.
54. See the comments of J. C. L. Gibson, Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions
(3 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1971–82) 2.54.
55. See the antiquated but still useful observations of C. F. Burney, The Book of
Judges (ICC; London: Rivingtons, 1918) 171–76.

Spread is 6 points long

 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song 111

plain why his late author would list only ten tribes, why Judah was
excepted from the list, why Yahweh came from Seir rather than from
Sinai or Jerusalem, 56 or why the text is so cryptic that parts of it are al-
most unreadable, 57 so there are many problems with a thesis like his.
But the rejection of Vernes’s very late dating of the song should not dis-
tract us from the equally problematic tendency to assume that the song
is very early. For instance, B. Halpern suggests that the song “can be lo-
cated with relative confidence in the pre-monarchic period,” that is,
near the time of Merneptah. 58 These sympathies are often expressed by
scholars, frequently with a rather thin supporting argument. 59 There
have been some serious efforts to demonstrate the antiquity of the
song, particularly the work of D. Robertson, who seems to have identi-
fied some correspondences between Ugartic poetry and several tradi-
tionally early Hebrew pieces, including SDeb. 60 But our enthusiasm
for such a conclusion must be somewhat bridled by the well-known
complexity associated with Ugaritic studies 61 and by the fact that Rob-
ertson’s view only supports the conclusion that SDeb is earlier than
most of our other Hebrew sources—not that it dates to a period near
the Ugaritic period. 62 As a result it is only natural that a number of

56. Cf. É. Lipinski, “Judges 5, 4–5 et Psaume 68, 1–11,” Bib 48 (1967) 185–206.
57. As Soggin has noted, both the A and B recensions of the LXX seem thor-
oughly confused by the song ( Judges, 92).
58. Halpern, The Emergence of Israel in Canaan, 32, 117. The early date has a long-
standing tradition. See Y. Aharoni, “New Aspects of the Israelite Occupation in the
North,” in Near Eastern Archaeology in the Twentieth Century: Essays in Honor of Nelson
Glueck (ed. J. A. Sanders; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970) 260; W. F. Albright,
Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan, 13; R. G. Boling, Judges (AB 6A; Garden City: Dou-
bleday, 1975) 98–100; F. M. Cross and D. N. Freedman, Studies in Ancient Yahwistic
Poetry (SBLDS 21; Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1975) 5; R. de Vaux, Histoire an-
cienne d’Israël (Paris: Gabalda, 1973) 105. A. W. Hertzberg, Die Bücher Josua, Richter,
Ruth (ATD; 2d ed.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1959) 173; R. Albertz’s re-
cent history of Israelite religion utilizes the song as a source for reconstructing prestate
Israel: A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period (2 vols.; OTL; Louis-
ville: Westminster/John Knox, 1994) 1.80–82.
59. See, for instance, the work of D. K. Stuart, Studies in Early Hebrew Meter
(HSM 13; Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1976).
60. D. A. Robertson, Linguistic Evidence in Dating Early Hebrew Poetry (SBLDS
3; Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1972) 31–34.
61. T. J. Lewis, “The Disappearance of the Goddess Anat: The 1995 West Se-
mitic Research Project on Ugaritic Epigraphy,” BA 59 (1996) 115–21.
62. To complicate matters further, we really understand very little about Hebrew
poetry, as Soggin has noted: J. A. Soggin, Introduction to the Old Testament (OTL;
Louisville: Westminster, John Knox, 1989) x, 71–77.
 112 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song

scholars have recently questioned the hoary antiquity of the song, 63 fre-
quently explaining that the song’s archaic features are a consequence of
its poetic genre—that is, poetry tends to preserve earlier morphological
forms. G. Garbini has lent his support to this view by pointing out that
the language of the song is, after all, not so archaic and includes fea-
tures that postdate the tenth-century Gezer calendar, such as the defi-
nite article and the common plural construct. 64 Although one might
attempt to explain this via modernization of the text, it does not seem
necessary to do so when we take account of one additional point. 65 It
must also be borne in mind that another important reason the song has
been dated early—normally to the twelfth century b.c.e.—is the pre-
sumed antiquity of the pentateuchal sources, and this is now a part of
the debate. As long as a person dates the Yahwist to the early monar-
chic period, it is necessary to date SDeb even earlier, since it looks, lin-
guistically speaking, much older than the pentateuchal narratives. But
since we are setting aside those narratives for the time being, a sound
conclusion is that the song dates sometime between the twelfth and
ninth centuries b.c.e., with a date near our terminus ad quem being
quite likely. 66
Even if a person tends toward the ninth-century date, an impor-
tant problem remains unresolved. As Gray has suggested, the tradition
63. G. W. Ahlström, Who Were the Israelites? (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns,
1986) 80–81; L. E. Axelsson, The Lord Rose Up from Seir: Studies in the History and Tra-
ditions of the Negev and Southern Judah (ConBOT 25; Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell,
1987) 52; U. Bechmann, Das Deboralied zwischen Geschichte und Fiktion: Eine exeget-
ische Untersuchung zu Richter 5 (St. Ottilien: EOS, 1989); Lemche, The Canaanites and
Their Land, 92–93; J. A. Soggin, “Bemerkungen zum Debora lied, Richter Kap. 5,”
ThLZ 106 (1981) 625–39; van der Toorn, Family Religion, 236. For a very late Hasmo-
nean dating of the song, see B.-J. Diebner, “Wann sang Deborah ihr Lied? Überlegun-
gen zu zwei der ältesten Texte des TNK (Ri 4 und 5),” ACEBT 14 (1995) 106–30.
64. G. Garbini, “Il Cantico di Debora,” La Parola del Passato 33 (1978) 5–31;
idem, History and Ideology in Ancient Israel (New York: Crossroad, 1988) 32. Soggin
and Lindars generally follow Garbini’s conclusion (Soggin, Judges, 80–1; Lindars,
Judges 1–5, 214–15). Soggin also finds in the text rather advanced theological notions
that point us toward a later rather than earlier date.
65. On the tendency to update grammatical and morphological archaisms, see
B. K. Waltke and M. O’Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Winona
Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1990) 17.
66. Lending additional support to this view is the recent observation of Lemaire
that the geographical regions listed in the song best fit a ninth-century b.c.e. context
(A. Lemaire, “Galaad et Makir,” VT 31 [1981] 39–61).

Spread is a line short

 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song 113

behind the song might be older than the song itself, 67 and this seems
all the more likely when we realize the reason for the fact that even
scholars open to the later dating tend to treat the song as a source of
premonarchic history. 68 The problem is that we are hard-pressed to
explain why a ninth-century poet felt it necessary to point out that
four of the tribes failed to enter the conflict against Canaan. As far as I
know, a suitable ninth-century Sitz im Leben for the polemic against
these tribes has not been suggested. The strength of the Omride dy-
nasty during this period appears to preclude the unstable political
context reflected in the song, and the tribe of Gad, which in the
ninth-century Mesha Stele figures so prominently, is curiously miss-
ing, as is the tribe of Manasseh. 69 In lieu of such a context, we are
pushed to the conclusion that the song, even if it is from a later date,
probably reflects an earlier and perhaps premonarchical tradition.
This problem is of course related to the much-debated composition
history of the piece. Although most agree that we are dealing with a
Siegeslieder or something similar in terms of final form, 70 Weiser has
emphasized that a number of separate form-critical units lie behind
the poem, and Müller has argued that one can discern both epic and
nonepic contributions to it. 71 H.-D. Neef has recently defended the
compositional unity of the poem on the basis of its consistent style

67. J. Gray, Joshua, Judges, Ruth (NCBC; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1986)
261.
68. See the following discussions: Lindars, Judges 1–5, 265–67; Soggin, Judges,
97–99.
69. Gibson, Syrian Semitic Inscriptions, 1.75–6. In fact the text tells us that the
Gadites had lived in the region since ancient times (μl[m trf[ ≈r[b bvy dg vaw). Re-
garding the absence of Manasseh, Finkelstein believes that the Iron Age archaeological
data allows us to distinguish a Canaanite population in the region that is distinct from
an Israelite population in nearby Ephraim and in the marginal areas of Manasseh. This
is at least interesting (Finkelstein, The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement, 352–56).
70. However, as R. de Vaux noted (Histoire ancienne d’Israël, 100), the Sitz im
Leben in which the text was used is difficult. Of course the most common approach is
to view the text as a victory song used in the context of the amphictyonic festivals, but
this is very much in question.
71. According to Müller, we are dealing primarily with an old battle report in
vv. 2–5, 9–11, and 31a. Weiser has especially emphasized that vv. 13–18 constitute a
“roll-call” used in the amphictyonic festival (Hans-Peter Müller, “Der Aufbau des
Deboraliedes,” VT 16 [1966] 447). See also D. A. Weiser, “Das Deboralied: Eine gat-
tungs- und traditionsgeschichtliche Studien,” ZAW 71 (1959) 67–69.
114 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song

and morphology, and I think that his observations have merit. 72 In

my view the chief problem is that the song’s complexity, which causes
some to view it as a composite text, also makes it difficult to provide a
convincing explanation of its supposed compositeness. In light of this,
it seems wise to begin with the final form of the text, which few would
date any later than the ninth century.
Although the heroic genre of the poem is of the sort that is a poor
substitute for history, 73 we must nonetheless ask what it can tell us
about Israelite identity. As it is usually translated, the poem recounts a
battle in which ten entities, collectively known as “Israel” (5:5, 13–
18), participated (or should have participated) in a battle against the
“kings of Canaan” (5:19). 74 Of primary importance with respect to
the question of Israelite ethnicity is this: what is the nature of these ten
modalities and in what sense do they share a common identity as Is-
rael? Geographic explanations of the text seem to be in vogue recently:
de Geus argues that the ten-name list enumerates geographical regions
and Ahlström contends that Israel should be understood in this period
primarily as a territory rather than a people. 75 But as B. Lindars has
pointed out, this does not explain the reference in 5:15–16 to Reu-
ben’s ‘clans’ (twglp, twice), and even less does it explain the reference
to Benjamin’s ‘kinsmen’ (˚ymm[) in 5:14. 76 Furthermore, one must
reckon with the fact that these so-called geographical units are behav-
ing throughout very much like social modalities that make and follow
corporate decisions concerning participation in the conflict. Whether

72. Neef, “Der Stil des Deboraliedes (Ri 5),” ZAH 8 (1995) 275–93. Lending
support to this view is G. Gerleman, “The Song of Deborah in the Light of Stylistics,”
VT 1 (1951) 168–80. We should note that the quite uniform obscurity of the text’s
Hebrew also argues, paradoxically, for its unity.
73. C. M. Bowra, Heroic Poetry (London: Macmillan, 1961) 535.
74. Although unlikely in my view, it has been argued that the text, rightly under-
stood, actually indicates that all of the tribes participated. See B. Halpern, “The Re-
sourceful Israelite Historian: The Song of Deborah and Israelite Historiography,” HTR
76 (1983) 379–401; See also Halpern’s reworked version of the same article in The
First Historians: The Hebrew Bible and History (University Park, Penn.: Penn State Uni-
versity Press, 1996) 76–103.
75. Ahlström, Who Were the Israelites? 57–83; C. H. J. de Geus, The Tribes of
Israel: An Investigation into Some of the Presuppositions of Martin Noth’s Amphictyony
Hypothesis (Studia Semitica Neerlandica 18; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1976) 111.
76. On the possible ethnic significance of hglp, see the rather late text of 2 Chr
35:5: twbah tyb twglpl. See also the use of glp on a weight published by Moscati in
1951 (Gibson, Syrian Semitic Inscriptions, 1.68).
 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song 115

these social modalities were envisioned along ethnic lines is somewhat

obscure to us, and even in the case of Benjamin and Reuben one must
be careful not to draw hasty conclusions from slippery Hebrew termi-
nology. However, we should probably not be satisfied with the conclu-
sion that we have here nothing more than a list of geographical
regions. Rather, we have social modalities associated with geographical
regions—and this is something quite different. This explanation also
implies the whole notion of homeland, a notion frequently associated
with ethnicity.
But setting aside the question of ethnicity within the supposedly
“tribal” modalities of our text, we should ask ourselves what essential
ties connected these groups with each other and so, for the poet, cre-
ated the entity called Israel. Of course, a common answer has been
Noth’s amphictyonic proposal—that they shared a cultic shrine and
therefore fought to protect it—but this thesis has been questioned so
much of late that most everyone is leery of it. It is no doubt true that
the text presumes a certain mutual responsibility on the part of the ten
groups listed here, and this is as one would expect from Noth’s thesis.
But there is no sense that the responsibility hinged on a particular sanc-
tuary. Rather, the text explicitly tells us only that the groups shared a
common responsibility as the people of the god Yahweh to fight in bat-
tle against the non-Israelite “kings of Canaan,” as Smend told us some
time ago. 77 It was this common Yahwistic religious identity that seems
to have connected the tribes together and made Israel what it was for
the composer of SDeb. Strictly speaking, then, one should be careful to
avoid speaking of these ten groups as “tribes” in the sense of ethnic
groups, for if ethnic identity is reflected in the text (and I will argue it
may well be), its prominence is secondary to the religious ties that
linked the tribes together. Our song speaks primarily of a common re-
ligious identity that united various groups of Yahwists rather than an
ethnic identity that united various groups of Israelites. But we should
remind ourselves again that perhaps we are dealing with a viewpoint
that postdates the supposed events by some time, and if this is the case,
the song could well contain historical or sociological anachronisms that
are not evident to us.
77. R. Smend, Yahweh War and Tribal Confederation: Reflections upon Israel’s Ear-
liest History (Nashville: Abingdon, 1970) 1–42. As Hertzberg has noted, the sense of
expectation for participation in the battle precluded military neutrality (Hertzberg, Die
Bücher Josua, Richter, Ruth, 180).
116 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song

There is perhaps something more that we can say about the reli-
gious identity reflected in the song. Facing an admittedly difficult and
cryptic section of the text, the RSV translates the beginning of Judg
5:8: ‘When new gods were chosen, then war was in the gates’. The first
few words, μyrja μyhla rjby, read rather clearly if one assumes with
most commentators that rjby is singular with an indefinite subject. 78
On the other hand, Soggin and Lindars read the verb as written (third-
person singular), and this results in a translation ‘God chose others’,
that is, ‘God chose new men’. 79 The next phrase, μyr[v μjl za, is
more difficult, and a number of emendations and diverse readings
have been proposed. 80 But if we follow the most common tack on this
text, as the RSV has done, then the text is very close to the ideology
(but not the language) of the Deuteronomic and Deuteronomistic
sources, namely, that Yahweh was the sole God of Israel and that, de-
spite this, Israel nonetheless had a propensity to follow after other
gods—with unpleasant results. If one dates the song to the ninth cen-
tury, then this should come as no real surprise, since the roughly con-
temporary Mesha Stele confirms Yahweh as Israel’s national deity (and
also the theology of divine retribution). But if one either dates the
song earlier or finds in it traditions from the prestate period, then this
kind of theology is somewhat unexpected. Lest we build a “house of
cards,” however, the unfortunate state of the text dictates that we end
our speculations here. Let it suffice that, for the writer of SDeb, the
entity Israel was composed of ten groups that were united by a com-
mon devotion to Yahweh and by a common obligation to fight on his
side. Israel was the ‘people of Yahweh’ (hwhy μ[), and Yahweh was the
god of Israel (larcy yhla).
Setting aside the preliminary question of Israel’s religious identity
in the song, we turn our attention more directly to the question of eth-
nic identity. Ethnicity requires a contextual contrast between various
78. Following Gray, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 267. This is contra Moore, who does
not view this reading as very likely (Moore, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on
Judges, 145).
79. Lindars, Judges 1–5, 207; Soggin, Judges, 82.
80. For instance, Weiser translated the text as the ‘[Gods] whom they formerly
had not known’, while Budde suggested ‘[the] barley bread was spent’. For their dis-
cussion as well as for other possible solutions, see C. F. Burney, The Book of Judges,
117–19; K. Budde Das Buch der Richter (KHAT 7; Freiburg: Mohr, 1897) 43; Hertz-
berg, Die Bücher Josua, Richter, Ruth, 171; A. Weiser, The Old Testament: Its Formation
and Development (New York: Association Press, 1961) 75–76.
 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song 117

social modalities, and in the song we have this contrast on two levels.
First, we have a sense of contrast between the Israelite groups. Despite
their religious unity as Israel, the song reflects the notion that Ephra-
imites were not Reubenites, that Reubenites were not Benjaminites,
and so forth. And so we must imagine how these Israelites construed
the tension between their common religious identity and their obvious
sociological distinctiveness. As I have pointed out concerning the “Ta-
ble of Nations” in Genesis 10, and as ethnicity studies have frequently
observed, a common way to handle this tension is through the creation
of segmented genealogies that explain both the perceived similarities
(we share a common ancestry) and the perceived differences (but, after
all, we are not entirely of the same stock). 81 Even more significant from
an ethnic point of view is the second sociological contrast in our text,
the intense atmosphere of competition between Israel and Canaan.
Without necessarily assenting to the solutions suggested by Menden-
hall and Gottwald or their early dating of the song, 82 we can neverthe-
less see here a tension between Canaanite city-states around Jezreel and
the Israelite groups nearby. 83 We are forced to pause here, because
Lemche has suggested that the phrase “kings of Canaan” might be a
Deuteronomistic gloss inspired by the prose account of Judges 4,
wherein Jabin of Hazor is a “king of Canaan.” 84 This conclusion ought
to be rejected for several reasons. First, since Merneptah’s text has al-
ready suggested a possible contrast between Canaan and Israel, there is
no compelling reason to view a similar contrast in the later SDeb as
problematic. 85 Second, we must see in the song an Israelite military op-
ponent, and even if we follow Lemche’s suggestion to exclude Canaan,
81. The genealogy constructed in Genesis 10 attempts to account, in part, for Se-
mitic linguistic similarities, as in the case of Aram and Israel, by making them fellow
Semites. See K. L. Sparks, “Semites,” EDB (forthcoming).
82. Mendenhall, The Tenth Generation; Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh.
83. And if one follows Stager, as Lindars does, then we can go as far as seeing a so-
ciological struggle between village highlanders and city-state lowlanders, although not
for the same reasons that Mendenhall and Gottwald suggest. See L. E. Stager, “Archeol-
ogy, Ecology, and Social History: Background Themes to the Song of Deborah,” Con-
gress Volume: Jerusalem, 1986 (VTSup 40; Leiden: Brill, 1988) 221–34; Lindars, Judges
1–5, 237–38.
84. Lemche, The Canaanites and Their Land, 95.
85. In fact, in a later study even Lemche has noted that “it may still be possible
to refer the antagonism between the Israelites and the Canaanites back to premonar-
chical and early monarchical times.” For his theory on this, see N. P. Lemche, “City-
Dwellers or Administrators: Further Light on the Canaanites,” History and Tradition of
118 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song

we must still identify a suitable candidate—and who would be a better

candidate for a ninth-century poet than Canaan? Probably the most
important reason to question Lemche’s conclusion, however, is that the
“king of Canaan” references in the prose account of 4:2, 23–24 are, as
Richter pointed out long ago, a part of the Deuteronomistic editor’s
work in Judges 4. 86 Because this is the only time that Dtr uses the
phrase “king(s) of Canaan,” it seems to me very likely that the editor
has borrowed the terminology from one of his sources, namely SDeb,
and this seems to be confirmed by Halpern’s thesis that the prose
account of Judges 4 stems rather directly from the poetic account of
Judges 5. 87
For Lemche, the Canaanites were primarily a literary antagonist of
the Israelites rather than their ancient, historical opponent. 88 His thesis
needs ˆ[nk yklm to be redactional, despite the fact that even he seems
to realize that there is thin evidence for making it so. 89 For the most
part, I have some sympathy with Lemche’s thesis. But the literary
Canaanites did not appear from thin air; they were derived from previ-
ous traditions, and their presence in a ninth-century source presents us
with no real problem. What we should conclude, then, is that accord-
ing to our poet the entity Israel was a religiously united group of sepa-
rate—but perhaps similar—social modalities that took up arms against
Canaanite city-state populations in the lowlands around Taanach and
Megiddo.
If we continue to assume a ninth-century terminus ad quem for
the Song of Deborah, how can we summarize Israelite identity and its

Early Israel: Studies Presented to Eduard Nielsen (ed. A. Lemaire and B. Otzen; Leiden:
Brill, 1993) 86.
86. W. Richter, Die Bearbeitungen des ‘Retterbuches’ in der deuteronomischen
Epoche (BBB 21; Bonn: Hanstein, 1964) 6–9. Cf. Becker’s view that Judges 4 is basi-
cally a composition of Dtr (based on the Song of Deborah and the Jabin tradition in
Josh 11:1–15) that was subsequently subjected to minor additions by a post-Dtr redac-
tor: U. Becker, Richterzeit und Königtum: Redaktionsgeschichtliche Studien zum Richter-
buch (BZAW 192; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1990) 126–28, 138.
87. B. Halpern, The First Historians: The Hebrew Bible and History (University
Park, Penn.: Penn State University Press, 1996) 76–97.
88. This is certainly true of Lemche’s work in The Canaanites and Their Land
(152–55). However, his previously cited and more recent study, “City-Dwellers or Ad-
ministrators: Further Light on the Canaanites,” does postulate a Late Bronze conflict
between the Israelites and the functionaries of the Egyptian provincial system, who
were dubbed “Canaanites.”
89. As evidenced in his own phrase “should this be the case” (ibid., 95).
 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song 119

relationship to Canaanite identity at that point? First, we can say, at

least from a polemical standpoint, that the supposed religious contrast
between Canaanites and Yahwists was firmly established by the ninth
century b.c.e., and if the composition histories of Müller and Mathys
are correct, then this contrast was known from an even older epic bat-
tle report (see v. 31a). 90 This is somewhat counter to present trends in
biblical scholarship, which are wont to push the Israelite/Canaanite re-
ligious contrast very late in Israel’s history and to combine ancient Is-
raelite and Canaanite religion under the rubric of “West Semitic
Religion.” 91 But in our text the entity called Canaan stands in opposi-
tion to the people of Yahweh, and it makes precious little sense con-
stantly to emphasize that Israelite and Canaanite religion are of one
cloth when even our earliest biblical sources stress the distinctions be-
tween them. 92 Second, from a historical perspective, the poet under-
stood Israel’s early history as one of conflict between Canaan and
Israel, in this case a conflict that was probably spurred by both ecologi-
cal competition for the fertile areas of the Jezreel valley and by eco-
nomic competition to control trade routes through the region. 93
Theoretically speaking, this is precisely the kind of conflict that gives
rise to and/or intensifies ethnic sentiments. Third, from a geographical
perspective, it has long been noted that an important aspect of tribal
identity in the song is geographic. 94 We should suppose from this not
only that geography distinguished the tribes from each other but also
that it necessarily distinguished them from non-Israelites, that is,

90. Müller, “Der Aufbau des Deboraliedes,” 447; H.-P. Mathys, Dichter und
Beter: Theologen aus spätalttestamentlicher Zeit (OBO 132; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht / Freiburg: Universitätsverlag, 1994) 174–75.
91. Lemche, The Canaanites and Their Land, 170.
92. On the question of Israelite religious distinctiveness, see especially P. Machin-
ist, “The Question of Distinctiveness in Ancient Israel,” Essential Papers on Israel and
the Ancient Near East (ed. F. E. Greenspahn; New York: New York University Press,
1991) 420–42.
93. As N. Naªaman has pointed out, the Jezreel Valley was regarded as “crown
property” from very ancient times to the Second Temple Period, and even later. See his
“Pharaonic Lands in the Jezreel Valley in the Late Bronze Age,” in Society and Economy
in the Eastern Mediterranean (c. 1500–1000 b.c.): Proceedings of the International Sym-
posium Held at the University of Haifa from the 28 th of April to the 2 nd of May 1985 (ed.
M. Heltzer and E. Lipinski; Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 23; Leuven: Peeters,
1988) 177–85.
94. Lindars, “The Israelite Tribes in Judges,” 103–4; M. Noth, Das System der
Zwölf Stämme Israels (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1930) 5–36.
 120 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song

Canaan and the like. Fourth, from a political perspective, the two enti-
ties could not be more different. Canaan’s city-states were ruled by
“kings,” while Israel followed Deborah and Barak (and its ‘command-
ers?’ larcy yqqwj), who, whatever they were, were not kings. Rather, it
is perhaps best to think of Deborah and Barak as “military saviors” in
the sense suggested by W. Richter some time ago. 95 Finally, from a so-
ciological and cultural perspective the poet viewed Canaan as distinct
from Israel. This is not only because of their religious, political, and
geographical differences. It is also because of a kinship distinction be-
tween Israel and Canaan, reflected in the poet’s references to Ben-
jamin’s kinsmen (˚ymm[) and Reuben’s clans (twglp), a distinction that
is valid even if we are not sure how the poet thought that these sub-
tribal modalities worked and operated. So, in the song we have kin-
ship; we have contrasting sociopolitical modalities; we have intense
economic and ecological competition; and we have religiously charged
rhetoric. In sum, we have all of the ingredients necessary to suggest
that Israel, as depicted in the Song of Deborah, was probably an ethnic
modality, or to be more precise, was at least composed of ethnic mo-
dalities. Because of this, it is my view that our social histories of Israel
can no longer postpone the development of Israelite ethnicity to a pe-
riod later than the ninth century b.c.e. And the fact that the tradition
behind our song is probably older than the song itself suggests an even
earlier date for the emergence of Israelite ethnic sentiments.
Before summarizing our work in this chapter, we should ask if it is
appropriate to speak of amphictyony in association with Israel’s tribes in
the Song of Deborah. In one sense, it certainly is not, for if by amphic-
tyony we mean that Israel was organized like and functioned analogous
to the Greek amphictyonies, then the idea of an amphictyony has al-
ways been wrong-headed. As soon as one examines the two quite dif-
ferent cultural and historical contexts, one is bound to find that they
were not the same thing. On the other hand, if one is looking for com-
parative data that is similar to ancient Israel, then it is useful to exam-

95. W. Richter, Traditionsgeschictliche Untersuchungen zum Richterbuch (BBB 18;

Bonn: Hanstein, 1963); as well as the previously cited Die Bearbeitungen des ‘Retter-
buches’ in der deuteronomischen Epoche. This conclusion of course assumes Richter’s
view of a predeuteronomistic Retterbuch, which has been challenged recently by
Becker. Nevertheless, in the case of Deborah, Becker concedes that we are dealing with
a Rettererzählung (Becker, Richterzeit und Königtum, 123).

Spread is 1 pica short

 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song 121

ine the concept of amphictyony more closely. 96 As Lemche has noted,

there were three primary types of leagues described in classical materi-
als, the ajmfiktuoniva (‘sacral league’), the sumpoliteiva (‘political
league’) and the summaciva (‘military league’). 97 These structures are
much more complex than biblical scholars sometimes realize, and it is
difficult to make generalizations about them, especially when the classi-
cal sources often postdate the structures themselves by many years. Al-
though it is common to think of the amphictyony as a twelve-, ten-, or
six-tribe league, this was not always the case. Further, the use of eßqnh
cannot be taken as evidence that the groups were always ethnic tribal
federations, for it appears that the term was also used when federal
states were joined together. Nevertheless, there are generalities that we
can highlight. With respect to its religious nature, the obligations and
the ten-tribe list reflected in the Song of Deborah are most similar to
those of the Greek “sacral leagues.” Unlike the Greek amphictyonies,
however, the Israelite obligation does not reflect a common religious
shrine or cultic assembly. Such a pre-state institution may have existed,
but to say that it did on the basis of Deborah’s song would be guessing.
Therefore, although the Israelite obligation appears to be religiously
motivated, in terms of expectation it stands closer to the Greek military
leagues (symmachies). This is because the Israelite action does not ap-
pear to have been motivated by threatening sacral encroachments but
rather by a desire to control ecologically productive territory. So if by
amphictyony we mean only that a group of independent sociopolitical
modalities shared a common religious identity that linked them to-
gether in an effective and functional way, especially with regard to war-
fare, then it seems quite appropriate to say that the Israel of our song
was not only amphictyonic but also symmachic; it is not proper to
speak of it as an amphictyony or as a symmachy.

96. For a somewhat speculative discussion of parallels between the Israelite “am-
phictyony” and comparative materials from Philistia and the Sumerians, see H. E.
Chambers, “Ancient Amphictyonies, Sic et Non,” in Scripture in Context II: More Es-
says on the Comparative Method (ed. W. W. Hallo; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns,
1983) 39–59.
97. Lemche’s short study is very valuable (N. P. Lemche, “The Greek Amphicty-
ony: Could It Be a Prototype for the Israelite Society in the Period of the Judges?”
JSOT 4 [1977] 48–59).
122 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song

Summary and Conclusions

To draw the proper conclusions, we must steer a middle way be-
tween the tendency, on the one hand, to make probabilities out of pos-
sibilities and, on the other, to make possibilities into irrelevancies. The
Merneptah Stele seems to provide slim but reasonable evidence of an
early context where an entity called Israel stood in geographical and so-
ciological juxtaposition to the city-states of Canaan, in this case Ash-
kelon, Gezer, and Yanoªam. However, this proposition is somewhat
misleading unless we rephrase it. We might equally well say that the
text of the stele distinguishes between a Canaanite people called Israel
and the Canaanite peoples of the nearby city-states, for I doubt seri-
ously that it allows us to determine with confidence whether the scribe
intended us to locate Israel within Canaan or alongside it. Our confu-
sion along these lines is somewhat obviated (1) by the scribe’s use of
the “people” determinative in conjunction with “Israel,” (2) by the fact
that Israel is probably an endonym rather than an exonym, and (3) by
the fact that the name Israel contains the theophoric element El. These
are three different but related pieces of evidence that suggest we are
dealing with a sociocultural entity that called itself Israel and that wor-
shiped (among other deities?) the high god El. Apart from a good deal
of speculation, this is about all that can be said regarding Merneptah’s
Israel. But the text provides us with the first evidence of a possible
situation in which Israelite ethnicity might have either emerged or
intensified. 98
The Song of Deborah probably dates several centuries later and
was composed by a Northern poet for reasons that are not entirely
clear. 99 It reflects a context that was very suitable for the emergence or

98. I am obviously more guarded than H. N. Rösel, who asserts that Merneptah’s
Israel was already an ethnic entity during the thirteenth century b.c.e. See chap. 6 of
his Israel in Kanaan: Zum Problem der Entstehung Israels (Beiträge zur Erforschung des
Alten Testaments und des Antiken Judentums 11; Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang,
1992).
99. To determine the reason for the song’s composition we would have to know
the extent to which the poet followed earlier traditions to inform his work (a very diffi-
cult problem that I will not attempt to work out here!) and also the particular Sitz im
Leben in which the song might have been used. On the basis of Judges 5:10–11, we
might suppose that the poem was recited in “Homeric style” at local “watering places”
to fulfill a natural curiosity about the ancient traditions of Israel and also for entertain-
ment (cf. Lindars, Judges 1–5, 245). On the other hand the song may have been com-
posed for the royal courts to mimic this musical experience of the peasantry. It might
 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song 123

intensification of ethnic sentiments among the Israelites. The descrip-

tions of Benjamin and Ephraim appear to reflect ethnic modes of iden-
tity, and it seems plausible that this was true of other groups as well.
But for our poet the most powerful integrating force in Israelite iden-
tity was a common devotion to the god Yahweh, and this religious dis-
tinctiveness, joined with other sociological, political, and geographical
distinctives, served to divide the Israelites from the nearby peoples—in
this case from the Canaanites. We cannot prove from the song that the
Israelites had taken the step of connecting themselves to each other via
segmented genealogy and the like, but in my view, the poem’s context,
coupled with the ecological and economic competition that originally
lay behind it, makes the presence of Israelite ethnicity likely in the
ninth century, probably even earlier. 100
It is tempting at this point, despite the chronological disparity, to
draw a straight line from the Israelite/Canaanite polarity of the Merne-
ptah Stele to the same sociological polarity in the Song of Deborah.
This is possible, but only possible. Soggin and others have pointed out
that the original antagonist in Deborah’s Song was probably Sisera, and
his name is not what we would expect of a West Semitic king. 101 Al-
though this does not preclude the fact that early traditions identified
Sisera as a Canaanite, it does mean that we must be careful to avoid
hasty conclusions about the antiquity of a supposed Canaanite/Israelite
rivalry. It is possible that the Sisera tradition originated during the Phi-
listine conflicts (as reflected in the Samuel narratives) and that it was
only subsequently connected with “Canaanite” terminology. Given
these parameters, we may guardedly say that, by the ninth century
b.c.e., the Canaanite opposition to Israel was already rooted in the col-
lective memory of Israel as an important element within its national

also have been used in ritual or cultic contexts to celebrate the power of Yahweh. The
song might have been excerpted from a longer epic tradition, or it may have been com-
posed as an independent poem. In other words, outside of the observation that it is a
song of victory (and even some would debate this), its contextual character remains un-
clear to us if we date it to the ninth century.
100. R. Neu finds that early Israel was comprised of several kinship groups that
conceptualized their identity with segmented genealogies. The groups were subse-
quently united as ecological pressures in the region grew (Neu, Von der Anarchie zum
Staat: Entwicklungsgeschichte Israels von Nomadentum zur Monarchie im Spiegel der
Ethnosoziologie (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1992) 19–138.
101. Boling, Judges, 94; Burney, The Book of Judges, 84; Gray, Joshua, Judges,
Ruth, 254; Soggin, Judges, 63.
124 Merneptah’s Stele and Deborah’s Song

history; we may also say that the tradition behind SDeb shows evi-
dence of a healthy context in which Israelite ethnicity could either
emerge or intensify, in spite of the fact that it is difficult to connect
SDeb with one specific context.
Despite the fact that I have already cautioned against positing a re-
lationship between Merneptah’s Israel and Deborah’s Israel, it is never-
theless interesting that the two sources appear to share several common
features. First, both portray a sociocultural modality called Israel and
distinguish it from the Canaanite city-states nearby. Second, both
sources focus our attention on the religious identity of Israel as an im-
portant factor in its sociological integration, in one case a common de-
votion to El and in the other to Yahweh. Third, depending on how we
interpret the name “Israel” in the Merneptah text (for example, ‘El
fights’), we can see the slender possibility that both texts reflect certain
“martial tendencies” among the people called “Israel.” In light of this
evidence, although it seems to me that we cannot prove the legitimacy
of closely linking the two texts, we are on equally tenuous footing if we
insist that they describe two different “Israels.”
 Chapter Four

Ethnicity and Identity in

the Assyrian Period

In comparison with the Merneptah text and the Song of Deborah,

the texts to be examined here, namely the eighth-century Hebrew liter-
ary prophets, provide us with a much more stable collection of evi-
dence for our inquiry into ethnicity. It may seem unfortunate to some
that a point so late in Israel’s history is given this much weight, but my
own view of the materials suggests that we have few substantial sources
in the biblical or extrabiblical materials that may be unambiguously
dated before the eighth century (although these sources may frequently
be informed by traditions of greater antiquity). 1 It is, then, not as
though we must set aside a vast cornucopia of materials from the Late
Bronze Age until the fall of Samaria. As we have already seen, a source
like the “Israel Stele” is somewhat obscure and leaves us with the obvi-
ous problem that we have trouble linking it directly with biblical Israel.
So we must give special attention to Hosea, Amos, and Isaiah. It is very
unfortunate that our sources for the origins and early history of the Is-
raelite state are so late, since anyone examining Israelite identity hopes
to deal with the issue of state and ethnicity. But my focus on the more
“stable” sources precludes this; consequently, we must (regrettably)
proceed directly from SDeb to the ministry of Hosea. 2 Throughout
this discussion, I will weigh the data provided by these texts with data

1. As a reminder, I must again stress that this approach to the sources means that
when we begin with Hosea and Amos, we are basically starting “from scratch.” We can-
not assume that these prophets were familiar with any of the portions of the biblical
corpus that are commonly viewed as early, and I am referring here especially to the J
and E documents of the Pentateuch.
2. For a recent and useful (but necessarily speculative) discussion of identity and
the state, see S. Grosby, “Kinship, Territory, and the Nation in the Historiography of
Ancient Israel,” ZAW 105 (1993) 3–18.

125
126 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

provided by the Assyrian, Greek, and Egyptian sources examined in

chap. 2. When the biblical materials are examined in light of these
comparative sources, the resulting picture of Israelite ethnic identity
and its historical development is somewhat different from that gener-
ally presupposed in biblical scholarship.
The Neo-Assyrian period must play a pivotal role in any inquiry
into ancient Israelite identity. It is generally agreed that, despite their
cultural ties, the Northern and Southern traditions had a certain de-
gree of independence from each other and that, after the fall of the
North, the Northern traditions migrated South, where they were trans-
mitted via the Judean scribal community. Because of this it is essential
that we give proper attention to the various concepts of identity (eth-
nic, political, cultural, etc.) that existed before these two bodies of tra-
dition merged during the late eighth century. The major limiting
factor in this endeavor is that we are dealing with three relatively short
collections, one from the North (Hosea) and two from the South
(Amos, Isaiah), and this kind of evidence is naturally suspect if we
hope to draw far-reaching and detailed conclusions about the social
landscape of ancient Israel and Judah. I do not say this pessimistically.
We can reach very useful and accurate conclusions about the work of
these prophets and, from it, attempt to isolate and characterize their
opponents and the like. It is much more difficult, however, to extrapo-
late from their work information such as the number of people in-
volved in a given ideological party or even something as broad as the
general trajectory of thoughts and ideas in Israel and Judah. What we
must be content with, instead, is evidence about some of these trajecto-
ries. To put our dilemma in mathematical terms, we face the problem
that our sources may not always be as “statistically significant” as we
would like. But they are all that we have.

Ethnicity and Identity in Hosea

While I hope to avoid encumbering the present study with exces-
sive literary analysis, I must stake out my own position. In the case of
Hosea there seem to be two general schools of thought about its redac-
tional character. The major problem that Hosea presents as an eighth-
century source is this: in the decades after the fall of Israel, its text was
transmitted in a Judean context and therefore reflects certain ideas that
may have originated in the North. For many commentators this does
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 127

not present a serious problem because they see “little evidence of any
tampering with the text in the interest of updating its material.” 3 On
the other hand a number of scholars, because of the relative promi-
nence given to Judah in Hosea, suggest that a fair number of later addi-
tions have been made to the text. 4 The differences between these two
perspectives are, in many instances, more a matter of tone than sub-
stance. Mays and Wolff struggle with the authenticity of the same texts
that “skeptics” like Jeremias and Rudolph question. The recent com-
mentary of G. I. Davies provides a very balanced and useful summary
of the redactional character of Hosea, which he divides into five basic
literary components. First, the bulk of the materials stems from Ho-
sea’s own day and underwent very little change before the collections
were brought to Judah. Second, a Judean phase of redaction followed,
which stressed the distinction between Israel’s fate and Judah’s preser-
vation. A third stage, which dates near or after the fall of the South to
Babylon, includes accusations and threats against Judah as well as Is-
rael. Finally, during the Babylonian and Persian periods, a fourth layer
of tradition, designed to provide hope for Jews, was added; this layer
predicted that the exiles would return, the two kingdoms would re-
unite, and a new David would arise. This analysis makes good sense of
the materials in Hosea and contextualizes them within appropriate,
concrete circumstances. It also provides a useful baseline for my work,
since by focusing primarily on the first and supposedly original layer of
tradition I hope to preempt excessive debate about the dating of my
sources and, therefore, about the validity of my study with respect to
eighth-century Israel.
In addition to outlining this general approach, I should state a few
theoretical and methodological prejudices clearly from the outset. I
tend to regard a given text as original with Hosea unless there are suit-
able reasons to exclude it, and this is at variance with the tendency of
3. Francis I. Andersen and David Noel Freedman, Hosea (AB 24; Garden City,
N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980) 57. Concurring with this sentiment are G. I. Davies, Hosea
(NCBC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992) 34–38; J. L. Mays, Hosea: A Commentary
(OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969) 16; D. Stuart, Hosea–Jonah (WBC; Waco,
Tex.: Word, 1987) 14–15; H. W. Wolff, Hosea (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress,
1974) xxix–xxxii.
4. J. Jeremias, Der Prophet Hosea (ATD; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1983) 18–19; W. Rudolph, Hosea (KAT; Gütersloh: Gütersloh Verlagshaus, 1966) 25–
27; N. H. Snaith, Mercy and Sacrifice: A Study of the Book of Hosea (London: Epworth,
1953) 50.
 128 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

some to deny a text’s authenticity unless a strong case can be made for
it. One reason for my position is that the present trend in scholarship is
to view the Hosean corpus as a generally authentic corpus that contains
only scattered redactional elements. A second and more important rea-
son is that there are problems with the tendency of some scholars to
view the literary history of Hosea along the lines of the history of Jere-
miah—to say that the work reflects Deuteronomistic ideology and is,
therefore, largely the product of Deuteronomistic redaction. 5 This is a
problem because Deuteronomic ideology as represented in the older
“core” of Deuteronomy betrays its Northern provenience and is, there-
fore, quite at home in a Northern, eighth-century prophetic work like
Hosea. 6 Furthermore, even if we set aside the so-called “Deuterono-
mistic” materials, what remains of Hosea must certainly be viewed as
proto-Deuteronomic; how can one differentiate between the older and
newer elements if they share such fundamental theological tendencies?
Not very easily, I think. The mere presence of Deuteronomic ideology
in passages in Hosea does not justify viewing them as redactional, un-
less there are other criteria, such as are suggested above by Davies. This
is not to say that I deny Judean additions to Hosea’s text, for it is no
doubt true that some texts betray the influence of later Southern edito-
rial activity. I am only making the point that it is more appropriate to
think of Hosea as a proto-Deuteronomic work than as a book that has
been subjected to a full-scale Deuteronomistic redaction. Therefore,
any supposed additions to the text must be identified with more care
than is sometimes exercised.
The texts to be examined from Hosea include 2:4–25, 4:1–19,
7:8–13, 9:1–3, and 12:1–14. 7 These are generally accepted as a part of

5. The “Deutero-” terminology can be slippery. Here I use proto-Deuteronomic to

refer to the ideas that eventually took shape in the book of Deuteronomy, whose ideas
I classify as Deuteronomic. But the book of Deuteronomy itself contains an older base
of materials that preceded the Josianic edition itself, and these portions are usually re-
ferred to as the “Kern” or “core” of that book. The adjective “Deuteronomistic” refers
to those later writers and editors who took their cues from Deuteronomy in producing
the Deuteronomistic History and also in editing the prophetic materials, especially
Jeremiah.
6. For a summary comparison of the similarities between Deuteronomy and Ho-
sea, see M. Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1972; reprinted, Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1992) 366–70.
7. All references are to the Hebrew text. English equivalents are 2:2–23, 4:1–19,
7:8–13, 9:1–3, and 11:12–12:14.

Spread is 6 points short

 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 129

the original corpus, and the few exceptions can be handled on an ad

hoc basis. Why these texts? I think that they have a direct bearing on
four primary questions that we should ask of Hosea if we hope to lay
bare his perspectives on Israelite identity and ethnicity. First, it is abun-
dantly clear that Hosea criticized the non-Yahwistic cults because they
represented religious competition for Yahweh. But this circumstance
raises an important question for anyone interested in Israel’s ethnic
identity. Was this polemic grounded only in the non-Yahwistic nature
of the other cults, or was part of the problem also that these deities
were foreign deities? Related to this question is a second. Were the vari-
ous cultic features that Hosea rejected—idols, multiplication of altars,
and so on—viewed as foreign or simply as non-Yahwistic? Third, how
important for Hosea were the traditions that linked Israel with Judah
and what does this tell us about eighth-century Northern identity? And
finally, what role did the historical tradition play in the Israelite sense
of identity, especially as regards its forefather and ancestor traditions? It
is with this last question that our inquiry begins.

The Jacob Traditions: Hosea 12:1–14

In the previous chapter, the Merneptah and Deborah sources

yielded pertinent insights only after we pressed them rather hard, and
the resulting details are admittedly speculative at points. Here it re-
quires no detailed analysis whatsoever to show that ethnicity played a
role in eighth-century Israelite identity, as the Jacob ancestral tradition
demonstrates. I think it is fair to characterize this tradition as a “popu-
lar” one because the references to it are more properly understood as
allusions, and these are only effective if an author can assume his audi-
ence’s familiarity with them—that is, these traditions must have be-
longed to the people. Beyond these truisms, the real question is how
intense this ethnic sentiment was and also how this ethnicity was re-
lated to other modes of identity, particularly religious and political
identity. As I attempt to address these issues, I will bring into the dis-
cussion a number of complexities found in the text, and my attempts
to address these are admittedly tedious at points. But if the problems
can be worked out carefully and patiently, then I believe that we will
see valuable results.
 130 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

Following Yahweh’s indictment of Israel 8 in 12:3, we meet Israel’s

ethnic forefather in vv. 4–7, in which most commentators see Jacob as
either a character with both positive and negative traits or as an entirely
positive role model for Israel. 9 The text of vv. 4–7 has its difficulties, es-
pecially in v. 5. 10 The subject of the first clause is unclear, in part be-
cause of a text-critical question and also because the subject of the
received text seems to be at odds with the surrounding context. The
verb of the clause is also unclear, for both morphological and lexical
reasons. Taking the last problem first, some have viewed rcyw as a dou-
blet of 4b and have translated the verb as hrc/yrc ‘to struggle’. 11 Oth-
ers (Davies, Jeremias, Wolff, and Whitt, for instance) view the verb as a
form of rrc (‘to reign’, ‘to play the prince’ 12), with the form in this
case being identical to the form in Judg 9:22. 13 I tend to side with the
latter view, but the problem of the verb’s subject is more crucial to our
understanding of the text. As Whitt has noted, how one solves the am-
biguity of the subject (is it Jacob or the deity?) is dependent upon how
one handles ˚alm in v. 5a. Several scholars view ˚alm as a gloss and
thus emend ˚almAla< rcyw to laE rcyw, the change allowing El to serve
as the verb’s subject (i.e., El was the victor!). 14 This is contrary to most
commentators, who retain ˚alm and so have Jacob struggle against the
8. The text reads “Judah,” but this is almost universally understood as a part of
the Judean redaction since, for Hosea, Jacob (vv. 3ff.) is everywhere else associated with
the Northern Kingdom. Furthermore, the parallelism of the text (larcy with hrc) re-
quires that we read “Israel” rather than “Judah.” Andersen and Freedman characterize
the substitution of “Israel” for “Judah” as “desperate” but then proceed to do acrobatic
maneuvers with the word dr in 12:1 to make their scheme work (Hosea, 601–2).
9. On the dual role model, see R. B. Coote, “Hosea XII,” VT 21 (1971) 389–
402; Mays, Hosea, 169. On the positive role model, see H.-D. Neef, Die Heilstradi-
tionen Israels in der Verkündigung des Propheten Hosea (BZAW 169; Berlin: de Gruyter,
1987) 15–49, 231–35; Stuart, Hosea–Jonah, 190.
10. Our discussion of the text is facilitated by the RSV translation and the BHS
text of 12:5, which read, respectively: ‘He strove with the angel and prevailed; he wept
and sought his favor. He met God at Bethel, and there God spoke with him’ (rcæY;w'
WnM:[I rBEd'y] μv…w] WNa<x:m}yi laEAtyBE /lAˆN,j:t}Yiw' hk:B: lk:Yuw' Ëa:l]m"Ala,).
11. Thus emending the text from rcæY;w' to rcæYiw,' as done by Andersen and Freed-
man, Hosea, 593, 607–8; Mays, Hosea, 161; S. L. McKenzie, “The Jacob Tradition in
Hosea XII 4–5,” VT 36 (1986) 313–14; Stuart, Hosea–Jonah, 185, 191.
12. BDB 979.
13. Davies, Hosea, 274; Jeremias, Der Prophet Hosea, 153; Wolff, Hosea, 212,
W. D. Whitt, “The Jacob Traditions in Hosea and Their Relation to Genesis,” ZAW
103 (1991) 32.
14. Jeremias, Der Prophet Hosea, 153; Wolff, Hosea, 212; H. S. Nyberg emends
the text to laE but retains ˚alm, in Studien zum Hoseabuche (UUA 6; Uppsala: Lunde-
quistska, 1935) 94–95.

Spread is 15 points long

 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 131

angel of God. As J. Vollmer has pointed out, the phrase ˚almAla rcyw
is verdächtig and appears to reflect a redactional effort to soften v. 4b’s
claim that Jacob wrestled with God himself. But this does not require,
as Rudolph and Vollmer suggest, that we delete the entire text. 15 De-
leting ˚alm alone solves a number of problems and is preferable for
several reasons. First, it preserves continuity with Ata hrc wnwabw
μyhla in 4b, where the struggle is between Jacob and the deity, not Ja-
cob and an angel. Second, as Wolff points out, Hosea uses the divine
name laE on several occasions (2:1, 11:9, 12:1) but never uses ˚alm.
Third, it fits well with what follows in v. 5, since Jacob’s plea for favor
is now prompted by El’s victory (lky) over him. 16 If one is willing to
adopt my reasoning here, then the resulting text reads like that of
Wolff:
But God proved himself Lord and prevailed. He [Jacob] wept and
made supplication to him [El]. In Bethel 17 he [El] finds him [Jacob]
and there speaks with him [Jacob]. 18
The doxology that follows in v. 6 is sometimes viewed as a later ad-
dition, but the question of its authenticity is less relevant than the in-
terpretive issues of v. 7, which I read as follows: ‘Likewise you (Israel),
with your god’s help, turn back. Preserve loyalty and justice, and wait
continually for your god’. Most important in this rendition of the verse
is my translation of htaw as ‘likewise you’, which more loosely para-
phrased reads in vv. 6–7: “Just as Jacob sought god’s favor after his re-
bellions and found it at Bethel, so likewise you should repent of your
15. Vollmer takes all of vv. 5–7 as a gloss, for the reasons cited above and also be-
cause he considers rmv with the objects fpvm and dsj in v. 7 to be characteristic of
Deuteronomic thinking. I have already argued that Deuteronomic ideology alone is in-
sufficient ground for questioning a text’s authenticity. See J. Vollmer, Geschictliche
Rückblicke und Motive (BZAW 119; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1971); and also Rudolph, Ho-
sea, 222.
16. In a unique approach, M. Gertner views Jacob as the victor and the divinity as
the one seeking favor. This would seem to be unlikely, but it is nonetheless a possibil-
ity. See the appendix of “The Masorah and the Levites: An Essay in the History of a
Concept,” VT 10 (1960) 272ff.
17. Whitt et al. read la tyb as a divine name (see Whitt, “The Jacob Traditions
in Hosea,” 35–37), which is plausible but speculative. Even if one agrees with him, as I
do, that the J/E pentateuchal sources may postdate Hosea, this does not make Hosea’s
testimony irrelevant. The tradition as known in Genesis would cause us to expect
Bethel to be a geographical name (GN), and since Beth El as a divine name is poorly
attested in the Hebrew Bible (if at all) the GN makes more sense, especially with the
resumptive μvw that follows in 5b.
18. Ibid., 206, reading wm[ with ÌÍ contra wnm[ in ˜ (brackets mine).
132 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

rebellions and return to god.” 19 This approach to the text explains why
the negative forefather tradition is juxtaposed with a call to repentance,
since now the ancestor has become an example of one who rebelled
and then subsequently repented. 20 But with the exception of Jacob’s
repentance, the prophet’s portrait of the patriarch is not a very flatter-
ing one.
I suppose that we would be remiss to neglect the other side of this
debate, which would include some number of Hosean opponents who
thought a great deal of the Jacob traditions and, we would suspect, of
the Jacob forefather as well. Even in the cryptic story that we can glean
from Hosea, it is clear that Jacob was something of a heroic figure, the
kind of fellow who can struggle with God and live to seek his favor.
The human that can last even a few moments in the ring with God is
still a very special kind of figure, more like Gilgamesh or Prometheus
than like other men. 21 So it would appear that many Israelites viewed
their Jacobite origins as a noble kind of pedigree.
But this was not the pedigree of choice for Hosea, who continued
his negative portrayal of the forefather in 12:13. The verse, which
should obviously be treated as a unit with 12:14, has two major prob-
lems: its poor integration into the surrounding text and the absence of
direct objects for either db[ or rmv. With regard to the first problem,
one of two answers is usually suggested. First, 12:13–14 is sometimes
viewed as a continuation of 12:4–7. Since this suggests that the texts
are both intrusive, the minority of scholars who adopt this approach
usually view both texts as late additions, although not always. 22 How-
ever, most scholars view vv. 13–14 as authentic and try to integrate
them into the text on the basis of the common religious theme that
runs through the text. Wolff does so by suggesting that the religious
concerns expressed in vv. 11–12 are also reflected in v. 13, particularly
in the repetition of hvab, which indicates that “the patriarch of Israel
19. A similar idea is expressed by S. Romerowski, “Le prophéte Osée prêche sur
l’histoire de Jacob,” Hokhma 52 (1993) 33–66.
20. As Davies has pointed out, this polemic can only be meaningful if Hosea be-
lieved that some hope for the future of Israel remained (Hosea, 37).
21. For a discussion of the Jacob tradition and its similarity to the epic heroes, see
R. S. Hendel, The Epic of the Patriarch: The Jacob Cycle and the Narrative Traditions of
Canaan and Israel (HSM 42; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987).
22. J. Mauchline, “Hosea,” IB 6.703; Mays, Hosea, 169; Rudolph, Hosea, 227;
Vollmer, Geschictliche Rückblicke und Motive, 110. Neither Mays nor Rudolph views
the text as redactional.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 133

had begun his disgraceful association with the foreign women of Aram
. . .” (i.e., Jacob involved himself in unacceptable sexual rituals). 23
W. D. Whitt similarly understands the text in a religious sense but sees
in the objectless verbs db[ and rmv evidence that Jacob participated in
illicit cultic activity. The ancestor’s transgression was his service (db[/
rmv) to a foreign priest and god in exchange for the priest’s daughter. 24
While the detailed suggestions of both Whitt and Wolff are somewhat
speculative, they, along with Davies, Jeremias, and Rudolph, are most
likely correct that the problem envisioned here is a religious one, since
the previous text is concerned with cultic activity, and the contrast be-
tween vv. 13 and 14 centers on the distinction between Jacob and a re-
ligious leader, “the prophet.” 25 This would seem to indicate that one
component of Hosea’s criticism of Jacob was prompted by his religious
affiliation, and this affiliation was understood in connection with a for-
eign land and a foreign spouse (or possibly spouses). This tradition
seems to be at odds with the Jacob tradition of J (which is at pains to
explain that Jacob married among Israelite relatives in Aram) 26 and
thus probably reflects an eighth-century Yahwistic perspective that re-
jected cultic activities with foreign connections.
Hosea’s Jacob will perhaps become a more transparent figure if we
can clarify our perspective of “the prophet” mentioned in 12:14, who
is obviously to be understood in terms of his relationship to the patri-
arch Jacob and also in relation to Israel as a whole. 27 In a recent article,
de Pury has argued that the text of 12:13–14 deliberately contrasts the
Patriarchal and Exodus origin traditions, calling upon Israel to make a
choice between two alternatives represented by Jacob and by the

23. J. Jeremias, Der Prophet Hosea, 157; Rudolph, Hosea, 231; Wolff, Hosea, 216.
24. Whitt, “The Jacob Traditions in Hosea,” 38–41.
25. I have some sympathy with Davies’ claim (see Hosea, 282) that this text
“serves to underline that Jacob’s humiliation was ‘only’ for the sake of a woman, just as
Israel of Hosea’s day humiliated itself in the rituals of Baal worship which were de-
signed to create fertility.”
26. Gen 28:1–2, 6–9; 29:11.
27. Neef argues that Jacob serves as a positive role model. Jacob, unlike the
people of Israel, pursued God to the point of struggling with him. Likewise, Jacob
served tirelessly for his wives, much as Moses served Yahweh as a prophet. The problem
with Neef ’s proposal is that he assumes that the Genesis traditions served as the
Hintergrund for Hosea’s work, which is, in my view, a questionable assumption (Neef,
Die Heilstraditionen Israels in der Verkündigung des Propheten Hosea, 15–49, and espe-
cially pp. 231–35).
134 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

prophet (aybn). Both Mays and Römer have made similar sugges-
tions. 28 The essential contrasts between Jacob and the prophet can be
summarized like this: while Jacob fled the land to live on foreign soil
and, in so doing, turned to foreign deities, the prophet led Israel into
its land and was a faithful servant of Yahweh. So it would appear that
Jacob served as the poor role model and the Exodus tradition as the
ideal mono-Yahwistic origin tradition. The contrast between the views
of Hosea and popular thinking in the North is clear enough. North-
erners embraced an origin tradition that featured a patriarchal figure
who, even in the womb, made trouble for his brother. As an adult, he
contended with the deity, took up residence on foreign soil, married a
foreign woman and worshiped foreign deities. His only redemptive act
was his pursuit of the deity’s favor, and even this was prompted by his
defeat at the hands of God. Obviously, if one accepts this reading of
the material (as I do), then Hosea’s Jacob was of very poor religious
character and a particularly objectionable example of normative behav-
ior. Yet in this view, contemporary Israel was emulating the forefather’s
vices rather scrupulously, and it was precisely this that would prompt
Yahweh’s punishment of Israel (cf. 12:2–3). The only appropriate ori-
gin tradition had Yahweh at its center, as he led Israel out of Egypt by
the hand of a prophet.
How does the Jacob tradition compare with the other ancient
Near Eastern materials? The whole debate of Hosea 12 presupposes
two competing origin traditions, both ethnic, that were founded on
the idea of either a communal migration or a common forefather. Al-
though we did find evidence of ethnic traditions like these in the Old
Babylonian sources, from a comparative perspective these two types of
origin traditions were not very prominent in the national traditions of
either Neo-Assyria or Egypt. Both kinds of origin traditions are very
prominent, however, in the Greek sources, and the affinities of Hosea’s
origin traditions with Herodotus’s are not limited to these general
kinds of observations but include some specific features as well. This is
particularly true in the traditions’ emphasis on a “heroic” figure, in
their common effort to choose one origin tradition over another, and
28. A. de Pury, “Osée 12 et ses implications pour le débat actuel sur le Penta-
teuque,” in Le Pentateuque: Débats et Recherches (ed. Pierre Haudebert; Lectio Divina
151; Paris: du Cerf, 1992) 175–202; Mays, Hosea, 169; T. Römer, Israels Väter: Unter-
suchungen zur Väterthematik im Deuteronomium und in der deuteronomistischen Tradi-
tion (OBO 99; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990) 532.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 135

in their preference for higher culture (Egypt) as an appropriate point of

cultural origin. Whether these similarities can be traced to some com-
mon point of origin is a good question, but one that I will postpone
discussing until we have examined the Jacob figure in the Southern
prophetic tradition.
So far, our discussion of Hos 12:1–14 has lingered on the theme of
the Jacob ancestor, but in doing so we have passed over a relatively im-
portant issue that is raised in our text by the RSV’s reading of Hos
12:8, which chastises Ephraim as “a trader (ˆ[nk) in whose hands are
false balances.” As has been done here, translators have in some cases
chosen to render the term ˆ[nk ‘trader, merchant’ rather than ‘Canaan’.
There are no doubt two reasons for this. The first is a precedent dis-
cerned from Ezekiel, where the term can (or seems to) function as a so-
ciological designation (merchant) rather than as an ethnic identifier
(Canaan). 29 The second reason is that Ephraim’s arrogant remark in
the following verse (Hos 12:9) alludes to riches gained in the trade in-
dustry, so that in Hosea we may be dealing with the same semantic
value for ˆ[nk as in Ezekiel. While I do not wish to haggle over the
texts from Ezekiel, I do have several objections to thinking that Hos
12:8 refers only to a ‘trader’ and not to ‘Canaan’.
It seems clear to me from the previous chapter that the terms
“Canaan” and “Canaanite” were employed for a long time, both before
and after Hosea’s ministry, as designations for a land and its people.
This being the case, it is difficult for me to believe that the word ˆ[nk
actually took on an entirely different semantic value and at the same
time lost its implied connection with Canaan and with the Canaanites.
It is much more likely that the word “Canaan” denoted the land and its
people but connoted, in a pejorative way, the dishonest merchants so
closely associated with the land during the first millennium. The ap-
propriate context for this connotative shift would have been the period
of Phoenician expansion in the eighth century and afterward—in other
words, beginning with the time of Hosea and increasing rapidly as we
approach the time of Ezekiel’s ministry. 30 A second reason for rejecting
the RSV’s reading is that comparing “Ephraim” and a “trader” does not
strike me as being as rhetorically effective as likening Ephraim to
29. Cf. Ezek 16:29, 17:2; Zeph 1:11.
30. Lemche, The Canaanites and Their Land, 135–38, 156; B. Mazar, “Canaan
and the Canaanites,” BASOR 102 (1946) 7–12; A. F. Rainey, “Who is a Canaanite?” 6;
cf. Isa 23:8–11.
136 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

Canaan. The latter pair are much better analogues, and we know from
the last chapter that Israel had rather negative feelings about Canaan
and the Canaanites in any case. This is not an effort to deny the obvi-
ous mercantile connotations of the term “Canaan” but is, rather, an ef-
fort to say that the following translation is a better one (Hos 12:8–9):
Canaan, in his hands are false balances, he loves to oppress. Ephraim
has said, “Ah, but I am rich, I have gained wealth for myself ”: but all
his riches can never offset the guilt he has incurred.
As a result of this reading, we find that Hosea’s rhetoric is decidedly
ethnic, in that he hopes to stimulate change by comparing ethnic Israel
with an out-group about which Israel feels particularly negative (the
Canaanites). 31 If one is comfortable with this reading, then our text
can be profitably compared with the texts about Canaan that we exam-
ined in the previous chapter.
In the case of both Merneptah and SDeb, the Canaanites were
city-state populations within Palestine and, at least in the case of SDeb,
military opponents of Israel. Hosea’s eighth-century text probably pre-
serves some memory of this competitive relationship in that it obvi-
ously depicts Canaan (and its people) as dishonest and oppressive. But
here the similarity ends, because in Hosea the Canaanites are almost
certainly the Phoenicians (and therefore not in Palestine) and the prob-
lem (at least in this text) is not competition with them, but rather, Is-
rael’s propensity to be like them. So whatever the Canaanites may have
been in the second millennium and in SDeb, it is clear that we have
identified something different in Hosea, and in so doing we have iso-
lated a step in the development of Israel’s ideas about Canaan and the
Canaanites.

The Harlot and Her Children: Hosea 2:4–17

We have already confirmed the importance of ethnicity in eighth-
century Israel and have demonstrated that, at least for Hosea’s party, it
is was rather closely tied to religious identity. Perhaps we can construct
a more lucid picture of the prophet’s sense of religious identity by ex-
amining one of the more important religious images employed by him,
31. Most commentators follow my reading of this. See Andersen and Freedman,
Hosea, 615–16; Davies, Hosea, 278; W. R. Harper, A Critical and Exegetical Commen-
tary on Amos and Hosea (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1905) 384; Mays, Hosea,
165–67; Stuart, Hosea–Jonah, 192; Wolff, Hosea, 214.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 137

namely, the image of the unfaithful harlot. In doing so I hope to eluci-

date not only Hosea’s sense of religious identity but also to show more
clearly how ethnicity and religious identity were related to each other
in his theology. When this is done it will become clear that Hosea and
his party were the forerunners of the seventh-century Deuteronomic
reforms, especially with regard to their emphasis on ethnicity. 32
Although most scholars follow Wolff ’s conclusion that vv. 4–17
represent a “completely indivisible kerygmatic unit,” 33 Rudolph and
Whitt have concluded that the unit should end at v. 15. 34 The text’s
unity has also been questioned, particularly by Harper (who views
2:4a, 5, 7, 10–11, 13–15 as authentic), and also by Whitt (who accepts
2:4–7, 12–14 as authentic). 35 Harper employs a number of criteria to
reach this conclusion, beginning with the assertion that 2:8–9 cannot
be authentic because: (1) they break the otherwise close connection be-
tween vv. 7 and 10; (2) 2:8–9 does not harmonize with 3:3, since in
3:3 a voluntary return of the woman is described, while in 2:8–9 she is
held in forcible restraint; (3) 2:8–9 is rendered superfluous by 3:3;
(4) 2:8–9 prematurely introduces the element of chastisement, which
fits in naturally in v. 11; and (5) the rhythm and strophic structure of
2:8–9 differ from the structure of the context. The third and fourth ar-
guments are immaterial, since they admit that the ideology is consis-
tent with Hosea’s thought anyway, and arguments based on poetic
features (see #5) are always problematic, given our limited mastery of
Hebrew verse. The first argument is weak because it fails to apprehend
the distinction between redaction criticism of narratives (as in the Pen-
tateuch) and redactional analysis of prophetic collections. Interrup-
tions in prophetic texts are to be expected since they are, by nature, a
collection of various speeches and oracles that have come from a broad

32. For a discussion of this, see E. Theodore Mullen, Jr., Narrative History and
Ethnic Boundaries: The Deuteronomistic History and the Creation of Israelite National
Identity (Semeia Studies; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993).
33. Andersen and Freedman, Hosea, 57–58 ; Davies, Hosea, 64–67; Jeremias, Der
Prophet Hosea, 36–44; Mays, Hosea, 34–37; Stuart, Hosea–Jonah, 45–46; Wolff, Hosea,
33. Jeremias, although he accepts most of the text, views vv. 6 and 10c as redactional.
34. Rudolph, Hosea, 61–72; W. D. Whitt, “The Divorce of Yahweh and Asherah
in Hos 2, 4–7.12ff.,” SJOT 6 (1992) 33–34. Rudolph and Whitt fail to appreciate the
connective force of ykna hnh ˆkl in v. 16, which serves to explain the contrast they per-
ceive between vv. 15 and 16ff.
35. Harper, Amos and Hosea, clx, 236–38; Whitt, “The Divorce of Yahweh and
Asherah,” 31–67.
138 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

range of contexts and have been knitted into a single piece. Harper’s
other argument (#2), that an ideological inconsistency exists between
2:8–9 and 3:3, is simply untrue, because Yahweh prohibits the pursuit
of lovers in both cases. Harper’s remaining arguments have similar
weaknesses. Whitt’s argument that the authentic materials include only
2:4–7, 12–14 is based on the form-critical ground that these texts refer
to the specific proceedings of a divorce suit, while the remaining texts
are rejected both because they do not contribute to this formal struc-
ture and because of “late” vocabulary. But given the similar thematic
ties within the material of 2:4–17, it seems quite natural for the fea-
tures of a formal divorce proceeding to be interspersed within a larger
discussion of related issues. Regarding the “late” vocabulary, Whitt
eliminates vv. 10–11 because they contain Deuteronomistic features
(rhxyhw vwrythw ˆgdh; cf. 2:11, 2:24) instead of the earlier Hosean fea-
tures (ˆgdh vwrythw; cf. 7:14, 9:1–2). But this is very slender evidence.
As I have pointed out, one cannot discount a text in Hosea simply be-
cause it looks “Deuteronomistic.” When I examine the central thesis of
Whitt’s article, I will assess his arguments in greater detail. Despite
these objections from Whitt and Harper, most scholars find Hos 2:4–
17 relatively free of problems. As Mays has noted, “Any division of the
sequence into smaller units creates fragments which presuppose the
very context from which they are separated.” 36
The most pressing problem raised by this text is the interpretation
of the “wife/harlot” imagery and its relationship to the ‘children’ (μynb)
mentioned in the text. Taken independently, either of the images
makes sense, the former portraying Israel as the wife of Yahweh and the
latter depicting Israel as the children of Yahweh. But taken together,
the two features create a mixed metaphor, which commentators have
tended to live with, despite its awkwardness. The most common solu-
tion, with a few permutations, is to understand the wife as corporate
Israel and the children as Israel’s citizens. 37 In a recent article, W. D.
Whitt has taken issue with this general approach to Hosea 2 and has
argued that Hosea never used the metaphor of Israel as Yahweh’s wife.
According to him, the symbolism represents a secondary layer of tradi-
36. Mays, Hosea, 36.
37. In a minor twist, Andersen and Freedman view the unfaithful harlot as Ho-
sea’s wife (symbolizing corporate Israel) and the children as his children, in which case
the demand to renounce adulterous behavior applies literally to Hosea’s wife and figu-
ratively to Israel (Andersen and Freedman, Hosea, 217–20).
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 139

tion which corresponds to the time of Jeremiah, who freely utilized

such imagery. Whitt’s conclusions are based on four basic premises:
(1) the mixed metaphor of Israel as both wife and children is a problem
that must be solved; 38 (2) a formal divorce proceeding exists in Hosea
2, and all texts that do not contribute to it are non-Hosean; (3) the
wife described in Hosea 2, on the basis of the historical and literary
context, is best understood as Asherah; (4) all of the texts that portray
the wife as Yahweh’s wife (vv. 16–17) are exilic or postexilic additions,
and texts with features that would contradict the Asherah theory are
also late (vv. 10, 15).
Whitt’s arguments are problematic for several reasons. First, even
if Whitt has demonstrated that a formal divorce proceeding exists here,
this conclusion does not preclude intrusive (vv. 10–11) texts’ belonging
to the Hosean corpus. Second, if one excludes the “hedge of protec-
tion” text in vv. 8–9, which seems to intrude between vv. 7 and 10, the
remaining text of 2:4–11 reads quite smoothly with vv. 10–11 and
without v. 12, a verse that is a crucial portion of Whitt’s form-critical
structure: 39
Say to your brother, “My people,” and to your sister, “She has ob-
tained pity.” Plead with your mother, plead—for she is not my wife,
and I am not her husband—that she put away her harlotry from her
face, and her adultery from between her breasts; lest I strip her naked
and make her as in the day she was born, and make her like a wilder-
ness, and set her like a parched land, and slay her with thirst. Upon
her children also I will have no pity, because they are children of har-
lotry. For their mother has played the harlot; she that conceived
them has acted shamefully. For she said, “I will go after my lovers,
who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil
and my drink.” She did not know that it was I who gave her the
grain, the wine, and the oil, and who lavished upon her silver and
gold which they used for Baal. Therefore I will take back my grain in
its time, and my wine in its season; and I will take away my wool and
my flax, which were to cover her nakedness. (Hos 2:4–7, 10–11)
Whitt’s form-critical argument is also weak because the introductory
verses (vv. 4–7) are a plea for the wife to remain faithful to her marriage
relationship. It does not seem likely that they are part of a divorce pro-
ceeding. In other words, what Whitt has found are features of a divorce
38. In fact, this problem will be solved—but by Ezekiel, not Hosea.
39. He sees this form-critical unit in 2:4–7, 12–14.
 140 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

proceeding; he has not found an independent, form-critical unit that

can be extracted from its context in Hosea. 40 Finally, Whitt argues that
vv. 16–22, which portray Israel as Yahweh’s wife, must be late because
this ideology appears in the time of Jeremiah and can only be compre-
hensible when “henotheism had made a strong impact,” that is, after
the Deuteronomic reform of the late seventh century. But these argu-
ments will not do. For Whitt, like myself, much of the material in the
Hebrew Bible, particularly the pentateuchal material, is of question-
able antiquity. This means that eighth-century prophetic works like
Hosea become the most substantive early sources at our disposal. And
when this is the case, Hosea no longer lies in the middle of a broad lit-
erary context against which it can be evaluated, but rather, it lies at the
beginning (or close to it). To argue that portions of Hosea are Deuter-
onomistic or that they reflect the thinking of Jeremiah is problematic,
because almost all agree that both the Deuteronomists and Jeremiah
are to a degree dependent on the proto-Deuteronomistic thought re-
flected in Hosea. 41 Furthermore , I cannot agree with Whitt’s conclu-
sion that henotheism only made a strong impact in the seventh century
and therefore could not have existed in the eighth. The Deuteronomis-
tic movement did not appear out of thin air; at some point it must
have existed in its infancy, and it is possible that with Hosea we have
found its headwaters. 42
By now it is obvious that I do not concur with Whitt’s conclusion
that Hosea 2 refers to Asherah and her divorce from Yahweh, not only
for the reasons that I have already cited but also for this reason: in al-
most all of its 18 uses in the Hebrew Bible, hrva is best understood as
a stylized tree; it is something ‘made’ (hc[), ‘cut down’ (trk), ‘carved’
(lsp), ‘burned’ (πrc), ‘planted’ ([fn), and ‘set up’ (μyv), and is often
40. See also Paul A. Kruger’s article, “The Marriage Metaphor in Hosea 2:4–17
against Its Ancient Near Eastern Background,” Old Testament Essays 5 (1992) 7–25.
Kruger argues that there is a logical progression from beginning to end in the divorce
ritual. But this evidence does not show that there is an independent form-critical unit
that one can identify as a divorce proceeding and that is separated from the context of
chap. 2, especially when it is recognized that elements are not listed in a consistent or-
der and sometimes create illogical sequences. For example, part of the proposed ritual
includes the following: exposure of wife, provision for her, bridal gifts, termination of
the marriage, bridal gifts again, etc.
41. For a discussion of Jeremiah’s dependence on Hosea, see K. Goss, Die liter-
arische Verwandschaft Jeremias mit Hosea (Ph.D. diss., Berlin, 1930); J. A. Thompson,
Jeremiah (NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980) 81–85.
42. Whitt admits that Hosea himself was henotheistic (“The Divorce of Yahweh
and Asherah,” 67).

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 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 141

depicted as an ≈[ (‘tree’/‘wood’). Consequently, the term appears to be

a common noun referring to some kind of wooden cult object, a con-
clusion that is borne out by the eighth-century evidence from Kuntillet
Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qôm. In both cases, most scholars read the text
‘by Yahweh and by his asherah’ (htrvalw hwhyl), with the possessive
third-person suffix showing that asherah should not be understood as a
proper name. 43 This reading is supported by the iconographic evidence
on pithos A from Kuntillet Ajrud, which depicts the asherah as a styl-
ized tree flanked with ibexes. That this tree was a symbol of Asherah is
confirmed first by the fact that the handwritten text (‘by Yahweh and
his asherah’) is from the same hand as the tree figure 44 and second by
the iconographic evidence, which clearly reflects a connection between
Asherah and the stylized tree from the thirteenth-century “Lachish
Ewer” onward. 45 Taken together, this evidence seems to indicate that
in eighth-century Israel the goddess Asherah, though a consort of Yah-
weh, had become more of a cult fetish than a functioning consort and
“mother of the people.” While one cannot state this thesis in a categor-
ical way, its may suggest why the goddess herself has left so little im-
pact in the Hebrew Bible and the extrabiblical Israelite evidence. S. A.
Wiggins has independently arrived at a similar conclusion:

43. In fact, pithos A from Kuntillet Ajrud mentions “Yahweh of Samaria.” For
more on the Asherah question, see W. G. Dever, “Asherah, Consort of Yahweh? New
Evidence from Kuntillet Ajrud,” BASOR 255 (1984) 21–37; J. Emerton, “New Light
on Israelite Religion: The Implications of the Inscriptions from Kuntillet Ajrud,” ZAW
94 (1992) 14ff.; W. A. Maier III, Asherah: Extrabiblical Evidence (HSM 37; Atlanta:
Scholars Press, 1986); B. Margalit, “The Meaning and Significance of Asherah,” VT 40
(1990) 264–97; Z. Meshel, “Did Yahweh Have a Consort?” BARev 5/2 (1979) 24–35;
S. Olyan, Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel (SBLMS 3; Atlanta: Scholars Press,
1988); M. S. Smith, The Early History of God (San Francisco: Harper, 1990) 89–114;
Z. Zevit, “The Khirbet el-Qôm Inscription Mentioning a Goddess,” BASOR 225
(1984) 39–47.
44. Whitt follows Margalit’s conclusion that the two standing figures are Yahweh
and Asherah. Clearly, however, the head of one of these figures crosses over so obvi-
ously into the written text that it cannot be from the same hand, not to mention the
fact that the tree and inscription are carefully inscribed, while the two standing figures
and the seated lyre-player are more sloppy. The standing figures should instead be
viewed as Bes figures, as a comparison with the Bes iconography shows. For a descrip-
tion of Bes iconography with illustrations, see V. Wilson, “The Iconography of Bes
with Particular Reference to the Cypriot Evidence,” Journal of the British School of Ar-
chaeology in Jerusalem 7 (1975) 77–103. For a concurring argument, see P. Beck, “The
Drawings from Horvat Teiman (Kuntillet Ajrûd),” Tel Aviv 9 (1982) 3–86.
45. For an extended discussion of this, see Ruth Hestrin, “Understanding
Asherah: Exploring Semitic Iconography,” BARev 17/5 (1991) 50–59.
 142 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

The Old Testament material also raises the question of the relation-
ship of the goddess Asherah to the cultic object asherah. . . . The
texts are not explicit about the connection between the cultic objects
and the deities. To me it seems unlikely that no connection existed
between Asherah and asherah. It may be that the cultic object out-
lived the memory of the goddess in ancient Israel. 46
With this Hausputz out of the way, we can proceed with our examina-
tion of Hos 2:4–17.
Although some portions of the text may come from other periods
in Hosea’s ministry, the text generally assumes a high degree of eco-
nomic prosperity and consequently best fits the period of Jeroboam II’s
reign, in other words, some time before 750 b.c.e. As commentators
frequently point out, it is the use of an apparently mixed metaphor
that gives the text its unique character. I would suggest that the ambi-
guities of this metaphor need not be resolved but instead be read as
several portraits of Israel: first as the land, then as the estranged wife of
Yahweh, then as children of Yahweh’s estranged spouse, and finally as
the children of Yahweh himself. 47 We should steer clear of resolving
these ambiguities, because it seems to me very unlikely that such a
combination of metaphors would arise accidentally. Furthermore, the
metaphors are interrelated in a way that prevents a neat dissection of
them. For instance, the first two images—the land and estranged wife
of Yahweh—often blend together so that the land is the estranged wife:
“lest I strip her naked . . . and make her like a wilderness, and set her
like a parched land . . . and I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees.”
Additionally, the image of the wife’s children is a natural extension of
the estranged spouse imagery and can hardly be labeled an inconsis-
tency. Although I will refer to this problem briefly during our discus-
sion, we should dispense with our attempts to solve the imaginary
riddle and instead focus on the way each metaphor contributes to our
understanding of the prophet’s message.
I will begin with Hosea’s “land imagery.” Here as in chap. 1 the
land corresponds to Yahweh’s unfaithful wife and is an image that
stems from the religious competition Hosea perceives between Yahweh
and Baal, primarily because the land (i.e., Israel, Yahweh’s wife) sees in
46. S. A. Wiggins, A Reassessment of ‘Asherah’: A Study according to the Textual
Sources of the First Two Millennia b.c.e. (AOAT 235; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirch-
ener Verlag, 1993) 190.
47. This conclusion is more or less supported by Harper, Amos and Hosea, 226–
27; Mays, Hosea, 35–37; Wolff, Hosea, 33–34.

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 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 143

Baal rather than Yahweh its source of fecundity. Although this comes
as no surprise to us, since Baal in the Levant and elsewhere was a god
of fertility, I think that for Hosea this lack of dependence on Yahweh
constituted a theological heresy that prompted Yahweh to prove his
lordship by withdrawing support for the agricultural yield. Interspersed
within this agricultural threat are images of the divorce proceeding oc-
casioned by acts of infidelity with Baal, as Whitt has shown (see
above). The competitive threat raised against Yahweh should perhaps
not be understood as Baal alone, but more likely as the baalim, the
various local manifestations of Baal. 48 Whether the plural baalim
might also be taken as a generic reference to other deities is difficult to
say, but certainly Baal is the chief culprit here. 49
Perhaps more telling than Hosea’s land imagery is his image of
the children (μynb) in chap. 2, which reflects his deep ambivalence to-
ward his ethnic brothers. On the one hand, the μynb are Yahweh’s
children who appeal to their mother and, 50 on the other hand, they
are ‘children of harlotry’ (μynwnz ynb, v. 6) who were begotten of the
illicit relationship between Israel and Baal. 51 Although we cannot
48. Wolff argues against this view and sees the Baalim of 2:15 as deriving from
the imagery of Israel’s various adulterous relationships, mainly because the second-
millennium Ugaritic evidence does not support a belief in widespread local Baal divin-
ities. But the second-millennium evidence that Wolff cites is several centuries previous
to Hosea’s day and the texts are mythic texts, a genre notoriously poor as sources for
elucidating actual historical situations. Against Wolff, the Hebrew Bible refers to local
manifestatons of Baal (e.g., Baal of Peor in Hos 9:10; Baal-Zebub of Ekron in 2 Kgs
1:2), and the eighth-century inscriptional evidence reflects similar local manifestations
of Yahweh (Yahweh of Samaria and Yahweh of Teman, mentioned on Pithoi A and B,
respectively, from Kuntillet Ajrud).
49. The problem of clarity in understanding l[b and μyl[b is well known. Ac-
cording to M. S. Smith, Hosea uses the terms in three different senses: (1) Baal the de-
ity, (2) local manifestations of Baal, and (3) as more general terminology referring to
deities. While I tend to follow Smith’s conclusions, I cannot be sure that Hosea is tak-
ing issue with other deities in addition to Baal in Hosea 2, especially when the issue
here seems limited to fertility. See Smith, The Early History of God, 48–49.
50. According to Davies, these were “lay members of the community [called] to
join him in denouncing the rampant paganism of his day,” a reading that is plausible
but difficult to substantiate (Davies, Hosea, 69–70).
51. Cf. M. Smith, Palestinian Parties and Politics That Shaped the Old Testament
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1971) 31–32. Whitt has argued, contrary to
the grammar of the text, that Ab byr and the accompanying text of 2:4 should be inter-
preted as ‘take your mother’s side in my lawsuit’, rather than the more common ren-
dering ‘Accuse your mother . . .’. Even if he is right, the text still implies two different
categories of children, those who are of harlotry and the ideal children that Israel ought
to be (Whitt, “The Divorce of Yahweh and Asherah,” 52).
144 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

hastily identify these ‘children of harlotry’ as ethnic foreigners, the

imagery brings to mind another text in Hosea, where the prophet rep-
rimands Israel for begetting ‘strange children’ (μyrz μynb in 5:7).
Wolff tells us that these μyrz μynb were children born of foreign cultic
activities, 52 and this is a reasonable conclusion given that elsewhere in
Hosea the μyrz are clearly foreigners. This should direct our attention
again to the question of whether or not Hosea viewed the cult of Baal
as foreign activity or merely as non-Yahwistic activity, a distinction
that may at first seem superficially minor but that is actually rhetori-
cally important. I think that these texts make it a virtual certainty that
Hosea viewed Baal not only as a competitor of Yahweh but also as a
foreign competitor, so that already in the eighth century we have a
close connection between Israel’s ethnic identity and its religious sen-
timents. 53 So it appears that in spite of the fact that no one seems to
have adequately explained all of the confusing metaphors used by
Hosea, we have nevertheless been able to draw some reasonable con-
clusions about Israelite identity from the materials.
As I did in the case of the Jacob story, here I have argued for Ho-
sea’s antipathy toward foreign influence in general and toward foreign
religious institutions in particular (an argument to be reinforced by my
discussion of Hos 7:8–13). The eighth-century historical context was
quite favorable for the development of these ideas, primarily because
Yahweh was the national deity of Israel and therefore already possessed
a unique and exclusive claim to Israelite affections. The reasonableness
of this conclusion is threefold. First, we know that national deities
played important roles in the nations surrounding Israel, particularly
in Judah (Yahweh), Moab (Chemosh), and Ammon (Milkom). 54 Sec-
ond, the onomastic evidence from the epigraphic sources, regionally
limited as it is, reflects a strongly Yahwistic flavor. 55 Third, Holladay’s

52. Wolff, Hosea, 101.

53. See especially Mullen, Narrative History and Ethnic Boundaries, which argues
that Dtr viewed the political and religious identities of Israel as important components
in its ethnic sense of identity.
54. As reflected by the Mesha Stele (Chemosh in Moab) and the Rabbath-ammon
Inscription (Milkom in Ammon).
55. See J. H. Tigay, You Shall Have No Other Gods: Israelite Religion in the Light of
Hebrew Inscriptions (HSS 31; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), especially pp. 47–89.
Some argue that Tigay’s data is skewed by his assumption that El names are congruent
with Yahweh’s, especially since the eighth-century Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions mention
El as parallel with Baal. However, this argument is only partially valid, if at all, because
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 145

archaeological study of religious activity during the monarchic period

suggests a dichotomy between “official” religious activities at national
temple shrines and “popular religion” distributed away from major
centers. 56 If, as this evidence seems to indicate, Hosea prohibited the
worship of all deities except for the national God Yahweh, it would
seem that the prophet had for some reason “radicalized” devotion to
the national deity in a way that most others had not. This makes it very
clear that Hosea rejected other cults not only because they were non-
Yahwistic but also because they were non-Israelite; in other words, they
were foreign cults.
Both the text and the historical context suggest, therefore, that
Hosea’s views were not only Yahwistic but also ethnic in character. The
problem that remains, then, is not whether this was the case but,
rather, how many Israelites agreed with the prophet and, even if they
did not, how much their views overlapped with his. I do not know if
we can answer these questions in any definitive way, but it does seem
that Hosea’s religious perspective represented a minority position
within Israel’s eighth-century social matrix, because his polemic is lev-
eled against every sector of his society: its religious leaders, political
leaders, and the people in general. 57 But minority view or not, his was
the view that eventually found its way into Deuteronomy and into
many of the later biblical sources, giving shape, if one is willing to ad-
mit the idea, to biblical theology as a whole.
To summarize, although we are missing concrete terminology like
yrkn (‘foreigner’), the language and polemic of Hosea strongly suggests
that the non-Yahwist cults were perceived to be foreign in origin and
therefore a threat to the national cult. The categories of ‘children of

El also functions generically as the title for god. As I argued above, Asherah had been
the consort of Yahweh for some time by the eighth century, and this makes it very likely
that El, Asherah’s consort, had long since merged with Yahweh in Israelite thinking.
56. See J. S. Holladay, Jr., “Religion in Israel and Judah under the Monarchy: An
Explicitly Archaeological Approach,” Ancient Isrealite Religion (ed. P. D. Miller, Jr.;
Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987) 249–83. Notice also the call narrative of Amos (7:12),
which demonstrates an awareness of Bethel as the “king’s sanctuary” and as the “temple
of the kingdom.”
57. As suggested by N. P. Lemche, “The God of Hosea,” in Priests, Prophets and
Scribes: Essays on the Formation and Heritage of the Second Temple Judaism in Honour of
Joseph Blenkinsopp (ed. E. Ulrich; JSOTSup 149; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992) 241–57;
Smith, Palestinian Parties and Politics, 31–34.
 146 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

harlotry’ (μynwnz ynb) and ‘strange children’ (μyrz μynb) reflect an envi-
ronment of religious competition and a growing sense of differentia-
tion, within the population of Israel, between those who followed
“Israelite” religious practices and those who participated in “foreign”
cultic activities. 58 This seems to be confirmed by Psalm 81, which ac-
cording to Davies dates to the time of Hosea and offers conclusive evi-
dence for this ethnoreligious ideology: hwjtvt alw rz la ˚b hyhyAal
rkn lal (Ps 81:10). 59 In my view, one of two developments will ac-
count for this trend. Either Hosea’s mono-Yahwist party was responsi-
ble for merging two previously separate modes of identity (religious
and ethnic) into one vision of community or it successfully augmented
an older and neglected ethnoreligious theme such as may be repre-
sented in the Song of Deborah. The choice between these two options
hinges on how much confidence we have in our reading of SDeb and
how detailed we are willing to be in laying out its implications about
Israelite ethnicity, its religious identity, and the relationship between
the two. If I must lean in one direction (and lean is the proper word
here), then I believe that Israel’s ethnoreligious ideas antedated Hosea’s
party and were taken up by them in support of their pro-Yahwist
agenda. But one should view this conclusion in the noncategorical
spirit in which I intend it.

The Ethnoreligious Party and Its Criticism of the Priests:

Hosea 4:1–14
Even if we cannot know precisely when and how the ethno-
religious party originated, we can deduce from Hosea something about
its essential doctrines and ideas during the eighth century. Our exami-
nation of this text will lay bare some of the features that characterized
the mono-Yahwist party that we have been examining, including its es-
sential foundations in law, the place of covenant in its theology, and
also the indicia it used to distinguish “Israelite” worship from “non-
Israelite” activities. The charge that Israel and its leaders no longer
knew Yahweh is one of Hosea’s most important themes, and it is the
leitmotif that ties vv. 1–3 to vv. 4–14, with the former charging that
the people had no knowledge of God and the latter that the priests
58. L. A. Snijders has argued that the prophetic use of rz generally refers to either
foreign peoples or deities (“The Meaning of zar,” OTS 10 [1954] 22–59).
59. Davies dates the text to ca. 733–722 b.c.e. (Hosea, 32–34).

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 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 147

were the cause of it. 60 Scholarly consensus is that the chapter wholly
reflects authentic Hosean materials, 61 with the minor exceptions of
4:1a, 4:3, and 4:10. 62 These exceptions have no great bearing on my
thesis, and so I have no interest in defending their authenticity here.
The text of 4:1–14 breaks up fairly easily into three units: vv. 1–3,
4–10, and 11–14. Yahweh’s “controversy” with the inhabitants of Israel
is introduced by the initial unit (4:1b) in what would appear to be Ho-
sea’s first use of byr in a potentially “covenantal” context. 63 But viewing
the term in this way is premature, since a lively debate surrounds the
question of whether or not covenantal theology informed Hosea’s
work. I will take up this question a bit later, but to foreshadow my dis-
cussion, I must mention that a similar use of the root byr in the roughly
contemporary Sefîre treaties may support a covenantal reading. 64 Yah-
weh’s controversy with Israel stems from the fact that Israel lacks cer-
tain necessities—particularly faithfulness (tma), kindness (dsj), and
knowledge of God (μyhlaAt[d)—and that these inadequacies have re-
sulted in various ethical lapses, such as swearing (hla), 65 lying (vjk),
killing (jxr), stealing (bng), and adultery (πan). The presence of hla in
the list is unexpected, because taking an oath would not seem to consti-
tute a moral blunder. But if one follows Harper’s suggestion, that hla
and vjk are a hendiadys roughly equivalent to ‘bearing false witness’,
then we have here a brief list of breaches of the sixth, seventh, eighth,
and ninth commandments. 66 Even if one rejects Harper’s solution to
60. This criticism is phrased in a number of ways but normally uses either the
verb [dy (as in Israel ‘does not know Yahwh’ w[dy al hwhyAtaw) or the noun t[d (as in
Israel lacks ‘knowledge of Yahweh’ ≈rab μyhla/hwhy t[dAˆya). Cf. Hos 2:22; 4:1, 6;
5:4; 6:3, 6; 8:2; 11:3.
61. This is true even for Harper, who is quite prone to isolating later additions
even when others do not (Amos and Hosea, clx).
62. Jeremias, Hosea, 62, 68.
63. The use of byr in Hosea 2 is often viewed as idiosyncratic. For a discussion of
the term’s use in covenantal contexts in the Hebrew Bible, see H. B. Huffmon, “The
Covenant Lawsuit in the Prophets,” JBL 78 (1959) 285–95.
64. Interestingly, Hebrew uses the verbal form of byr in a manner similar to its
use in the Sefîre Treaty III 26: “If my son contends (bry) and if my grandson contends
and if my offspring contends with your offspring about Tal’ayim and its villages, its
lords. . . .”
65. The precise meaning of the term is not clear here. Normally hla means ‘to
take an oath, to swear’, but it can occasionally suggest the invocation of a curse, i.e., an
imprecation. The former is adopted by Andersen and Freedman, Hosea, 331–37; the
latter by Mays, Hosea, 64.
66. Harper, Amos and Hosea, 250.
148 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

the problem, the list is formally similar to the Decalogue’s moral code,
suggesting that we have here, not just moral lapses, but the transgres-
sion of legal statutes. That Hosea perceived a conceptual link between
these statutory failures and Israel’s religious infidelity is suggested by
the fact that in two cases the resulting punishment was an ebbing of the
land’s productivity (cf. Hos 2:11 and 4:3).
Although Hosea was vexed by the impotent religion of Israel (4:1–
3), his stance toward the priests was even more caustic because, in his
view, they had caused the spiritual crisis (4:4–10). The failure that
sealed their doom (as well as their mothers’ and children’s) was neglect
of their role as the arbiters of t[d to the people: “My people are de-
stroyed for lack of knowledge, because you have rejected knowledge”
(v. 6). The explanation for this priestly impiety apparently stemmed
from their disregard for God’s law, as indicated by v. 6c: trwt jkvtw
μyhla. To summarize our progress more clearly, the priests served as
the arbiters of the μyhlaAt[d that was embodied in the μyhla trwt,
and this law of God contained moral prescriptions similar to those in
the Decalogue. When this information is joined to Hos 8:12, which
speaks of the written hrwt, it seems that Hosea’s hrwt is best under-
stood as a formal collection of written religious statutes that were con-
cerned primarily with ethical standards of behavior. These ethical
standards were not merely prescripts for moral living but were related
both to an intimate relationship with the deity (“to know Yahweh”)
and, as I will argue below, to the concept of covenant.
Although Hosea’s oracle against the priests also included a brief
criticism of Israel’s prophets (v. 5), I find this noteworthy not so much
because of his posture toward the prophets but because, having taken
up Yahweh’s byr with both the religious leaders (priests and prophets)
and the people of Israel, Hosea did not single out the political figures
of the Northern Kingdom. The fact that his jabs at the political elite
were curt and thematically secondary (cf. 1:4; 5:1; 7:3–7; 10:3, 7, 15)
requires an explanation. The best explanation is that Hosea embraced a
rather negative view of the monarchic institution, as suggested by Hos
8:4 and 13:10–11:
They made kings, but not through me. They set up princes, but
without my knowledge. With their silver and gold they made idols
for their own destruction.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 149

Where now is your king, to save you; where are all your princes, to
defend you—those of whom you said, “Give me a king and princes”?
I have given you kings in my anger, and I have taken them away in
my wrath.
Whether Hosea’s negative view of the Northern monarchy was
prompted by an endorsement of Yahweh’s kingship, as Wolff has sug-
gested, is debatable. 67 But it seems that he did reject the institution of
kingship and that his concept of identity embraced political structures
grounded in Israel’s religious life, namely, in its priests and prophets.
Thus Hosea envisioned a more theocratic kind of arrangement than
kingship could provide, and in this he reveals his proto-Deuteronomic
colors because, like Deuteronomy, he shows very little interest in the
monarchy.
The next unit of our text (vv. 11–14) continues the discussion of
religious themes but moves beyond the criticism of Israel to explore
the religious behaviors and practices that Hosea deemed inappropriate.
The brief catalog of rejected cultic activities includes certain oracular
activities (v. 12), 68 sacrificial rituals on mountaintops and under trees
(v. 13), cult prostitution (twvdq, v. 14), 69 and the use of idols (μybx[).
On six occasions we find that these kinds of practices were condemned
as “harlotry,” which in Hosea is a rhetorical way of saying that some-
one is worshiping other deities (cf. our discussion of Hosea 2). While
this leaves us with the distinct impression that the mono-Yahwists
associated these practices with foreign cults and rejected them for that
reason, it raises a more subtle question. Did Hosea reject practices as-
sociated with other deities only in foreign cultic contexts or also in
67. Wolff, Hosea, 227. Most agree that we have here a rejection of the kingship
institution: Harper, Amos and Hosea, 400; Mays, Hosea, 178.
68. Drinkard argues that the terms μ[ and lqm are references to Asherah. This is
possible but quite difficult to prove (J. F. Drinkard, Jr., “Religious Practices Reflected
in the Book of Hosea,” RevExp 90 [1993] 205–18).
69. I have stayed with the traditional understanding of hvdq as ‘cult prostitute’,
despite Westenholz’s recent argument, on the basis of Ugaritic and Mesopotamian evi-
dence, that this is erroneous. The translation ‘cult prostitute’ fits the context well here
(including the unambiguous term, hnz), and Westenholtz’s argument against this un-
derstanding of hvdq in Genesis 38 is not entirely convincing. For a discussion of this
issue, see D. Arnaud, “La prostitution sacrée en Mésopotamie: Le mythe historique?”
RHR 183 (1973) 111–15; M. Astour, “Tamar the Hierodule: An Essay on the Method
of Vestigial Motifs,” JBL 85 (1966) 185–96; J. G. Westenholz, “Tamar, Qedesa, Qa-
distu, and Sacred Prostitution in Mesopotamia,” HTR 82 (1989) 246–65.
 150 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

Yahwistic contexts? The answer to this question is an important one,

because if Hosea rejected these practices in both Yahwistic and non-
Yahwistic contexts, then we might conclude that religious practices
served his community to distinguish proper Israelite worship from for-
eign worship. In other words, religious practices differentiated the or-
thodox ethnoreligious community from heretical outsiders.
The first clue is Hosea’s use of the semantically related concepts of
hnz (‘adulterer’) and πan (‘to commit adultery’). His polemic in 2:4–14
rejected Israel’s pursuit of other gods on the grounds that it was equiva-
lent to spiritual “harlotry” and “adultery” (2:4). The illegitimacy of
these two social practices themselves, as I have pointed out earlier in
this section, was based on the ethical ideals outlined in the hrwt of
God, which explicitly condemned πan and probably by implication the
sexual practices of the hnz. When one turns then to the use of hnz and
πan in the present text (4:14), it would seem that Hosea rejected the
acts of adultery, harlotry, and cult prostitution not merely because they
were being done in non-Yahwistic contexts but because of religious
principle. If so, then by analogy the other practices mentioned in this
text, such as oracular activities with wooden objects, peripheral cultic
activities, and the idolatry involving μybx[, were equally odious to the
prophet and so were not to be associated with authentic Yahwism. As
Yahweh said: wnrwvaw ytyn[ yna μybx[l dw[ ylAhm μyrpa (14:9). So
these practices were, from Hosea’s point of view, “negative indicia”
that distinguished foreign religious practices from Israelite practice.

The Problem of Foreign Alliances: Hosea 7:8–13

Let us go further with this issue of Hosea’s foreign polemic. If he
tended to reject even “minor” foreign religious elements, then it seems
reasonable to ask if we can discern in him a more general tendency to
reject everything of foreign origin, including political relationships. As
in any historical context, it was standard practice in the ancient Near
East to forge political relationships that would promote national secu-
rity and foster, at least from the participants’ perspective, international
stability. As one would expect, our text reflects Israel’s participation in
these diplomatic maneuvers but adds the additional twist that Hosea
objected to this standard practice. Such a break with traditional expec-
tation is noteworthy and invites an investigation. Our passage most

Spread is a pica short

 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 151

likely describes Israel’s helter-skelter foreign policy in the face of

Tiglath-pileser III’s threat to the nation, around 733 b.c.e. This time-
frame suits the context best because it juxtaposes Hoshea’s payment of
Assyrian tribute and the Syro-Ephraimite coalition backed by Egypt. 70
The prophet describes Israel as a “silly dove” that flutters from one al-
liance to another, and this bids us first to see the prophet’s concern that
the nation lacked political vision. But this is only one aspect of his
criticism. For Hosea, the result of these diplomatic activities, which
would from a pragmatic perspective seem to benefit Israel, is actually a
“mixing among the peoples” that is detrimental to the nation’s health:
“Aliens devour his strength, and he knows it not; gray hairs are sprin-
kled upon him, and he knows it not” (7:9). Although the Assyrians
represented the most tangible threat to Israel in those days, as Mays has
pointed, the threat in this case was subtle, insidious, and on-going—
not a threat to the future but a disease of the present. 71 Israel’s pursuit
of new military alliances was for Hosea a continuing process of reli-
gious contamination that was bringing the nation ever closer to de-
struction, and we should ask why he felt this way about it.
At one level, we can answer this question on the basis of what fol-
lows in 7:13, that Israel’s destruction was imminent because its en-
dorsement of foreign alliances constituted rebellion ([vp) against
Yahweh. But this holds us at arm’s length from the more important ob-
servation that these alliances were considered rebellion because they
threatened Israel’s exclusive covenantal relationship with Yahweh. 72 I
suggest this on the basis of two lines of evidence; first, Hosea explicitly
identifies the foreign political relationships that he rejects as ‘cove-
nants’ (wtrky rwvaAμ[ tyrbw in 12:2); second, there is substantial evi-
dence—both internal and external—that Hosea’s religious ideology
included a covenantal relationship between Israel and Yahweh.
70. Cf. 2 Kgs 16:7ff.; ANET 283–84. That Egypt was behind these coalitions
against Assyria is a natural assumption and is also suggested by Hanun of Gaza’s flight
to Egypt.
71. Mays, Hosea, 108–9. See also Andersen and Freedman, Hosea, 466–67;
Harper, Amos and Hosea, 302. I strongly disagree with Wolff ’s suggestion that the
problem here is a military threat (Hosea, 126).
72. As I will show later, Isaiah was equally critical of foreign political relation-
ships. Although he, like Hosea, viewed such relationships as “rebellion” against Yah-
weh, he did not utilize covenant imagery to express this relationship, as I am arguing
that Hosea has done.
152 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

This second claim is a matter of contention, since L. Perlitt has ar-

gued that the concept of Israel’s covenant with Yahweh did not date to
hoary antiquity but instead originated with Josiah’s seventh-century
Deuteronomic reforms. 73 Although this perspective has gained a sub-
stantial following in contemporary scholarship, E. W. Nicholson has
raised some important objections to Perlitt’s thesis. At the center of the
covenant controversy is the book of Hosea, a situation that is the result
of two simple facts. First, the continuing debate about the date of the
pentateuchal sources has made their witness suspect, so that their wit-
ness to Israel’s covenant tradition cannot provide a concrete dating of
the tradition. Second, Hosea dates prior to the seventh-century water-
shed date suggested by Perlitt and, contrary to Perlitt’s view, appears on
the surface to embrace covenant ideology. As one might expect, Perlitt
claims that Hosea’s apparent references to covenant are redactional,
and Nicholson claims that they are not. So we should properly begin
by outlining Perlitt’s reasons for rejecting them. The texts in question,
Hos 6:7 and 8:1, read as follows:
But at Adam they transgressed (wrb[) the covenant (tyrb); there
they dealt faithlessly with me (6:7).
Set the trumpet to your lips, for a vulture is over the house of the
Lord, because they have broken (wrb[) my covenant (ytyrb), and
transgressed (w[vp) my law (ytrwt) (8.1).
Perlitt argues that 6:7 does not refer to a broken covenant with Yah-
weh but with some other nation or group, a tyrb like the one with
Assyria mentioned in Hos 12:2. For Perlitt, the sense of 6:7 is like the
sense of Hos 10:4: “They utter mere words; with empty oaths they
make covenants (tyrb); so judgment springs up like poisonous weeds
in the furrows of the field.” 74 Perlitt views 8:1 as a Deuteronomistic
addition because ytyrb ‘my covenant’ is characteristic of the Deuter-
onomistic sources. But such an argument is somewhat circular and
runs the risk of saying “berîtî is Deuteronomistic because berîtî is Deu-
teronomistic.” 75

73. L. Perlitt, Bundestheologie im Alten Testament (WMANT 36; Neukirchen-

Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1969). For his discussion of tyrb in Hosea, see pp.
139–52.
74. Ibid., 143.
75. D. J. McCarthy, “Berît in Old Testament History and Theology,” Bib 53
(1972) 114.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 153

E. W. Nicholson’s response to Perlitt’s analysis of the evidence

from Hosea is persuasive, especially in light of my contextual analysis
above. 76 First, Nicholson points out that tyrb in Hos 6:7 cannot be a
reference to transgressions against foreigners because the surrounding
context is concerned only with Israel’s internal ethical failures (6:8),
which stand in contrast to the dsj and μyhla t[d that Israel ought to
possess (6:9). Second, Nicholson points out that the grammar of 6:7
clearly shows that the transgression was against Yahweh rather than a
breaching of a political agreement. Perlitt would counter, with appar-
ent support from Ezek 17:11–21, that the breach of a foreign treaty
was equivalent to treachery against Yahweh (Ezek 17:20). 77 However,
as I have already shown and as Nicholson points out, Hosea does not
accept the validity of foreign covenants in the first place, and so the
evidence from Ezekiel does not apply here. All of this makes it difficult
to view Hos 6:7 as other than Israel’s transgression (rb[) of its cove-
nant with Yahweh, and the context implies that this transgression was
closely related to Israel’s failure to adhere to ‘law’ (hrwt).
This implicit connection between law and covenant in 6:7 is made
explicit in 8:1: “they have broken my covenant (ytyrb wrb[), and
transgressed my law (ytrwt w[vp)’. Perlitt argues that this is not
evidence of an eighth-century covenant tradition but rather a Deuter-
onomistic addition, as suggested by the use of ytyrb, supposedly a
Deuteronomistic feature. But the ytyrb terminology occurs only six
times in Deuteronomy and Dtr combined. 78 And the parallel phrase
w[vp ytrwt l[w is peculiar to Hosea and is never used in the Deuter-
onomistic corpus, even though there are many occasions when it
would have been appropriate. The only possible argument left against
8:1 is its reference to the hwhy tyb ‘the house of Yahweh’, which might
indicate a later Judean context associated with cult centralization (i.e.,
Josianic redaction). But this is slender evidence upon which to build a
case, first because the singular noun would fit Hosea’s context in either
a collective sense or with reference to a particular cultic site (like Amos,
who describes Bethel as the “king’s sanctuary” and as the “temple of
the kingdom” in 7:13); second, Hos 9:4, which is normally accepted as
76. I am referring to the evidence that Hosea rejected foreign covenants for reli-
gious reasons. My discussion of Nicholson’s argument is based on his God and His
People: Covenant Theology in the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986) 179–88.
77. Perlitt, Bundestheologie im Alten Testament, 143–44.
78. See Deut 31:16, 20; Josh 7:11; Judg 2:11, 20; 1 Kgs 11:11.
154 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

an authentic Hosean text, 79 uses hwhy tyb as well. So far, then, the the-
sis that Hosea embraced a Yahwistic covenantal ideology has faired
rather well. Furthermore, this argument can be strengthened by an ex-
amination of the comparative materials, the closest example being the
eighth-century Aramaic inscriptions unearthed at Sefîre.
The Aramaic inscriptions of Sefîre (AIS), first published in 1931,
preserve the texts of three treaties made by a north Syrian ruler of Ar-
pad at approximately the time of Hosea’s ministry in Israel. 80 The text’s
geographical, chronological, and linguistic affinities to Hosea’s histori-
cal context make it an ideal source of comparative data. Here I will as-
sume as a working hypothesis that Hosea’s perspective did include
covenantal ideology. Whether the data will support this assumption
should be evaluated on the basis of the relative strengths and weak-
nesses of the perceived similarities, but in my view the evidence shows
that the two documents share both form-critical and lexical similari-
ties, and that they also employ similar imagery.
Form-critically, several similarities should be noted. First, both
Hosea and AIS use a technical term in reference to international trea-
ties: in Hosea tyrb (in 12:2) and in AIS yd[ (I 1ff.). (1) In each case,
the concluding of a treaty is characterized as ‘cutting’ a treaty: tyrb
trk in Hosea and yd[ rzg in AIS (see Hos 10:4, 12:2; AIS I 7). (2) In
both texts byr serves as a technical term for controversies that arise be-
tween the treaty’s parties (Hos 2:4, 4:1; AIS III 26): in AIS as a verbal
form and in Hosea as both a verb and a noun. (3) Both texts refer to
the function of a written text within the covenant/treaty context (Hos
8:12; AIS II c 1ff.). And (4) in each case the terms of the treaty are
enforced by the witnessing deities (Hos 8:15: ymyAta hyl[ ytdqpw
μyl[bh; Hos 7:2: wyh ynP dgn μhyll[m; AIS I a 25–6: hm lk ddh ˚sy
lm[ hm clw ˆymvbw qrab hyjl; AIS I a 7–8: ˚drm μdq rzg yz ˆla ayd[w
lgrn μdq).
In terms of imagery and vocabulary, the following similarities be-
tween Hosea and AIS should be noted. In both Hosea and AIS, the im-
agery of a wife stripped naked as a harlot (Hosea hnz; AIS, hynz) is used
to describe the consequences of covenant infidelity (Hos 2:1ff.; AIS I
79. Harper, Amos and Hosea, clx; Mays, Hosea, 125–27. Wolff views hwhy tyb as
an addition to 9:4 precisely because he thinks it does not fit Hosea’s context. However,
for some reason he accepts the phrase in 8:1.
80. I will be referring to Fitzmyer’s text, The Aramaic Inscriptions of Sefîre (BibOr
19/A; rev. ed.; Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1995).
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 155

40–42). 81 Added to this punishment could be attacks from wild beasts

and various agricultural disasters (Hos 2:8–9; AIS I 27–32). Correc-
tion by the sword (brj) was also a possible measure of discipline (Hos
7:16, 11:6; AIS III 13–14), including the avenging of blood for those
killed outside of the treaty’s terms (cf. Hos 1:4: la[rzy ymdAta ytdqpw
awhy tybAl[; AIS III 11: yanc dy ˆm ymd μqtw). In both cases, the mili-
tary power of those unfaithful to the treaty’s terms would be eliminated
when the witnessing deity or deities would ‘break the bow’ (tvq rbv
and atvq rbv) of the offender (Hos 1:5; AIS I 38). The infidelities
that could prompt such retributions varied, but included deception
(Hos 7:13; AIS III 4–6) as well as actions, expressions, or even
thoughts of rebellion (Hos 4:7, 7:13–15; AIS I 26–7, III 1–2), particu-
larly focusing attention on the heart (bl/bbl) of those involved in the
treaty arrangement (Hos 10:2; AIS II b 5–6). Like AIS, Hosea used the
natural pairing of “heaven and earth,” which served as treaty witnesses
in AIS (II 11–12) but were adapted to Hosea’s mono-Yahwism in Hos
2:21: “And in that day, says the Lord, I will answer the heavens and
they shall answer the earth.” 82 The many similar features shared by Ho-
sea and AIS are too numerous to attribute to coincidence, especially
when one considers that with both Hosea and AIS we are dealing with
a relatively small textual corpus. These similarities, coupled with the
close geographical and chronological relationship between the texts,
make it all but certain that Hosea freely utilized covenant imagery to
express his understanding of Israel’s relationship with Yahweh.
If one supposes, as I think the evidence shows, that Hosea utilized
covenant imagery in his work, then this raises another question: was
this purely a matter of the prophet’s creative discourse or was Hosea’s
theology influenced by a formal covenant arrangement? Our answer
to this question will largely determine whether we should see the
prophet’s work as the “headwater” of covenantal Yahwism or rather as
standing in an older covenantal tradition that preceded him. Let us be-
gin this part of our discussion with my previous observation, that Ho-
sea appears to have used this covenant imagery in close conjunction

81. The imagery in Hosea is more properly associated with a divorce proceeding.
The natural similarities between marriage agreements and treaties probably accounts
for the use of common imagery.
82. This similarity suggests the possibility that hn[, usually translated here as
‘answer’, should instead be rendered in terms of its common secondary meaning, ‘to
witness’.
156 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

with the concept of hrwt, a religious code that enumerated proper

ethical behavior for those who desired to “know Yahweh.” As Davies
has recognized, this association of covenant with the concrete law of
Yahweh certainly does suggest that one ought to think seriously about
the thesis that Hosea’s religious perspective was informed by some kind
of formal covenant arrangement between Yahweh and Israel. 83 And I
think that we should also agree with Nicholson that Hosea’s covenant
references “have the character of allusions to something familiar both
to Hosea and to his audience,” and this again suggests that we are deal-
ing with something that is referentially concrete rather than with a dis-
cursive creation of the prophet. Still, it can be averred that those who
would argue for a formal eighth-century Yahwistic covenant must pro-
pose and defend a suitable Sitz im Leben for the covenant’s operation
within the community. 84 While I am not entirely in sympathy with
this rationale, since there can be evidence of covenant even in the ab-
sence of evidence about how it functioned, it does make sense to ex-
plore how this covenant might have been worked out, especially in
relation to its cultic features.
While neither Davies nor Nicholson actually explains how such a
covenant might have worked, D. R. Daniels’s recent study does suggest
a context for the expected covenant renewal ceremony. He argues that
renewal of the covenant occurred within the context of the cultic ritu-
als performed on the occasion of both national and local catastro-
phes. 85 Such a ceremony would therefore be characterized by its
irregularity, since it would occur only when disaster highlighted the
broken state of Israel’s covenant relationship with Yahweh. Daniels’s
example of such a renewal context is Hos 2:16–25, which is problem-
atic because it is of questionable provenience and, furthermore, its con-
tents do not firmly locate it in a covenant renewal context. 86 While
Daniels’s suggestion is plausible, therefore, it is only plausible.
Another, perhaps more promising, possibility is presented by the
book of Deuteronomy. Although its limits are debated, it is generally
agreed that an older core of legislation is imbedded within the final

83. Davies, Hosea, 171–72.

84. Nicholson, God and His People, 188.
85. D. R. Daniels, Hosea and Salvation History (BZAW 191; Berlin: de Gruyter,
1990) 91–92.
86. Harper, Amos and Hosea clx, 239–46; Jeremias, Der Prophet Hosea, 36–39,
46–52; Rudolph, Hosea, 72–83.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 157

form of Deuteronomy. This core is, furthermore, thought to reflect

Northern provenience, which is in keeping with both Hosea’s proto-
Deuteronomistc outlook and the “decalogue-like” legislation reflected
in Hosea. This raises an important question: is it a coincidence that
Hosea associates law with covenant and that Deuteronomy, in its
present form, does the same? The texts in Deuteronomy that are at
once most “Northern” are Deut 11:29–30 and 27:12, which speak of a
covenant renewal ceremony at Mounts Gerizim and Ebal. These texts,
however, are often viewed as secondary to the original Deuteronomic
core, 87 and J. Van Seters has argued, on the basis of their association
with Exod 20:25 and Gen 12:6, that both are additions by the exilic
Yahwist. 88 But even if this is so, it is profitable to ask why the Yahwist
or Deuteronomistic editor, whichever the case may be, would locate
this cultic ritual in a Northern milieu unless the environs of Shechem
were known already for their association with covenant renewal cere-
monies. Since no clear consensus about the extent of the original Deu-
teronomy has been reached, it is difficult to answer these questions.
Nevertheless, I tend to agree with Mayes that the “existence in pre-
Deuteronomic time of a covenant tradition is suggested . . . by the
strong association of covenant ideas with Shechem.” 89 I think that one
can find evidence of a Northern context in which covenant renewal
ceremonies took place prior to the fall of Samaria, even if we do not
know exactly how it worked or how much time had elapsed between
the last formal ceremony and Hosea’s references to it. After all, one
does not need a working covenant renewal ceremony to have a cove-
nant idea. One needs only a tradition about covenant, and it seems
quite clear to me that eighth-century Israel knew such a tradition.
However, none of this addresses the question of which eighth-
century community we should associate with this covenant tradition.
After all, here we are dealing with Hosea, with law, and with covenant
ideas that are the precursors to Deuteronomy, 90 and we must consider

87. A. D. H. Mayes, Deuteronomy (NCBC; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans,

1979) 218, 343–44.
88. J. Van Seters, In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the
Origins of Biblical History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983; repr., Winona
Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1997) 328.
89. Mayes, Deuteronomy, 68.
90. Although an early edition of the Deuteronomic Code may have existed prior
to the time of Hosea.
158 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

the very real possibility that only a small community within ancient
Israel actually adhered strongly to these ideas. In my mind it would
seem that we are dealing with a rather old but familiar covenant tradi-
tion, perhaps associated with Shechem, that Hosea and his associates
resurrected and amplified in support of their mono-Yahwist agenda. As
the prophet’s polemical stance shows, most Israelites would not have
shared his excitement about the notion of covenant, at least the notion
of covenant as Hosea’s party conceived it. Although I am confident
that Hosea adhered to a preexisting covenant tradition of some sort, it
is difficult to offer very much detail about this eighth-century phenom-
enon. In spite of this limitation, there remain some related issues that
need to be explored more fully, and one of them is the prophet’s the-
ology of Israel’s homeland.

Land Theology in Hosea 9:1–3

Because of the ideological stance of Deuteronomy, there has been a
long-standing interest in the concept of land and its theological nexus
with covenant in ancient Israel. Thus our interest in this text stems first
from the fact that this early source discloses to us one of the earliest (if
not the earliest) portraits of Israel’s land theology. Perhaps even more
significant for a study of ethnicity, however, is the fact that the concept
of homeland has often been emphasized as an important component of
group identity, and we ought to see what role it played in the Israelite
sense of identity. 91 Hos 9:1–3, which is brief and relatively free of prob-
lems, levels against the Israelites the now familiar charge that they have
played the harlot and adds the familiar warning that, as a result, the fe-
cundity of the land will fail. In this respect its theology is like the the-
ology of Hosea 2, although it adds to our growing list of unacceptable
religious practices its condemnation of cultic activity at the ‘threshing
floors’ (μrg), which we should apparently tie to the Baal cult. 92

91. H. Isaacs, “Basic Group Identity,” in Ethnicity: Theory and Experience (ed.
N. Glazer and D. P. Moynihan; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975) 29–52;
F. W. Riggs (ed.), Ethnicity: Concepts and Terms Used in Ethnicity Research (Interna-
tional Conceptual Encyclopedia for the Social Sciences 1; Honolulu: COCTA, 1985)
30–37. For a helpful but general discussion of land theology in the Hebrew Bible, see
Walter Brueggemann, The Land: Place as Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith
(OBT 1; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977).
92. Wolff, Hosea, 154. Here, as elsewhere, Wolff sees these activites in light of an
ancient sex-cult associated with fertility religion.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 159

The rationale behind Hosea’s condemnation of Israel’s Baal wor-

ship is clarified by his comment in 9:3, that Israel “will not remain
long in the land of the Lord (hwhy ≈ra).” For Hosea, the land that Israel
inhabited belonged to Yahweh, and this necessarily precluded the wor-
ship of Baal and other deities because the land was not Baal’s land. Just
as Baal was not welcome in Yahweh’s land, likewise those who polluted
the land with Baal worship were to be exiled. Exile from the land was a
serious consequence, since it not only made Israel a refugee but also
sentenced it to life in an unclean and foreign environment (rwvab
lkay amf, 9:3). Care should be taken to distinguish this theology from
later Deuteronomic theologies of land. As M. Köckert’s brief study
shows, Hosea did not view the land as a gift from Yahweh. Rather, the
land was Yahweh’s own possession and Israel his tenant. 93 The theo-
logical overlap in Hosea and the Deuteronomic traditions is that Israel
could remain in the land as long as it was faithful to Yahweh.
It is important to tie together some of the features that we have
noted in Hosea and their relationship to the prophet’s land theology.
For Hosea, failure of the land’s fecundity could be equally attributed to
both non-Yahwistic cultic activities (Hos 2:4ff.) and transgressions of
the ethical principles enumerated in the hrwt of Yahweh (Hos 4:1ff.). 94
Both kinds of rebellion were understood as transgressions of the basic
covenant notions that Hosea embraced, an ideology that demanded,
on the one hand, faithfulness to the ethical principles of law and, on
the other, exclusive devotion to Yahweh against all competing deities.
Moreover, this exclusive ideology extended beyond the religious realm
to the political sphere, where Hosea and his party also objected to Is-
rael’s relationships with foreign nations.

Hosea and Israel’s Ancient Traditions

Before summarizing my work in Hosea, I must remark on Hosea’s
many allusions to the ancient Israelite traditions. As H. R. Isaacs has
pointed out, a group’s perception of its past and origins is a powerful
component of identity, particularly any supposed ethnic identity, 95
93. M. Köckert, “Jahwe, Israel und das Land bei den Propheten Amos und Ho-
sea,” Gottesvolk: Beiträge zu einen Thema biblischer Theologie: Festschrift S. Wagner (ed.
Arndt Meinhold and Rudiger Lux; Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1991) 43–74.
94. A similar conclusion is argued by J. Van Seters, Prologue to History (Louisville:
Westminster/John Knox, 1992) 231.
95. Isaacs, “Basic Group Identity.”
160 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

and we are fortunate that Hosea offers us a number of details in his

recollections of Israelite tradition. 96 Specifically, I think that we need
to discuss Hosea’s perspective on Israelite origins, on the progress of
Israelite history, and on the place of Judah and tribal traditions within
this history.

The Origin Traditions. The prophet mentions two different ori-

gin traditions: (1) Israel as the progeny of a forefather and (2) Israel as
a people brought up from Egypt by Yahweh’s prophet. Although both
traditions were well known in Hosea’s day, Hosea embraced the Exo-
dus tradition rather than the Jacob tradition and challenged Israel to
do the same. The prophet’s rejection of the Jacob tradition raises the
question of its historical 97 status for Hosea: did he doubt the tradition’s
veracity or did he simply dismiss it as a normative example of proper
behavior? And if he did reject the tradition, what then becomes of eth-
nic sentiment within the prophet’s concept of identity? First, it seems
doubtful that Hosea rejected the Jacob tradition outright, since he used
the patriarch’s repentance as an example for Israel to emulate. Second,
even if he did reject the tradition, it is very unlikely that this would
completely undermine his perception that Israel constituted a people
who shared a common ancestry, even if that ancestry could no longer
be conceptualized as a “forefather” but rather as a group of “fore-
fathers,” as seems to be the case in Hos 9:10:
Like grapes in the wilderness, I found Israel
Like the first fruit on the fig tree, in its first season, I saw your fathers
(μkytwba).
This parallelism equates Israel with the ancient fathers from the days of
the wilderness. The fact that Hosea situates these “fathers” within the
Exodus/Wilderness tradition, which he presents as a competing tradi-

96. The most complete study of the historical traditions in Hosea, as well as in
Amos and Isaiah, is J. Vollmer’s Geschichtliche Rückblicke und Motive. In addition to
the works I cite during my discussion, see also the following: P. Arnold, “Hosea and the
Sin of Gibeah,” CBQ 51 (1989) 447–60; and for Dutch readers, A. Breytenbach, “Pen-
tateuchtradisies in die boek Hosea,” HTS 48 (1992) 645–62.
97. Throughout this discussion, it is important to keep in mind the sense in which
I use the term history. I do not mean history in the modern sense, in which one evaluates
critically events of the past on the basis of evidence and probability. I am instead refer-
ring to the common distinctions made apart from critical inquiry—“then . . . now,”
“once upon a time . . . today”—distinctions that are as valid in myth as in history.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 161

tion to the patriarchal tradition, shows that these fathers should proba-
bly not be equated with the patriarchal figures mentioned in the
pentateuchal sources. 98
Wolff has suggested that this text actually refers to a “finding” ori-
gin tradition that was independent from the Exodus tradition. 99 Al-
though this is possible, I find it unlikely for several reasons. Davies has
pointed out that “like finding grapes” is a part of the imagery and not
necessarily a reference to an additional origin tradition. 100 One could
argue that if I am willing to admit two origin traditions—the Jacob
tradition and the Exodus tradition—why not go the whole way and
add a third? The reason is that the Jacob and Exodus traditions are
quite different: one begins with a single forefather and the other with
the people as a whole. In other words, although I can see Hosea em-
bracing two quite different origin traditions, such as the Exodus and
Jacob traditions, it does not seem very natural for him to embrace two
different origin traditions of the corporate type, one associated with
Egypt and the other with the Wilderness. If ever these traditions ex-
isted independently, they would have quickly been assimilated to each
other, as appears to be the case already in Hosea. The geographical
proximity of the wilderness region and Egypt creates a certain ambigu-
ity, so that one can refer to the entire corporate origin tradition by re-
ferring to one place or the other, as in the case of Deut 32:10, where
God finds Jacob in the desert.” 101

Hosea’s Philosophy of History. As Vollmer has suggested, Hosea

puts the whole of Israel’s history from the earliest times up to the
present before his hearers. 102 Further, it is my contention that Hosea’s
view of Israelite tradition, from its beginnings until his own time, re-
flects a rather clear theology of progressive degeneration, a degeneration

98. If one views Hosea as proto-Deuteronomic, as most do, then this observa-
tion seems to support the conclusion of T. Römer that “the fathers” of Deuteronomy
originally had no connection with the three patriarchs of Genesis. For his specific com-
ments on this text, which agree with my analysis, see Israels Väter, 531–32. For general
arguments contra Römer, see N. Lohfink, Die Väter Israels in Deuteronomium, mit
einer Stellungnahme von Thomas Römer (OBO 111; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ru-
precht, 1991).
99. Wolff, Hosea, 163–64.
100. Davies, Hosea, 226.
101. Mayes, Deuteronomy, 380–85.
102. Vollmer, Geschichtliche Rückblicke und Motive, 55.
162 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

that could be reversed only by a return to the day of Israel’s origins in

Egypt and the wilderness, to the days before kingship. This theology of
degeneration necessarily implies that such a deterioration can be de-
tected within Hosea’s treatment of Israel’s religious, political, and eco-
nomic life, and I will attempt to demonstrate this.
We should begin our historical survey with the time before Israel’s
entry into the Kulturland, when, according to Vollmer, we have the
golden age of Yahweh’s relationship with Israel. 103 This was the harmo-
nious day of Israel’s youth in Egypt and the wilderness, when the
people were responsive to Yahweh’s call (2:17) and when he provided
every need for them (13:6). However, the religious degeneration of the
people followed closely on the heels of this idyllic venue, as 13:5–6
indicates:
It was I (Yahweh) who knew you in the wilderness, and in the land of
drought; but when they had fed to the full, they were filled, and their
heart was lifted up; therefore they forgot me. 104
When Hosea claimed that Israel “forgot Yahweh,” he had a particular
event in mind, namely, the wilderness apostasy at Baal-peor that he al-
ready mentioned in Hos 9:10. Although this tradition was also known
to other sources in the Hebrew Bible, Hosea’s version of it reads like
this:
Like grapes in the wilderness I found Israel. Like the first fruit on the
fig tree, in its first season, I saw your fathers. But they came to Baal-
peor and consecrated themselves to Baal, 105 and became detestable
like the thing they loved.
This text historically juxtaposes the golden age in the wilderness with
its more sinister element, the ancestral apostasy after Baal. 106 This is
important for two reasons. First, it helps to explain the origins of Baal-

103. Ibid.
104. Contra most commentators, Vollmer takes ynwjkv ˆkAl[ ‘therefore they for-
got me’ as a gloss because it does not conform to the poetic meter he finds in the text.
Even if this is the case, the context of 13:6 demands that the clause correctly reflects the
meaning of μbl μryw ‘and their heart became proud’ (ibid., 66–67).
105. The Hebrew reads tvb, but some view this as a copyist revision from an
original l[b (e.g., Harper, Amos and Hosea, 336–37). I follow Mays, Vollmer, and
Wolff in retaining tvb, but it remains obvious that Baal is the deity in question.
106. Even if one is inclined to view the “wilderness discovery” tradition, along
with Wolff, as separate from the Exodus origin tradition, this does not substantively af-
fect my argument here.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 163

ism, for if Israel is living in the land of Yahweh, as Hosea has already
suggested, then we need to know how this foreign god has gained a
foothold within the ethnic community. According to the prophet’s his-
tory, this foothold was gained among the Israelites prior to their entry
into Yahweh’s land at the foreign cult-center of Baal-peor. The second
reason that this text is important is that it reveals a pattern that is a
common one in Hosea and from which we can derive his typological
paradigm of Israel’s history: Yahweh’s gift of prosperity tends to be fol-
lowed by Israel’s religious apostasy and subsequent degeneration. 107 A
similar idea is expressed in Hos 10:1, which tells us that the more Israel
prospered economically, “the more altars it built” and the more it “im-
proved” its cult pillars. This pattern of degeneration was extended to
Israel’s religious leaders as well, whose increasing numbers (like the
growing count of pillars and altars) represented not only economic
prosperity but also an increase in the proliferation of evil (cf. Hos 4:7).
Although in Hosea this degenerative paradigm is somewhat frag-
mented and unsystematic, and although it is unencumbered by Deu-
teronomic phraseology, when we compare these theological features to
a text like Deut 8:12–14, the proto-Deuteronomic character of Hosea’s
theology of history becomes clear:
When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for
the good land he has given you. Be careful not to forget the Lord
your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees
that I am giving you this day. Otherwise, when you eat and are satis-
fied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your
herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all
you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you
will forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of
slavery.
From this we might deduce that although Hosea did not write a his-
tory, his view of history (or at least the views of his community) may
have played a pivotal role in the development of Hebrew historiog-
raphy. This is not to say that one should view the Deuteronomistic
History as nothing more than an extended application of Hosea’s phi-
losophy to the events of Israel’s past, for the Deuteronomist’s work was
certainly of a more complex nature than what we see in Hosea. But it

107. As I will point out, Amos was even more preoccupied with the connection
between material prosperity and the appearance of social evils.
164 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

does mean that one does not begin looking for nascent conceptions of
Hebrew historiography in the historiographical sources. We must be-
gin with the earliest sources that reflect a historical perspective, and our
analysis of Hosea shows that the early concepts of Israelite history were
formed, at least in part, within the decidedly ethnic paradigm of Ho-
sea’s community.
As I have implied already, not only did the religious life of Israel
follow this degenerative historical paradigm but its political life as well.
I think that there is a natural tendency among scholars to view my dis-
tinction between the “religious” and “political” with skepticism since,
after all, in ancient Israel we are not dealing with a “secular” society.
But it was Hosea himself who implied that the priests and prophets
were Israel’s legitimate leaders and, in doing so, he rhetorically classi-
fied the monarchy as a secular institution. Thus the distinction be-
tween political and religious authorities was his. But it is too simple to
notice only that Hosea viewed the monarchy with suspicion, for there
is a decidedly diachronic element in his perspective. He knows of a
time in Israel’s early history when there was no king, and when this is
viewed in conjunction with his negative feelings about kingship we
may infer that he viewed the emergence of kingship as a degenerative
affair. Hosea’s political views were in keeping with his more general
theory of history, that Israel had degenerated appreciably since its ori-
gins in the wilderness, in large part due to its continuing economic and
political prosperity.
If prosperity had contributed to the continuing decline of Israel,
then we should expect at some point that the prophet would hope to
undo this prosperous trajectory, and he did so in 12:10: “I am the Lord
your God from the land of Egypt; I will again make you dwell in tents,
as in the days of the appointed feast (d[wm).” Regardless of how one
takes d[wm here, whether as a reference to the tabernacle or as a refer-
ence to a religious festival, our text shows that Israel’s early history was
a nomadic one and that chastisement from Yahweh might include a re-
turn to that nomadic lifestyle. Or to put it another way, if material
prosperity had caused Israel’s religious infidelity, then a return to eco-
nomic simplicity might secure anew its religious affections. It is inter-
esting to speculate about how this nomadic “tent-dwelling” tradition
might have originated. We could see in it (and I think that we should)
a model of social progress such as in Greece, whereby societies natu-
rally progress from a primitive nomadism to more advanced sedentary
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 165

living. We could equally attribute it to the “collective memory” of Is-

rael and see in it a dim reflection of Israel’s early history. Above all, we
should certainly consider the relationship between this tradition in Ho-
sea and the contemporary Neo-Assyrian tradition that the early kings
lived in tents. As I pointed out in the discussion of AKL, the Neo-
Assyrian tradition was only accurate to a point. It did preserve a mem-
ory of Old Babylonian nomadic tribal groups, but this was a somewhat
distorted memory because, by the Neo-Assyrian period, these Amorite
tribes had become the early nomadic kings of the Assyrian tradition.
What this tells us, I think, is that we cannot confidently make use of
Hosea’s “tent tradition” in our quest to discover early Israel. However,
we can draw the valuable inference that by the eighth-century b.c.e.
the Israelites, like the Assyrians, already viewed their past as a period of
historical progress from a nomadic to a sedentary lifestyle. Whether the
Israelites borrowed this convention from the Assyrians or developed
the tradition independently is difficult to say. But whatever the case, it
seems clear that Hosea did not view this socioeconomic progress as evi-
dence of religious progress, and in this respect his ideas remind us of a
Mari text that extols the benefit of the nomadic life and of its simplic-
ity. 108 For Hosea the loss of the nomadic life was just one in a number
of degenerative shifts that could be associated with the fundamental
decline of Israel:

1. From Yahweh 1. To Baal

2. From wilderness 2. To arable land
3. From divine provisions 3. To haughty prosperity
4. From few people 4. To many
5. From few priests 5. To many
6. From no king 6. To kingship
7. From few cultic altars 7. To many
8. From nomadism 8. To sendentary living

This series of changes reflected Hosea’s basic understanding of Israel’s

history. Beginning with the entry into the arable land, Israel had
turned away from Yahweh and had regressively moved away from him
over the course of its corporate life. The solution to this problem was

108. P. Marello, “Vie nomade,” in Florilegium marianum: Recueil d’études en l’hon-

neur de Michel Fleury (ed. J.-M. Durand; Memoires de N.A.B.U. 1; Paris: SEPOA,
1992) 115–25.
166 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

none other than a radical reversal of the tradition process, whereby Is-
rael could return to the “golden age” of its origins in Egypt: 109
Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her back into the wil-
derness, and speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her her vine-
yards, and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. And there she
shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came
out of the land of Egypt. (Hos 2:16–17)
Hosea believed that this dramatic reversal of direction would require a
substantial change in the religious, political, and social fabric of ancient
Israel, and we can surmise that many in Israel did not share his sympa-
thies or agenda. But he remained dedicated to the vision that Israel
might turn away from its historical degeneration and recoup the glory
of its past, when the people of Israel knew Yahweh and adhered to his
law. The prophet called upon Israel to reestablish the ethnic bound-
aries that had long ago protected them from foreign religious and
political influences and to emulate, not the stubborn disobedient fore-
father Jacob, but the faithful prophet who led Israel out of Egypt.
One issue that has eluded my brief discussion of Hosea and his his-
torical allusions up to this point is the problem of Judah and its con-
nection to the Northern Kingdom. After all, the tradition that Judah
and Israel together originally composed a single political entity is an
important one in the Hebrew Bible. However, once the supposedly
post-Hosean redactional materials have been excluded, there is very
little said about Judah in Hosea. With the exception of 5:16, which is a
reprimand of Judah for its border encroachments into Northern terri-
tory, our understanding of the historical relationship between Israel
and Judah is scarcely elucidated by this prophetic collection. For that
we will have to turn to Amos and Isaiah. There is a brief reference to
the ‘tribes of Israel’ (larcyAyfbv) in 5:9, and although I suppose
someone might argue that this collectivity implies Judah, such a con-
clusion seems altogether reckless and careless in the absence of other
references to Judah in the book. Nevertheless this phrase does tell us
that Hosea’s model of Israelite society included the concept of tribal
composition, as we also saw in our examination of Deborah’s Song. If
we are curious about the details of this eighth-century tribal composi-
tion, however, we cannot depend on SDeb, because a rather long chro-
109. As argued by Y. Hoffman, “A North Israelite Typological Myth and a Judean
Historical Tradition: The Exodus in Hosea and Amos,” VT 39 (1989) 169–82.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 167

nological span probably separates Hosea from the song. But we are
fortunate to have the collection of Deuteronomy 33 (along with the as-
sociated tribal list), and the early edition of that collection should be
dated no later, I think, than to the eighth century. 110 We will examine
these texts in the next chapter.

Summary
This examination of Hosea has yielded the following results. It is
clear that ethnic sentiments were an important component of identity
in the Northern Kingdom, as demonstrated by the fact that the people
shared a common ancestor, Jacob, and a common historical origin in
Egypt. These traditions are similar to the Greek traditions, both in the
general sense and in the particular, and they are quite different from
both Assyrian and Egyptian literary traditions. Although we might
speculate about the origins of these ethnic traditions, and I will do so
at the conclusion of this chapter, we can safely conclude at this junc-
ture that Israel’s ethnic traditions already existed prior to Hosea’s min-
istry. This conclusion squares well with my contention that ethnicity
was probably a factor in the ninth-century (or earlier) composition of
SDeb.
But the fact that ethnicity was one aspect of Israel’s social identity
does not necessarily mean that the boundaries associated with these
ethnic sentiments were particularly intense among most Israelites. It
was perhaps only in the case of Hosea and his (small?) party that antip-
athies for foreign influence were strong, as we see in his rejection of
gods, religious practices, and ethical mores that failed to pass his tests
for being Yahwistic and Israelite. His distaste for foreign influence ex-
tended beyond what we might call the religious realm into the political,
so that he also objected to treaty relationships with foreign nations on
the grounds that they somehow threatened the covenant relationship
he envisioned between Yahweh and Israel. While these features share
many traits with later Hebrew texts, particularly with popular notions
assumed by Jeremiah and Deuteronomy, in Hosea we seem to have a
peripheral, minority position shared by a small community of mono-
Yahwists who had radicalized devotion to Israel’s national deity. This
ethnoreligious movement was responsible for combining preexisting

110. For a discussion of the “tribal list” tradition in the Hebrew Bible, see
pp. 267–272, 297–299.
 168 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

ethnic traditions with a new (or resurrected?) brand of mono-Yahwism,

the goal being to utilize and intensify those ethnic sentiments in sup-
port of their religious program. We should therefore conclude that the
primary concerns of the proto-Deuteronomic movement were more
religious than ethnic in character. And although the Northern state of
Israel ultimately disappeared from the historical scene, these mono-
Yahwists did not. At least in certain ways, therefore, the effort to secure
and preserve the identity of this religious party succeeded.

Ethnicity and Identity in Amos

Our study of Hosea provided a glimpse, albeit a Northern one,
into the contextual situation that faced the prophet Amos during his
ministry. Although Amos’s roots were in the South, he provides us not
only with a partial window into eighth-century Judean identity but
also with a Judean perception of the surrounding nations, including Is-
rael. This affords us the opportunity to clarify the various concepts of
identity represented in the eighth-century social matrix of Palestine
and to evaluate the role that ethnicity played within them. One of our
working assumptions will be that Amos was already familiar with the
popular ethnic traditions of the Northern Kingdom (an assumption
that the evidence will bear out). This means that our focus should be
duly placed on the way that he tends to characterize the non-Israelite
and non-Judean populations. 111 If we wanted to put our primary con-
cerns in the form of three questions, I would suggest these. First, we
have established the presence of ethnic sentiments within the eighth-
century Northern context, but now we must ask, to what extent did Is-
rael’s neighbors share in this mode of identity? Second, what contribu-
tion does the prophet make toward our understanding of Northern
identity, particularly with regard to the various ancestral figures known
to us from the biblical corpus? And third, as we come to understand
Judean identity from the prophecies of Amos, we should ask: what role
does Israel play in this sense of identity and what function, if any, does
ethnicity serve within Judean thought?

111. Hosea’s prophetic work presumed the ethnic sentiments of his audience, es-
pecially their familiarity with the Jacob tradition. Amos refers to the Northern King-
dom as “Jacob” on six occasions (3:13, 6:8, 7:2, 7:5, 8:7, 9:8) and also refers to “Isaac”
(7:9, 16), which makes his acquaintance with the Israelite forefather traditions a virtual
certainty. The degree of his familiarity with these traditions is more difficult to assess
and will be discussed below.

Spread is nine points long

 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 169

Our discussion of these questions is necessarily, but temporarily,

preempted by a few comments about the redactional history of Amos.
More than any other study, H. W. Wolff ’s commentary has been re-
sponsible for defining and clarifying the lines of critical research in
Amos studies. 112 In general terms, although there is a strong tendency
to exclude the oracles against Tyre, Edom, and Judah, we can say that
only in the case of the superscription and Amos 9:11–15 is there un-
qualified agreement that Amos is the work of later Judean editors. 113 In
addition to these texts, Wolff has identified a number of minor addi-
tions and editorial changes that have been made in Amos, but none of
these substantially alters the texts of my selected readings. 114 Our in-
quiry can therefore move ahead with minimal obstruction. My pri-
mary focus in Amos will be the “nations oracles” in chaps. 1–2, and I
will be giving particular attention to the place of ethnicity in Amos’s
representation of those nations. We will also examine three texts in
chaps. 6, 7, and 9 that describe, respectively, the social stratification
present in Northern society, the ancestral figures known to Amos, and
the prophet’s evaluation of Israel’s supposedly unique Exodus origin
tradition. Although I investigated Hosea’s view of history extensively, I
will not do so with the book of Amos, primarily because there is very
little in Amos from which to build a case. I agree with Vollmer that
Amos’s historical picture is incomplete. 115

Oracles against the Nations: Amos 1:3–2:16

The most pressing introductory issue presented by the oracles is
that three of the eight (the oracles against Tyre, Edom, and Judah) are
often viewed as later additions for form-critical, literary, historical, and
ideological reasons. 116 Form-critically, three characteristics of these
112. H. W. Wolff, Joel and Amos (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977) 106–
13. Wolff ’s position in the English edition has changed somewhat from the earlier Ger-
man edition, which listed the following as later additions to the text: 1:1–2; 1:9–11;
2:4–5; 3:1–2; 3:7; 4:13; 5:8–9; 5:25–27; 9:5–6, 11–15.
113. But see S. Paul’s recent commentary, Amos (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: For-
tress, 1991) 288–89.
114. Wolff, Joel and Amos, 106–13.
115. Vollmer, Geschichtliche Rückbliche und Motive, 43–46.
116. Contrary to this near consensus, V. Fritz has asserted that the entire collec-
tion, all eight oracles, is late vaticinia ex eventu. This view has little to commend it and
has been refuted in G. Pfeifer’s recent article. See V. Fritz, “Die Fremdvölkersprüche
des Amos,” VT 37 (1987) 26–38; and G. Pfeifer, “Die Fremdvölkersprüche des
Amos—später vaticinia ex eventu?” VT 38 (1988) 230–33.
170 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

oracles distinguish them from the other oracles to which they are su-
perficially similar: (1) the infinitival clause following Al[ is expanded
with one or more finite verbs, (2) the threat of punishment is brief and
lacks detail, and (3) the concluding hwhy rma is missing. 117 From a lit-
erary point of view, Harper argues that the strophic arrangements of
these oracles differ from the other five oracles. 118 Historically, it is usu-
ally argued that Edom’s mistreatment of Judah in 1:11 is more prop-
erly associated with the exilic period 119 and that Tyre’s ascendancy as
an opponent of Israel in 1:9 dates to the late seventh century. 120 And as
has often been argued (by B. Gosse most recently), the ideology of
these oracles, particularly the oracle against Judah, supposedly betrays
their Deuteronomistic origin. Thus the Judah oracle is thought to con-
tain a cluster of features similar to those of 2 Kgs 17:13–15 (hrwt,
twba, ˚lh, qj, sam, and rmv) and the oracle against Tyre likewise to
be Deuteronomistic in its use of tyrb rkz. 121
S. Paul has argued for the authenticity of all eight oracles. 122 He
points out, for instance, that because Philistia and Tyre are often cited
together in the Hebrew Bible, the Tyrian oracle must be an integral
part of the original prophecy. Likewise, the omission of the Judah
oracle effectively removes the Southern Kingdom from Amos’s purview
and because, as Paul says, this is unlikely, the oracle must also be an au-
thentic one. As for the Edomites, their struggle with Judah does not
117. J. Barton, Amos’s Oracles against the Nations (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1980) 22; Wolff, Joel and Amos, 135–44. H. Reventlow attempts unsuc-
cessfully, via literary gymnastics, to restore a common form to all of the oracles in 1:3ff.
(Das Amt des Propheten bei Amos [FRLANT 8; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1962] 62). Agreeing with the conclusions of Barton and Wolff are J. L. Mays, Amos
(OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969) 22–26; H. Reimer, Richtet auf das Recht!
Studien zur Botschaft des Amos (Stuttgarter Bibelstudien 149; Stuttgart: Katholisches
Bibelwerk, 1992) 28–29; W. Rudolph, Joel, Amos, Obadija, Jona (KAT 13/2; Güters-
loh: Gütersloh Verlagshaus / Gerd Mohn, 1971) 102, 133–37.
118. The oracles against Tyre, Edom, and Judah contain strophes of five and two
lines, while the other oracles contain five, three, and four lines (see Harper, Amos and
Hosea, 12–13).
119. Edom is reprimanded for its aggressive attitude toward Judah only after
Jerusalem’s fall. See Ezekiel 25 and 35 as well as Obadiah 10–14 and Lam 4:21–22.
120. Cf. Isa 23:1–18, Ezekiel 26–29, Joel 4:4ff.
121. See B. Gosse, “Le Recueil d’oracles contre les nations du livre d’Amos et
l’histoire deuteronomique,” VT 38 (1988) 29–30, 32–33. For several relatively late
uses of tyrb rkz, see Lev 26:42–45; Deut 8:18; Josh 4:7; Jer 3:16, 14:21; Ezek 16:60–
61; 1 Chr 16:15; 2 Chr 23:1; Neh 13:29.
122. Paul, Amos, 7–30.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 171

need to be dated to the sixth century, since “skirmishes between Israel

and Edom must have occurred for hundreds of years before Amos.” 123
Paul’s many arguments have merit, and I could add to them that the
distinctive form-critical pattern of the questionable oracles might be
explained by their thematic relationship to each other. In each case, the
concept of brotherhood plays a part in the oracle (Tyre/Edom explicitly,
Judah implicitly), making it possible that the three oracles previously
existed as a collection independent of the other five oracles. But this
does not address the real problem with these texts: their Deuterono-
mistic features. Unlike Hosea, Amos is not a proto-Deuteronomistic
work, and therefore these features must necessarily be viewed with sus-
picion. The Deuteronomistic color, coupled with the other problems
that I have cited above, put some momentum behind the cumulative
argument that these three oracles are not authentic. It is therefore diffi-
cult to agree in an unqualified way with S. Paul or with those who
share his sympathies about these oracles. 124 My methodological desire
to ground this study in unimpeachable sources therefore dictates that I
examine only the five oracles that are, by consensus, authentic: the ora-
cles against Syria, Philistia, Ammon, Moab, and Israel.
Two other problems require attention before these judgment ora-
cles can be properly evaluated. First, on what theoretical basis did
Amos condemn the ‘rebellions’ (μy[vp) of the foreign nations? And
second, why are the oracles arranged in their present order? As J. Bar-
ton has pointed out, the range of possible answers to the first question
is limited to four: 125
1. Nationalism and Covenant: the nations are denounced for oppos-
ing Yahweh’s people, Israel.
123. Ibid., 20. This is possible, but the archaeological record does not lend much
support for the view that Edom existed during the second millennium b.c.e.
124. See Andersen and Freedman, Amos (AB 24A; New York: Doubleday, 1987)
199–218; E. Hammershaimb, Amos: A Commentary (New York: Schocken, 1970) 35–
46; J. H. Hayes, Amos the Eighth-Century Prophet (Nashville: Abingdon, 1988) 52–55;
G. Smith, Amos (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989) 40–42; Stuart, Hosea–Jonah, 308–
9. A. E. Steinmann has recently argued for the authenticity of all eight oracles because
the two oracle forms reflected in the text follow a discernible pattern. The problem
with this is that the Israel oracle does not actually conform to the pattern, thus negat-
ing his argument (Steinmann, “The Order of Amos’s Oracles against the Nations: 1:3–
2:16,” JBL 111 [1992] 683–89). I will review this in detail during my discussion of the
order of these oracles.
125. See Barton, Amos’s Oracles against the Nations, 39–45.
172 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

2. Logical Extension : the moral obligations that Israel owes to Yahweh

apply, by extension, to the surrounding nations, despite the fact
that they have no covenant relationship with Yahweh.
3. Universal Law : all nations are subject to a divine, universal law
because Yahweh’s dominion is over all mankind.
4. International Customary Law: the nations are condemned for
infringing on customs of war accepted or believed to be accepted
by all civilized nations.
Contrary to E. Würthwein, who argues for case #1, the oracles against
Moab and Philistia cannot have been prompted by aggressions against
Israel. 126 Option #2 does no justice to texts like Amos 4:10, 6:2, and
9:7, which highlight the prophet’s universalistic perspective that all
nations are subject to Yahweh on the same grounds. Rather, this notion
of “logical extension” can only help us if it is viewed as a path to the
third option, universal law. About this Mays writes:
Amos sees Yahweh as the sovereign of history who moves nations in
their national careers and can remove them to their earlier spheres
(1:5). By analogy with Yahweh’s relation to Israel, that sovereignty in
the nations’ history furnishes the foundation for their responsibility
to him. It seems clear that for Amos the ethos over which Yahweh
watched was not exhausted in or confined to a particular covenant
legal tradition which was Israel’s possession by special revelation. 127
The conclusion that universal ethical standards are applied by Amos in
these oracles is followed not only by Mays but also, albeit idiosyncrati-
cally, by Paul, Reimer, Reventlow, and Wolff, 128 and it is by far the
most common approach to our problem.
But Barton’s short monograph challenges this conclusion and em-
braces option #4, that the μy[vp which Amos denounces are transgres-
sions of “accepted norms of international conduct.” This can only be
the case if at least two things are true: (1) that the most obvious possi-
bility, the universalistic argument, is invalid; and (2) that Barton can
demonstrate the existence of the internationally recognized norms that
correspond to the crimes Amos denounces. First, Barton’s argument
against the universalistic position is very weak. He writes:

126. E. Würthwein, “Amos-Studien,” ZAW 62 (1950) 10–52.

127. Mays, Amos, 27–28.
128. Paul, Amos, 45; Reimer, Richtet auf des Recht, 31; Reventlow, Das Amt des
Propheten bei Amos, 70; Wolff, Joel and Amos, 152.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 173

If we say that the humanitarian principles the nations are con-

demned for flouting are part of a divine law, we still run the risk of
suggesting that they are condemned for breaking an edict they were
unaware of: for what reason was there to think that God’s will had
been revealed to them? In other words, we shall seem to accuse Amos
of irrationality if we hold that he appealed to a supposed divine
law. . . . 129
If we must so “accuse” Amos, we must necessarily accuse the entire
Deuteronomic movement for its similar condemnation of foreigners
and their idolatry. The fact is that there is nothing surprising about
such a rigid, particularistic view. Barton is right that the foreign nations
have contravened “moral principles which even they should have rec-
ognized,” but there is no compelling reason why universal moral prin-
ciples cannot be the underlying basis of the prophet’s criticism.
Second, Barton has not adequately demonstrated the existence of
international norms that correspond to the crimes Amos has de-
nounced. He realizes that the evidence itself preempts the view that
these norms correspond to formal international laws. But in examining
several parallels from the Amarna Letters, Mari, Hittite texts, and the
Iliad, Barton finds a few connections between Amos’s rationale and the
ethical codes expected between international parties, particularly with
respect to the problems of boundary rights and extreme cruelty. 130
However, these similarities amount to nothing more than the kinds of
universal principles that Amos routinely applies within Israel itself and
that he views as transgressions against Yahweh. And with respect to
boundary rights, Amos clearly views these as established by Yahweh
(Amos 9:7). Or to put it another way, there may well be a similarity
between international norms and Amos’s ethical code, but this does
not mean that Amos embraced his code on the basis of international
practice. Amos envisioned a moral code that applied equally to Israel
and the surrounding nations because all of them lived under the sover-
eignty of his God. The term [vp refers to rebellions against author-
ity, 131 and for the prophet this authority was Yahweh.
The last important problem, the order of these oracles, is of con-
cern because a discernible pattern might provide a glimpse into the
prophet’s conceptual model of the world. The difficulties of finding a
129. Barton, Amos’s Oracles against the Nations, 43.
130. Ibid., 51–61.
131. Harper, Amos and Hosea, 14.
 174 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

modus operandi are magnified by the fact that three of them are later
additions. As Harper points out, these late additions may well have
displaced original oracles, meaning that it is hard to know whether
they would contribute to any assumed pattern, and this must be kept
in mind as we proceed. 132 First, A. Bentzen, among others, has argued
that the five original oracles follow the geographical organization of
Egyptian execration texts and therefore reflect a cultic setting for the
collection. But this view is wanting, because most now recognize that
the order in Amos is quite different from the order in the execration
texts. 133 K. Marti attempted to find a circular geographical pattern in
the oracles, but he did so by selectively eliminating the oracles against
Philistia, Tyre, and Edom, which is methodologically questionable
and not convincing. 134 Wolff ’s analysis identifies several loose con-
nections between the various oracles but finds no overarching or-
der. 135 More recently, A. E. Steinmann has attempted to explain the
oracles by systematically tying together the ideas of several scholars
with his own. Following Paul (who finds connections between the or-
acles via catchwords and phrases) and Hayes (who sees a form-critical
pattern that joins all eight oracles together), 136 Steinmann argues that
all eight of these oracles were the contribution of Amos because they
conform to the formal arrangement below. 137 The problem with this
132. Ibid., cxxx–cxxxii.
133. A. Bentzen, “The Ritual Background of Amos i.2–ii.16,” OTS 8 (1950) 85–
99. For the problems with this view, see J. Barton, Amos’s Oracles against the Nations
12–3; Steinmann, “The Order of Amos’s Oracles against the Nations,” 683–84; Wolff,
Joel and Amos, 145–47.
134. K. Marti, “Zur Komposition von Amos 1:3–2:3,” Abhandlungen zur Semiti-
schen Religionskunde und Sprachwissenschaft (ed. W. Frankenberg and F. Küchler;
BZAW 33; Giessen: Alfred Töpelman, 1918) 323–30.
135. Wolff, Joel and Amos, 144–50.
136. S. Paul, “Amos 1:3–2:3: A Concatenous Literary Pattern,” JBL 90 (1971)
397–403; Hayes, Amos the Eighth-Century Prophet, 52.
137. In this table, “group” refers to the two form-critical patterns of the oracles
involved. I have already discussed these above.
Text Nation Presented as Neighbor of Group
1:3–5 Damascus City-State Israel 1
1:6–8 Gaza City-State Judah 1
1:9–10 Tyre City-State Israel 2
1:11–12 Edom Nation Judah 2
1:13–15 Ammon Nation Israel 1
2:1–3 Moab Nation Judah 1
2:4–5 Judah Special Nation Israel 2
2:6–16 Israel Special Nation Judah 2

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 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 175

is that, as Steinmann recognizes, the Israel oracle is missing several

elements of the form and does not actually fit the pattern. 138 Further-
more, Hayes’s “group” structure actually works even if we eliminate
all three of the questionable oracles. 139 In the end I can only say that
no convincing resolutions to the question of the oracles’ order have
been suggested up to this point. Nevertheless, I think that my discus-
sion will shed some light on the problem. My examination of the ora-
cles is organized into three parts, beginning with Aram and Philistia,
moving on to Ammon and Moab, and then completing the discussion
with Israel. The rationale behind this threefold scheme will become
clear as we proceed.
Although from a political perspective Aram (μraAμ[) and Philistia
(μytvlp) were different kinds of modalities, one being a monarchic
kingdom and the other a confederation of city-states, this fact did not
preclude Amos from recognizing that they shared something in com-
mon. 140 Both peoples originated as the progeny of ancestral migra-
tions, the Arameans from Kir and the Philistines from Caphtor (cf.
1:5, 9:7). Although we know that the Philistine homeland should be
identified with either Crete or Cyprus, 141 the location of Kir, some-
times thought to be in the environs of Elam, is more difficult. 142 But
this Aramean migration tradition should no doubt be associated with
the rapid Aramean population expansions between 1200 and 1000
b.c.e., an expansion that, as G. Roux has pointed out, can be traced to
the ancient textual evidence. 143 There is also some truth behind the
Philistine tradition. Although it is doubtful that the Philistine ances-
tors stemmed entirely from either Cretan or Cypriot stock, there is
substantial evidence that they migrated across the Mediterranean to

138. Steinmann, “The Order of Amos’s Oracles against the Nations,” 684–85. As
Wolff notes, “Israel falls into neither group” ( Joel and Amos, 144).
139. Steinmann also fails to address the problem of the Deuteronomistic features
in the later texts.
140. Because Sargon II destroyed Gath in 711 b.c.e. (see ANET 286), it is some-
times suggested that the Philistine oracle is a later addition to the series. However,
there are a host of other possibilities (the most likely being that Gath had been sub-
sumed by Ashdod at this point) and, generally speaking, scholars take the oracle as
authentic. See Mays, Amos, 32–33; Paul, Amos, 17, 56; Reimer, Richtet auf das Recht,
58–66; Wolff, Joel and Amos, 158.
141. R. S. Hess, “Caphtor,” ABD 1.869–70.
142. H. O. Thompson, “Kir,” ABD 4.83–84.
143. G. Roux, Ancient Iraq (2d ed.; New York: Penguin, 1980) 253–61.
176 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

their levantine settlements. 144 Thus both the Philistine and the Ara-
mean traditions reflect a generally accurate (though undoubtedly dis-
torted) collective memory of their ancestral ethnic origins. This is to
say that they knew that they were different because their forefathers
had come from somewhere else. The passages in Amos, therefore, are
not Israelite models of foreign origins but are Philistine and Aramean
traditions, with which Israel was familiar. Nevertheless, as Amos him-
self recognized in 9:7, these traditions were quite similar to the Israelite
tradition that an ancestral migration from Egypt accounted for the dis-
tinctive identity of the Northern Kingdom. As one can plainly see, Ho-
sea and Amos have exploited their familiarity with this tradition in
quite different ways. At about the same time that Hosea was trying to
reestablish a sense of ethnic distinctiveness by emphasizing the unique-
ness of Yahweh’s divine election in the Exodus event, Amos was busy
pointing out that Yahweh had done similar things for the Philistines
and Arameans: “Did I not bring . . . the Philistines from Caphtor and
the Syrians from Kir?” While the ideological differences between these
two prophets is not as great as it might seem, since both of them pro-
nounced doom upon the North and embraced a hope (of sorts) for the
future of Israel, their rhetorical strategies are entirely different from an
ethnic perspective, with one hoping to intensify ethnic sentiments and
the other hoping to subvert them. The reason for this rhetorical differ-
ence stems in part from the different theologies that inform their work,
since for Hosea Yahweh was the God of Israel’s land and for Amos he
was the God of every land. This explains not only why Amos has at-
tributed the ancestral migrations of several groups to Yahweh’s divine
initiative but also why the groups were equally culpable before him and
would be punished for their rebellions.
There is more that can be culled from Amos on the subject of pun-
ishment, if we tarry a bit on this subject. If we are willing to believe
that there was such a thing as a prophetic tradition that was Yahwistic
(as opposed to Northern or Southern), then in spite of their differences
there appears to have been a common notion of punishment among
Yahweh’s prophets. We have already noticed that Hosea had pro-
nounced upon Israel a “punishment of return,” wherein the people
144. T. Dothan and M. Dothan, People of the Sea: The Search for the Philistines
(New York: Macmillan, 1992). As Redford has pointed out, the Philistines managed to
preserve a distinct sense of identity as late as the first century b.c.e. (Redford, Egypt,
Canaan and Israel in Ancient Times, 294–95; cf. Strabo 16.2.2).
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 177

would be returned to their place of Egyptian origins. A similar fate was

also predicted by Amos for the Arameans in 1:5, so that punishment
was in some sense a reversal of national fortunes that returned the
people to their beginnings. This ideology probably stemmed, at least in
part, from the then-current threat of Assyria, an aggressor that had a
long-standing reputation for exiling population groups. That Assyria
should be viewed as the primary means of punishment here is all too
clear from 1:5, which predicted a military siege that would end with
the city’s gate broken, with its buildings burned, and with the people
in exile. Because this description corresponds rather precisely with As-
syrian imperial policy, it suggests that the theology of Amos both per-
mitted Assyria to be and envisioned it as the instrument of Yahweh’s
wrath.
We need to look at the issue of Yahweh’s wrath in a little more de-
tail because Amos predicted that it would consume “the remnant of
the Philistines.” The prediction prompts H. Reimer to raise the ques-
tion of whether Amos offered any hope to the non-Israelite peoples
mentioned in his oracles. He has argued that the oracles never envi-
sioned a complete destruction of the people but only predicted the de-
struction of their core power structures, as represented by Damascus in
the case of Aram or by Gaza in the case of Philistia. 145 Although we
might infer hope for Israel from other texts in Amos, we cannot arrive
at this position via the oracles to the other nations because there is no
explicit (or implicit) expression of hope for the foreigners. We need to
be careful on this point, however, because we are assuming that Amos
was interested in the question we have raised. After all, he was a man of
compassion toward the oppressed, and if we could have put to him the
question “will the poor of Philistia be destroyed?” he might well have
answered “no,” in spite of the fact that the corpus fails to include a
message of hope for them.
The first two oracles that we have examined, the oracles against
Aram and Philistia, share with the next two, against Ammon and
Moab, the judgment that their punishment was prompted by the
transgression of international boundaries established by Yahweh. In the
case of Ammon this was because they trespassed their northern border
to oppress the Gileadites, and in the case of Moab it was because of
their southern forays into Edom. In spite of this general similarity to

145. Reimer, Richtet auf das Recht, 63.

178 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

the other oracles, however, the Ammonite and Moabite oracles display
a number of features that link them together. The oracles are structur-
ally identical. Both refer to the ‘shout’ (h[wrt) that will accompany de-
struction and envision this imminent destruction in a context of
confusion, in the Ammon oracle as “a tempest (r[s) in the day of the
whirlwind” and in the Moab oracle an ‘uproar’ (ˆwav) accompanied by
“the sound of the trumpet.” In each oracle both the political and mili-
tary leaders are chastised: in the case of Ammon its king (˚lm) 146 and
princes (μyrc) and in the case of Moab its ruler (fpv) and princes
(μyrc). 147 These similarities, coupled with the fact that the oracles are
placed next to each other, suggest that Amos was probably familiar
with the traditional ethnic connection between Ammon and Moab (cf.
Genesis 19, Deuteronomy 2). 148 The geographical proximity of the
two nations probably contributed to the development of this fraternal
tradition, which can be explored in more detail as we discuss the name
that Amos used for the Ammonites. 149
Amos called the Ammonites the ˆwm[Aynb ‘the sons of Ammon’, a
designation that raises two questions: first, whether it is an endonym or
exonym; and second, whether the name reflects a supposed eponymous
ancestor like the Israelite Jacob. It should be recognized that ynb + GN
can serve a very generic role that reflects no indication of ethnic iden-
tity, as Isa 11:14 shows: “together they shall plunder the people of the
east (μdqAynb).” However, if this is the case with respect to Ammon,
then the ynb + GN pattern was followed with remarkable consistency.

146. E. Puech, on the basis of the Greek evidence and comparisons with a parallel
text in Jer 49:3, has rendered Amos 1:15 ‘Et Milkom ira en exil, ses prêtres et ses chefs
ensemble, dit le Seigneur’. I do not find this convincing. The Greek witnesses generally
translate μklm as basileiÍ, and a reference to political figures is expected on the basis
of the other oracles (E. Puech, “Milkom, le dieu ammonite, en Amos 1:15,” VT 27
[1977] 117–25).
147. As most commentators agree, in this case fpwv is synonymous with kingship
and should not be viewed as evidence of some other political institution (Paul, Amos,
74; Mays, Amos, 40). Wolff ( Joel and Amos, 163) views the institution as somewhat dis-
tinct from kingship but admits that “for all purposes . . . the official in question was a
king.”
148. If Psalm 83 dates to the Assyrian period, as seems likely, then Amos’s famil-
iarity with the Lot tradition seems assured. See the reference to the fwlAynb in Ps 83:6–
8 and the associated discussion of A. A. Anderson in The Book of Psalms (2 vols.;
NCBC; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1972) 2.595–98.
149. Geographical proximity (or distance) exerts an influence on human concep-
tions of self and also of others (cf. Hartog, The Mirror of Herodotus, 12–19).
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 179

From the eighth century to the postexilic period, the Ammonites were
consistently identified in the prophetic literature as ‘sons of Ammon’
(ˆwm[Aynb), in contrast to Edom (not ‘sons of Edom’), Moab (not ‘sons
of Moab’), Aram (not ‘sons of Aram’), and so on. 150 Isa 11:14 is a good
example of this pattern when it refers to “Edom, and Moab and the
sons of Ammon.” Likewise Jer 25:21 and Dan 11:41 list the same com-
bination. And as Shalom Paul has pointed out, an Assyrian letter from
Calah refers to the ‘land of the sons of Ammon’ (mâtBa-an-am-ma-na-
aia). The title ˆwm[Aynb for Ammon’s people is therefore firmly estab-
lished from the eighth century onward. The fact that the designation
ˆwm[Aynb was consistently used by various foreigners suggests that it
originated with the Ammonites themselves—that is, it was an endo-
nym. This conclusion seems to be confirmed by an indigenous Ammo-
nite inscription, which refers to the bn ºmn (= Heb. ˆwm[Aynb). 151 In
the absence of more plentiful data from the Ammonite evidence, our
understanding of ˆwm[Aynb is aided by an examination of the biblical
materials in Deuteronomy 2 and Genesis 19.
The Ammon/Moab tradition found in Deuteronomy 2 would ap-
pear to lie closer to the Amos tradition, because it adheres to the corpo-
rate migration model that the prophet preferred for Israel, Philistia,
and Aram. Here Moab and Ammon (n.b., ˆwm[Aynb) are identified as
the “sons of Lot” who migrated to their new homeland and dispos-
sessed its inhabitants by the authority of Yahweh. Although this may
strike us as an inconsistency, because the Lot forefather tradition does
not immediately square with the corporate origin tradition that is em-
phasized in the text, this situation is perhaps no different from the Ho-
sean tradition, where the forefather story and the corporate migration
story appear to have existed with relative independence (see pp. 133–
134). As Van Seters has noted, the Ammon/Moab origin tradition in
Genesis 19 is quite different from the corporate migration described by
Deuteronomy 2. The Genesis story stands much closer to the tradition
in Genesis 38, in which a single ancestor, Judah, migrates to the region
and settles there. This type of tradition cannot (easily) be squared with
a corporate migration tradition, and so we must assume that these
150. All 21 references to Ammon in the prophetic literature refer to the “sons of
Ammon.” This is also the case in 85 of the remaining 107 references to Ammon.
151. Paul, Amos, 67–68. See also H. W. F. Saggs, “The Nimrud Letters, II: Rela-
tions with the West,” Iraq 17 (1955) 134–35; H. O. Thompson and F. Zayadine, “The
Tell-Siran Inscription,” BASOR 212 (1973) 5–11.
 180 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

represent alternative traditions which were preserved out of antiquar-

ian interest by the Yahwist. 152 In the story of Genesis 19, the two in-
cest-begotten sons of Lot, Moab and Ben-ammi, represent the
eponymous ancestors of Moab and Ammon, respectively. As Wester-
mann has pointed out, this story undoubtedly reflected the nature of
relations between Israel and the Transjordanian states when the Yah-
wist’s work was done. 153 But what is most interesting, I think, is that in
Genesis 19 Ben-ammi is the ancestor of the ˆwm[Aynb, that is, that the
ancestor’s name attempts to account for the prevailing name used for
the Ammonites, ‘the sons of Ammon’. This would seem to suggest
that, in the Yahwist’s day, the name ‘sons of Ammon’ could not have
reflected a patriarchal figure, Ammon, but was instead such an ossified
reference to the Ammonites that the personal name of any supposed
ancestor needed to reflect it (hence Ben-ammi). This does not com-
pletely solve the problem of what ˆwm[Aynb meant for eighth-century
Amos, but it does show that one cannot assume that it reflects an epon-
ymous ancestor. However, in Amos we seem to be dealing with an eth-
nic modality, because the title ‘sons of Ammon’ implicitly suggests an
ethnic connection regardless of whether a particularly eponymous an-
cestor stood behind it. This ethnic designation was an endonym
coined by the Ammonites themselves and was subsequently adopted by
the surrounding nations, including Israel.
Given the ties between the Ammonite and Moabite oracles in
Amos, the fact that the Ammonites were an ethnic entity implies that
the Moabites were as well, perhaps sharing together the title “sons of
Lot.” If this is true and if we combine this with what we have already
learned about Israel, Aram, and Philistia, then we may conclude that
ethnic paradigms were a quite popular mode of identity in the periph-
eral communities of the eighth-century Levantine context. 154 The
note-worthy exception seems to be Judah, unless of course the “Judah”
tradition of Genesis 38 dates to an early period—a thesis that is diffi-
cult to confirm. 155 But none of these ethnic exemplars reflects the fer-
vent ethnic intensity of Hosea’s proto-Deuteronomic community.
152. Van Seters, Prologue to History, 238.
153. But the Yahwist may date much later than Westermann suggests (C. Wester-
mann, Genesis [3 vols.; Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984–86] 2.310–14).
154. The Story of Sinuhe, though much older, also supports this conclusion (see
above, pp. 83–84). We can add to our list of ethnic entities in Amos the Ethiopians,
whom Amos identifies as the ‘sons of Cush’ (μyyvkAynb) in 9:7.
155. For discussion, see Westermann, Genesis, 3.46–57.

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 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 181

Before moving on to the Israel oracle in Amos, we should briefly

review what has been accomplished during my examination of the “na-
tions oracles” in Amos. I have suggested that the Aramean and Philis-
tine oracles are adjacent to each other because both groups originated
via ancestral migrations and that the Ammonite and Moabite oracles
are adjacent to each other because the two groups shared common
origins, perhaps as the ethnic progeny of an ancestor such as Lot.
Whether this arrangement of the oracles was the result of an explicitly
“intentional” effort on the part of Amos is a slightly different question
that we cannot answer. After all, the human effort to convey intention
frequently arranges words, phrases, and arguments in patterns that lie
outside of our conscious awareness. Nevertheless, I believe that there is
something significant about the arrangement of these oracles, one way
or the other, and I believe that it is related to the question of the origin
traditions of the nations involved.
This brings us at last to the Israel oracle of Amos 2:6–16, of
which only 2:6–8, 14–16 is decisively authentic. 156 As commentators
are quick to mention, the striking feature of this oracle is that, unlike
the oracles that precede it, the basis of Amos’s criticism is not Israel’s
bellicose activity but its internal penchant for social injustice. Very
little attention has been given to the question of why Israel’s failure is
described in such unique terms, but I would suggest that two lines of
inquiry are promising. First, it is natural to assume that Amos’s criti-
cism of Israel, despite its focus on social evils, stems from the same set
of universal ethical standards that motivated the other oracles. There
is, for instance, a natural correlation between selling people into exile,
as the Philistines had done (1:6) and Israel’s selling the needy into sla-
very (2:6). Aggressions against an international neighbor, like the in-
stances denounced in each of the previous oracles, are congruent with
Israel’s social aggressions against the poor (2:7). The remaining criti-
cisms, Israel’s transgression of sexual norms (2:7) and its hypocritical
practice of mixing religion with injustice (2:8), undoubtedly stemmed
from the same universal principles that Amos espoused elsewhere.
Second, and I believe more important, the distinctive character of
the Israel oracle is derived from the prophet’s understanding of identity,
particularly the difference between his conception of Israelite identity

156. See below, pp. 183–185.

182 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

and the identity of the nations around Israel. Consider the following
table:

Table 3.1. The Judgment Scheme of Amos

Text Addressee Object of Oppression Result
1:13–15 Ammon Gilead Destruction of Ammon
2:1–3 Moab King of Edom Destruction of Moab
2:6–16 Israel Poor of Israel Destruction of Israel

As one can see, Amos no more envisioned the destruction of Israel’s

poor along with the Northern state than he did the destruction of
Gilead along with Ammon. Or to put it another way, although Amos
viewed Ammon as an ethnic social modality that would be totally de-
stroyed, his view of Israelite identity was different, primarily because he
distinguished between various groups within Israel on the basis of
socioeconomic factors. For Amos, it was not ethnic Israel that would
be destroyed but rather the oppressive power structures of the nation
that were persecuting the poor of Israel. 157 So in spite of his Judean
roots, Amos sensed a shared identity with Israel that was different from
his relation to Ammon and Moab. This no doubt stemmed from the
very circumstance that prompted his prophetic ministry: the two peo-
ples, Judeans and Israelites, shared Yahweh as a national deity. We
should conclude from this that Amos probably envisioned a strong reli-
gious link between Judah and Israel, in spite of the fact that his Hosean
contemporary seems to have harbored little interest in the South.
We should address two more questions that are raised by this ora-
cle against Israel. First, why did Amos, more or less a contemporary of
Hosea, fail to condemn Israel’s cultic abandonment of Yahweh, as his
Northern counterpart did? Although a precise answer to the question is
difficult, the answer is undoubtedly related to the quite disparate views
of identity embraced by the prophets Hosea and Amos. It seems pos-
sible that the religious behaviors that Hosea chastised were much less
widespread than his polemic might lead us to believe. Perhaps the Baal

157. Here I agree in part with H. Reimer, who argues that all of the oracles envi-
sion only a partial destruction. However, I would argue that only the Israel oracle re-
flects the socioeconomic distinction necessary to argue for a partial destruction of the
people, in this case the destruction of the oppressive upper classes of Israel (see Richtet
auf das Recht, 63–64).
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 183

cult was such a minor part of the Israelite religious landscape (after all,
Yahweh was the national God) that a prophet with other concerns,
such as Amos, failed to notice much of it. 158 This is perhaps the stron-
gest evidence that Hosea’s perspective was both highly ethnic and
highly peripheral. For Hosea, ethnicity was a distinctive feature of Is-
raelite identity; for Amos, Israel’s ethnicity was simply one more per-
mutation of the same basic human identity.
The other question is a redactional one. Although Hosea was fa-
miliar with an Exodus/settlement tradition of sorts, in Amos 2:9–10
we have our first evidence that Israel’s settlement of the homeland re-
quired that it displace and destroy the original Amorite inhabitants of
the land. In our study of Israelite identity, we are naturally curious
about how these Amorites figure within Israel’s ethnic tradition and
also what this conquest tradition tells us about Israel’s origin tradi-
tions, and hence, about its identity. Are vv. 9–10 a redactional addi-
tion to the book of Amos? According to Mays, Reimer, Vollmer, and
Wolff, vv. 10–12 should be considered a unit and treated as an addi-
tion, mainly because both the phrase tvrl yrmah ≈raAta and the
forty-year wilderness experience in v. 10 are considered Deutero-
nomic. 159 The connection between v. 10 and vv. 11–12 is (1) the last
two verses take up the change of address (from third person to second
person) that is introduced by v. 10 and (2) they continue with the
enumeration of Yahweh’s generous activity on Israel’s behalf. In other
words, vv. 11–12 are redactional only by their association with v. 10,
so the real question can be posed this way: is v. 9 redational and, if so,
is v. 10 also redactional?
The idea that 2:9 is authentic has a respectable history in the study
of Amos, and it is probably this momentum that has prevented more
commentators from raising questions about it. 160 The phrase yknaw
μhynpm yrmahAta ytdmvh has a Deuteronomistic ring to it, and the
158. Tigay has argued, on the basis of the onomastic evidence, that the biblical
polemic far exceeds the actual cultic activity associated with non-Yahwistic deities (You
Shall Have No Other Gods, 37–41).
159. Mays, Amos, 44; Reimer, Richtet auf das Recht, 28; Vollmer, Geschichtliche
Rückbliche und Motive, 24–26; Wolff, Joel and Amos, 169–71.
160. Harper’s commentary, which is more or less a compendium of Amos studies
from the last century and a fountainhead for this one, assumes that v. 9 is authentic
(Harper, Amos and Hosea, cxxxii, 54–59). Agreeing with Harper are: Mays, Amos, 50;
Reimer, Richtet auf das Recht, 28; Vollmer, Geschichtliche Rückbliche und Motive, 24–
25; Wolff, Joel and Amos, 87–89.
 184 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

tradition about powerful Amorites is also familiar to the Deuterono-

mistic sources (Deut 1:27–28). 161 However, several features also distin-
guish the text from Deuteronomistic tradition. First, although the verb
dmv is used several times in the Deuteronomistic corpus (see esp. Deut
31:4), the verbs vry and vrg are more common in references to the
conquest. 162 Second, as for the Amorites of 2:9, although Amos is in
good company when he associates them with “giants,” the fact that he
extends this description to all Amorites rather than to portions of them
is unique in the Hebrew Bible. 163 Finally, 2:9 indicates that the Amor-
ites were completely destroyed, “his fruit above and his roots beneath,”
which is at odds with the Deuteronomistic idea that a goodly portion
of the land’s inhabitants escaped destruction. So it seems to me that 2:9
can only with difficulty be identified as a Deuteronomistic addition.
This brings us to Amos 2:10. The fact that Harper believes that
vv. 9–12 form a unit demonstrates that the change of address from
third to second person is not by itself sufficient evidence for dividing
an otherwise thematically related unit. And given that we have pro-
vided good reasons for keeping v. 9, we cannot too quickly cast aside
vv. 10–12. After all, even if the supposed redactor added them, he did
so under the guise that he created a new unit in 2:9–12. The real ques-
tion is this: do the supposedly Deuteronomistic features of v. 10 war-
rant identifying it as redactional? The answer must be “no.” The
argument that it is redactional presupposes that we have many sources
prior to and after Amos, and that when we compare v. 10 to all of these
sources it does not “fit the picture.” However, as I am approaching the
text in this study, Amos is one of our earlier sources and can become,
with the other eighth-century prophets, a mother text for any number
of later traditions. After all, most of what we see in 2:10 is already
known to us from Hosea, except for the 40-year length of the wilder-
ness experience. Thus, we ought to let vv. 9–10 tell us what Amos
knew about Israel’s origins and history, all the while reminding our-

161. Ps 80:8, which appears to be of Northern origin, shows that the conquest
tradition was known in the North and that it was already integrated with the Exodus
tradition: “Thou didst bring a vine out of Egypt; thou didst drive out the nations and
plant it.”
162. Usually, the Israelites possess the land (vry) and Yahweh drives out (vrg) its
habitants. But other combinations occur. Cf. Deut 4:47; Josh 3:10; 24:8, 12, 18; Judg
11:21–22.
163. Mays, Amos, 50; Cf. 2 Kgs 14:9; Isa 2:13; Ezek 17:9; Job 18:16.

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 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 185

selves that we have not proved that vv. 9–10 are authentic. We have
only outlined the reasons that suggest their probable authenticity.
What Amos 2:9–10 tells us is that the eighth-century Judean tradi-
tion of Israelite history included an Exodus from Egypt, an extended
wilderness experience, and a conquest of the Amorite populations in
the new homeland. Whether Amos would have connected this tradi-
tion with Judah as well is an interesting question that cannot be an-
swered unequivocally, although the evidence from Hosea (which kept
Israel and Judah at arm’s length) would seem to suggest that he would
not have done so. What is most interesting about this text, I think, is
that while the Northern texts seem to have the Canaanites as Israel’s
chief opponent, this Southern text situates the Amorites in that role.
This may explain the tendency in later texts to include both Canaan-
ites and Amorites in their list of early Israelite opponents since, in a
post-722 b.c.e. Judean context, scribes were forced to deal with both
Southern and Northern traditions in close literary quarters.
At this point we can summarize our discussion of the “nations ora-
cles.” The five oracles in this complex reflect the prophet’s universal
standard of conduct, a standard that conformed to and was enforced
by the sovereign and universal God, Yahweh. Yahweh had created the
nations by settling them and by establishing their borders, and he had
provided for their security and stability by enacting universal standards
of international conduct (as reflected in the first four oracles) and social
behavior (as reflected in the Israel oracle). The prophet envisioned a
grand world order that operated according to these standards, and each
of the nations he addressed had breached that order by seeking to “en-
large their borders” (1:13). Israel, the primary target of Amos’s minis-
try, was juxtaposed with these nations to show that, as H. Reimer has
put it, Israel was “kein besser Staat!” 164 But this comment ought to be
tempered with the fact that Amos envisioned primarily the destruction
of Israel’s wealthy and oppressive classes rather than the nation as a
whole.
We have also determined during this discussion that the interna-
tional communities addressed by Amos probably shared the tendency
to embrace ethnic components of identity to varying degrees of inten-
sity, with the exception of Judah. And speaking of Judah—as a Judean,

164. Ibid., 68.

 186 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

Amos was surprisingly laconic on the subject. In fact, if the standard

redactional views of Amos are right, the only reference to Judah is by
the Northern king, Amaziah, who tells Amos to go home. Was this ret-
icence to speak of Judah a part of the prophet’s rhetorical approach?
This question must be taken up another time. But it now seems clear
that, for Amos, Israel and Judah were linked by their common status as
Yahwistic nations and that his notion of identity was, like Hosea’s, pri-
marily religious.

Woe to the Wealthy: Amos 6:1–7

In his recent article, H. C. Roberts has argued that in Amos’s day
political and socioeconomic problems fueled by the expansionist poli-
cies of Assyria and Aram created an environment of economic exploita-
tion of the lower classes in eighth-century Israel. 165 The pressures
wrought by this situation accentuated class differences in Israel’s al-
ready stratified society, creating, at least from Amos’s perspective, an
atmosphere of competition between the wealthy upper class and the
underclass. Therefore, despite the religious overtones, the climate of
conflict in Amos should perhaps be related more closely to economic
competition than to the religious competition that we see in Hosea. It
is this sociological context that stands behind the text of 6:1–7.
The text has two redactional problems, the reference to Zion in
v. 1 and the reference to Calneh, Hamath, and Gath in v. 2. Most
scholars take the reference to Zion as a later Judean redaction, which
makes sense for two reasons. First, Judah is noticeably absent from
Amos, making a reference to Zion unexpected; and second, the re-
mainder of the oracle addresses the wealthy of Samaria, not Judea. 166
For these reasons, I will assume that v. 1 originally addressed only the
Northern Kingdom, not Judah. The reference to Calneh, Hamath, and
Gath is often attributed to a time after Amos and is sometimes consid-
ered the work of his disciples. 167 This is because the period when
Tiglath-pileser III threatened these cities, around 738–734 b.c.e., is

165. H. C. Roberts, “La época de Amós y la justicia social,” BT 50 (1993) 95–

106.
166. Rudolph, Joel, Amos, Obadja, Jona, 215.
167. Harper, Amos and Hosea, 141; Reimer, Richtet auf das Recht, 138; Wolff, Joel
and Amos, 275.

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 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 187

well after the beginning of Amos’s ministry (ca. 760 b.c.e.). However,
as Wolff has noted, it is difficult to know when the prophet’s ministry
ceased in the first place. 168 This, joined to the fact that the ideology of
6:2 corresponds to ideology that is unmistakeably Amos’s (cf. Amos
9:7), makes it difficult to attribute the text to someone other than the
prophet. 169
Several items related to the issues of ethnicity and identity arise in
6:1–7. First, this text indicates, as did the oracle in 2:6–16, that Amos
identified with the poor lower classes of Israel rather than with their
wealthy oppressors, “notable men” whom he sarcastically portrayed as
enjoying the spices of life while “the destruction of Joseph” was before
their eyes (6:1, 4–6). So Amos ought to be viewed as a peripheral
prophet who “lacked status and social power” in relation to the central
religious and political structures of Israel. 170 The “Woe!” of this text
was therefore directed toward those who felt “secure on the mountain
of Samaria” and who were “upon beds of ivory,” not toward the poor
of Israel who awaited deliverance on the “evil day” (i.e., the “Day of
Yahweh” in 5:18–27). 171 Clearly, both here and elsewhere, Amos’s
concept of identity was tied primarily to religious and socioeconomic
concerns, not ethnicity. Because of this, one cannot associate “ethnic
stratification” with Amos’s sociological views. 172
Read in light of these socioeconomic distinctions, the text of 6:2
provides an additional insight into the prophet’s concept of identity.
The oracle says, concerning the wealthy in Israel:
Are they better than these kingdoms [Calneh, Hamath, Philistia]?
Or is their territory greater than your territory? O you who put far
away the evil day, and bring near the seat of violence.
As was implicit in the oracles of 1:3–2:16, it is here explicit that Amos
rhetorically blurred the ethnic distinctions between the upper-class
oppressors of Israel and the foreigners who faced the punishment of

168. Ibid., 90.

169. Andersen and Freedman, Amos, 558–59; Mays, Amos, 114–15; Paul, Amos,
201–4.
170. R. R. Wilson, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel, 38, 270.
171. Mays, Amos, 116.
172. By “ethnic stratification” I mean that the obvious social stratification re-
flected in Amos is not along ethnic lines, as is the case with present socioeconomic con-
ditions in the twentieth-century United States.
 188 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

Yahweh along with them. Not only does this remind us that Amos was
familiar with Israelite ethnicity but it also provides us with a more sub-
tle insight. All along we have been pointing out that Hosea’s peripheral
community embraced a very intense kind of ethnicity, and this leaves
us facing the implicit question of how the larger body of citizens in the
Northern Kingdom thought about ethnicity. Although we cannot say
what the average citizen would have thought, the rhetorical assault of
Amos on the ethnicity of Israel’s wealthy citizens could only have been
effective if they too harbored a rather meaningful notion of ethnicity.
Thus we should avoid the impression that Israelite ethnicity was im-
portant only to the proto-Deuteronomic movement; it was also impor-
tant for the core political, religious and social structures of ancient
Israel. Whether the poor and oppressed lower classes shared in these
sentiments, however, is difficult to know.
In a different vein, there is a reference in our text to Joseph in 6:6,
and this raises a number of questions. Did Joseph refer to the Northern
Kingdom as a whole or to some restricted region within it? And did it
imply a patriarchal figure? Because the polemical target in the sur-
rounding context was Israel, most scholars, Harper, Paul, and Mays for
instance, believe that the referent of πswy was the Northern King-
dom. 173 Even Wolff, who correctly points out that πswyAtyb/πswy nor-
mally refers to the central regions of the North, concludes that πswy was
often used polemically to highlight Israel’s greatly reduced territorial
limits. 174 But in either case we need to ask whether the patriarchal fig-
ure should also be associated with the name. I believe that there is sub-
stantial evidence to show that the most natural antecedent of πswy
would be not only a geographical region but also the ancestral figure
known to us from Genesis 37–50. First, the fact that another eighth-
century witness (Isa 9:20) pairs Ephraim and Manasseh as brothers im-
plies that Amos is alluding to an ancestor tradition. Second, it is gener-
ally acknowledged that older strata of the Joseph traditions reflect a
Northern provenience, which would require that they were current

173. Harper, Amos and Hosea, 112, 124; Mays, Amos, 89–90, 102; Paul, Amos,
165–66, 178.
174. The reference to πswy tyb in 5:5 is of no help here, since it is almost invari-
ably viewed as a later addition. Harper connects it to the previous text in 5:4–5, which
is also viewed as redactional (Amos and Hosea, 112; Wolff, Joel and Amos, 240).

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 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 189

during Hosea’s ministry. 175 If this is true, the origin traditions of Israel
already included more than one patriarchal figure during the ministry
of Amos. This is an issue that we will be able to explore more com-
pletely in the context of Amos 7:10–17.

“You Shall Die in an Unclean Land”: Amos 7:10–17

Until recently, this text has been viewed by nearly every scholar as
belonging to the authentic corpus of Amos materials. 176 However,
H. G. M. Williamson has recently argued that 7:9–17 is a Deuterono-
mistic redaction that seeks to interpret the plumb-line of 7:7–8 as
Amos himself. 177 This is because the text not only interrupts (along
with 8:4–14) the five visions recounted in 7:1–9:4 but also because it
is clearly tied to the themes of the previous vision. I would respond
that there certainly is an interruption of the vision series, but as even
Williamson admits, there is no thematic interruption, and the collec-
tion process itself can account for this kind of phenomenon. What is
perhaps more of a problem for Williamson’s thesis is the fact that the
so-called “Deuteronomic redaction” of Amos has left us precious little
evidence, and almost everywhere in the collection the viewpoint is en-
tirely different from the viewpoint found in the proto-Deuteronomic
work of Hosea and the later Deuteronomistic editorial work in Jere-
miah. Because of these observations, I am inclined to agree with the
majority of commentators, who view 7:10–17 as authentic Amos
material.
175. Two psalms of Northern provenience, Psalms 80 and 81, refer to Joseph as
well as to Ephraim, Benjamin, Manesseh (Psalm 80), and Jacob (Psalm 81). See
Davies, Hosea, 32; Anderson, The Book of Psalms, 2.581–87; A. Weiser, The Psalms
(OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1962) 547, 553. Anderson and Weiser assign Psalm
80 to a Northern context, but Anderson is not certain about Psalm 81, which Weiser
regards as also Northern. Davies offers a few brief arguments in favor of Northern ori-
gins in his Hosea commentary. For more on the Northern origins of the Joseph tradi-
tion, see D. M. Carr, Reading the Fractures of Genesis: Historical and Literary Approaches
(Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1996) 277–89, 300–302; D. B. Redford, A Study
of the Biblical Story of Joseph (VTSup 20; Leiden: Brill, 1970); Van Seters, Prologue to
History, 311–27; and Westermann, Genesis, 3.15–30.
176. Andersen and Freedman, Amos, 751–54; Harper, Amos and Hosea, cxxxii;
Paul, Amos, 238–52; Wolff, Joel and Amos, 306–16; However, see Reimer, who argues
that 7:10–17 is a later addition (Richtet auf das Recht, 215–25).
177. H. G. M. Williamson, “The Prophet and the Plumb-line: A Redaction-
Critical Study of Amos vii,” OTS 26 (1990) 101–21.
190 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

In this text, the peripheral character of Amos’s prophetic work ap-

pears again in his conflict with representatives of the national religious
and political system, Amaziah and Jeroboam, high priest of Bethel and
king of Israel, respectively. 178 The prophet’s Judean identity prompted
Amaziah to urge Amos homeward, 179 but Amos responded, “The Lord
said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel [italics mine].’ ” It is sig-
nificant that Amos identified the Northern Kingdom as the people of
Yahweh, since he undoubtedly held similar ideas about Judean iden-
tity. This reaffirms my observation that Amos saw a close connection
between the Northern and Southern Kingdoms on the basis of their
common identity as the people of Yahweh. 180 In the prophet’s concep-
tual world, therefore, deity preference was regarded as an organizing
principle in defining identity, but this religious principle of identity
did not merge significantly with ethnic identity. Why were these two
modes of identity so closely merged in Hosea and not in Amos? Per-
haps ethnicity was not an important component of Judean identity
during or prior to the eighth century b.c.e. This is a possibility that
will be explored more thoroughly during our examination of Isaiah.
However, ethnicity was an important component of Northern
identity, especially with respect to the notion of homeland. This is
what gave the polemic of Amos its force: “you yourself shall die in an
unclean land (hamf hmdaAl[), and Israel shall surely go into exile
away from its land” (v. 17). The ideas expressed here correspond rather
closely to those of Hos 9:3, with both texts indicating how closely Is-
raelite identity was tied to the homeland and also how polluted foreign
territory was by comparison (in both cases, foreign lands are amf ). But
here again, several of Amos’s ideas are quite distinct from Hosea’s ideas.
First, although the concept of land is closely related to the idea of cove-
nant in many portions of the Hebrew Bible, including Hosea, the cor-
pus of prophetic material from Amos explicitly conveys nothing about
178. The phrase “priest of Bethel” probably refers to the “high priest of Bethel”
(Paul, Amos, 239). G. Pfeifer has argued that Amaziah did not act alone but sought to
deport the troublesome Amos under the authorization of Jeroboam himself. That this
is implied by the text seems to me very likely (Pfeifer, “Die Ausweisung eines lästigen
Ausländers: Amos 7:10–17,” ZAW 96 [1984] 112–18).
179. Pfeifer also argues that Amos’s Judean identity played a part in this at-
tempted expulsion. This seems to me to be self-evident from the text (ibid., 112).
180. There is also a strong tendency for Amos to use the perspective of his North
ern audience in an ironic fashion, so that the benefits of their Yahwistic heritage are
rhetorically minimized.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 191

covenant ideology. And second, the relationship of Yahweh to the land

was quite different in the theology of Amos. God as depicted by Amos
was a more universal deity than in Hosea, so that the latter’s notion of
Israel dwelling on “Yahweh’s land” (Hos 9:3) would probably have
been too limited in the eyes of the Southern prophet, for whom Yah-
weh was the God of all lands. We might ask on the heels of this obser-
vation whether, in the absence of universality, Hosea would have
viewed Yahweh as a “higher” or “more powerful” deity than the gods of
the surrounding nations. I would suppose that the answer would be
“yes,” but it would be predicated in part on the somewhat speculative
“excursus” at the end of this chapter.
As I have promised above, because the ancestral theme is here rein-
troduced by the reference in 7:16 to the ‘house of Isaac’ (iqjcy tyb), we
can at this point return to the issue of the Joseph figure mentioned in
connection with Amos 6:6. Since we should safely assume that Amos
was familiar with the patriarchal figure Jacob, the references to Joseph
and Isaac and the status of these two figures as patriarchs in later Israel-
ite literature raise the question of how many patriarchal figures Amos
knew.
Taking the problem of Isaac first, the manner in which 7:16 places
Isaac in parallel with Israel reminds us of the Jacob/Israel parallels in
Hosea and so invites the conclusion that Isaac was a patriarchal figure.
There are a number of lines of evidence that suggest that this is the
right conclusion to draw. First, J. Van Seters has observed that the
“whole life of Isaac [in Genesis] is a rather pale reflection of the life of
Abraham, and one can scarcely find in it any evidence of older tradi-
tions.” 181 This probably indicates that at the time of the Yahwist’s com-
position there was little or nothing left of Isaac apart from his identity
as an ancient patriarchal figure. Such a situation would explain why, on
the one hand, Isaac appears quite commonly as a name listed with
Abraham and Jacob but, on the other hand, why he has so little impact
in the prophetic corpus of the Hebrew Bible. It might also explain why
his name appears in Amos as qjcy instead of qhxy, since the former
now becomes an older spelling of the ancient patriarchal name. A sec-
ond reason that the name of Isaac might refer to an ancestral figure is
that it appears as a synonym for Israel but not, it seems, as a geographi-
cal name. This makes it unlikely, at least within our limited historical

181. Van Seters, Prologue to History, 268.

192 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

horizon, that the figure of Isaac developed from association with a par-
ticular region of the same name, as seems to have happened in the case
of Ephraim, Manasseh, and some of the other figures in the Hebrew
Bible. Third, where it can be examined with precision, Atyb almost in-
variably implies ‘house of PN’ in addition to ‘house of GN’, referring
especially to the dwelling and/or progeny of the indicated PN. 182 To
argue that “house of Joseph” or “house of Isaac” does not imply a fore-
father figure misses the point since, regardless of the phrase’s supposed
origins, the language itself obviously did suggest a forefather figure. Other-
wise, there would be no Isaac, son of Abraham. Or, to say it another way,
although one might imagine that the phrase house of Isaac could have
originated as a geographical designation, it is difficult to imagine it re-
maining only this for long. Fourth, the probability that “Isaac” was a
forefather figure is heightened by that fact that Hosea reflects a con-
temporary Jacob cycle which included the patriarch’s marriage (12:12).
The combination of Jacob’s extended biographical cycle with this mar-
riage tradition does suggest that we ought to expect additional family
members, especially a father (Isaac) and/or a son (Joseph).
So, although we cannot speak about this with certainty, it does
seem to me very likely that Amos knew at least three patriarchal gen-
erations—Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. But these ancestral figures cannot
necessarily be taken as evidence of a “patriarchal age” in the likeness of
what we associate with the pentateuchal sources. In those sources we
have a narrative that has been closely integrated and thematically uni-
fied within a chronological sequence. However, we cannot assume that
this was the case in the eighth century because Abraham is not men-
tioned, the Isaac traditions are cryptic at best, and most scholars will
agree that the Joseph narratives were secondarily connected to the Ja-
cob traditions in the Pentateuch. 183 So one is hard pressed to find a
“patriarchal age” here.

Summary
The combined evidence from Amos and Hosea shows that it was
commonplace for ethnicity to play a role in the group identities of Is-
rael and the surrounding nation-states. This mode of ethnopolitical

182. In fact, I can find no instance that unambiguously attests to the formula
‘house of GN’ without implying ‘house of PN’.
183. See Westermann, Genesis, 3.22–28.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 193

identity is most similar to the comparative materials from Greece and

should be distinguished from the nonethnic modes of identity that pre-
dominated in the Egyptian and Mesopotamian sources. In spite of fre-
quent sentiments of ethnicity among the smaller Levantine states, we
observed that there was a great disparity in the intensity of these ethno-
national sentiments as reflected in Amos and Hosea. Although it is an
oversimplification to say that ethnicity played no distinguishing role in
Amos’s identity, particularly in light of his view that foreign lands were
“unclean,” it is substantially correct to say that, for Amos, ethnicity was
only a mode of identity shared by various groups in the region and not
a feature unique to any of them. Israel’s migration from Egypt, which
was for Hosea a primary element in Israelite identity, was for the
Southern prophet only one more migration in the tradition of the
Arameans, the Philistines, and others. This reinforces the conclusion
that Hosea’s community was a peripheral religious movement that dis-
played both an unusually heightened awareness of ethnic identity and
an ardent desire to intensify ethnic boundaries in support of the na-
tional deity, Yahweh.
Although one might infer from our discussion of the surrounding
nations that Judah also had ethnic traditions, the evidence for a dis-
tinctive Judean ethnicity is wanting in the Amos materials. We do not
get the sense that there was a connection between the forefather fig-
ures—Jacob, Joseph, and Isaac—and the Southern Kingdom, nor is
there evidence for a Southern eponymous counterpart, a “Judah” fig-
ure, unless one can demonstrate the antiquity of the tradition now
preserved in Genesis 38. 184 The Southern prophet’s fleeting references
to Judean identity include a comment about the Davidic king and also
numerous instances of implied connections between Judah and the
Northern Kingdom, particularly when Amos refers to the Northern
Kingdom as the people of Yahweh. 185 On the other hand, Hosea
seems to have lacked any sense of common ground with the Judeans,
and we should probably conclude from this that Southerners felt a
greater affinity with the North than did the North with the South.

184. See discussion in Van Seters, Prologue to History, 207–9; Westermann, Gene-
sis, 3.49–50.
185. The reference to the Judean king in Amos 6:5 reads in Hebrew, wbvj dywdk
ryvAylk μhl, which is obscure in meaning but is usually rendered ‘like David they in-
vent for themselves musical instruments’. For a summary of the options, see Paul,
Amos, 206.
194 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

This difference is easily explained, of course, by the fact that the

Judeans were more than happy to rule (and tax) Israel, while the Is-
raelites were less than satisfied to let them.
Up to this point, we have discussed various modes of identity—
political, religious, ethnic, and so on—but we have not presented the
essential ways in which these modes of identity were related to each
other in the sources. How did our two prophets conceptualize the rela-
tionship between these various modes of identity? From Amos’s point
of view, although monarchic politics were entirely compatible with
Israelite ethnicity, ethnicity played a comparatively minor role within
Israelite identity. More important than Israel’s ethnic identity was the
problem created by the oppression of the poor; this threatened the
sense of religious unity that the Israelites ought to have with God and
with each other. The essential problem that Amos wrestled with was
that Israel’s wealthy classes had defined Israelite identity in such a way
as to exclude the less fortunate from participation in the broader com-
munity. This problem was of an entirely different nature from the
problems that Hosea tried to confront. There is no evidence that Amos
attempted to link ethnic and religious sentiments, as did Hosea’s party.
This comes as no real surprise when we recognize that, from the South-
ern perspective, Yahwism was already present on both sides of the
ethnic boundary that separated Israelites from Judeans. Ethnic distinc-
tions could not have been very important for Amos anyway, because
his discourse assumed that all of the nations shared a more fundamen-
tal and common position under the universal sovereignty of Yahweh.
This view of the deity contrasted with Hosea’s view. For Hosea Yahweh
was more a localized than a universal deity, being a God with his own
land, his own people, and his own primary sphere of activity. On the
other hand, there is an implied sovereignty of Yahweh in the judgment
that Hosea predicted via Assyria and Egypt, so in this respect the differ-
ences between Amos and Hosea must be viewed in part as rhetorical.

Ethnicity and Identity in Isaiah of Jerusalem

Isaiah serves as a bridge between the time of Hosea/Amos and the
early seventh century b.c.e., after which a rather long break separates
this eighth-century prophet from the next major prophetic witness,
Jeremiah. While in the case of Hosea and Amos we have the luxury of
possessing two generally “authentic” texts that contain a few later addi-
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 195

tions, this is obviously not true in the case of Isaiah. In Isaiah, a great
deal of complexity is involved both in delimiting the various strata
within the text and dating these strata to appropriate contexts. Because
of this (and contrary to my approach in Hosea and Amos), my stance
in Isaiah is that of a “minimalist,” focusing attention primarily on the
texts that are normally considered authentic. 186 As usual in our trade,
however, there are several “borderline” texts that are so closely related
to the topic that we cannot neglect them; the problems in these texts
will have to be addressed in detail as they arise during the discussion.
Lest we cover the same ground a second time, I should like to out-
line several common elements (and differences) that can be identified
in Isaiah and the other two eighth-century prophets. Despite the fact
that the primary audiences of Isaiah and Amos were of two different
sorts, Judeans and Israelites, even a superficial perusal of Isaiah’s text
will confirm the fact that the two Southern prophets should be viewed
as stemming from a common Southern prophetic community. If we
take Isa 1:10–17 as an example, we can see that Isaiah shared with the
Tekoan Amos a common devotion to the poor, especially its orphans
and widows, and that he blamed the troubles of this underclass on the
ruling classes (μynyxq) of the nation. For both prophets, the injustices
of national society made cultic and ritual activities an exercise in hy-
pocrisy that the deity would not accept. 187 Judgment and oppression
would come upon the nation in each case. From this, we should con-
clude that class distinctions played an important role in Southern pro-
phetic traditions and that, in contrast, this was not a primary concern
for Hosea (at least in the corpus that he has left us). In spite of these
similarities the rhetorical methods of the two Southern prophets
differed chiefly in this: Amos belittled Israel by comparing it with
foreigners, while Isaiah compared Judah with the morally reprobate
populations of Sodom and Gomorrah. This is best explained by the
186. Isa 1:1–3, 1:10–2:1, 2:5–4:1, 5:1–24, 6:1–11, 8:1–18, 9:1–10:15, 14:24–
32, 17:1–14, chaps. 18 and 20, 22:1–25, and chaps. 28–32. This list follows Soggin
for the most part, but at points where he is unclear I have supplemented his work with
R. E. Clements’s work on Isaiah’s text (J. A. Soggin, Introduction to the Old Testament
[OTL; Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1989] 299–311; R. E. Clements, Isaiah 1–
39 [NCBC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980] 2–8).
187. I agree with H. Wildberger that it is very difficult to suggest that Isaiah re-
jected cultic piety in principle. The juxtaposition of his cultic condemnation with his
reprimand for social injustice shows clearly that it is religious hypocrisy that Isaiah con-
demns, not the cult itself (Wildberger, Isaiah 1–12, 39–40).
196 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

fact that ethnicity was not a primary feature of Judean identity, which
necessarily precluded Isaiah’s use of ethnic slurs.
This brings us to Hosea. Because Amos and Isaiah share many
kinds of similarities, the differences that distinguish Amos from Hosea
necessarily tend to differentiate Isaiah from the Northern prophet.
There is nevertheless this similarity between Isaiah and Hosea: their
common use of the concept of hrwt (‘law’). 188 Here, as in Hosea, the
term seems to refer to moral prescriptions regarding social behavior
and, if we agree with Begrich’s form-critical analysis of 1:10–17, then
in both the Northern and Southern traditions the priests were respon-
sible for the hrwt instruction of the people. 189 But these observations
are of a general kind and do not permit me to provide a detailed analy-
sis of the relationship between the Northern and Southern hrwt tradi-
tions. This will have to be worked out somewhere else.

A Struggle among Brothers: Isaiah 9:18–20

During our examination of Hosea and Amos, it was determined
that the eighth-century Northern context knew of at least three patriar-
chal figures, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. Here we are fortunate not only
because the text introduces us to two more Israelite ancestral figures
but also because it clarifies their relationship to each and to the Judean
traditions. The text is, with one exception that we will address, free of
introductory problems and is uniformly embraced as Isaianic. 190
and the people are like fuel for the fire; no man spares his brother
(wyja) . . . each devours his neighbor’s flesh (wlkay w[rzArcb vya),
Manasseh Ephraim, and Ephraim Manasseh, and together they are
against Judah.

188. See my previous discussion of Hos 4:1–19.

189. J. Begrich, “Geschichte Studien im A.T.,” TB 21 (1964) 232–60. E. W.
Davies has argued that a law code did not lie behind Isaiah’s ethical concerns, since the
activities he condemns were probably legal in a technical sense (e.g., mortgage fore-
closures and debt-bondage). I would argue that here, as in Hosea, it is likely that an
ethical lawcode akin to the Decalogue provided a religious form of social constraint be-
yond public legislation. This is suggested by Begrich’s form-critical identification of Isa
1:10–17 as a priestly teaching, espcially in its use of the phrase wnyhla trwt wnyzah. For
the arguments of Davies, see Prophecy and Ethics: Isaiah and the Ethical Tradition of
Israel (JSOTSup 16; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1981) 113–19.
190. P. Auvray, Isaïe 1–39 (SB; Paris: Gabalda, 1972)128–29; Clements, Isaiah
1–39, 69; Duhm, Das Buch Jesaia (HKAT; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1968) 94–96; Kaiser, Isaiah, 1.136–37; Wildberger, Isaiah 1–12, 218–24.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 197

The phrase in italics is viewed by Clements as a redactional addition

by one who sought to point out more forcefully that the North’s de-
feat arose because of its refusal to accept the Davidic monarchy. 191 I
will address this claim soon, but the more common approach to this
text is to identify a point at which Ephraim and Manasseh quarreled
with each other and with Judah, an endeavor that is difficult accord-
ing to Wildberger, because there is not enough specific information in
the text to link it confidently with events that we know about. 192
Procksch’s suggestion that it has in mind the conflict between Pekah
of Manasseh (from Transjordan) and Pekahiah of Ephraim (from Cis-
jordan) has its merits (cf. 1 Kgs 15:25), 193 and chronologically speak-
ing, this would correspond nicely with the Syro-Ephraimite War, thus
suggesting an appropriate context for the text’s reference to Judah.
But even if this is not true, provided that the text was composed
during or soon after the Syro-Ephraimite conflict—and it probably
was—the reference to Judah seems appropriate enough in an eighth
century Judean prophet. But the reference to Judah, even if it is redac-
tional, is probably not a very late one.
I think that we can plainly see that the prophet has paired Ephraim
and Manasseh not only because of the state of hostility between them
but because of the prior relationship that he perceives them to have
had with each other. Ephraim and Manasseh were μyja ‘brothers’ who
were “eating one another’s flesh” instead of living in peace, a situation
not unlike the internecine struggles that occurred among the ethnic
Hellenes of Greece. We need not attend to the details of this conflict or
the events that might have been behind it because what this “brother”
rhetoric means for our inquiry into Israelite ethnicity is more impor-
tant. Because we can assume that Isaiah, like Amos, was familiar with
the Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph figures of Northern lore, this reference to
Ephraim and Manasseh as brothers, coupled with their later associa-
tion as the sons of Joseph, makes it probable that we are actually deal-
ing with four patriarchal generations in this eighth-century context:
Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Ephraim/Manasseh. And if we deduce from
this a patriarchal cycle of which Jacob was the centerpiece, the cycle
would then extend over four generations and would tend, of course, to

191. Clements, Isaiah 1–39, 69.

192. Wildberger, Isaiah 1–12, 238.
193. O. Procksch, Jesaja I (Leipzig: Deichert, 1930) 106–7.
198 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

include fewer details about the cycle’s first and fourth generations and
greater detail about the second- and third-generation patriarchal fig-
ures. The materials available to us display exactly these features, since
we have significant collections of material associated with both Jacob
and Joseph but, at the same time, very little associated with Isaac,
Ephraim, or Manasseh. The common notion among scholars that the
original Jacob and Joseph traditions were of Northern provenience fits
well into this explanation of the data. 194 For reasons that I have already
enumerated (see p. 192), I would stress again that we should probably
avoid the assumption that we are dealing with a supposed “patriarchal
period” if by it we mean something like what is suggested by the pen-
tateuchal sources. We would require a good bit more from our sources
to make such a claim.
Having addressed the question of Ephraim and Manasseh, we turn
to the problem of Judah. Despite my sense that the reference to Judah
is probably authentic, the possibility that it is redactional is significant
enough that I cannot claim this with conviction. If it is authentic, then
Isaiah seems to have viewed the relationship between the Southern
Kingdom and Ephraim/Manasseh with sentiments of kinship, since
the struggle between the brothers, Ephraim and Manasseh, was pre-
sented in parallelism with the struggle between Judah and the two
tribes. However, this pairing of Judah with Ephraim/Manasseh was
not as deliberate as was the pairing of the two Northern groups them-
selves, and this makes it possible that the prophet never intended to
imply ancestral connections between Judah and the North. Moreover,
in the language of international politics, fraternal discourse was not
uncommon in the ancient Near East, so that the older North–South
political links through David might account for this language. How-
ever, the political use of fraternal language does not actually remove us
from the realm of ethnicity since it was, after all, a rhetorical device
with the precise purpose of creating stronger ethnic-like ties between
two groups. What we can say with confidence, therefore, is that our
text, whenever it was composed, viewed conflicts between the North
and South as quite inappropriate in light of the common relationship
that the two kingdoms shared with each other.

194. For bibliography on the Joseph traditions and their place in the pentateuchal
materials, see p. 189 n. 175.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 199

Assyria in the Eyes of a Judean: Isaiah 10:5–15

On the basis of the extensive primary sources that we examined in
the previous chapter, we were able to sketch out some of the key Neo-
Assyrian perspectives on identity, both with respect to the Assyrians
themselves and also with respect to their imperial subjects. 195 We know
that near the end of the eighth century, that is, the age of Isaiah, Assyr-
ian ambitions of world domination were largely realized and Assyria’s
keen sense of superiority over its imperial subjects emerged. The new
viewpoint was manifested in the sources by a tendency to count impe-
rial subjects “as booty” rather than “as Assyrians.” This competitive en-
vironment between core and peripheral modalities naturally intensified
the sense of identity among the peripheral groups involved, and we can
in fact demonstrate that some of Isaiah’s most important ideas were a
direct response to this peripheral experience, beginning with this text
in Isaiah 10:5–15.
For the most part, recent exegetes are in agreement that vv. 10–12
are redactional, for both stylistic and ideological reasons. 196 My exami-
nation will therefore focus on 10:5–9, 13–15. As Clement has noted,
this text “represents the surest and most reliable evidence that Isaiah
did foretell a time when the Assyrians would be punished and over-
thrown by Yahweh.” The terminus a quo for our text must be around
717, since the cities mentioned in v. 9 were by that time under Assyrian
domination. These cities represent the steady march of Assyrian influ-
ence from North to South, with Judah the next obvious target. It was
in this context that the Judean prophet Isaiah uttered this oracle of re-
buke against Assyria. Since the prophet condemned the anti-Assyrian
alliance against Sennacherib in 705–701, our text must date between
717 and 705.
Although Amos demonstrated that Southern prophetic circles of-
ten conceptualized foreigners in ethnic paradigms, there is no hint that

195. Although focused on slightly different issues, Machinist has already provided
a valuable study of this issue (P. Machinist, “Assyria and Its Image in the First Isaiah,”
JAOS 103 [1983] 719–37). For a brief study of Neo-Assyrian administration and prac-
tice in the region, see B. Otzen, “Israel under the Assyrians,” in Power and Propaganda:
A Symposium on Ancient Empires (ed. M. T. Larsen; Mesopotamia 7; Copenhagen:
Akademisk Forlag, 1979) 251–61.
196. Clements, Isaiah 1–39, 109–13; Duhm, Das Buch Jesaia, 99–100; Wild-
berger, Isaiah 1–12, 413–15. Kaiser retains v. 11 and Auvray retains the entire text (Au-
vray, Isaïe 1–39, 131–35; Kaiser, Isaiah, 1.136–37).
200 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

Isaiah understood Assyrian identity in an ethnic sense. In this text, the

first-person speech of Assyria’s king includes the phrase “are not my
commanders all kings?” which shows at once that Isaiah’s understand-
ing of Assyrian identity was rooted in the institution of kingship, not
ethnicity. 197 This comes as no surprise, since the comparative evidence
from Assyria revealed the same monarchic perspective. The Neo-
Assyrian sources show that Assyrian identity was not only monarchic
but was monarchic to an arrogant extreme. The texts feature the repeti-
tive royal claim that the king was “the great king, king of the universe,
king of Assyria, king of the four corners of the earth.” Such a claim
would not have sat very well with Isaiah, who predicted that judgment
would come upon all who were ‘proud’ (hag), ‘lofty’ (μr), and ‘lifted
up’ (acn), a threat that applied not only to Judah but to the peoples in
general.” 198 For Isaiah, only Yahweh was the universal king that was
‘high’ and ‘lifted up’, 199 and any figure who sought this exalted posi-
tion was necessarily a usurper that would be ‘humbled’ (twhbg yny[
lpv μdah) and ‘brought low’ (μyvna μwr jvw, Isa 2:11). As Huber has
commented, “Not merely because of his cruelty, enjoyment of murder,
etc., is it announced that the Assyrian must appear before the court,
but because he rebelled against the place Yahweh determined for him
and so is an offence to Yahweh’s sovreignty.” 200 Thus the Yahwistic uni-
versalism of Isaiah and Amos (which contrasted sharply with the par-
ticularism of Hosea) was not very patient with any modality,
“peripheral” or “core,” that failed to acknowledge Yahweh’s lordship.
And although Isa 10:12 is usually viewed as a later addition, it no
doubt summarized Isaiah’s sentiments: “the Lord . . . will punish the
arrogant boasting of the king of Assyria.”
One expression of the hubris for which Isaiah criticized Assyria
was its inclination to boast about shifting international boundaries
(10:13), a practice that Isaiah, like his compatriot Amos, viewed as an
expression of rebellion against Yahweh’s universal dominion. We have

197. Machinist, “Assyria and Its Image in the First Isaiah,” 726–27.
198. See Isa 2:12 and Auvray’s comments in Isaïe 1–39, 56. See also comments by
J. S. Rogers, “An Allusion to Coronation in Isaiah 2:6,” CBQ 51 (1989) 232–36.
199. See Isa 6:1.
200. “Nicht wegen seiner Grausamkeit, Mordlust usw. wird also dem Assyrer das
Gericht angekündigt, sondern weil er gegen seine von Jahwe verfügte Bestimmung
und damit gegen Jahwes Verfügungsgewalt verstieß.” F. Huber, Jahwe, Juda und die an-
deren Völker beim Propheten Jesaja (BZAW 137; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1976) 50.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 201

already seen in the Assyrian sources that the Assyrians were preoccu-
pied with the problems both of extending their domain and of preserv-
ing stable border frontiers, but there is an essential difference of
perspective. As we saw in the “Synchronistic History” above (p. 43),
for the Assyrians it was the universal god Assur, not the universal God
Yahweh, that established the borders between nations and punished
transgressions of them. Given this, it seems possible, perhaps even
likely, that the eighth-century Judean preoccupation with borders and
boundaries, and with Yahweh’s sovereignty over them, was a response
to similar theologies espoused by the Assyrians.
In addition to Assyria’s penchant for border encroachments,
Isaiah’s other complaint with the Mesopotamians was the disparity
that existed between Yahweh’s plan for Assyria and the nation’s own
plans. Yahweh had commanded Assyria to ‘take spoil’ (llv llvl) and
‘to seize plunder’ (zb zbl), but Assyria had instead chosen ‘to destroy’
(dymvl) and ‘to cut off nations’ (μywg tyrkhl). This grievance is an im-
portant one when we remind ourselves of Isaiah’s view of Judah as an
economically stratified society. Although he envisioned the plunder of
the wealthy, he could not accept the perpetration of Assyrian violence
against the nation as a whole. 201 For both Amos and Isaiah, Assyria was
not to destroy the underprivileged people of Yahweh but to punish the
oppressive upper classes of society.
Not only did Isaiah challenge Assyria’s claim to universal domina-
tion, but he did so in juxtaposition to the powerful imagery of Yah-
weh’s enthronement in chap. 6. This universal ideology and royal
imagery seems to be distinctive when we set in alongside the Northern
prophetic tradition as represented by Hosea. It reminds us much more
of Assyrian ideas about its god and king than it does of Israelite ideas
about Yahweh. In light of this, while it is much too strong a claim to
suggest that we have here the origins of Yahwistic kingship imagery, it
is clear that the peripheral experience of the Assyrian period brought
the kingship of Yahweh and his universal dominion to the theological
fore. Or to put this in slightly more theoretical terms, the Judean pe-
ripheral experience of the late eighth and early seventh centuries did
not produce a heightened sense of ethnicity but instead resulted in the
201. It is probably for this reason that the criticism of Assyria in 10:5–15 was jux-
taposed to Isaiah’s defense of Judah’s impoverished population in 10:1–4. This might
also explain how two texts that are often viewed as a single unit, 5:8–24 and 10:1–4,
became separated in the collection. See Clements, Isaiah 1–39, 60–61.
202 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

intensification of Judean religious identity and, along with that, an ex-

altation of its national God, Yahweh.

The Ethiopians: Isaiah 18:1–6

The eighth-century Israelite and Assyrian evidence, along with
some classical sources, reflect the view that Ethiopia lay on the edge of
the known world. 202 Whether Isaiah, like Hippocrates, would have
attributed the phenotypical distinctives of the Ethiopians to their lo-
cation on this geographical periphery is difficult to say. 203 But he was
well aware that there were essential differences that separated these
Ethiopians (vwk) from the Judeans, namely, that they were ˚vmm
(‘tall’), frwm (‘smooth/hairless’), and arwn (‘fearful’). 204 Although
Isaiah does not mention their darker skin tone, it is perhaps implied
in his reference to their skin’s smoothness. 205 The prophet’s descrip-
tion is remarkably similar to the description in Herodotus:
These Ethiopians, to whom Cambyses sent them, are said to be the
tallest (megistoi) and fairest (kallistoi) of all men. Their way of
choosing kings is different from that of all others, as (it is said) are all
their laws; they deem worthy to be their king that townsman whom
they judge to be tallest and to have strength proportioned to his stat-
ure. . . . Thank the gods who put it not in the minds of the sons of
the Ethiopians to win more territory than they have. 206

202. See the descriptions of Herodotus and Hippocrates in Hartog, The Mirror of
Herodotus, 19–30. Throughout this discussion, Ethiopia refers not to the region associ-
ated with modern Ethiopia but the region of the Sudan and Nubia just south of an-
cient Egypt.
203. Hippocrates Airs, Waters, Places, 13–18. In this text we see a classical expres-
sion of the early “climatic” explanation for human phenotypical attributes.
204. What is intended by the second term, frwm, is somewhat difficult. On the
one hand, frm often refers to a condition of baldness or to the process of removing hair
(cf. Ezra 9:3, Neh 13:25, Isa 50:6), which would seem to indicate that our text is refer-
ring to the relatively hairless skin of the Ethiopians. Others have attempted to connect
this term with the dark skin color of the Ethiopians on the basis of 1 Kgs 7:45, where it
is translated ‘burnished’, as in ‘burnished bronze’. While it seems clear to me that the
term refers to the smooth, hairless characteristic of Ethiopian skin, such a description
undoubtedly brings to the reader’s mind their dark skin hues as well.
205. Skin color is an obvious distinctive marker, and in the classical sources no
author before Xenophanes applied a physical characteristic to Africans other than
color. See F. M. Snowden, Before Color Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks (Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1983) 10.
206. See Herodotus Histories 3.14, 21:
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 203

Thus it would seem that the ancient traditions are more-or-less

unified in recognizing that the Ethiopians were tall, distinctive in ap-
pearance, and fierce in battle, with this last characteristic undoubtedly
emphasized in Isaiah’s mind because of the Ethiopian dynasty that had
seized control of Egypt (the 25th Dynasty). These characteristics have
a decidedly ethnic flavor, since they include quite pronounced inher-
ited phenotypical characteristics, which would reinforce the already es-
tablished tendency among the Southern prophets to conceptualize
peoples through an ethnic paradigm.
The interesting issue reflected in Isaiah is the confusion of identity
that resulted from the fact that the Ethiopians controlled Egypt during
the latter part of the eighth century. The prophet’s references to the
“Nile,” “vessels of papyrus,” and “land the rivers divide” refer unmis-
takably to the regions normally associated with Egypt (cf. Isaiah 20).
The Assyrian annals of Sargon II and Sennacherib reflect a similar
awareness of the Ethiopian presence:
Pharaoh of Egypt . . . which (land) belongs (now) to Kush (Ethio-
pia). . . . Hezekiah . . . had called (for help) upon the kings of Egypt
and the bowmen, the chariot(-corps) and the cavalry of the king of
Ethiopia, an army beyond counting—and they (actually) had come
to their assistance. 207
Both Assyrians and Judeans were well aware that the king in Egypt was
ethnically Ethiopian and that an “outsider” ruled Egypt during this pe-
riod. Although this Judean/Assyrian perception was no doubt height-
ened by the Ethiopians’ distinctive phenotypical characteristics, their
view of the Ethiopians should not obscure the fact that the Ethiopian
kings seem to have viewed themselves as “more Egyptian” than native
Egyptians. Both Piye (748–716 b.c.e.) and Shabako (716–702 b.c.e.)
were often at pains to present themselves as Egyptian pharaohs in their
royal titles, architectural pursuits, and religious commitments to
Amun. 208 Furthermore, scholars have in fact tended to view these kings
as cultural and religious conservatives, 209 a view born out in King
Piye’s claim that he restored traditional Egyptian religious life and that
207. ANET 286–87; and Luckenbill, ARAB, 2.30, 62, 193–95.
208. K. A. Kitchen, The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt (1100–650 bc)
(2d ed.; Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1986) 369–80.
209. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, 344; J. A. Wilson, The
Culture of Ancient Egypt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965) 292–93; Frand-
sen, “Egyptian Imperialism,” 169–70.
204 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

he rejected vassals who failed to meet Egyptian cultural standards

(because they were “uncircumcised eaters of fish”). 210 The Ethiopian
kings had a similar contempt for the foreign Libyan element within
Egypt, which they viewed as morally clumsy, ritually inept, and recre-
ant in behavior. 211 As the reader may recognize already, there is a sense
of irony here, because our failure to find ethnicity among native Egyp-
tians in the previous chapter must be juxtaposed with this evidence
that the Ethiopians tended to act like “ethnic Egyptians.” So, although
Judeans and Assyrians appear to have viewed the Ethiopian dynasty as
ethnically distinct and “foreign” to the Egyptian milieu, the Ethiopian
kings obviously felt themselves to be Egyptian. But this annulment of
the ethnic distinction between Ethiopians and Egyptians was success-
ful only to a point, as is illustrated by the fact that both Taharqa (698–
664) and Tantamani (664–656) fled back to their Ethiopian homeland
when Assyria brought to a close their control of Upper Egypt. 212
The oracle in this text predicts judgment upon the Ethiopians, pri-
marily because they sought to entice Judah (most likely, Hezekiah) to
join a political alliance against Assyria. Isaiah was not very happy with
this maneuver, perhaps because of certain pro-Assyrian sympathies but
even more likely for religious reasons that I will outline below. It seems
clear enough that his rejection of the Ethiopians was not rooted in any
distinctive sense of Judean ethnicity.

Egypt in the Eyes of a Judean: Isaiah 19:1–15

The Ethiopians represented only one facet of the political matrix
that vied for control of Egypt during the latter part of the eighth cen-
tury and the early seventh century. As the Assyrian threat appeared on
the horizon, the Libyan presence was also keenly felt. The western por-
tions of the Delta were controlled primarily by a Libyan kingdom, and
the contemporary 22d and 23d Dynasties were also associated with Lib-
yan kings. Although the Ethiopian rulers called these kings “Libyans,”
to do so was something of a misnomer since the Delta’s Libyan aristoc-
racy had long since assimilated into Egyptian society. 213 At the same
210. Lichtheim, AEL, 3.80.
211. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, 344.
212. T. G. H. James, An Introduction to Ancient Egypt (San Francisco: Harper,
1979) 73–74.
213. W. W. Hallo and W. K. Simpson, The Ancient Near East: A History (New
York: Harcourt Brace, 1971) 288.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 205

time portions of the southern and eastern delta were governed by vari-
ous chieftains and lesser princes, and none of the larger political modal-
ities was fully able to tame these local rulers. 214 As we will see, Isaiah
was clearly familiar with these political and cultural circumstances. But
first a few preliminary observations about our text are in order.
The authenticity of this text is much debated, and it is customary
to address the problem by recognizing three units within the text:
vv. 1–4, 5–10, and 11–14 (v. 15 is for nearly everyone a later addition).
Wildberger has claimed that the “politische Orientierungslosigkeit”
described in vv. 1–4 and 11–14 represents the original oracle and that
the “Naturkatastrophe” in vv. 5–10 is intrusive and therefore an addi-
tion. Kaiser and Duhm have rejected the entire oracle, Auvray has ac-
cepted it, and both Gray and Clements seem to be unsure about it. 215
In light of this, let us begin by setting aside vv. 5–10, which are of little
consequence for this study anyway. Next we can exclude the question-
able portions of vv. 1 and 3 for the same reason. This leaves us with a
part of v. 1 as well as with vv. 2–4 and 11–14. A strong case can be
made for the authenticity of all of these. Thematically, the political dis-
integration of Egypt reflected in vv. 1, 4, and 11–14 unites these texts
as a single literary unit. 216 Historically this description of Egypt corre-
sponds precisely to our understanding of the region in Isaiah’s day.
Furthermore, I can think of no reason that a later redactor would find
this addition profitable, nor can one easily characterize the whole text
as a late one.
Wildberger is probably correct when he dates this text sometime
before the 25th Dynasty came to power in 716 b.c.e., since texts after
that period recognize the new Ethiopian presence (cf. Isaiah 18 and
20). Given this context, we can outline specific circumstances that pre-
vailed in the region. 217 Piye, the Ethiopian founder of what would

214. Ibid., 287–92; Redford, Egypt, Canaan and Israel in Ancient Times, 335. The
best way to conceptualize this period is: (1) the demise of the Sheshonqids; (2) the rise
of the Ethiopians; (3) the continuing presence of independent chiefdoms.
215. Auvray, Isaïe 1–39, 187–92; Clements, Isaiah 1–39, 166–67; Duhm, Das
Buch Jesaia, 140–44; G. B. Gray, Isaiah I–XXXIX (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark,
1912) 318–23; Wildberger, Jesaja (3 vols.; BKAT; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener
Verlag, 1978) 2.703–8.
216. However, there is no need to suppose that these texts were originally parts of
the same prophetic oracle.
217. On this historical period, refer to Kitchen, The Third Intermediate Period,
348–77.
 206 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

become the 25th Dynasty, ruled Egypt as an overlord. His underling

vassals were in three ranks. The highest rank included Osorkon IV in
Tanis and Bubastis (22d Dynasty), the uncertain successor of Input II
(Shoshenq IV?) in Leontopolis, two lesser pharaohs in Hermopolis and
Heracleopolis, and the hereditary princes in Athribis-with-Heliopolis.
The second rank was filled by Bakenranef ’s western kingdom (a rem-
nant of the 24th Dynasty), the third was comprised of the four great
“Chiefs of Ma,” and a large number of lesser rulers also participated in
governing the region. Obviously, there was a great deal of political and
cultural disorder within the Egyptian territory, and it was probably this
fact that prompted Isaiah to say in 19:14 that Yahweh had “mingled
(˚sm) within her a spirit of confusion (μy[w[ jwr).” This sense of politi-
cal and cultural confusion is given a more detailed description in vv. 2
and 13.
I will stir up Egyptians against Egyptians, and they will fight, every
man against his brother and every man against his neighbor, city
against city, kingdom against kingdom . . .
The princes of Zoan have become fools, and the princes of Memphis
are deluded; those who are the cornerstones of her tribes have led
Egypt astray.

The princes of Zoan and Memphis were Osorkon IV (22d Dynasty)

and Bakenranef (24th Dynasty), respectively. 218 So Kitchen is substan-
tially correct when he points out that Isaiah seemed to view rulers in
the nearby regions, particularly the 22d Dynasty at Tanis/Zoan, as the
primary representatives of Egyptian power, even when the primary
center of power was well removed from it. 219 The “cornerstones” of
Egypt’s tribes (μyfbv) were undoubtedly the various leaders of the
multifarious political and cultural modalities present at that time. 220
This use of fbv (‘tribe’) is rather unusual because it is the only time in
the Hebrew Bible that the term is used of non-Israelite social modali-
ties. Although this at first seems to provide a unique opportunity to

218. Bakenranef ruled from Sais but was recognized as the ruler of Memphis as
well (ibid., 376).
219. Kitchen, The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt, 373–74; Redford, Egypt,
Canaan and Israel in Ancient Times, 335–36.
220. Ibid., 335. The Hebrew singular tN'P} may be taken collectively or perhaps
emended to the plural, tNoP}.

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 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 207

explore the term’s significance in Israelite thought, 221 the complex

Egyptian sociopolitical context makes it difficult to know whether the
prophet’s μyfbv included larger modalities (such as the Tanites),
smaller independent modalities (such as the “Chiefs of Ma”), or some
combination of the two. Contrary to the suggestion of Clements, we
cannot be sure that here we are dealing with “ethnic groups,” and this
means that our initial enthusiasm about fbv seems to be unwar-
ranted. 222 But there is at least one conclusion that I think we should
draw. If everywhere else fbv referred to Israelite and Judean modali-
ties, then we must assume that, whatever Isaiah thought he saw in
Egypt, it was similar to something that he perceived in the socio-
cultural features of Judah and Israel. Whether we should think here of
“ancient” Judah and Israel or of the two contemporary kingdoms is an-
other matter that is difficult to address.
What we can say with certainty is that, in Isaiah’s eyes, Egypt’s
problem was the total collapse of a cohesive sense of identity. The ref-
erences to Tanis and Memphis clearly point to the disappearance of an
unambiguously “legitimate” Egyptian dynasty, and when he described
the quarrel for political autonomy as the struggle of μyrxmb μyrxm,
Isaiah was depicting the various groups involved as “Egyptian” quite
apart from the fact that many were supposedly of Libyan origin. As a
result of this internecine struggle, “the spirit of Egypt (μyrxmAjwr)
within them” was to be emptied out. The significance of μyrxmAjwr
cannot be quickly arrived at using, as Gray does, a “stock” definition of
jwr as opposed to vpn. Helpful generalizations about Hebrew anthro-
pological terms, such as the ones provided in Wolff ’s Anthropology, are
just that, and in a given context jwr, vpn, and bl can convey the same
meaning. 223 The term jwr occurs twice in our text, here and also in
9:14, where Isaiah describes the “spirit of confusion” that Yahweh had

221. The term hfm, which is synonymous with fbv, is not used to refer to non-
Israelite peoples. The anthropological term hjpvm is also noticeably limited in its us-
age, referring to non-Israelite groups on very few occasions. See the “Table of Nations”
in Genesis 10; Jer 1:15, 25:9; Zech 14:17. I will discuss hjpvm at greater length in the
next chapter.
222. Clements, Isaiah 1–39, 169.
223. H. W. Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress,
1974) 10–58. See, for example, the great lexical elasticity displayed by the Hebrew
term bbl/bl, in F. H. von Meyenfeldt’s Het Hart in het Oude Testament (Leiden: Brill,
1950). Portions of von Meyenfeldt’s work were translated for me by A. Teeuwen.
 208 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

given to Egypt. The continuing references to “foolishness,” “stupid

counsel,” and “delusion” indicate that Egypt was losing its vital, unify-
ing powers of reason (i.e., “the spirit of Egypt will be emptied out”)
and had been given over to a disruptive loss of rationality (i.e., “a spirit
of confusion”). 224 That Isaiah would depict the decline of Egyptian so-
cial order in this way suggests that he probably understood Egyptian
history as an ancient tradition characterized by order and stability. He
was undoubtedly familiar with Egypt’s cohesive national character, its
relatively continuous dynastic history, and its long and influential pres-
ence in the region. Isaiah predicted that, in the end, Egypt’s political
confusion would result in Assyrian domination: “a fierce king will rule
over them” (v. 4).
The Egyptian materials that we have examined in the previous
chapter show that Egypt’s identity was primarily political, and the data
from Isaiah only reinforces this perspective. This reaffirms the mount-
ing evidence from Hosea, Amos, and now Isaiah that the identity of
the larger Near Eastern powers, both in their own eyes and in the eyes
of the Israelite prophets, was largely political. The exception to this
rule seems to have been the tendency of Isaiah to understand Ethio-
pian identity in ethnic terms, but it must be remembered that, for their
own part, the Ethiopians were anxious to portray themselves as the le-
gitimate political heirs of Egyptian dynastic rule.

The Problem with Foreign Alliances: Isaiah 30:1–5 and 31:1–3

Hosea’s distaste for Israel’s international alliances is mirrored in sev-
eral texts from Isaiah that criticize Judean sympathies with Egypt. As
Clements has pointed out, these texts (Isa 30:1–5 and 31:1–3) are ob-
viously related, though Wildberger would date 31:1–3 slightly later
than 30:1–5. 225 With the exception of Kaiser, who views 30:3 as a late
interpolation, commentators are united in viewing both texts as Isa-
ianic. 226 The context reflected here is obviously one of the Egyptian-
sponsored rebellions against Assyria, dating around either 713–711 or
705–701 b.c.e. Egypt was represented by “the princes of Zoan and
Hanes,” that is, the princes of Tanis and Heracleopolis. The remnants of

224. This use of jwr approximates Wolff ’s understanding of bbl/bl as the ‘rea-
sonable’ aspect of humans. We might also see behind this a reference to Egypt’s the-
ology of the Ba as the vital force in the human spirit.
225. Clements, Isaiah 1–39, 254; Wildberger, Jesaja, 3.1227–35.
226. Kaiser, Isaiah, 2.286–87.

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 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 209

the 22d Dynasty were in Tanis, with which Judah was quite familiar,
and Heracleopolis was at this point associated with the new Ethiopian
dynasty of Shabako (the 25th Dynasty). 227
The criticism offered in these oracles is straightforward: Judah had
added ‘sin to sin’ (tafjAl[ tafj, 30:1) by “going down to Egypt for
help” (31:1). This act was understood by the prophet as rebellion
against the deity (μyrrws μynb ywh) because, in doing so, Judah had
substituted confidence (jfb) in foreign military power for confidence
in Yahweh (wvrd al hwhyAtaw). In my discussion of Hos 7:8–13, I
suggested that Hosea rejected foreign alliances because he viewed them
as ‘covenants’ (tyrb) that threatened Yahweh’s covenantal relationship
with Israel. Although the Southern prophets lack any explicit notions
of covenant ideology, Isa 30:1 implies that Hosea and Isaiah shared a
common contempt for international military relationships because of
their religious viewpoint. Isaiah’s polemic presents the parallel accusa-
tion that Judah had sought yjwr alw hksm ˚snlw ynm alw hx[ twc[l
(30:1). The first phrase, “to carry out a plan, but not mine,” is clear
enough. But the meaning of hksm ˚snlw is obscure primarily because
this verb/noun combination occurs only here in the Hebrew Bible and
because hksm normally refers to ‘molten images’. Most commentators
have translated the phrase along the lines laid out by the RSV, ‘to make
a league’ or ‘an alliance’, 228 which makes sense for several reasons.
First, the LXX tradition actually translated hksm ˚snlw as sunqhvkaÍ
(‘covenant, agreement’) which indicates, as Procksch has pointed out,
that the Septuagint must have understood the Hebrew along the lines
of sponda;Í spevndesqai ‘to pour out a drink offering’ during a cove-
nant ratification ceremony. 229 Although there appears to be no con-
crete parallel to this use of drink offerings in Levantine treaty texts, the
covenant renewal of Jacob in Genesis 35 does feature a libation. 230 All
things considered, both the parallelism in 30:1 (hksm ˚snlw is parallel

227. Shabako moved north of Heracleopolis and took control of Memphis in his
second year (715 b.c.e.), extending his rule to all of Egypt at the same time. None-
theless, Osorkon IV continued to reign in Tanis as he had during Bakenranef ’s 24th
Dynasty.
228. Clements, Isaiah 1–39, 243; Duhm, Das Buch Jesaia, 215; Kaiser, Isaiah,
2.285; Procksch, Jesaia I, 384–85; Wildberger, Jesaja 28–39, 1152. Auvray is less cer-
tain about this (Isaïe 1–39, 262–63).
229. Procksch, Jesaia I, 384–85.
230. One of the best illustrations of such a ceremony is found in the Sefîre trea-
ties (AIS I A 35–42).
210 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

with “carry out a plan”) and the oracle’s overall content favor that we
read the text as the ritual ratification of a political alliance. One is at
first tempted to suggest on this basis that Isaiah would have agreed
with Hosea’s condemnation of all foreign alliances, 231 but his oracles
were silent on the question of alliances with Assyria and J. Høgen-
haven has taken this as evidence that Isaiah endorsed the pro-Assyrian
party. 232 This thesis may be true in part, but it cannot account for the
whole matter, because Isaiah’s criticisms of the Egyptian alliance in
chaps. 30–31 do not appear to stem from his support for Assyria but
from his prophetic conviction that it constituted rebellion against Yah-
weh. While Isaiah may have been very familiar with Assyrian propa-
ganda and have resigned himself to its power, he obviously did so out
of a respect for his sovereign God. 233 It would therefore seem that for
both Isaiah and Hosea the issue of foreign alliances was more religious
than political.

The Ancient Traditions in Isaiah of Jerusalem

J. Vollmer’s examination of Isaiah’s Rückblicke to ancient traditions
is somewhat hampered by its tendency to presume the prophet’s famil-
iarity with the pentateuchal sources, and this is precisely the assump-
tion that I have assiduously tried to avoid during this inquiry. But this
problem turns out to be mostly academic because Vollmer has identi-
fied almost all of these Rückblicke as nachjesajanischen, so that they do
not come into play here. 234 After all, it was not Israel’s ancient tradi-
tion but its imminent end that stood in the center of Isaiah’s prophetic
proclamation. 235 I will therefore refer to his comments only as they
relate to the specific texts that interest us. In relation to the issue of
identity, Isaiah refers to two historical traditions that are particularly

231. Did Isaiah and Amos view Judah’s relationship with Yahweh in the exclusive
terms of Hosea? In contrast to Hosea’s strong polemic against foreign deities, Isaiah
and Amos offer no such polemic. In my view, the most likely explanation is that the
universal status of Yahweh in Isaiah and Amos seems to have precluded the necessity of
such an argument.
232. J. Høgenhaven, “The Prophet Isaiah and Judaean Foreign Policy under Ahaz
and Hezekiah,” JNES 49 (1990) 351–54; see also Clements, Isaiah 1–39, 11.
233. On Isaiah’s familiarity with Assyrian propaganda and its military power, see
Machinist, “Assyria and Its Image in the First Isaiah,” 722–25, 728–29.
234. See Vollmer, Geschichtliche Rückbliche und Motive, 169–86.
235. Ibid., 187.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 211

important to me, the first being his references to the Davidic monarchy
and the second his allusions to the schism between the Northern and
Southern kingdoms. These are naturally important issues because of
the growing skepticism about the historicity of the David monarchy. 236
Isaiah alluded to the Davidic tradition at several points, and only
in one of these cases is there a question about the text’s authenticity. 237
While Amos affirmed the artistic talents of the dynastic founder, Isaiah
underlined his martial exploits against the Philistines (his victory at
Mount Perazim in 28:21) 238 and against Jerusalem (successfully con-
quered in 29:1). We thus infer that the Judean prophetic tradition—
and we would assume the people in general—was supportive of the
Davidic monarchy. The importance of the Davidic period for Isaiah is
especially clear in his oracle against Jerusalem’s social and political cli-
mate (1:21–26), in which Yahweh promises:
I will restore your judges (˚yfpv) as at the first and your counselors
(˚yx[y) as at the beginning. Afterward you shall be called the city of
righteousness, the faithful city.
As Clements has noted, this cannot be a reference to the pre-Davidic
period reflected in the book of Judges because for Isaiah the origins of
Jerusalem lay with David’s conquest of the city (29:1). 239 Instead,
commentators have agreed that we must be dealing with a restoration
of the ideal Davidic rule as it was in the beginning (hnvarbk . . .
hbyva). 240 This restoration would feature leaders—judges and counse-
lors—like the ones associated with the “golden age” of David.
This means that the conquest of Jerusalem and the founding of its
ruling dynasty played the same role for Isaiah that the Exodus/Wilder-
ness traditions played for Hosea. In both cases the Ursprung of the
people represented a “golden age” in which the nation and the deity
enjoyed prosperous relations. In spite of their obvious differences,

236. I have already referred to the recent discussion of G. N. Knoppers, “The

Vanishing Solomon: The Disappearance of the United Monarchy from Recent Histo-
ries of Ancient Israel,” JBL 116 (1997) 19–44.
237. Cf. Isa 1:26, 9:6, 28:21, and 29:1, with 9:6 being of questionable prove-
nience. See the appropriate portions of Auvray, Clements, Duhm, Kaiser, Procksch,
and Wildberger.
238. No doubt the tradition that informs 2 Sam 5:17–25.
239. Clements, Isaiah 1–39, 36.
240. Duhm, Das Buch Jesaia, 34–35; Gray, Isaiah I, 34; Wildberger, Isaiah 1–12,
70.
 212 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

Isaiah and Hosea seem to have agreed that hope for the nation rested in
a return to the “golden age.” But their “golden ages” were entirely dif-
ferent, with one featuring origins outside of the land via deliverance
from Egypt and the other featuring the conquest of a city within the
land by a powerful military leader. To put this in terms laid out by
Procksch some time ago, while Isaiah believed that a return to the mo-
narchic ideal would restore Judah, Hosea viewed kingship as a mis-
guided notion whose annulment was essential to the restoration of
Israel. 241 In all of this, Hosea’s concept of Israelite identity presents it-
self as ethnoreligious and in contrast with Isaiah’s more political sense
of national identity. This no doubt stemmed from the very different
bases of identity envisioned by the two prophets, in one case (Hosea) a
vision of identity that was grounded in the people’s shared history with
their national God, and in the other case (Isaiah) a vision of identity
grounded in support for the divinely chosen monarchic dynasty. This
monarchic focus would tend, in the case of Isaiah, to detract from an
emphasis on the people and on their collective sense of identity in ways
similar to the Mesopotamian and Egyptian evidence that we have al-
ready examined, wherein the constant preoccupation with kingship
displaced an emphasis on the people themselves.
If the Davidic materials in Amos and Isaiah hint at the relationship
that once tied North and South together, Isaiah’s reference to the
North–South schism in 7:17 made it explicit: “The Lord will bring
upon you and upon your people and upon your father’s house such
days as have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from
Judah.” This evil omen was representative of the Southern perspective
that the political schism had been a mistake and that it represented a
threat to the security and identity of both nations, a view that was in
stark contrast to Hosea’s seeming apathy toward his Southern neigh-
bors. All of this can be summarized with this proposition: if our three
prophetic witnesses are suitable representatives of the eighth-century
perspective, then the Judeans remembered the old United Monarchy
with nostalgia and the Israelites with very little affection. 242

241. Procksch, Jesaia I, 48.

242. In light of the fact that language often serves as an important marker of eth-
nic distinctiveness, it is instructive to note J. C. L. Gibson’s observation that there was
a marked difference in the eighth century between Judean and Israelite Hebrew. But
we should strees that there is no evidence that would explicitly suggest that this was a
strong marker of the distinctions between them in antiquity (Gibson, Textbook of Syr-
ian Semitic Inscriptions [3 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1971–82] 1.5–16, 21–24).

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 Subhead drop

Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 213

Summary:
Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period
Ethnic concepts such as forefathers and ancestral migrations
played an important role in Israelite identity, and these Northern tradi-
tions were well known even to Southerners like Amos and Isaiah. This
comes as no surprise, given the fact that in Amos we have evidence
both of widespread tendencies toward ethnicity in the Levantine con-
text and, at least in the case of the smaller states, of some knowledge
about the ethnic traditions of the surrounding peoples. Therefore, Ho-
sea’s ethnicity is distinguishable not in type but in degree, since it ap-
pears to have been a more intense kind of identity with a firmer sense
of boundary. However, these powerful sentiments were motivated not
so much by ethnic concerns as by Hosea’s desire to promote the agenda
of his mono-Yahwist party. In essence, Hosea utilized a preexisting
sense of Israelite ethnicity and intensified it through a heated polemic
against other deities, which he identified as foreign. He therefore
brings us neither to the root of Israelite ethnic identity nor to the be-
ginnings of Israelite Yahwism; both of these predated him. Rather, his
community was responsible for the merging (or remerging? or reem-
phasizing?) of these two modes of identity when it intensified ethnic
sentiments in support of Israel’s national god, Yahweh. “Foreignness”
became the criteria for rejecting anything that threatened the mono-
Yahwist community, and Hosea not only rejected “non-Israelite” dei-
ties like Baal, but he also criticized Jacob’s ancient foray into Aram for
a spouse, international political treaties, and even the nontheocratic in-
stitution of kingship. The extent to which Hosea’s community sanc-
tioned exclusive devotion to Yahweh is reflected in two related and
powerful metaphors, marriage fidelity and an exclusive covenant rela-
tionship. All of this of course implies that the larger community that
surrounded the mono-Yahwist sect did not adhere to these same in-
tense boundaries, so that we must presume that Hosea’s community
was a peripheral one in the sociological sense. From this one should
not conclude that Israel’s sense of ethnicity entirely lacked meaningful
boundaries, since the discursive strategies of both Hosea and Amos as-
sume a general commitment by the people to Israel’s ethnicity. Hosea’s
sense of ethnicity was simply stronger than most Israelites’.
Although it is difficult to unravel all of the factors that contributed
to Hosea’s unique perspective, I have suggested that the peripheral ex-
perience of Israel was perhaps an important one. As we will explore in
214 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

more depth below, Hosea’s community responded to this uncomfort-

able status by suggesting that Yahweh, not Assyria, was responsible for
any military losses that might be suffered. In doing so, they replaced
the specter of Assyrian domination with the vision of the rule of Israel’s
own God over his people and his land. As an expression of this ideol-
ogy, Hosea endorsed unyielding loyalty to Yahweh and actively op-
posed alliances that might have symbolized dependence on sources
other than Yahweh.
Returning to the ethnic features themselves—as I have said, the
constituent parts of Israelite ethnic identity (its migration and forefa-
ther traditions) were assumed by, and therefore predated, our earliest
prophetic sources. These ethnic traditions are similar to the Greek tra-
ditions described in chap. 2 and share with them the title charter myths,
in that their essential purpose was to describe the origins of the peoples
involved. It is important to assess the nature of the similarity here. The
Greek traditions were of both aggregative and oppositional varieties.
They were aggregative in the sense that the ethnic genealogies gradu-
ally accumulated new elements as groups were assimilated into the mix
or as they needed to define the relationships between them with more
precision. The oppositional elements of Greek ethnicity were for the
most part relatively late developments because they stemmed from the
pan-Hellenic effort to repulse the threat from Persia; in other words,
the greatest sense of common identity among the various Greek peo-
ples emerged when they faced a common outside threat. Similar ethnic
patterns can be discerned in the Hebrew materials.
In the first place, there does appear to be an aggregative tendency
to include the various Israelite ancestors and groups within a genealogi-
cal framework, since the Jacob and Joseph traditions appear to have ex-
isted somewhat independently of each other, only to be joined at a
later point in time. Because the Jacob, Isaac, and Joseph figures do not
function directly as eponyms for Israel, it seems to me that one could
make the case that they have only secondarily been employed in their
ancestral roles. The fact that Jacob does not figure in the ninth-century
Song of Deborah perhaps indicates when the forefather tradition first
appeared, or more precisely, when it was first adopted as an ancestral
tradition. This remains a guess, however. 243 When we compare the

243. For a ninth-century dating of Deborah’s Song, see my discussion in chap. 3

above.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 215

eighth-century prophetic sources to the Song of Deborah, the aggrega-

tive tendencies in Israelite ethnicity stand out more clearly. In SDeb,
there was an Ephraim but no Manasseh. In Isaiah, however, the two
tribes appear, it seems, as brothers and as the common progeny of Jo-
seph. Our examination of the “Moses blessings” (Deuteronomy 33) in
the next chapter will provide us with a clearer vantage point on this ag-
gregative process. In certain respects, these processes should be viewed
as examples of what I call “concrete ethnicity”; in other words, the eth-
nic concepts serve to lay out and explain the relationships between ex-
isting groups that were in some sense already ethnic in character. This
should be contrasted with “abstract ethnicity,” the tendency to use
ethnicity as a template to explain the character and origins of other
groups. An example of this is Gen 10:22, which traces the origins of
Assyria back to the forefather Asshur.
This brings us to the question of oppositional ethnicity and its
place in the Israelite traditions. Perhaps in the Merneptah text, and cer-
tainly in SDeb and Hosea, the Canaanites figure as “the other” against
which Israel defined itself. While in the first two sources this was
largely a function of Canaan as a military opponent (if we take gener-
ous liberties with the Merneptah Stele), in Hosea the Canaanites
should be associated primarily with the Phoenicians and with the reli-
gious threat from one of their chief deities, Baal. In other words, al-
though SDeb implies that the Canaanites were the opponents of the
Yahwists, this was a military struggle that became an ethnoreligious
struggle only later when Hosea and his party sought to promote their
mono-Yahwism.
More examples of oppositional ethnicity are found in the migra-
tion traditions of Israel’s neighbors, particularly in the cases of the
Arameans and the Philistines. Although these groups shared this type
of legend with the Israelites, both were long-standing enemies of Israel
and firmly separated from it via ethnic traditions. Migration origin tra-
ditions were also popular in archaic and classical Greece, and from this
we should probably conclude that migration was a popular model in
the eighth-century levant. This raises an important question. When we
speak of a model are we then speaking of abstract ethnicity, that is, the
use of ethnic models by one people to explain the origins of another?
We may at first be tempted to think, along with the anthropologists,
that we are dealing merely with “charter myths” that were invented to
account for national origins of other peoples, but I have already
216 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

pointed out that this is not very likely, because some of these migration
traditions have at least a grain of truth behind them, particularly in the
instance of the Arameans and Philistines. I also think that one could
find any number of contexts that might lie behind the Israelite migra-
tion from Egypt, especially the circumstances that prevailed when the
Asiatic Hyksos were forced out of Egypt. So in some of these cases our
sources witness (perhaps in distorted fashion) to instances of concrete
ethnicity that became the “charter myths” of these Levantine states.
I turn now to the question of Judean identity. Although Isaiah and
Amos were familiar with the ethnic sentiments held by their Northern
counterpart, they never expressed the idea that Judah somehow shared
in that identity. The few indications of ethnicity in Amos and Isaiah
were limited to descriptions of non-Judeans, and in Amos ethnicity did
not even serve to distinguish the Israelite people from the Philistines,
Arameans, and Ethiopians. Instead, Amos and Isaiah were concerned
primarily with sociological, religious, and political modes of identity.
Both Judean prophets were frustrated by the socioeconomic division
that prevailed in society. The injustices associated with this situation
were a primary cause of the coming judgment from Yahweh, which was
presumably directed toward the upper classes rather than the “peas-
ants.” From a religious standpoint, the Southern prophets viewed Yah-
weh not only as a national god, although he certainly was that, but also
as a universal deity. This emphasis clearly resulted from Judah’s periph-
eral status under the Assyrians, as evidenced by the fact that Isaiah at-
tacked the hubris of Assyria’s king while he simultaneously averred that
Yahweh was the true sovereign of the universe. Politically speaking, this
sovereignty was tangibly expressed in his divine choice of the Davidic
monarchy, which turns out to be an important component of Judean
identity and one that distinguished it from Israelite identity. In spite of
this difference between Israel and Judah, an important aspect of Judean
ideology was its affiliation with the North, an affiliation that stemmed
both from the period of Davidic rule in that region and also from a
common Yahwistic heritage. As must now be clear, this sentiment of
the South toward the North was not shared by many in the North to-
ward their neighbors in the South.
In light of the comparative aspects of our inquiry, I suppose that it
is appropriate at this point to ask specific questions about the prove-
nience of the ethnic traditions in ancient Israel as we have outlined
them up to this point. Was Israel’s view of its own ethnicity, or of the
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 217

ethnic identities of others, influenced in some way by the Greeks, Me-

sopotamians, or Egyptians? I think that we have confirmed without
doubt that Isaiah’s view of Israelite identity was very much influenced
by Assyrian ideologies, but for both the Assyrians and the Judeans this
sense of identity was more religious and political than it was ethnic.
The ethnic traditions of the North, however, particularly the forefather
and migration traditions, are a different matter and display certain
similarities with the ethnic traditions from Greece, from the Old Baby-
lonian period, and from the anthropological data that was discussed in
our introduction. We will need to sketch out these similarities and dif-
ferences with a view to identifying potential points of contact.
Israel’s ancestral traditions were of three varieties. First, they in-
cluded figures like Jacob and Isaac, whose names appear to have no im-
mediate connection either with the nation of Israel itself or with a
particular geographical region. In such cases, the traditions do not
seem to have been contrived to explain the origins of Israel or groups
within Israel but were secondarily appropriated as a tradition about the
ethnic forefather. As Westermann points out, whether there is any kind
of link between the traditions about Jacob and early Israel is difficult to
say, given the evidence:
If these texts, or even parts or motifs, or traces of them, actually go
back to the period of the patriarchs, actually originated with those
living persons Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, then the scholar
must account for the path of these traditions from the period (2000–
1400 b.c.e.) to the written works in the tenth, eighth, or sixth centu-
ries. And this path is virtually inaccessible because 80% to 90% of it
is oral tradition, and all we know of it is the written end product. 244
While we might quibble with Westermann’s characterization of the
problem, I think that no one will question the fact that we face many
difficulties in our effort to reconstruct and explain the history of these
traditions, difficulties that for some will make the very idea of a connec-
tion between the Jacob tradition and early Israel a fanciful one. This
seems to me too strong of an objection, because the Mesopotamian evi-
dence has demonstrated the tendency to generate forefather traditions
(during the Old Babylonian period) and to preserve these ancestral
traditions—in a somewhat distorted form—for rather long periods of

244. C. Westermann, Genesis: A Commentary (3 vols.; Minneapolis: Augsburg,

1982–85) 2.36.
218 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

time (down into the Neo-Assyrian period). The Egyptian evidence

from Sinuhe seems to indicate that kinship played an important role in
the organization of Asiatic society during the second millennium. For
these reasons I think that we should not quickly discard (or embrace)
the Jacob traditions as a witness to life in early Israel, or, if you like, to
life among the proto-Israelites.
This kind of tradition is clearly different from two other types of
ancestral tradition. The first has the name of an ancestor, such as
Ephraim or Manasseh, that is associated with a tribe or geographical
region. Thus, one would imagine that the ancestor was contrived to ac-
count for the origins of the people or the territory. This is very close to
what we have seen in the Greek evidence (Hellen was the forefather of
the Hellenes) and also, to an extent, in the anthropological data (Tiv
was the forefather of the Tiv people). Essentially, this brings us to a
fork in the road, because the comparative evidence can lead us down
one of two paths: one explains this kind of Israelite ethnicity through
diffusion (they borrowed it from the Greeks or Phoenicians); the other
explains it phenomenologically (similar kinds of traditions appear
rather naturally among disparate groups). How does one choose? I
have already explained that there are reasons to suspect contacts be-
tween the Greeks and Israelites via Phoenicia during the eighth cen-
tury, and I have cited the third kind of ancestral tradition, the ancestral
migration, that was known among the Greeks and among Israel’s Le-
vantine neighbors. With these migration traditions we face a similar
problem because they too can be explained in two different fashions:
first, as diffusions from some central point of origin, and second, as
actual migrations that gave rise to the traditions. We could probably
think of any number of ways to argue for either the diffusion model or
the phenomenological model, but I do not think that either choice
would be very conclusive, because our data are too cryptic. My own
thought is that there is probably a mixture of the two involved in the
origins and development of Israelite ethnicity.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 219

Excursus:
Core and Periphery in the Assyrian Period—A Proposal
The Neo-Assyrian period brings to a close one of the most intense
periods of peripheral experience that the Judeans and Israelites faced in
antiquity. But our dialogue up to this point has been more with bibli-
cal scholarship than with ethnicity studies, so at this juncture I would
like to interact briefly with the view of Wallerstein, now popular in
many quarters of scholarship, that ethnic identity is created and nur-
tured when small peripheral social modalities live under the imperial
pressures of a powerful core civilization.
First, in Hosea and in Amos we saw a tendency among the Levan-
tine peoples to employ ethnicity as an organizing principle of identity.
Because these neighboring groups shared a common status as “periph-
eral societies,” this would come as no surprise to Wallerstein. But the
Judean evidence shows that our support for Wallerstein must be quali-
fied since it is far from certain that ethnicity played any role in South-
ern identity and, even if some ethnic sentiments existed, it is clear that
they did not intensify during the eighth century. Instead, Judean iden-
tity was primarily organized around religious and political ideas, and
these were the boundaries that intensified during the Assyrian period.
In other words, it seems rather clear that competition between a core
and periphery intensifies not only ethnic boundaries but any existing
boundaries that serve to promote a sense of community and identity.
Regarding the “core” civilizations in Assyria and Egypt—neither
the native evidence nor the Hebrew sources suggests that ethnicity
played any significant role there, and this suits well the theoretical pre-
dictions of Wallerstein. The Israelite and Judean dynasties acted out
their peripheral relationship with these core societies quite predictably
as they sent and received envoys in their effort to forge some sense of
national security. Probably one of the more interesting observations
that we could draw from this is that Israelites and Judeans tended to
view Egypt and Assyria as equals, in spite of the fact that during this
period the glory of Egypt had long since faded. This exposes the rather
potent effect of Israel’s collective memory, which continued to consider
Egypt the powerful core civilization that it had been but was no longer.
Such an impression of Egypt is not entirely surprising if one considers
the cumulative effect of Egypt’s long domination of Asia and, over the
years, its frequent military incursions by the likes of Thutmose III,
220 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period

Amenhotep III, Ramses II, Merneptah, and Sheshonk I, to name a

few.
It would be natural for any of the smaller peripheral states in the
region, Israel and Judah being no exception, to seek the help of one
core civilization when threatened by another. How did these states re-
spond in the face of the powerful threat from Assyria? We can see two
alternating diplomatic policies: first, an attempt to appease Assyria po-
litically, and second, an effort to establish military alliances with Egypt
and with the surrounding peripheral states. Given that these practices
were quite conventional and clearly expected in such circumstances, we
must ask ourselves again why Hosea and Isaiah took such a stalwart po-
sition against Israel’s political effort to defend itself. In the paragraphs
that follow, I will suggest an answer to this question.
We should begin with a reminder of the positions that have been
staked out on this issue and the rationale that lay behind them. Our
Northern prophet, Hosea, viewed both the payment of tribute (to ap-
pease foreign aggressors) and the use of military alliances (to defend
against them) as a “mixing” with “foreigners” that would devour Is-
rael’s strength (7:8–9). This was because Yahweh had already proved
his mastery over the core imperial powers in the Exodus event, and Is-
rael needed only to safeguard its relationship with him. Isaiah was
equally uneasy with similar policies in Judah but for somewhat differ-
ent reasons. It was not only that Yahweh could defeat a core power but
that he was a universal deity whose sovereign territory included the
core powers. Thus Isaiah and Hosea traversed different roads to arrive
at the same kinds of conclusions about political alliances with foreign
powers. But I think that we can go a bit further in our analysis of these
ideas.
Israel’s position on the periphery of two great civilizations had dic-
tated a history of defeat and subordination. In terms of military re-
sources, it could compete with the martial power of these urban
civilizations only when they were internally weakened. However, in
terms of theological resources, it had Yahweh, who could resist any po-
tential foe. This was a theological idea that represented hope for a
people who, on simple material grounds, could never be optimistic
about the chances of military resistance. This theological position had
to be grounded in tangible policy, and for both Hosea and Isaiah this
trust in Yahweh was best expressed in a rejection of help from all oth-
ers. And there is more. In the view of these prophets, not only military
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Assyrian Period 221

victory but also military defeat was the result of Yahweh’s activity or
inactivity in the history of events. This meant that it was no longer As-
syria, the foreign power, who dominated Israel; it was Yahweh himself. In
other words, prophetic theology was a denial of foreign domination
that could be summarized in two complementary theological proposi-
tions. First, the prophetic rejection of foreign political relationships
was a theological response to the imperialistic policies of core urban
civilizations toward peripheral regions, in this case Israel and Judah.
With this strategy, the prophets exchanged Israel’s frailty for Yahweh’s
martial powers, thus preserving Israel’s importance in a world where,
on other grounds, it remained an insignificant player. 245 Second, the
theologies of divine retribution embraced by these prophets displaced
the long-standing specter of foreign domination. Just as Yahweh’s
power was substituted for Israel’s frailty in the first proposition, so also
Yahweh’s dominion was substituted for the domination of foreign
powers in the second. In this theology, Israel was never at the mercy of
foreign powers, either in times of potential threat or in times of impe-
rial domination.
I consider this proposal somewhat speculative, since it is based on a
combination of theory and data that are heavy on the theory side. In
addition, I am quite hesitant to argue, as Wallerstein would, that Asi-
atic identities on the periphery of Egypt and Mesopotamia were created
by the dominance of those core civilizations. Nevertheless, I believe
that the data do tend to support the assertion, often made in ethnicity
studies, that the domination of a peripheral social modality by power-
ful, imperialistic policies will transform the identity of that social
group.

245. There is a long-standing debate concerning the origin of certain elements of

Israel’s warfare theology, particularly the tradition that Yahweh fights on behalf of Is-
rael. Von Rad viewed this as late and Deuteronomic in origin, while others (F. M.
Cross, P. D. Miller, M. C. Lind) view it as a more ancient concept. For a brief summary
of the history and issues as well as a bibliography, see B. C. Ollenburger’s introduction
to the English edition of von Rad’s Holy War in Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Eerdmans, 1991).
Chapter Top dropped 1 pica

Chapter Five

Ethnicity and Identity in

the Judean Monarchy

The period between Isaiah and Jeremiah has produced a rather si-
lent and therefore disappointing interim in our biblical sources. 1 While
the Deuteronomistic History provides an account of this period, the
history itself dates to the late Judean monarchy or the exile, so that
there is a substantial period during the seventh century for which our
firsthand literary sources are the Assyrian annals of Sennacherib, Esar-
haddon, and Assurbanipal. Several Judean works serve as witnesses to
the period that follows these Assyrian sources, particularly Deuter-
onomy and Jeremiah, and it is this later period that is of primary im-
portance for this chapter. However, before I turn to these sources, in
the interest of perspective I will tarry briefly on the subject of the years
between Isaiah and the Josianic age.
When one speaks of exile, the sixth-century Judean exile almost
invariably comes to mind, with the term less often reminding us of
Israel’s fate at the end of the eighth century. Despite our impression
from the biblical sources, however, Sennacherib’s annals inform us that
a third important exile took place. According to the annals, 200,150
people were “counted as booty” by Sennacherib, and this number—if
it referred to actual exiles—would be far in excess of anything encoun-
tered during the other two deportation experiences. 2 S. Stohlmann has
carefully examined the available texts and concluded that the phrase
“to count as booty” should not be equated with deportation and that
the number deported was therefore considerably less than the high

1. However, I will argue below that much of Deuteronomy originated during this
“silent period” between 722 b.c.e. and Josiah’s reforms.
2. ANET 288.

222
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 223

number provided by Sennacherib. 3 Nevertheless, Stohlmann correctly

surmised that this “hidden exile” was quite comparable to the two ex-
iles more familiar to us. This noteworthy event, which was prompted
by Hezekiah’s rebellions against Assyria, began the long Assyrian domi-
nation of Judah that came to a close only during the reign of Josiah.
For most of this period, Manasseh ruled Judah and seems to have sub-
mitted rather passively to his Assyrian overlords. 4 The fact that the
Deuteronomistic Historian remembered Manasseh with disdain and
contrasted him with both his major predecessor (Hezekiah) and his
successor (Josiah) is evidence that a strong sentiment must have existed
against Manasseh’s policy, at least in some circles. Assyrian imperial
tactics, which had included a “two-way” deportation policy in the
North, 5 appear to have taken a different turn in the South, where a
massive “one-way” deportation depopulated Judah. 6 Nevertheless, due
to the influx of foreign groups into adjacent regions—to the north,
south, and east—the frequency of foreign contacts increased markedly
for the relatively isolated Judeans.
In addition to contact with these distant foreigners, and perhaps a
more important population trend in the period, was the migration of
Israel’s citizens into Judah after 722 b.c.e. Deuteronomy and a num-
ber of other texts in the Hebrew Bible betray Northern origins and, al-
though straightforward accounts of this migration process are wanting,
it is quite clear that these literary and religious traditions arrived in the
South via Northern refugees. 7 It is difficult to assess the tensions and
problems that must have arisen from this situation. On the one hand,
it seems clear that these refugees would have shared with their Judean
counterparts many cultural patterns, a Yahwistic heritage, a concept of
priestly torah (see above, pp. 148, 196), and probably certain cultic

3. Stephen Stohlmann, “The Judaean Exile after 701 b.c.e.,” in Scripture in Con-
text II: More Essays on the Comparative Method (ed. W. W. Hallo, J. C. Moyer, and
L. G. Perdue; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1983) 147–75.
4. J. A. Soggin, A History of Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984)
238–40; cf. ANET 291, 294.
5. By “two-way” I am referring to the practice of sending conquered populations
to other areas of the empire while resettling foreign populations in their place.
6. Nadav Naªaman, “Population Changes in Palestine following Assyrian Depor-
tations,” Tel Aviv 20 (1993) 112–19.
7. Deut 18:6 is a prime example. It refers to Levites who had made their way into
Judah from Israel.
224 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

rites and festivals. 8 Furthermore, the mono-Yahwist party represented

by Hosea and his community would have been especially comfortable
in the South, as seems evident in the fact that his brand of Northern
literature took firm root in the South. On the other hand, Hosea and
the epigraphic evidence confirm the presence of Baal worship in the
North, both in central and peripheral contexts, and this cultic activity
would probably have been at odds with Southern religious authorities
as represented by Isaiah and Amos (although one must say that Amos
has little to say in condemnation of the Northern Baal cult). 9 Compe-
tition for ecological resources and an ever-increasing underclass would
have added to the growing tensions in Judah. In sum, Judean popula-
tion trends during the late eighth and early seventh centuries included
a marked increase of Israelite refugees within Judah and an increase of
various foreign groups on Judah’s immediate periphery and even
within the state’s borders.
This period of Assyrian domination featured a marked intensifi-
cation of ethnic boundaries in Judean society, boundaries that were
virtually invisible during the early days of the Assyrian period yet be-
came quite pronounced by its end. Such a pattern is expected by the
core-periphery model commonly espoused in ethnic studies proper,
and I will show from the biblical data that this is not a coincidence. 10
In the eighth-century materials, the Assyrian presence was already ex-
erting a quite noticeable effect upon the ideas of Hosea, Amos, and es-
pecially Isaiah. The long-term effects of Assyrian domination are even
more profound when observed via their impact on Deuteronomy and
Jeremiah.
In this chapter, I will focus on modes of identity, especially ethnic
modes, that are present in these two important sources from the late
Judean monarchy. In both Deuteronomy and Jeremiah we face not
only the problem that some of the materials actually date to the early
exile (or even later) but also the problem that isolating this exilic mate-
rial is a rather arduous task at certain points. This make it more diffi-

8. R. de Vaux, Ancient Israel (2 vols.; New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965) 2.75.

9. On the epigraphic evidence, see J. H. Tigay, You Shall Have No Other Gods:
Israelite Religion in the Light of Hebrew Inscriptions (HSS 31; Atlanta: Scholars Press,
1986) 47–89.
10. I am thinking here of Wallerstein’s theories, but many ethnic theorists would
see at least the partial truth of his core-periphery model. The biblical data actually cor-
respond to his predictions only in part, as we will see.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 225

cult to utilize as our sociohistorical boundary a rather crucial historical

period—namely the exile. Therefore, although this chapter focuses on
identity before the exile, it will necessarily entail materials and issues
from the early exilic period, and this will be especially true during my
comparative discussion of Deuteronomic lawcode, the Holiness Code,
and the Book of the Covenant.

Deuteronomy
From a literary standpoint the book of Deuteronomy can conve-
niently be divided into five basic components: the historical prologue
(chaps. 1–4), the parenetic introduction (chaps. 5–11), the lawcode
(chaps. 12–26), blessings and curses (chaps. 27–30), and concluding
remarks (chaps. 31–34). The two latter sections are quite complex and
include some materials that are rather old and go back to the early
“core” of Deuteronomy as well as some post-Deuteronomistic addi-
tions, which may or may not be old depending on the text involved.
The other three sections of the book have literary problems of their
own but are nonetheless more homogenous than sections four and five.
In general, I adhere to the commonly held position that the underlying
basis of chaps. 12–26 was a lawcode of Northern origin that dated no
later than the eighth century b.c.e. and that, generally speaking, the
text reached its present form in conjunction with Josiah’s reforms late
in the seventh century. 11 Following M. Noth, 12 I regard chaps. 5–11 as
the original introduction to this lawcode and chaps. 1–4 as a later ad-
dition by the Deuteronomistic Historian that served to introduce his
work. 13
11. T. Römer has suggested that the original lawcode is principally represented by
chaps. 12–18, with an introduction in chap. 6 and a conclusion in chap. 26 (“Le
Deutéronome à la quête des origines,” in La Pentateuque: Débats et recherches [ed.
P. Haudebert; Lectio Divina 151; Paris: du Cerf, 1992] 67–68). On the Northern ori-
gins of Deuteronomy, see E. Nielsen, Deuteronomium (HAT; Tübingen: Mohr, 1995)
4; M. Weinfeld, “The Emergence of the Deuteronomic Movement: The Historical
Antecedents,” in Das Deuteronomium: Entstehung, Gestalt, und Botschaft (ed. N. Loh-
fink; BETL 68; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1985) 83–87.
12. M. Noth, The Deuteronomistic History (2d ed.; JSOTSup 15; Sheffield: JSOT
Press, 1991) 27–44.
13. The details of the redactional history of these texts is somewhat complex. In
particular, see N. Lohfink’s redactional analysis of Deuteronomy 5–11, in Das Haupt-
gebot: Eine Untersuchung literarischer Einleitungsfragen zu Dtn 5–11 (AnBib 20; Rome:
Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1963).
 226 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

The dating of the first four chapters in Deuteronomy is rather dif-

ficult, despite F. M. Cross’s defense of a preexilic edition of the Deuter-
onomistic History and the more recent defense by R. D. Nelson. 14 I
have insufficient confidence in the idea to base a descussion on it. I
must concede that Deuteronomy 1–4 might easily date to the early ex-
ilic period or perhaps even later. As I have said, I regard portions of
chaps. 5–11 and 12–26 as Northern in origin. While noting the impli-
cations of this origin where it is important, I will focus on the function
of chaps. 5–26 within the seventh-century Judean context and give at-
tention to any relevant redactional problems. I will handle other issues
in Deuteronomy and the various problems within the latter portions of
the book (chaps. 27–34) as they arise. My discussion begins with an is-
sue closely related to ethnic identity, the problem of the “forefathers”
in Deuteronomy.

“The Fathers” in Deuteronomy

During my discussion of Hosea in chap. 3 above, I pointed out
that the forefather migration tradition of the exodus and the Jacob an-
cestor tradition were two competing origin traditions that existed
alongside each other in eighth-century Israel. The references to the fa-
thers in Deuteronomy would therefore seem, at least on the surface, to
reflect a rather advanced stage in the history of Israelite ethnic ideas be-
cause they include an additional patriarchal figure, Abraham, and be-
cause the patriarchal figures (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) are clearly
joined to the forefather migration tradition. But this view is somewhat
superficial, and I agree with several others that the patriarchal formulas
qjxyl μhrbal bq[ylw are likely to have been later additions that
served to link the book of Genesis with Deuteronomy and the Deuter-
onmistic History.
It was J. Van Seters’s 1972 article that first suggested the redac-
tional status of this patriarchal formula, 15 but his seminal work has
been superseded by the more detailed work of T. Römer. 16 Römer has
14. F. M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1973) 217–90; R. D. Nelson, The Double Redaction of the Deuteronomistic
History (JSOTSup 18; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1983).
15. J. Van Seters, “Confessional Reformulation in the Exilic Period,” VT 22
(1972) 448–59.
16. T. Römer, Israels Väter: Untersuchungen zur Väterthematik im Deuteronomium
und in der deuteronomistischen Tradition (OBO 99; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ru-
precht, 1990).

Spread is 6 points long

 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 227

pointed out that the patriarchal name-formula normally occurs in ap-

position to “the fathers” and that, when sufficient attention is given to
the issue, it becomes quite clear that “the fathers” of Deuteronomy are
not the patriarchs but the generation that came out of Egypt. He sup-
ports this claim by showing that this understanding of the fathers is
precisely that of Hosea, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, provided that one agrees
with him that Jer 33:26 is late, which seems to me very likely. 17 Ac-
cording to Römer, the two texts that seem to create a problem for this
thesis, Deut 9:27 and 34:4, do not follow the above pattern because of
their redactional status, the former being associated with Exodus 32
and Numbers 14 as Deuteronomistic redaction and the latter being as-
sociated, along with Gen 50:24, Exod 32:13, 33:1, and Num 32:11,
with the Endredaktion of the Pentateuch. 18 The fact that the preexilic
prophetic collections do not refer to the Abraham tradition lends addi-
tional support to Römer’s convincing thesis.
N. Lohfink has challenged Römer’s conclusions, arguing that some
of Deuteronomy’s forefather references presuppose the patriarchs and
that on other occasions the patriarchal names cannot be deleted with-
out disturbing the text’s integrity. 19 While Lohfink makes several fine
points, he fails to address one of the more important issues, which is
that both the earlier and contemporary sources—Hosea, Jeremiah, and
Ezekiel—understood the forefathers to be the exodus generation, and
it is this which makes Römer’s assertions about Deuteronomy so con-
vincing. This evidence, coupled with the consistent apposition of the
father names with twba, shows that Römer’s thesis is probably correct
in spite of Lohfink’s detailed criticisms. The original “forefathers” of
Deuteronomy were none other than the exodus generation and their
children who conquered the land of Canaan. 20
As I will show below during my discussion of the parenesis in
Deuteronomy 5–11, these forefathers served an integral role in the
Deuteronomic sense of identity. However, I want to discuss for a mo-
ment the role of the forefathers in the lawcode proper (Deuteronomy
17. As Römer notes, the text is concerned with the restoration of the Davidic
kingship and Levitical priesthood and therefore should probably be associated with the
exilic period (ibid., 481).
18. Ibid., 255–65.
19. N. Lohfink, Die Väter Israels im Deuteronomium (OBO 111; Göttingen: Van-
denhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991). See especially pp. 27–47.
20. My conclusions agree with those previously published by J. Van Seters in Pro-
logue to History (Louisville: Westminster, John Knox, 1992) 215–26.
 228 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

12–26). Here their role is less pronounced but retains the essential
parenetic character found in chaps. 5–11. Three elements are repre-
sented in this lawcode parenesis. First, Yahweh, as opposed to any
other deity, was presented to Israel as the “God of your fathers.” 21 This
both demonstrated the antiquity of Israel’s relationship with Yahweh
and exploited the natural affinities of kinship to promote fidelity to
Yahweh. He alone was the God of the people. Second, Yahweh’s oaths
to the fathers, which in the lawcode included promises of land, in-
creased numbers, and mercy, were conditional and predicated on obe-
dience: “None of the devoted things shall cleave to your hand . . . that
the Lord may turn from the fierceness of his anger . . . and multiply
you, as he swore to your fathers” (Deut 13:17). 22 Third, on one occa-
sion the nicht-kennen formula was used with reference to the non-
Yahwistic deities. This formula is more prominent in the parenetic
introduction but on this occasion served the same polemical role,
which was to point out that Israel should follow Yahweh because he
was the deity known to the forefathers and, therefore, the proper deity
for those who desire to live within the Israelite ancestral tradition. So
in the Deuteronomic law, the forefather tradition served as a primary
expression of ethnic sentiment and common origins, both in terms of
ancestry and in terms of historical experience. The primary purpose of
these ethnic expressions in Deuteronomy was to exploit the natural
sentiment of kinship as a motivational factor in the effort to promote
the Deuteronomic ideal of mono-Yahwistic fidelity. This ethnic fore-
father tradition comes into clearer focus when the lawcode’s old pare-
netic introduction (chaps. 5–11) is examined.

Ethnicity and Identity in the Parenesis of Deuteronomy 5–11

In the present form of the text, Deuteronomy 5–11 serves as the
primary statement of community identity in Deuteronomy. The liter-
ary history of this pericope has been explored most completely by
N. Lohfink, and his work has yielded conclusions that are considered
both definitive (that the Horeb experience and Decalogue are second-
ary) and speculative (that the basis of chaps. 5–8 rests in a Gilgal cove-
nant text associated with Judg 2:1–5). 23 Part of the continuing
21. See Deut 12:1, 26:3–5.
22. Cf. Deut 19:8; 26:3–5, 15.
23. See N. Lohfink, Das Hauptgebot, especially his discussion of the “Gilgal text”
on pp. 176–80.

Spread is 6 points long

 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 229

confusion both here and with the rest of Deuteronomy stems from the
fact that, although everyone speaks of the Kern of Deuteronomy, very
little care is given as to whether this core refers to an older Northern
edition or rather to the original Josianic Deuteronomy. In other
words, even if Lohfink’s analysis has successfully uncovered the vari-
ous schickten in the text, these layers are not always associated with
particular historical contexts, and this limits the usefulness of his con-
clusions. Because all of Lohfink’s layers in chaps. 5–11 predate the
Deuteronomistic additions to the work, I will assume that these chap-
ters substantially reflect the edition of Deuteronomy that we associate
with Josiah’s reforms. I would like to discuss the vision of community
identity put forward by Deuteronomy under six separate headings, as
organized below.

The Formula ‘Yahweh, Your God’ (˚yhla hwhy). It is very easy,

given the common translation of ˚hla hwhy as ‘the Lord your God’, to
overlook the fact that repetition of this phrase in Deuteronomy 5–11
served the role of emphasizing the personal name of the deity, Yahweh,
and his claim to Israel’s sole allegiance. In this respect, the traditional
translation does grave injustice to the intent of the Deuteronomic leg-
islation, since the central issue in Deuteronomy, as it was in Hosea,
was the competition between the God Yahweh and other deities, such
as Baal. 24 The Deuteronomic movement was attempting to replace
any expressions of what it viewed as religious pluralism with mono-
Yahwism, and many themes in Deuteronomy turn out to be ancillary
to this main theme. So, for instance, although it is common to focus
on the notion of covenant and its importance in Deuteronomy—and
it was, no doubt, important—the primary function of the covenant
was to promote the Deuteronomic preference for an exclusive relation-
ship with Yahweh. And many phrases used in the book, such as the
concept of Israel as a “holy people” and the claim that the people were
“set apart” by Yahweh from among “all the peoples on the face of the
earth,” were designed to emphasize this special and therefore exclusive

24. We should note the work of B. Halpern, who concludes, correctly I think,
that in the seventh century the term Baal served a collective function and referred, po-
lemically speaking, to all foreign deities (“The Baal [and the Asherah] in Seventh-
Century Judah: Yhwh’s Retainers Retired,” in Konsequente Traditionsgeschichte: Fest-
schrift für Klaus Baltzer zum 65. Geburtstag [ed. R. Bartelmus; OBO 126; Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993] 115–54).
 230 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

kind of relationship Israel ought to have with its deity. This is not to
overlook the obvious fact that beyond the struggle of Yahwism against
non-Yahwism there was also a struggle between “pure” Yahwism and
corrupted Yahwism (i.e., Yahwism under foreign influence), and we
will discuss this issue in more depth later. The influence of other dei-
ties, however, was a serious concern for the Deuteronomic party, and
it turns out that ethnicity served an important role in their discursive
effort to eliminate this religious competition, as we see in the book’s
use of Israel’s forefather traditions.

The Forefathers. The references to the forefathers, which I have

discussed briefly already, were closely tied to the phrase ˚yhla hwhy. In
Deut 6:3, Yahweh was described as ‘the God of your fathers’ (hwhy
˚ytba yhla), and on many other occasions the fathers were recipients
of oaths sworn by ˚yhla hwhy (see Deut 6:10, 7:12, 8:18, 9:5,
10:22). 25 That Yahweh was the God of Israel is therefore reinforced by
the long-standing relationship between the deity and the forefathers,
and the tie between Yahweh and later generations was accomplished by
extending this relationship to the progeny ([rz) of those fathers:
yet the Lord set his heart in love upon your fathers (˚ytbab) and
chose their descendants (μ[rzb) after them, you above all peoples, as
at this day. (Deut 10:15)
So Yahweh had designated Israel as the ethnic community that would
receive his love and protection, and this community was to be distin-
guished from the ‘peoples’ (μym[) and ‘nations’ (μywg) on Israel’s nearby

25. It is very interesting that this combination occurs outside of Deuteronomy

only in Exod 3:13–16; Josh 18:3; 2 Chr 13:12, 28:9, 29:5; Ezra 8:28, 10:11. Accord-
ing to most accounts, all of these texts postdate Deuteronomy except perhaps Exod
3:13–16. Van Seters, who has argued that the J narrative and with it the call of Moses
in Exodus 3 are later than Deuteronomy, has recently suggested that the revelation of
the divine name in that text was prompted by Ezekiel’s claim that God appeared to
Israel in Egypt as Yahweh. I would suggest that the revelation actually serves a two-fold
purpose, first to solve a conundrum created by Ezekiel, and second, to relate J’s narra-
tive more closely to Deuteronomy. Just as the names Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were
added to Deuteronomy to bring it into conformity with J, so J’s narrative added the
“God of the fathers” to connect Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to the older “fathers tradi-
tion” of Hosea and Deuteronomy (Van Seters, Prologue to History, 227–45; idem, The
Life of Moses: The Yahwist as Historian in Exodus–Numbers [Louisville: Westminster/
John Knox, 1994] 47).

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 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 231

periphery (Moabites, Ammonites, etc.) by this special and exclusive

status in relation to Yahweh. Yahweh was their own God and they were
his special people. All of this was clearly an effort to promote Deuter-
onomy’s mono-Yahwistic ideal by employing sentiments of kinship in
support of that agenda, a tactic that the proto-Deuteronomic move-
ment (as depicted in Hosea) had already perfected. There were a num-
ber of promises made in Deuteronomy to this ethnic community and
these were predicated in most cases on Israel’s faithfulness to Yahweh.
Foremost of these examples would be the deity’s promise of an Israelite
homeland.

Land Theology. As I pointed out during my discussion of Hosea,

the concept of land often plays an important role in ethnic modes of
identity. Among Yahweh’s oaths in Deuteronomy was a promise to
give the forefathers the land that he had sworn to them: “when the
Lord your God brings you into the land which he swore to your fore-
fathers” (Deut 6:10). The land’s dimensions are provided in the text
(11:24) and are said to stretch from the southern wilderness to Leba-
non in one direction and from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean in
the other. 26 As later texts came into play, these boundaries were repre-
sented with increasing precision, so that Dtr in Deut 1:7 attempted to
clarify these borders, and the P text of Num 34:2–12 went into even
greater detail. More important than the issue of the specific boundaries
is the ideology behind Deuteronomy’s concept of the land, which I will
explore along two lines. First, attention should be given to the question
of conditionality of the land-promise theme, and second, the prove-
nience of Deuteronomy’s land theology should be assessed.
L. Perlitt has attempted to argue that several layers of land the-
ology exist in the book of Deuteronomy and that, furthermore, among
these layers is a theology of unconditional land promise in the lawcode
of Deuteronomy 12–26. For Perlitt, this idea is found in no other Old

26. Mayes, and Buis and Leclercq feel that the rbdm in view here is the Syrian
wilderness rather than the dry southern regions of Palestine. However, Deut 1:7, which
is clearly a more detailed explication of this text, interprets the rbdm as the bgn and
hbr[, and this is also how both Nielsen and Braulik see it (A. D. H. Mayes, Deuter-
onomy [NCBC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979] 217; P. Buis and J. Leclercq, Le
Deutéronome [SB; Paris: Gabalda, 1963] 97; G. Braulik, Deuteronomium [2 vols.;
Würzburg: Echter, 1986–92] 1.91; Nielsen, Deuteronomium, 127).
232 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

Testament literary context. 27 But there are serious problems with Per-
litt’s thesis, because 12:28 warned that the Israelites should ‘be careful’
to follow the commands outlined in the lawcode, “in order that (ˆ[ml)
it may go well with you and your children after you.” This text provides
us with a paradigm in that the command to “be careful” (rmv) can
only be meaningful if punishment was envisioned, and the verb was
used in this way on seven other occasions in the lawcode proper. 28
Also, the text warns that those who follow the example of the dispos-
sessed nations would be ‘utterly destroyed’ (μrj; see 13:12–16), which
again implies that Israel could lose the land as easily as the primeval in-
habitants did. And finally, Hosea’s proto-Deuteronomic land theology
was clearly conditional, since he envisioned the punishment of Israel
via Assyrian deportations. So it is difficult to believe, then, that the old-
est levels of Deuteronomy were unconditional. 29 The land theology of
the lawcode is clearly conditional, and this is even more explicit in the
parenetic sections of Deuteronomy 5–11 (see Deut 8:19–20).
Concerning the provenience of Deuteronomy’s land theology, we
must begin with observations made in chap. 3 about Hosea and Amos.
Hosea’s particularism viewed Israel’s territory as “Yahweh’s land,” while
Amos had a more universal perspective in which all lands were under
Yahweh’s authority and were distributed to the corresponding peoples.
Another observation was that, for Hosea, the religious corruption of Is-
rael did not take place in Yahweh’s land but instead took place on for-
eign soil during the Baal-Peor incident before Israel’s settlement (Hos
9:10). This last feature is at variance with Deuteronomy, where the pri-
mary source of corruption was within the land through the influence
of its primeval inhabitants. And in Deuteronomy the land was no
longer “Yahweh’s land” but was given to Israel and so became Israel’s
land:
he will give the rain for your land (μkxra) in its season, the early
rain and the later rain, that you may gather in your grain and your
wine and your oil. (Deut 11:14)
This was not only true in the parenetic materials of chaps. 5–11 but
also in the lawcode proper, as seen in Deut 12:19 and 15:7. Further,

27. Perlitt, “Motive und Schichten der Landtheologie im Deuteronomium,” Deu-

teronomium-Studien (Tübingen: Mohr, 1994) 108.
28. Cf. Deut 12:1, 32; 16:12; 17:10; 23:23; 24:8; 26:16.
29. My conclusion is in agreement with Van Seters, Prologue to History, 229.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 233

although the text is Deuteronomistic and somewhat later, Deuter-

onomy 2 reflects similar notions, in that Yahweh’s “land gifts” ex-
tended not only to Israel but also to its neighbors, Edom, Moab, and
Ammon. In this respect Deuteronomy’s land theology shares more in
common with the universalistic perspectives of Amos than with the
particularistic views of Hosea.
This should suggest to us something about the date and prove-
nance of Deuteronomy, and we must remember that we are speaking
here not only of the parenetic section but also of the earlier lawcode it-
self. Although the religious polemic is characteristic of Hosea, Deuter-
onomy’s land theology is more like Amos’s. Without getting into the
form-critical isolation of the various sources, laws, and traditions that
lie behind Deuteronomy, some of which could be very old, the best
explanation for this similarity is that Deuteronomy’s earliest composi-
tion should be located among or in conjunction with Northern refu-
gees in Judah sometime after 722 b.c.e. and, given the fact that the
language is consistent with Judean Hebrew of the seventh century, 30
the date should probably stand somewhere between the reigns of
Hezekiah and Josiah. 31 The combination of Northern and Southern
features in the book’s land theology are explained by this hypothesis.
These observations are important because, as I will show in the next
section, they suggest an appropriate Sitz im Leben for some of the
text’s ethnic traditions.

The History of the People. As I have pointed out previously, a

community’s sense of history can be a very powerful component of
ethnic identity, and this was no doubt true of the Deuteronomic com-
munity. Three primary events encapsulate the history of the people in
Deuteronomy: the exodus, the wilderness, and the conquest of the
land. These are presented as corporate experiences: in the cases of the
exodus and wilderness traditions, as experiences of the forefathers; and
in the case of the conquest, as the experience of their progeny ([rz). I

30. Mayes, Deuteronomy, 81.

31. A. Alt has already proposed that Deuteronomy originated in a Northern re-
newal movement after the fall of Samaria (“Die Heimat des Deuteronomiums,” Kleine
Schriften zur Geschichte des Volkes Israels [3 vols.; Munich: Beck, 1953–59] 2.250–
75).The key difference between us is that, while he locates this Northern renewal
movement in the North, I would suggest that it could easily have taken place in the
South.
 234 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

think that, due to the lack of evidence, it is unprofitable to attempt to

uncover the origins of the exodus and wilderness stories, both of which
may be quite old. But I think there is something that we can say about
the conquest tradition and the historical context that may have given
rise to it (or, at least, the historical context that made it popular in the
time of Deuteronomy).
With the exception of Amos 2:9, the authenticity of which has
been questioned, there is a notable absence of the conquest tradition
in Hosea, Amos, and Isaiah. This evidence suggests two possibilities.
First, if we assume for a moment that Amos 2:9 is an authentic eighth-
century tradition, then we must conclude that the origin of the con-
quest tradition dated prior to the classical Deuteronomic period. But
even if this were true, the tradition in Amos that the Amorites were
completely destroyed during the conquest is at variance with the ac-
count of Deuteronomy, which added other opponents (Hittites,
Canaanites, Hivites, etc.) and warned of the threat posed by the for-
eigners that were not destroyed (cf. Deut 7:1–5). Portions of this text
from Deuteronomy are probably later Deuteronomistic additions
(vv. 1b–2, 4–5), and this makes it difficult to know whether the addi-
tions date to the period just before or during the exile. 32 But from this
data it is clear that both Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomists that
followed were very interested in the conquest tradition. The second ap-
proach is that the text in Amos is redactional and that the conquest tra-
dition actually originated with Deuteronomy. But whether we adopt
the first or second approach to the problem, we can speculate that there
were contextual issues that made this tradition fit so well into the agen-
das of the Deuteronomic and Deuteronomistic parties.
During my discussion of land theology in the previous section, I
suggested that Alt was onto something when he suggested that the ori-
gins of Deuteronomy should be sought in the North, after 722 b.c.e.,
and I believe that the features of the conquest tradition also make sense
in that context. The primeval inhabitants of the land would corre-
spond to the foreign deportees transplanted by Assyria in the North.
The conquest theology itself would challenge the remaining Yahwistic
power—Judah—to restore the land’s purity by evicting these inhabi-
tants and restoring proper Yahwism. The most likely period for these

32. Nielsen, Deuteronomium, 94–97.

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 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 235

notions to arise would have been during the latter half of the seventh
century, when Assyrian power over the west was waning. 33 As the os-
tracon of Yavneh-yam appears to show (and as the questionable testi-
mony of the Chronicler tells us), Josiah may have taken the challenge
of Deuteronomy seriously, since these sources suggest that he extended
his control into the North around 630 b.c.e. 34 The influence that gave
impetus to these early Deuteronomic materials would seem most likely
to have come from the proto-Deuteronomic school of the North.
Whether the proper Sitz im Leben should be Yahwistic circles in the
North or the influence of Northern refugees in the South is a more dif-
ficult question to answer, although I tend toward the latter for this rea-
son: it seems clear that in Deuteronomy there already existed the blend
of Israelite and Judean identity that produced the Deuteronomic ideol-
ogy of the term all Israel. I will offer additional comments relating to
the provenience of Deuteronomy during my discussion of the ‘so-
journer (rg) and the ‘foreigner’ (yrkn).

Ethnic Separatism in Deuteronomy 5–11. The ethnic component

of identity in Deuteronomy’s parenetic introduction is quite pro-
nounced, as illustrated by Deut 7:1–3. Here the community was com-
manded to destroy the land’s inhabitants and to practice endogamy.
The command to avoid marriage with “Hittites, Girgashites, Amor-
ites,” and so on, seems incongruous with both the command to destroy
these people and with the fact that none of these peoples seem to have
existed in the seventh century b.c.e. 35 What this actually tells us, then,
is that the Deuteronomic community had extended the principles of
endogamy beyond the primeval inhabitants to the sphere of the sur-
rounding foreigners. The text is hardly clear as to what groups this
would have excluded or what exceptions may have existed. Ammo-
nites? Moabites? Egyptians? Edomites also? More clarity is provided in
the Deuteronomistic History and perhaps in Deuteronomy 23, and I

33. As suggested by G. von Rad, Studies in Deuteronomy (SBT 9; Chicago: Reg-

nery, 1953) 61.
34. See J. C. L. Gibson, Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions (3 vols.; Oxford:
Clarendon, 1971–82) 1.26–30. See also J. Naveh, “A Hebrew Letter from the Seventh
Century b.c.” IEJ 10 (1960) 129–39.
35. See chap. 2 above, pp. 34, 88–89, and later in this chapter, p. 273. See also
similar comments by B. Schmidt, Israel’s Beneficent Dead (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisen-
brauns, 1996) 139.
 236 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

will discuss both of these below. 36 We should not think of these endog-
amous practices as originating with Deuteronomy because, as I pointed
out in chap. 3, they were reflected already in Hosea’s criticism of Ja-
cob’s Aramean wives. But an even greater error would be to allow the
questions of endogamy and ethnic separatism to distract us from a
more important priority, namely, that these policies had the ultimate
aim of protecting Yahwism from the influence of foreign religious ele-
ments. Even in its most ethnic guise—“kill the Canaanites”—Deutero-
nomic identity was concerned primarily with religious identity rather
than ethnic purity.

“Brother Theology” in Deuteronomy

At this point we turn from the parenesis of Deuteronomy 5–11 to
texts and issues related to the lawcode proper. Certainly some of the
more natural expressions of ethnic sentiment in the book of Deuter-
onomy are the expressions that refer to the people of Israel as “broth-
ers.” The use of ja (‘brother’), which occurs 48 times in Deuteronomy,
has been thoroughly examined in an article by L. Perlitt. Perlitt con-
cludes that many uses of the term in Deuteronomy were secondary to
the older core of the book and that this brotherhood concept of identity
should be attributed to the creativity of the late seventh-century Deu-
teronomic movement. Specifically, he sees that in the original Deutero-
nomic law, as expressed in 13:6 for example, ja referred to one’s blood
relatives, while [r (‘friend’) referred to one’s neighbors. 37 However, re-
dactional activity shifted this semantic relationship, so that in Deut
15:2ff., for instance, the addition of ja in apposition to [r moved the
former beyond the range of a blood-relative to the status of der Nächste.
Perlitt contends that the redactor made similar changes in conjunction
with ˆwyba (‘poor’) and yrb[ (‘Hebrew’), so that ja is equated not only
with the neighbor but also with der Arme and der Hebräer. 38 The pri-
mary evidence that supports this conclusion is therefore twofold:
(1) the semantic shift in ja that we have just noted; and (2) the pres-
ence of other terms that stand in apposition to ja ([r, wyba, yrb[).
Several texts that are normally attributed to the older core of Deu-
teronomy would at first seem to present a problem for Perlitt’s thesis

36. See Judg 3:5, 1 Kgs 11:1–2.

37. L. Perlitt, “Ein einzig Volk von Brüdern,” Deuteronomium-Studien (Tü-
bingen: Mohr, 1994) 53–54.
38. Ibid., 55–57.

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 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 237

(specifically Deut 15:2, 17:15, 23:20–21, and 24:14), since they place
ja in opposition to out-groups and therefore imply national brother-
hood rather than family consanguinity. Perlitt views these texts as quite
different from the redactional use of ja, since for the redactor ja re-
ferred to ‘Mitmensch’, while ja in these texts actually referred to
‘Mitisraelit’, that is, “The brother in these [texts] is the non-foreigner,
the Israelite.” 39 However, the distinction that Perlitt sees here is slight,
and although one might see fit to entertain his theory of a Deutero-
nomic Bruderschicht, the ethnic sense of brotherhood is clearly visible
in the older portions of Deuteronomy:
Of the foreigner you may exact it [outstanding debt]; but whatever
of yours is with your brother your hand shall release. (Deut 15:3)
You may indeed set a king over you . . . one from among your breth-
ren you shall set as king over you; you may not put a foreigner over
you, who is not your brother. (Deut 17:15)
These texts can hardly fail to imply notions of extended kinship and
thus of Israelite brotherhood and ethnic sentiment. And there are re-
lated considerations that should be noted. First, although Hosea does
not manifest brotherhood terminology, it does use covenant imagery
(which is often rich in brotherhood imagery), 40 and it reflects ethnic
sentiments among the Northern peoples. Second, Amos 1:9–11 ap-
pears to indicate that Edom was viewed as the “brother” of Israel and
as a fellow participant in the μyja tyrb, and it is difficult to imagine
that Israel could have viewed the Edomite out-group as a brother with-
out prominent notions of indigenous Israelite brotherhood. Third,
below I will argue that the “Blessing of Moses” in Deuteronomy 33 re-
flects notions of brotherhood among the Northern tribal groups. All of
this suggests that the ideology of Israelite brotherhood dates well be-
fore the era of Josiah’s reforms.
Nevertheless, even if part of Perlitt’s thesis is correct, I would sug-
gest that Deuteronomy’s expressions of ethnic brotherhood may have
been amplified and fitted to a new agenda by the Josianic redactor. 41
39. “Der Bruder ist demnach der Nicht-Ausländer, der Israelit.” Ibid., 54, 56–57,
60–61.
40. M. Weinfeld, “Covenant Terminology in the Ancient Near East and Its Influ-
ence on the West,” JAOS 93 (1973) 190–91.
41. The redactor should be identified with the initial redactional activity associ-
ated with Josiah’s reform effort. This is because the brotherhood ideology of Deuter-
onomy had a marked influence on the prophetic work of Jeremiah (cf. 9:4, 12:6,
23:35).
 238 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

The new agenda was vitally concerned with the extension of ethnic
brotherhood into the everyday pattern of Judean life, so that natural
affiliations of kinship would motivate community members to care for
each other:
And this is the manner of release: every creditor shall release what he
has lent to his neighbor; he shall not exact it of his neighbor, his
brother, because the Lord’s release has been proclaimed. (Deut 15:2)
If there is among you a poor man, one of your brethren, in any of
your towns within your land which the Lord your God gives you,
you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor
brother. (Deut 15:7)
Whether we view it as Perlitt’s later Bruderschicht or as original with
the older core of Deuteronomy, the text contains an intentional ma-
nipulation of existing ethnic sentiments designed to promote not only
the Deuteronomic religious agenda but also its social agenda. The mo-
tivations behind this agenda correspond to my notion that the origins
of Deuteronomy should be sought in circles that sympathized with the
plight of Northerners. First, it calls upon those in the South to accept
each other, and also their fellow Yahwists from the North, as brothers.
And second, it legislates proper care and compassion toward the less
fortunate of these brethren, particularly the Northern refugees. In my
view, the fact that brother theology existed already within Northern
circles and yet was promulgated so actively in Deuteronomy shows
that it was probably a new notion for the Southern Judeans.
The status of these “brethren” and their relationship to Northern
refugees and toward non-Israelites is clarified by two issues in the law-
code: first, the problem of flesh that “dies of itself ” (14:21), and
second, the case of a “Hebrew slave” in 15:12–18. These texts help to
elucidate the concept of μyja precisely because they focus our atten-
tion on those who were not “brothers,” namely, the ‘sojourner’ (rg)
and the ‘foreigner’ (yrkn).

The Sojourner and Foreigner in Deuteronomy 14:21

This text brings several passages into the orbit of our discussion,
specifically, texts from the Holiness Code (Lev 17:14–16, 22:8), the
Book of the Covenant (Exod 22:31), and Ezekiel (4:12–15, 44:31).
These texts relate directly to the whole question of the consumption of
the hlbn (‘carcass’) and will help to clarify the tradition history of the

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 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 239

Deuteronomic statute. But what brings the text into our purview in
the first place is that it distinguishes the Israelite from both the ‘so-
journer’ and the ‘foreigner’ (rg and the yrkn), and this distinction will
preoccupy us for the moment.
Implicit in Deut 14:21, which tells Israelites not to eat the hlbn
but allows them to give it to the rg or sell it to the yrkn, are three social
categories, two of which are close to each other. The first category is
the Israelite community, normally represented as the μyja in Deuter-
onomy, and this category stands in contrast to both the rg (‘sojourner’)
and yrkn (‘foreigner’). The Israelites were not permitted to consume
the hlbn in question because to do so would threaten the Deutero-
nomic ideal of “a people holy to the Lord their God.” 42 The question
that this raises is, in what sense were the rg and yrkn distinguished from
each other and in what sense did they share a common status as outsid-
ers? And what was their place within seventh-century Judean society?
D. Kellerman’s suggestion regarding the rg is a common one, that
a rg is best understood as one who leaves his homeland to place himself
under the legal protection of another. 43 But this is a bit more technical
than the term actually suggests. Such a sojourner might, of course,
have a protected status among a host people, but only if the protection
were actually provided (and the need for this legislation suggests that
the concept of rg-protection was in question). More likely, the verbal
root simply suggests that one had departed from the homeland and was
dwelling among another people, 44 with the relative protection, rights,
and opportunities afforded by the new conditions varying with the
context. C. Bultmann is correct to recognize that in Deuteronomy the
sojourner had “no means of gaining and securing their livelihood” and
thus filled a rather vulnerable socioeconomic station. 45 This is why
42. This distinction is at variance with the conclusion of M. Rothschild, that the
μyrg were required to observe Israel’s religion because of their presence in the land.
This is not entirely the case in Deuteronomy, although the picture changes somewhat
in the Holiness Code. See M. Rothschild, “Aliens and Israelites: Part I,” DD 9 (1981)
196–202.
43. D. Kellerman, “ger,” TDOT 2.443.
44. BDB 157–58. This definition is in keeping with the conclusions of C. van
Houten, The Alien in Ancient Israelite Law (JSOTSup 107; Sheffield: JSOT Press,
1991) 19.
45. “[Ü]ber keine Mittel zur Erzielung und Sicherung ihres Lebensunterhalts ver-
fügt.” C. Bultmann, Der Fremde im antiken Juda: Eine Untersuchung zum sozialen
Typenbegriff “ger” und seinem Bedeutungswandel in der alttestamentlichen Gesetzgebung
(FRLANT 153; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992) 102.
240 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

Deuteronomy typically listed the sojourner with the equally piteous

widows and orphans (Deut 16:11–14). 46 Another variation of the term
rg is represented by the lifestyle of the Rechabites in Jer 35:1–11, who
were not so much foreigners within Judah as they were indigenous no-
mads. In this way, the word rg functioned sociologically, rather than
politically and ethnically, as a reference to one’s nomadic Lebensart.
The μyrg mentioned in Deuteronomy were probably of varied ori-
gin. Some were foreigners displaced by Assyrian imperialism, some
were refugees from the Northern Kingdom, and some were probably of
the indigenous, nonsedentary variety. But whatever the case, the curi-
ous question is this: why did the statutes of Deuteronomy so energeti-
cally protect the foreign rg and at the same time take such a firm stance
against foreign peoples and influence in general? This becomes clear
only when sufficient attention is given to the function of rg in Deuter-
onomy and to the historical contexts that gave rise to the text. Al-
though it is common to think of the rg as “an intermediate position
between a native (jrza) and a foreigner (yrkn),” 47 this is a slightly over-
simplified perspective. In Deuteronomy the rg could be an Israelite as
well as a foreigner (see the Levites in Deut 18:6) and at certain points
functioned within the community’s religious life, as we see through his
or her participation in the festival (tw[bv gj) of Deut 16:9–11. At
other points the rg was clearly an outsider and so was distinguished
from the community, as in our text: “you shall not eat anything that
dies of itself . . . you may give it to the alien (rg) . . . or you may sell it
to a foreigner” (Deut 14:21). The various uses of rg in Deuteronomy
are clarified by Table 4.1. Instead of viewing the rg as a ‘resident alien’,
which has both ethnic and national overtones, we should instead rec-
ognize it as a social classification within which one finds both Israelites
and non-Israelites. Among the μyrg of foreign origin (categories #3 and
#4) we find both those who were on the social periphery of the com-
munity and were assimilated into it (category #3) 48 and those who

46. We must remember, however, that the meaning of the English word widow
does not correspond precisely to the Hebrew hnmla. The former implies only that one
has lost a husband, while the latter implies that one has lost a husband and has no fam-
ily ties, so that the widow has no source of material wealth. See H. J. Boecker, Law and
the Administration of Justice in the Old Testament (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1980) 19.
47. Kellerman, “Ger ”; de Vaux, Ancient Israel, 2.74–75.
48. P. Schmidt has noted that the rg were composed chiefly of migrant guest-
workers who were participating within the culture and were being assimilated to it. For
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 241

Table 4.1. The “Sojourner in Deuteronomy”

Relation to
Category Community
1. Landed Israelite (wrza) In
2. Unlanded Israelite (rg/μyja) In
3. Non-Israelite on social periphery (rg) In
4. Non-Israelite in geographical proximity (rg) Out
5. Foreigner (yrkn) Out

were foreign but chose to retain an independent sense of identity (cate-

gory #4). It was the former that participated in the community’s reli-
gious life and the latter who, like the foreigner, consumed unclean
foodstuffs. 49 But even for the rg who sought membership status in the
community, the statutes themselves show us that a boundary contin-
ued to exist, at least until his or her family’s foreign status was con-
cealed by the passage of time. 50
The ‘foreigner’ (yrkn) in our text presents us with fewer problems
than the rg. C. Bultmann suggests that the yrkn is one whose “origin is
from outside the Israelite monarchy.” 51 Although this was no doubt
true, the minor place of kingship in Deuteronomy suggests that Bult-
mann is closer to the truth when he says that the yrkn has no natural
link to the land and the national God, Yahweh. 52 But the foreigner en-
visioned here did possess certain ties to the local Judean milieu, as evi-
denced by his or her participation in the community’s economic life.

this reason, it is no surprise that the Septuagint would come to view the rg as a ‘prose-
lyte’ (P. Schmidt, “De Vreemdeling in Israel,” Collationes 23 [1993] 237–40 [translated
for me by George Tous van Neukirk]; de Vaux, Ancient Israel, 2.75).
49. For this reason I cannot agree with Weinfeld’s suggestion that Deuteronomy’s
social polarity involves a contrast between ja and rg. Rather, in Deuteronomy, both
the Israelite μyrg and assimiliated μyrg would have been considered μyja (Deuteronomy
and the Deuteronomic School [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972; repr., Winona
Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1997] 229). My conclusions regarding the rg mentioned in
Deut 14:21are supported by the work of van Houten: “without a doubt, the alien re-
ferred to here is a non-Israelite” (The Alien in Israelite Law, 81).
50. J. Milgrom, “Religious Conversion and the Revolt Model for the Formation
of Israel,” JBL 101 (1982) 169–76.
51. “Herkunft von außerhalb der israelitischen Monarchien ist”; Bultmann, Der
Fremde in antiken Juda, 93.
52. “[K]ein natürliches Band das Land und den Nationalgott Jahwe”; ibid., 100.
242 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

The problem addressed by the Deuteronomic law was therefore created

by the proximity of the rg and the yrkn to the Israelite community
proper, and it would appear that Deuteronomy was able to forge a
compromise between its extreme nationalist position and its equally
strong humanitarian leanings. This was accomplished by distinguish-
ing between the foreigner who was economically vulnerable (the rg)
and the foreigner who was an economically independent figure (the
yrkn). 53 However, from a cultic standpoint, the text makes it clear that
both foreigners and nonassimilating sojourners were rejected from
participation.
This said, we can turn our attention more directly to Deut 14:21.
The prohibition against consuming the hlbn is normally connected
with the blood taboo of Deut 12:16. 54 The edible flesh was not neces-
sarily wasted, since it could be given away or sold to non-Israelites. We
might rightly expect, in light of Deuteronomy’s fierce stance toward
the land’s primeval inhabitants, that this text reflects an aversion to-
ward these non-Israelite groups. But even though the μyrg were con-
ceptually linked with the foreigners, they were nonetheless recipients of
the free foodstuffs; there was also no apparent malice toward the for-
eign trading partners. This surprising outcome stems from the com-
munity definition provided in the text, that Israel was a “people holy to
Yahweh.” Deuteronomy was much more concerned with providing a
clear definition of the Yahwistic community than it was antagonistic
toward “foreigners,” either those within Israel or those without. As we
have pointed out, the primary distinguisher of identity in the Deutero-
nomic community was not so much ethnic (although it was) as it was
religious, being tied especially to Israel’s special status before Yahweh.
How does this data support my thesis that Deuteronomy’s origins
reflect both Northern and Southern influences after 722 b.c.e.? While
a concern for the oppressed “widows and orphans” is characteristic of
ancient Near Eastern law, 55 the inclusion of the rg is unique to the He-
brew Bible and does not seem to predate Deuteronomy. 56 This new

53. “Ökonomisch selbständige Gestalt”; Ibid., 102; van Houten, The Alien in Is-
raelite Law, 82.
54. Braulik, Deuteronomium, 1.108.
55. Boecker, Law and the Administration of Justice, 54, 57, 76.
56. See van Houten, The Alien in Israelite Law, 34–41. Supposed similarities be-
tween the Greek perioikoi and metoikoi are just that, since neither corresponds very
closely to the Hebrew rg. The perioikoi were hardly foreigners in the midst of Sparta,
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 243

consideration finds its proper context after the fall of Samaria when
representatives of the North (and the humanitarian prophets of the
South) pushed for legislation to protect the many Northern refugees
living in the South. Although sociologically these refugees were μyrg,
because they were Yahwistic sojourners they were also ‘brothers’
(μyja). But because of the existential similarities between these Israel-
ite sojourners and the foreign ones, the new protective legislation
tended to create a blurred, and therefore permeable, ethnic barrier be-
tween them. This open-handed stance toward foreigners is for most
scholars, I think, an unexpected surprise in light of Deuteronomy’s
more general antipathy toward outsiders.
If this legislation was concerned with establishing some sense of
boundary between the Israelites on the one hand and the sojourners
and foreigners on the other, then it is profitable to ask how long this ef-
fort was protracted within the Israelite sources, namely, within the
other law collections. In another study, I have attempted to show that
one can trace the concerns associated with the biblical hlbn laws chro-
nologically from the D lawcode, through HC and BC, and ending
with the P code. 57 My argument can be summarized as follows:
(1) The original law in DC prohibited the consumption of hlbn,
presumably because of Deuteronomy’s blood taboo. (2) HC altered
this law by allowing the consumption of the hlbn so long as those
doing so took precautions to prevent the pollution of the temple pre-
cinct. But this new policy raised questions about the hlbn that had
been torn by unclean carnivores (hprf ), so HC also provided a rul-
ing on this: it could be eaten. (3) BC followed HC in permitting the
consumption of the hlbn but took exception with HC’s hprf rul-
ing, which it attempted to overturn by prohibiting hprf consump-
tion. (4) Not surprisingly, P ignored BC’s statute and followed HC’s
priestly tradition of permitting hlbn/hprf consumption. However,
the P legist recognized a potential problem created by this policy,
namely, that the hlbn of altar animals, though unsuitable for the al-
tar, contained fat products which might nonetheless carry a special
cultic status. So P clarified the legal position of HC by prohibiting

and the Athenian metoikoi were ethnically Greek. See M. M. Austin and P. Vidal-
Naquet, Economic and Social History of Ancient Greece: An Introduction (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1977) 78–79, 84–85, 95–97; Bultmann, Der Fremde in
antiken Juda, 28–30.
57. D/DC = Deuteronomic Law Code; HC = Holiness Code; BC = Book of the
Covenant; P = Priestly Code.
244 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

the consumption of animal fat when the hlbn or hprf was of a spe-
cies suitable for the altar. 58
As M. Douglas pointed out long ago, the dietary laws in the Hebrew
Bible served to lay out the indicia of one’s participation in the Israelite
ethnic community, 59 and we can trace this problem through the his-
tory of the biblical hlbn laws from the preexilic period, through the
early and late exile, into the postexilic period. We see in the biblical
materials a long and healthy legal tradition dedicated to expressing Is-
raelite identity according to the pursuit of ritual cleanliness, repre-
sented chronologically by the sources in D, HC, BC, and P.
According to the tenets of ethnic studies proper, an exilic experi-
ence should intensify existing ethnic boundaries because of efforts to
preserve group identity, and the above texts seem to sustain this predic-
tion, because HC reflects an intense interest in clarifying the details of
the extant D lawcode, which was itself concerned with ethnic distinc-
tiveness. 60 The law in HC was particularly concerned with clarifying
who came within the scope of the statute. HC at first seems at variance
with DC about this when it suggests that the rg was within the scope
of the dietary mandate, but as my previous discussion of the rg shows,
I do not think that this was the case. Instead, HC was clarifying the
principle that the assimilating rg (in contrast to the nonassimilating
rg) was equally culpable along with other Israelite citizens. This is basi-
cally my perspective on DC, because I see in Deuteronomy two differ-
ent classes of rg, those who were assimilating and those who were not.
Nevertheless, there does seem to be a certain distinctiveness in HC’s
perspective because in this law, as elsewhere, HC is very careful to in-
clude both the jrza (‘native born’) and the rg as participants in Israel’s
cultic community. This indicates, I think, that the intensification of
community identity in the early exilic period had the twofold effect of,
on the one hand, closing the ideological gap that separated the Israel-
ites from the μyrg who were assimilating to them and, on the other
hand, widening the rift that separated Israel from the nonassimilating

58. K. L. Sparks, “A Comparative Study of the Biblical hlbn Laws” ZAW 110
(1998; forthcoming).
59. On the close association of ritual purity and boundary maintenance, see
M. Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (New
York: Praeger, 1966); D. L. Smith, The Religion of the Landless: The Social Context of the
Babylonian Exile (Bloomington: Meyer Stone, 1989) 139–51.
60. Ibid., 49–92.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 245

sojourners (bvwt). 61 As we will see, many of the patterns that we have

observed in our discussion of the biblical hlbn laws apply also to the
slave laws of the Hebrew Bible.

The Hebrew Slave in Deuteronomy 15:1–18

Scholarly interest in Deut 15:1–18 has generally been overshad-
owed by fascination with its parallel in Exod 21:1–11. This is primar-
ily because the text from BC has been considered much older and
because it is thought that the word yrb[ is not used as an ethnic term
but as a sociological designation in Exodus 21. These facts suggest a
link between yrb[ and the second-millennium b.c.e. sociological class
known as the Hapiru, and this link is in turn believed to reveal some-
thing about the origins of ancient Israel. But all of this is predicated on
the idea that Deuteronomy is later than and dependent upon BC, and
my previous discussion of Deut 14:21 suggests that BC may postdate
both Deuteronomy and HC. I will attempt to demonstrate that this
chronological relationship also holds for Deut 15:1–18 and BC. Be-
cause yrb[ is clearly an ethnic rather than sociological designation in
Deuteronomy 15, a successful venture on my part will establish that
the term is also an ethnic designation in Exodus 21. This would make
it difficult to establish a discernible connection between the ethnic
term yrb[ and the second-millennium sociological term Hapiru.
With regard to the chronological relationship between the Hebrew
slave texts in Deuteronomy 15 and Exodus 21, G. C. Chirichigno’s re-
cent monograph is representative of most studies that assume that the
law in BC is older. 62 A notable exception to this trend is the discussion

61. M. Weinfeld has pointed out that while D was concerned primarily with the
purity of the people, HC added an intense concern for the purity of the land, which of
course necessitated the purity of everyone in the land, both natives and sojourners
(Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, 225–32). While this is partially true, why
then did HC not bring the yrkn (‘foreigners’) under the scope of the law? The reason is
that the statute in HC is concerned primarily with clarifying the boundaries that define
the community.
62. G. C. Chirichigno, Debt-Slavery in Israel and the Ancient Near East (JSOTSup
141; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993). One can add to this list E. Otto, “Aspects of Legal
Reforms and Reformulations in Ancient Cuneiform and Israelite Law,” in Theory and
Method in Biblical and Cuneiform Law (ed. B. M. Levinson; JSOTSup 181; Sheffield:
JSOT Press, 1994) 160–96; F. Crüsemann, The Torah: Theology and Social History of
Old Testament Law (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996) 154–59. Crüsemann’s sentiment is a
common one: “Every study of the so-called Book of the Covenant (Exod 20:22–23:33)
246 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

of O. Loretz, who has argued that the law from BC (at least in its final
form) should be associated with the postexilic period, suggesting that it
was inspired by the earlier law from DC. 63 But in doing so, Loretz has
put a great deal of weight on a presumed dependence of BC’s law on
the supposedly late sabbath institution, and it seems to me that there is
no necessary dependence of the seventh-year release in Exodus 21 on
such a general sabbath observance. There are perhaps better arguments
for dating the BC law after DC, and here we can outline a few of them
in a preliminary way. In the first place, I would suggest that the law in
Exodus makes the most sense if it is read in light of the “brother the-
ology” that, I have argued, originated with the Deuteronomic code
and had its appropriate Sitz im Leben in the period after the fall of Sa-
maria, when efforts were made to unify the Yahwistic peoples in the
North and the South. After all, it does seem that the pentateuchal Yah-
wist already presumed this “brother theology” in his narrative work (cf.
Exod 2:11), and this might suggest that the Yahwist was in fact depen-
dent upon Deuteronomy. If this were true, the term yrb[ would every-
where be an ethnic one rather than a remnant of the sociological group
known as the Hapiru. 64 That this is the proper conclusion is reinforced
by a comparative study of the two laws (as Van Seters has recently
demonstrated) 65 and by the fact that yrb[ itself was probably not an
ancient term that developed from Hapiru but was instead, as I will try
to show, a rather late development.
Now the fact that yrb[ functions as an ethnic term is nowhere
more apparent than in Deuteronomy, where the text’s ethnically-
charged “brother theology” is linked in Deut 15:12 directly to the

can begin with the following assertions, which are recognized today as indisputable
facts. . . . The Book of the Covenant is older than Deuteronomy and so is the oldest
law book in the Old Testament” (p. 109).
63. See O. Loretz, Habiru-Hebräer: Eine sozio-linguistische Studie über die Her-
kunft des Gentiliziums ºibri vom Appelativum habiru (BZAW 160; Berlin: de Gruyter,
1984) 122–46.
64. If BC postdates D and if yrb[ is an ethnic term in D, then it should without
doubt be viewed as an ethnic term in BC. However, even those who accept the priority
of BC sometimes conclude that yrb[ is an ethnic term in Exodus 21. See A. Alt, Kleine
Schriften zur Geschichte des Volkes Israel (3 vols.; Munich: Beck, 1953–59) 1.278–332;
Chirichigno, Debt-Slavery in Israel and the Ancient Near East; A. Levy-Feldblum, “The
Law of the Hebrew Slave: The Significance of Stylistic Differences,” Beth Mikra 31
(1985–86) 348–59.
65. J. Van Seters, “The Law of the Hebrew Slave,” ZAW 108 (1996) 534–46.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 247

yrb[ designation: ‘your brother (˚yja), a Hebrew man (yrb[h) , or a

Hebrew woman (hyrb[h)’. But if, as I am suggesting, yrb[ does not
find its origins with the Hapiru, can anything more be said about the
term’s provenience outside of pointing out that it was an “ethnic”
term? 66 It is very interesting to notice that the distribution of the term
yrb[ in the Hebrew Bible is quite restricted. It is found primarily in
the Joseph novella of Genesis 37–50, the Exodus narrative of Exodus
1–10, and the “Philistine narratives” of 1 Samuel. 67 The term also oc-
curs in Gen 14:13 and Jonah 1:9. Perhaps this sparse representation
does not stem from the term’s antiquity as an almost forgotten ethnic
term but from the fact that it developed later than many portions of
the biblical materials. As O. Loretz has concluded, “the biblical sources
for yrb[ are all to be dated in the postexilic period,” 68 and the term
‘Hebrew’ as a reference to Palestine/Israel does not show up in the ex-
trabiblical materials until the Egyptian Saite/Persian period (664–500

66. Extensive bibliography is available on this subject. In addition to the sources

cited below, see also the following: M. Anbar, “Le pays des Hébreux,” Or 41 (1972)
383–86; M. Astour, “Le étrangers à Ugarit et le statut juridique de Habiru,” RA 53
(1959) 70–76; R. Borger, “Das Problem der ºapiru,” ZDPV 74 (1958) 121–32;
I. Cardellini, Die biblischen “Skalven”-Gesetze im Lichte des keilschriftlichen Sklaven-
rechts (BBB 55; Bonn: Hanstein, 1981) 243–51; M. P. Gray, “The Habirû-Hebrew
Problem in the Light of the Source Material Available at Present,” HUCA 29 (1958)
135–202; N. P. Lemche, “The Hebrew Slave: Comments on the Slave Law Ex. XXI 2–
11,” VT 25 (1975) 129–44; H. Parzen, “The Problem of the Ibrim in the Bible,” AJSL
49 (1932/33) 254–61; D. B. Redford, “The ‘Land of the Hebrews’ in Gen XL 15,” VT
15 (1965) 529–31; J. A. Soggin, “Heber der Qenit: Das Ende eines biblischen Person-
ennamens,” VT 31 (1981) 89–92; W. R. Wifall, “The Tribes of Yahweh: A Synchronic
Study with a Diachronic Title,” ZAW 95 (1983) 207–9.
67. Gen 39:14, 17; 40:15; 41:12; 43:32; Exod 1:15–19; 2:6–13; 3:18; 5:3; 7:16;
9:1, 13; 10:3; 1 Sam 4:6–9; 13:3, 7, 19; 14:11, 21; 29:3.
68. “[D]ie biblischen Belege für yrb[ sind alle in die nachexilische Zeit zu da-
tieren”; I cannot offer a complete defense of this position within the scope of this work
and so rely here on the efforts of others. In general, see Loretz, Hapiru-Hebräer. On
Genesis 14, see J. Van Seters, Abraham in History and Tradition (New Haven: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1975) 296–308. Even C. Westermann, who sees in the text some very an-
cient material, confesses that the present form of chap. 14 betrays its postexilic
influence (Genesis [3 vols.; Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1985] 2.192). On the Joseph story,
see D. B. Redford’s very convincing arguments in A Study of the Biblical Story of Joseph
(VTSup 20; Leiden: Brill, 1970). On the narratives of 1 Samuel, see pp. 346–53 of
J. Van Seters, In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of
Biblical History (New Haven: Yale, 1983; repr., Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns,
1997). On the Exodus narratives, see Van Seters’s recent work on the J narrative in Pro-
logue to History and The Life of Moses.
248 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

b.c.e.). 69 Afterward, the term “Land of the Hebrew” was employed

until the Roman period by various authors in reference to Palestine. 70
Is it a coincidence that the late Egyptian sources refer to Palestine as
ºybr and that the contemporary Hebrew texts consistently put this de-
scription in the mouths of foreigners, both Egyptians and Philis-
tines? 71 What seems most likely is that the term yrb[ was an exonym
borrowed by Israel from the surrounding peoples, especially Egypt,
who used the term to refer to the region in which Israel lived. 72 In my
view, the terminology probably arose from the name given by foreign-
ers to the language used by the Israelites. This would explain why Is-
rael’s speech was labeled ‘Hebrew’, a term that seems to have no clear
connection with either Judah or Israel. And although this perhaps
brings us closer to solving the problem of yrb[ and its origins, it leaves
us with the still-unsolved problem of the term’s etymology, a problem
that has consistently eluded an unequivocal solution. 73 But the sugges-
tions offered here seem to explain both the lateness of the term and
also its relative paucity in the biblical sources.
In light of this discussion, it becomes all the more attractive to
consider the possibility that Deuteronomy 15 is our earliest witness to
the use of yrb[ in the ancient sources. We can test this by assuming
the priority of DC and seeing how the discussion goes. First, why was
yrb[ used in Deuteronomy and why in conjunction with the term
69. Following Redford in this conclusion are M. Weippert, Die Landnahme der
israelitischen Stämme in der neueren wissenschaftlichen Diskussion (FRLANT 92; Gött-
ingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967); and R. Giveon, “Hapiru,” LÄ 2.952–55.
70. Redford, A Study of the Biblical Story of Joseph, 201–2.
71. As has been observed by N. P. Lemche, “The Hebrew and the Seven Year
Cycle,” BN 25 (1984) 68; see F. A. Spina’s similar observation, in “Israelites as gerim,
‘Sojourners,’ in Social and Historical Context,” The Word of the Lord Shall Go Forth:
Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman in Celebration of His Sixtieth Birthday (ed.
C. L. Meyers and M. O’Connor; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1983) 331.
72. Lemche suggests that the term Hebrew cannot be a late ethnic designation for
Jews because it “is never used of postexilic Jews in the sections of the OT which
expressly refer to this period.” What he fails to notice is that this is precisely because the
term is an exonym which Jews would be prone to use only when describing themselves
in the mouths of others (N. P. Lemche, “The Hebrew and the Seven Year Cycle,” 68).
73. Whether ultimately true or not, the common suggestion that yrb[ is related
to the root rb[ ‘to go across’ supports the notion of an exonym. Exonyms are generally
coined in geographical and spatial terms. For other ideas on etymology, see R. J. Wil-
liams, “Review of R. A. Parker, A Vienna Demotic Papyrus on Eclipse- and Lunar-
Omina,” JNES 25 (1966) 69; Redford, A Study of the Biblical Story of Joseph, 201; and,
of course, see Loretz, Habiru-Hebräer.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 249

‘brother’ (ja)? As discussed above (p. 237), elsewhere in Deuter-

onomy ja was apposed to ‘neighbor’ ([r) and ‘poor’ (@wyba) in an ef-
fort to employ ethnic sentiments in support of community solidarity
under Yahweh. The neighbor is a brother. The poor man beside you is
a brother. And similarly, it may be that Deuteronomy 15 has apposed
this brother theology with yrb[ in an effort to say, “the Hebrew, the
one who speaks your language, is your brother.” In this way Deuter-
onomy brings into the discussion of ethnic boundaries one of the
more common ethnic markers, language. It is difficult to say precisely
how this might have worked. On the one hand, the Hebrew, Moabite,
Ammonite, and Phoenician languages were virtually identical. On the
other hand, dialectal differences may be observed between these lan-
guages and even within them, as the “shibboleth” text of Judg 12:6
shows. 74 So it is quite possible that dialectal features served to distin-
guish Israelites and Judeans from other peoples. I cannot stress enough,
however, the minor role that this probably would have played, given
West Semitic linguistic similarities. Furthermore, we must reckon with
the possibility that by the time Deuteronomy used the term yrb[, its
semantic range had already extended beyond its original linguistic
denotation.
The distinction made between the Hebrew slave and the non-
Hebrew in this text is quite pronounced and brings us to the discussion
of the way the groups on each side of the ethnic boundary were treated.
The law in vv. 1–3 extended debt relief to all Israelites on a seven-year
cycle but excluded foreigners from the benefit. Similarly the manumis-
sion of slaves during the seventh year (vv. 12–18) was for Hebrews
only, implying that perpetual slavery was the lot of foreign slaves. We
may conclude that the laws were enacted to protect members of the
ethnic community. The problems that arose in connection with the
slave release in Jeremiah 34 show that this statute was both new (at
least in its implementation) and unpopular, and this fact should serve
to remind us that Deuteronomy’s vision of Israel’s ethnic community
was in truth a visionary ideal that many resisted. And this law was
perhaps easy to resist because, as Van Seters has pointed out, it was
composed more as a moral prescript to be implemented within the

74. See Gibson, Syrian Semitic Inscriptions, 1.5–8, 21–22; F. M. Cross and D. N.
Freedman, Early Hebrew Orthography: A Study of the Epigraphic Evidence (AOS 36;
New Haven, Conn.: American Oriental Society, 1952).
 250 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

household rather than as a legal statute that would be enforced in the

public forum. 75 The public setting of the manumission “covenant” de-
scribed in Jer 34:15 was designed precisely to address this problem, but
it ultimately failed to do so because there were no statutes to prevent
reenslavement after manumission. As Van Seters points out, this prob-
lem was finally addressed in a definitive way by BC, which required
that the ritual ear-piercing become a public ceremony at the Temple:
“then his master shall bring him to God, and he shall bring him to the
door or the doorpost; and his master shall bore his ear through with an
awl; and he shall serve him for life” (Exod 21:6). 76 One can discern
here a clear sense of progress in the effort to protect slaves within the
ethnic community as the statutes moved from the original household
law of DC, to a more public effort in Jeremiah, to an even more public
effort on the part of the BC legist. Thus the proper order of the tradi-
tion here should be traced from DC through Jeremiah to BC. 77
How might HC fit into this picture? As was the case with the
hlbn, so too with the slave, we see that HC reflects an exilic intensifica-
tion of ethnic sentiment. While Deuteronomy decreed manumission
for Israelite slaves after six years, HC expanded the legislation to pre-
scribe proper treatment of the slave before the time of manumission:
“if your brother (˚yja) becomes poor . . . and sells himself to you, you
shall not make him serve you as a slave” (Lev 25:39). 78 Instead of serv-
ing under the harshness of slave-like conditions (v. 46), the fellow Is-

75. Van Seters, “The Law of the Hebrew Slave,” 535.

76. Ibid., 541.
77. As I pointed out in chap. 3, concern for social justice was a characteristic of
the eighth-century Southern prophetic tradition. In Deuteronomy, the emphasis on
social justice appears to stem from a combination of Southern and Northern influ-
ences. The concern for displaced Levites and other Northern μyrg stems from North-
ern influence, but the basic and fundamental concern for “widows and orphans” is
characteristic of the Southern prophetic tradition. For a discussion of social justice in
Deuteronomy as it relates to this text, see J. M. Hamilton, Social Justice and Deuter-
onomy: The Case of Deuteronomy 15 (SBLDS 136; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992).
78. Although HC says that manumission was to take place in the year of Jubilee,
which would involve almost a lifetime of slave service, not six years, I view the Jubilee
tradition as late and so assume agreement between the original HC law and the present
text. The primary arguments for this are three: (1) the Jubilee tradition does not appear
in any preexilic texts; (2) the Jubilee year appears to find its contextual home in Nehe-
miah’s reforms (see Nehemiah 5), which are late; (3) the distinction made in HC be-
tween Israelites and foreigners makes little sense in the context of the Jubilee system.
For concurring arguments, see Levine, Leviticus, 272–74; van Houten, The Alien in Is-
raelite Law, 128.

Spread is 6 points long

 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 251

raelite (˚yja) would serve as a hired servant (rykc) and as a sojourner

(here, bvwt). 79 The law itself presupposes that the community of Israel
was not accustomed to distinguishing between the treatment of native
slaves and non-Israelite slaves. So once again we are dealing, as in Deu-
teronomy, with an ideal picture of the community as conceptualized
by those who produced HC, a community that embraced ethnic senti-
ments more deeply than the broader community that it hoped to influ-
ence. Having defended the ethnic kin from the harshness of their
brethren, HC proceeded to address the additional problem that some
Israelite slaves were not protected by the legislation because they were
indentured to foreigners; that is, they were indentured to those who
lacked the fundamental ethnic sentiments necessary to motivate proper
treatment of the Israelite slave (25:47). 80 In such cases, the brother,
uncle, cousin, or nearest kinsmen was responsible for freeing the in-
dentured relative. 81 In this way HC attempted to clarify and extend the
benefits of community membership as outlined in Deuteronomy. But
the HC legist was not content with this effort to protect members
within the community, for he also made a serious effort to clarify the
actual parameters that defined community membership.
HC closely follows the pattern of Deuteronomy when it distin-
guishes between the ‘surrounding nations’ (μkytbybs μywgh) and the
‘sojourners’ (μkm[ μyrgh bvwth), on the one hand, and the ethnic
‘brothers’ (μyja) of Israel on the other (Lev 25:44–45). But there is a
further development of this “sojourner” identity in HC that goes be-
yond the one provided by Deuteronomy. In Deuteronomy there was a
threefold social classification scheme—brother, sojourner, and for-
eigner (ja/rg/yrkn)—in which the term rg served a dual semantic role ,
referring to both assimilating foreigners and nonassimilating foreign-
ers. This situation is altered in HC, where the assimilated foreigner was
79. Van Houten has concluded that bvwt and rg are virtually synonymous in the
Hebrew Bible (cf. Gen 23:4), however, she also concludes that in P the rg represented
the permanent foreign resident while the bvwt referred to the temporary foreign resi-
dent (The Alien in Israelite Law, 125–26). In my view, the relationship is a bit more
complicated than this, as I will show below.
80. Notice the absence of both ywg and yrkn in the statute. This is no doubt be-
cause, as outsiders, they could not fall under the jurisdiction of Israelite law.
81. The text’s implicit connection between ethnic identity and the more narrow
sphere of familial kinship conforms—as in Deuteronomy—to the sociobiological view
of ethnic identity, which suggests that ethnicity is a rather natural extension of kinship.
See Richard H. Thompson, Theories of Ethnicity: A Critical Appraisal (New York:
Greenwood, 1989) 21–48.
252 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

designated rg and the nonassimilated foreigner bvwt. That this was

the case becomes evident when we consider the following. First, I can-
not agree with van Houten that the bvwt was a temporary foreign resi-
dent in contrast to the rg, a permanent foreign resident. According to
Lev 25:45, the bvwt could refer to people born in Israel’s land, which
does not suggest a temporary residence status. Second, while at several
points HC suggests that the rg be treated as the native jrza (Lev
19:34, 24:22) this was never true of the bvwt. Third, the rg was con-
sistently presented together with the native Israelite as part of the reli-
gious community, 82 as is particularly clear from Lev 20:2: “Say to the
people of Israel, any man from the people of Israel or of the strangers
(rg) that sojourn in Israel. . . .” In contrast, the bvwt was never repre-
sented as a community participant and was, in fact, viewed as an out-
sider (rz) in Lev 22:10–13. So it is plainly evident that, although the
bvwt and rg shared a common identity as foreigners in the midst of Is-
rael (Lev 25:47), the two terms were significantly different for HC.
The intensification of ethnic sentiments that accompanied the exilic
situation required that a rhetorical distinction be created between
assimilating foreigners and nonassimilating foreigners, and this was
accomplished by preserving the term rg, which was becoming synony-
mous with our word ‘proselyte’, 83 and by coining a new term, bvwt,
which served to identify foreigners who were merely residing (bvy)
within the community. 84 That this linguistic distinction originated at
the time of HC (and most likely with HC) is suggested by the fact that

82. Members of the Israelite community or the community itself are variously de-
scribed as jrza, larvyAynb, and larvyAtyb. See Lev 16:29; 17:7, 10, 12, 13, 15;
18:26; 19:34; 20:2; 22:18; 24:16; 25:23.
83. By proselyte I mean only that a non-Israelite has assimilated to the Israelite
community as defined by the literature in question. In light of this, the recent conclu-
sion of Rendtorff that the rg was “a person who lives more or less permanently among
the Israelites but does not become one of them” appears too simple. See his otherwise
helpful discussion in “The Gêr in the Priestly Laws of the Pentateuch,” in Ethnicity and
the Bible (ed. M. G. Brett; Biblical Interpretation Series 19; Leiden: Brill, 1996) 77–87.
84. M. Smith briefly discusses the semantic development of rg from its early
meaning, ‘resident alien’, to its later meaning in the HC, ‘proselyte’. However, he fails
to see that rg was beginning to serve a proselyte function already in Deuteronomy. But
it was the development of the term bvwt by HC that actually served to limit the se-
mantic range of rg to ‘proselyte’. Although failing to see the development of rg and
bvwt as outlined here, in an older study T. J. Meek recognized that rg was taking on
the meaning of ‘proselyte’ in HC (“The Translation of Gêr in the Hexateuch and Its
Bearing on the Documentary Hypothesis,” JBL 49 [1930] 172–80).
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 253

all other uses of bvwt are postexilic. 85 Regarding other texts, the BC
corpus deals only with the question of the oppressed rg, hnmla, and
μwty and does not add very much to our discussion of bvwt; however,
it is interesting that Genesis 23, which brings Abraham into very close
relations with the Canaanites and Hittites, used the term bvwt—‘non-
assimilating sojourner’—to describe the forefather. 86 This is best un-
derstood as P’s effort to modify an older tradition by placing some
rhetorical distance between Abraham and the ‘people of the land’
(≈rahAμ[).

The Status and Treatment of Foreigners in Deuteronomy 23:4–8

The distinction between Israelites and foreigners moves beyond
the various statutory differences that we have discussed to a kind of
ethnic separatism, as expressed in Deut 23:4–8:
No Ammonite or Moabite shall enter the assembly (lhq) of the Lord;
even to the tenth generation none belonging to them shall enter the
assembly of the Lord forever; because they did not meet you with
bread and with water on the way, when you came forth out of Egypt,
and because they hired against you Balaam the son of Beor from
Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse you. Nevertheless the Lord your
God would not hearken to Balaam; but the Lord your God turned
the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord your God loved
you.
Three important questions are raised by the text. First, what is the ‘as-
sembly of Yahweh’ (hwhy lhq), and does such a concept easily fit into
the preexilic context? Second, why does the text distinguish between
Edom/Egypt on the one hand and Ammon/Moab on the other?
Third, if one attributes this text to the Deuteronomic code, how does
its separatism square with the code’s statutory support for the assimi-
lating foreigner, the rg? I will adopt, as a starting point, C. Bultmann’s
recent monograph, which includes a thorough examination of this
text. Regarding the problem of Ammonite/Moabite exclusion from the

85. Gen 23:4, Exod 12:45, Num 35:15, 1 Chr 25:15, Ps 39:13. The three pen-
tateuchal texts are all from P, the Chronicler is postexilic, and according to Anderson,
Psalm 39 is generally dated to the Persian period (A. A. Anderson, Psalms [2 vols.;
NCBC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972] 1.308).
86. The fact that Gen 23:4 refers to Abraham as a rg and a bvwt does not negate
my thesis. The term rg exhibits much greater lexical elasticity and is not as limited to
the translation of ‘proselyte’ as the term bvwt is to ‘nonassimilating resident alien’.
 254 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

assembly, Bultmann has concluded that, not only are the “historical-
ethical” explanations provided in vv. 4–5 later additions, as has long
been suggested, 87 but the entire Ammonite/ Moabite issue finds its
contextual home in Neh 13:1–3: “no Ammonite or Moabite should
enter the assembly of God” (μyhla lhq). 88 This would make the
Ammonite/Moabite exclusions quite late. But Bultmann also sees evi-
dence in both Deuteronomy and Lam 1:10 that a preexilic hwhy lhq
did exist and that the exclusions placed on Edomites and Egyptians
originated with Deuteronomy. 89 From this he concludes that the origi-
nal statute concerned the terms under which Edomites and Egyptians
could be included within the religious community, while a postexilic
addition to the text permanently excluded Ammonites and Moabites.
There are several problems with this conclusion. First, the text in
Nehemiah 13 was concerned not so much with Ammonites and Mo-
abites as with the exclusion of foreigners in general: br[Alk wlydbyw
larcym. 90 In other words, one can imagine the derivation of Nehe-
miah’s ideas from ideas in Deuteronomy much more easily than one
can imagine a postexilic redactor summarizing an antiassimilationist
policy by adding specific references to Ammon and Moab in the as-
sembly laws of Deuteronomy. I conclude from this that Deuteronomy
23’s permanent exclusion (μlw[Ad[) of Ammon and Moab predates
Nehemiah 13, and this establishes a terminus ad quem for the text dur-
ing the middle of the fourth century b.c.e. Second, Bultmann’s con-
clusion that the Egypt/Edom exclusions are older than the Ammonite/
Moabite is doubtful because the Egypt/Edom exclusions are in fact not
independent lhq exclusions. They are more properly viewed as modifi-
cations of the Ammonite/Moabite law and assume a period in which
the Ammonite/Moabite exclusions had become a generalized exclusion
of all foreigners—including Edomites and Egyptians. The most likely
context for this would have been after Nehemiah’s day, when the Am-
mon/Moab exclusion was interpreted in just this general fashion and
87. His evidence for this is the text’s obvious relationship to Deuteronomy 1–4,
which is a later addition to the original Deuteronomy, as well as the shifts in form of
address that are present in the text (Mayes, Deuteronomy, 316–17).
88. See Bultmann, Der Fremde im antiken Juda, 103–19.
89. Ibid., 104, 119. Bultmann concludes that hwhy lhq “eine aktuelle Versamm-
lung meint und nicht Gesamtbegriff für das Jahwevolk ist.” He therefore assigns the
Edomite/Egyptian exclusion to the seventh century b.c.e.
90. J. Blenkinsopp, Ezra–Nehemiah (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1988)
350–52.

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 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 255

when the large diaspora population in Egypt prompted a softening of

Judean policy toward its southern neighbors. But notice the negative
command, ‘do not abhor’ (b[tAal), which is a rather subdued pre-
scription in comparison with the Deuteronomic charge to ‘love the so-
journer’ (rghAta μtbhaw; see 10:19). 91 In this postexilic context, a
certain rhetorical distance was preserved between ethnic Israel and its
neighbors, even when the objective was to establish a “relaxed” stance
toward them.
So far, this leads us to the conclusion that the Ammonite/Moabite
exclusions predated Nehemiah and that the Edomite/Egyptian modifi-
cation of the law postdated Nehemiah. But how much earlier than Ne-
hemiah did the exclusions date? This brings us to Lam 1:9–10, a text
that bemoans the trespass of the ‘assembly’ (lhq) by foreigners, and
that is normally dated either just prior to the exile or just after its
beginning. 92
O Lord, behold my affliction, for the enemy has triumphed! The en-
emy has stretched out his hands over all her precious things; yea, she
has seen the nations (μywg) invade her sanctuary (hvdqm), those
whom thou didst forbid to enter thy congregation (˚l lhq).
As Hillers has noted, “the command referred to . . . is obviously Deut
23:3[4H], in view of the close verbal agreement.” 93 The similar features
between this text and the Deuteronomic statute are rather pronounced:

Lam 1:10: ˚l lhqb wabyAal htywx

Deut 23:4: hwhy lhqb ybawmw ynwm[ abyAal

The verb hwx suggests that Lamentations has legal materials in mind, of
which Deuteronomy 23 would be the most likely candidate. According

91. Lohfink suggests that this is a later addition to the present context due to its
affinity for 10:18. Although this may be true, it is characteristic of Deuteronomic ide-
ology and, as Mayes suggests, it is probably an old formulation (Lohfink, Das Haupt-
gebot, 223; Mayes, Deuteronomy, 211).
92. W. Rudolph says that the absence of references to the destruction of Jerusalem
and the Temple in Lamentations 1 suggests a date sometime between 597 and 586
b.c.e. D. Hillers, on the other hand, dates the text just after the exile (W. Rudolph,
Das Buch Ruth, Das Hohe Lied, Die Klagelieder [KAT 17; Gütersloh: Mohn/Güters-
loher Verlagshaus, 1962]; D. Hillers, Lamentations [rev. ed.; AB 7A; Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday, 1992] 9–10; C. Westermann, Lamentations: Issues and Interpretation [Min-
neapolis: Fortress, 1994] 130–31).
93. Hillers, Lamentations, 25.
256 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

to Bultmann, this evidence supports the conclusion that Deuter-

onomy’s assembly law should be dated no later than the early exile, that
is, to the date of Lamentations. Two recent commentators on Lamenta-
tions, however, would question this conclusion. I. Provan has pointed
out that “the allusion to illegal entry into the temple could be under-
stood in relation to the events of 597, 587 or 167 b.c.,” and O. Kaiser
has suggested that Lamentations 1 might date as late as the fourth cen-
tury b.c.e. 94 On the basis of our evidence, this conclusion is sound, for
Lam 1:10 has interpreted the Deuteronomic statute as a general exclu-
sion of foreigners, and this would seem to be most closely associated
with the time of Nehemiah, or at least closer to it. Lam 1:10 cannot
therefore serve as evidence of an early Yahwistic ‘assembly’ (lhq). We
must instead try to identify a point at which the original Ammonite/
Moabite assembly exclusion might have arisen.
We have determined that the Ammon/Moab exclusion dates be-
fore Nehemiah, and the fact that Deuteronomy was very supportive of
assimilating foreigners (μyrg) suggests that the law originated in a con-
text that lay somewhere between the classical Deuteronomic period
and Nehemiah. I would suggest that the most suitable context would
have been soon after the exile’s conclusion, when the various groups of
returnees attempted to reestablish a common context for worship, the
lhq. These groups returned to their ancestral lands and found that in
some cases they had been dispossessed by foreigners, particularly by the
Transjordanian peoples (cf. Jer 49:1–3). In this context, the Ammo-
nite/Moabite exception was necessitated precisely because the exiles
were faced with two conflicting circumstances: on the one hand, a legal
tradition that looked favorably upon assimilating foreigners; and on
the other hand, a situation in which specific foreigners—Ammonites
and Moabites—were a threat to the future of the community. The re-
sult was the assembly exclusion of Deut 23:3, to which vv. 4–5 were
subsequently added at some later point to explain the exclusion when
the original context that prompted it was forgotten.
The cultic exclusions of the Moabites and Ammonites were added
to a previously existing statute that excluded ‘bastards’ (rzmm) from the
assembly. The rare Hebrew term is an Aramaic loanword of the same

94. O. Kaiser, “Klagelieder,” in Das Hohelied, Klagelieder, Das Buch Ester: Über-
setzt und erklärt (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992) 104–9; I. Provan, Lam-
entations (NCBC; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1991) 13.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 257

meaning and at once brings to mind the μynwnz μynb (‘sons of harlotry’)
and μynb μyrz (‘strange sons’) described in Hosea 2 and 5. Braulik cor-
rectly surmises, along with Mayes, that these children were born of
“foreign” cultic activities and were thereby the progeny of a foreign
deity. 95 One potential threat to such illicit activity would therefore
have been the “excommunication” of the resulting offspring. This
analysis corresponds to the proto-Deuteronomic thought expressed in
Hosea and fits well in the present literary context of Deuteronomy 23.
Here again we see the powerful antipathy of the Deuteronomic com-
munity toward foreign cultic activity and also toward those who, by as-
sociation with it, become “foreigners.” In sum, the growth of the
assembly exclusions in Deuteronomy 23 may be represented as follows:
first, the religious exclusion of people involved in foreign cults; second,
the ethnic exclusion of Ammonites and Moabites; third, the logical ex-
tension of the Ammonite/Moabite exclusion to all foreigners; and
finally, an attempt to promote ethnic inclusion by providing special al-
lowances for Egyptians and Edomites.

The Primeval Inhabitants as the Rhetorical Other

Up to this point, the “foreigners” I have discussed—Ammonites,
Moabites, Edomites, and Egyptians—should be classified as “objective
others”—in other words, as part of an actual social category that ex-
isted in the world of the Israelite community and from which the com-
munity felt a need to distinguish itself. Similar in certain respects but
distinctly different in others is Deut 7:1–5, which commands the total
annihilation of Palestine’s original inhabitants (Hittites, Girgashites,
Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites) and prohibits
marriages and covenants with them. 96 Mayes hints at the difference
when he says, “The reference [to Hittites] is something of a problem,
for the historical Hittite empire of the Late Bronze Age lay con-
siderably north of Palestine” (and, I would add, considerably earlier

95. Braulik, Deuteronomium, 2.170; Mayes, Deuteronomy, 316.

96. Although this position would seem to be very compatible with the proto-
Deuteronomic movement as represented by Hosea, who rejected foreign covenants,
Nielsen (Deuteronomium, 94–97) has identified vv. 1b–2, 4–5 as part of the Deuter-
onomistic expansion of this text. This is, however, not the most common tack on the
text. Lohfink regards it as one of the older portions of Deuteronomy 5–11 (Das Haupt-
gebot, 167ff.), and Mayes argues that at least vv. 1–3 are authentic (Deuteronomy, 181);
and the first three verses are what interest me most.
258 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

chronologically). In chap. 2, we saw that the “Hittites,” “Amorites,”

and “Canaanites” were probably archaic exonyms of Mesopotamian
and Egyptian origin, and Mayes has suggested that the reference to
“Hivites” (an otherwise unknown group) might actually reflect the
term Horite, which is also an archaic Egyptian exonym. Of the other
peoples mentioned here, the Jebusites 97 existed only in Israelite litera-
ture as the primeval inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the two other
groups, the Perizzites and Girgashites, are also unknown outside of the
Hebrew text. We can add to this list the giant Anakim of Deut 9:1–
2. 98 Most likely, there were no extant groups in seventh-century Judah
that corresponded directly to the various peoples listed here. Contrary
to the “objective others” that confronted Judah during this period, we
have here “rhetorical others” which served as a foil in the argument and
theology of the Deuteronomic community. Consequently the prime-
val inhabitants of Canaan should be carefully distinguished from actual
foreigners on the community’s periphery.
This distinction is illustrated especially by Deut 20:10–18, in
which the primeval populations within the land were to be completely
destroyed (μrj), whereas the foreign populations encountered in dis-
tant lands were offered an opportunity to surrender and, even if they
did not surrender, the resulting attack was directed only at the males. 99
In such cases the women of the conquered people could be taken as
wives by the Israelites (Deut 21:10–14), provided that they observed a
one-month “rite of passage” that furnished the liminal transition from
a foreign to an Israelite identity. 100 The very different kinds of rules

97. Although occasionally called Jebus in the Hebrew Bible, second-millennium

texts from El Amarna show that the city was known in Egypt by its West Semitic
name, Urusalim (see W. L. Moran [ed.], The Amarna Letters [Baltimore: Johns Hop-
kins University Press, 1992] 328–29, 332–34).
98. The Anakim are described as a people μrw lwdg.
99. In other words, Deuteronomy espouses standard military practice. Appar-
ently, the Deuteronomic legislators were unwilling actually to endorse earlier practices
in the region, such as the μrj undertaken by Mesha of Moab (see ANET 320).
100. On the Deuteronomic (and some would say pre-Deuteronomic) character of
the law in Deuteronomy 21, see M. du Buit, “Quelques contacts bibliques dans les ar-
chives royales de Mari,” RB 66 (1959) 576–81; Mayes, Deuteronomy, 300–301;
Nielsen, Deuteronomium, 201–6. For classic discussions of liminality and ritual, see
V. Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure (The Lewis Henry Morgan
Lectures, 1966; London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969) 95–165; idem, “Liminal to
Liminoid, in Play, Flow, and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology,” Rice Uni-
versity Studies 6 (1974) 53–92.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 259

that governed the treatment of distant foreigners as opposed to the pri-

meval peoples probably stems from the fact that none of these primeval
peoples existed in the Deuteronomic period, so we should probably
conclude that for the Deuteronomic movement and its audience, Israel
had succeeded in its quest to destroy the primeval nations of Pales-
tine. 101 In spite of the fact that they no longer existed, these primeval
groups served an important rhetorical function in both the military
and religious spheres. As I have pointed out previously, von Rad long
ago suggested that the decline of Assyrian power after 701 b.c.e.
prompted conscription of a new Judean militia. 102 Although I cannot
agree with many of the accoutrements of his idea, he is undoubtedly
correct that the passing of Assyrian domination prompted the desire
for and the need for a revived Judean military. Rhetorically speaking,
the implied martial victories over the Anakim and others would have
renewed confidence for these troops: “When you go forth to war
against your enemies, and see horses and chariots and an army larger
than your own, you shall not be afraid of them. . . .” (Deut 20:1).
But more important than the rhetorical function of these primeval
groups in the military sphere was their function in the religious sphere.
Deuteronomy thoroughly demonized and marginalized the primeval
inhabitants of Palestine:
you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittites and the Amorites, the
Canaanites and the Perizites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the
Lord your God has commanded; that they may not teach you to do
according to all of their abominable practices (hb[wt) which they
have done in the service of their gods, and so to sin against the Lord
your God. (Deut 20:17–18)
take heed that . . . after they have been destroyed before you, and
that you you do not inquire about their gods, saying, “How did
these nations serve their gods?—that I may do likewise.” You shall
not do so to the Lord your God; for every abominable thing
(hb[wt) which the Lord hates they have done for their gods; for
they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their
gods. (Deut 12:29–31)

101. We can now add another category to our previous chart. The primeval in-
habitants represent a “rhetorical other,” whose primary function in the literature was to
be a destroyed enemy.
102. Von Rad, Studies in Deuteronomy, 60–61.
 260 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

The operant description of these deviant primeval religious practices

was hb[wt ‘abomination’. Other practices may be added to this Deu-
teronomic category, including the production and use of divine images
(μylysp, 7:25), nonprophetic forms of intermediation (18:9–14), un-
clean foodstuffs (14:3), transvestism (22:5), 103 and cult prostitution
(23:17–18). 104 The threat that these practices represented to the Deu-
teronomic reformers probably existed on two levels. On one level, the
Josianic reform suggests that many of these practices were quite closely
associated with the central Yahwistic cult prior to the reform. I am
thinking here not only of Jerusalem but also of other temple sites
where Yahweh was venerated. On another level, many of these “abomi-
nations” would have been practiced in the peripheral cult, so that post-
D legislation found it necessary to warn against setting up images ‘in
secret’ (rtsb μcw; 27:15). 105 The national reformers, religious progeny
of Hosea and the proto-Deuteronomists, 106 brought their brand of
aniconic, monotheistic Yahwism to the fore and with it a powerful,
highly-charged ethnic identity that joined Yahweh’s people together as
μyja. As “rhetorical others,” the primeval inhabitants of Canaan served
three different but overlapping roles in this new Yahwistic community.

103. Although this was clearly a cultic offense, Mayes’s suggestion that cultic
transvestism was rejected because of its non-Israelite origins is uncertain. It is possible
that the rejection stems from the implicit confusion of natural categories in a manner
similar to that which Mary Douglas has isolated in P. Nonetheless, Römer has pointed
out that transvestism played a significant role in the Mesopotamian cult of Ishtar. See
M. Douglas, “The Abominations of Leviticus,” Purity and Danger (London: Routledge
& Kegan Paul, 1978) 41–57; Mayes, Deuteronomy, 307; W. H. Römer, “Randbemer-
kungen zur Travestie von Deut. 22,5,” in Travels in the World of the Old Testament:
Studies Presented to Professor M. A. Beek on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday (ed. M. S.
H. G. Heerma van Voss; Studia Semitica Neerlandica 16; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1974)
217–22.
104. For a discussion of hvdq/vdq and its relationship to cult prostitution, see
p. 149 n. 69.
105. Similar peripheral concerns are reflected in Jer 7:16–20 and 44:15–19. Jere-
miah 44 is sometimes attributed to the Deuteronomistic redactor, but Jones and Hol-
laday view it as Jeremianic. On the other hand, Jones suggests that the text is at points
dependent on Dtr, which, provided that one dates Dtr to the exile, raises problems for
Jeremianic origin. Nevertheless, the text probably approximates the religious context
that confronted Jeremiah. See W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah: A Commentary on the Book of
the Prophet Jeremiah (2 vols.; Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989) 2.286–7; D. R.
Jones, Jeremiah (NCBC; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1992) 447–56.
106. It is interesting that, for Hosea, the corruption of Israel took place outside of
the land via Baal at Peor. For Deuteronomy, the corruption came inside the land at the
hands of its primeval peoples.

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 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 261

First, by staging a national renewal and simultaneously identifying the

unacceptable practices as primeval and non-Israelite, the Deutero-
nomic community placed a discursive wall between Israel and these
foreign practices. Second, by associating the unwanted practices with
the primeval inhabitants and by depicting these primeval peoples in
the most negative terms—for example, they sacrifice children to their
gods—the Deuteronomists cast a long, dark shadow upon all associ-
ated practices. Third, because the primeval inhabitants did not exist in
seventh-century Judean experience, the Deuteronomic message seemed
uniquely real, inasmuch as the fate of the evil Canaanites awaited un-
faithful Israelites: “And if you forget the Lord God and go after other
gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you this day
that you shall surely perish. Like the nations that the Lord makes to
perish before you . . . because you would not obey the voice of the
Lord your God” (Deut 8:19–20). Nevertheless, despite the rhetorical
nature of these ethnic boundaries, it is equally clear that at points they
functioned well beyond the threshold of what we might call “rhetoric.”

The Provenience of Ethnic Identity in Deuteronomy

Our discussion in the last few sections has emphasized the similari-
ties that may be observed between ethnic concepts in Israel and in
Greece as represented by Herodotus and some of the earlier archaic
sources, especially with respect to the importance of forefather and
ancestral figures. One of the comparative problems that we face, of
course, is that similar kinds of traditions were also identified in the Old
Babylonian materials and the comparative anthropological data, and
this makes it difficult to argue in a definitive way that certain ethnic
features in Israel can be explained by cultural diffusion. Nevertheless,
my own opinion is that Deuteronomy (especially in its Deuteronomis-
tic sections) shows signs of influence from Greece or perhaps from a
common cultural arbiter between Israel and Greece. Such an exchange
of ideas should be viewed as more likely in the case of Deuteronomy
than in the eighth-century prophets, because Deuteronomy comes
later in the period of growing contact between Greece and the Levant.
On the other hand, I think that there is sufficient subtlety in the evi-
dence to suggest that we are talking about probabilities rather than
about practical certainties.
How do the ethnic features in Deuteronomy compare with ethnic-
ity of the Greeks? The concept of eponymous ancestors, which played
 262 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

a major role in Hesiod, Herodotus, and Hosea, was not an important

idea in Deuteronomy. On the other hand, ancestral migrations did
play an important role in both Deuteronomy and the Greek materials,
and in both cases we can cite evidence that the migrations moved from
places of high culture (Egypt) to the new homeland. A number of
other Greek features that were absent from the eighth-century pro-
phetic tradition also played important roles in Deuteronomy. The
Greek materials I examined in chap. 2 tend to portray peoples who
were spatially and temporally peripheral: cannibalism, human sacrifice,
strange cultic activities, unusual social customs, sexual deviancy, and
nomadism were characteristic of these marginal peoples. Excepting
cannibalism and nomadism, Deuteronomy clearly exhibited a ten-
dency to conceptualize the primeval inhabitants of Palestine in these
terms. 107
As we proceed to the later Deuteronomistic materials in chaps. 1–
4, the similarities with Greek ideology appear still greater. Deuter-
onomy 1 and 2, which represent later additions by the Deuteronomis-
tic Historian, contain more advanced solutions to the problems of
Israel’s history and include itinerary, 108 genealogy, ethnographic no-
tices, and serious attempts to systematize these into a comprehensive
model, as shown in the accompanying chart (see Table 4.2). Notice
that, unlike the primeval inhabitant lists of Deuteronomy proper, this
material clearly distinguishes between the Amorite “hill-dwellers” and
the Canaanites who live “by the seacoast” (Deut 1:7). 109 Horites were
the original inhabitants of Edom and each culture, Israel, Ammon,
Moab, and the Caphtorim, had its own name for the giant primeval
inhabitants of its homeland, traditions that have affinities with the
Greek traditions. 110 Each group, with the exception of the Caphtorim,
had a forefather figure who served to provide an ethnic origin for the

107. E.g., human sacrifice (12:31), strange cultic activities (14:1), strange cus-
toms, (14:3ff.), and sexual deviancy (23:17–18).
108. On itinerary as a characteristic of Greek literary tradition and also for a help-
ful summary of the Greek antiquarian tradition, see Van Seters, Prologue to History,
78–103, 199–200.
109. Cf. Josh 13:1–7, as indicated by Mayes, Deuteronomy, 120. Although Mayes
views the text as Deuteronomistic, Van Seters is probably correct that the allotment of
the land in Joshua 13–22 should be attributed to the Priestly writer (Van Seters, In
Search of History, 331–37).
110. Cf. Deuteronomy 1–3 and Hesiod’s Theogony 50 and 185. These giants
should be associated with the primeval “bronze race” described in Theogony 140–55, as
West has demonstrated, in Hesiod: Works and Days (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978) 174.

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 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 263

Table 4.2. The Primeval Traditions of Israel’s Neighbors

People Dispossessed People Primeval Giants Forefather
Israel Amorites Anakim Jacob
Edom Horites — Esau
Moab — Emim Lot
Ammon — Zamsummim Lot
Caphtorim — Avvim —

people in question. By laying things out in this way, Israel was follow-
ing the very natural pattern of projecting its own ethnic mode of iden-
tity onto its neighbors (although we should not too quickly discount
the idea that here Israel may have gleaned some of this information
from the other groups that were nearby).
Despite these Greek-like features, Deuteronomy also exhibits the
marks that distinguish it as an Israelite piece. Most significant is the fact
that in the Deuteronomistic sections of the book Yahweh was the giver
of the land for Edom, Ammon, and Moab, as well as Israel, and it was
He who allowed them to dispossess the giant primeval peoples who pre-
ceded them. This idea finds its earliest witness in Amos: “Did I not
bring up Israel from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caph-
tor and the Syrians from Kir?” (Amos 9:7). So we see that both Deuter-
onomy and its Deuteronomistic expansions display a combination of
features that are similar to the Greek materials but also display the
unique stamp of the Israelite traditions. Were Israelite and Greek ideas
about ethnicity and identity influenced by common sources? Ulti-
mately, it is difficult to give an answer to this question in a categorical
way. Nevertheless, I think that the answer is probably “yes,” and I think
that the common arbiter was Phoenicia.

Ethnic Boundaries in Deuteronomy

We have demonstrated that ethnicity was an important mode of
identity for the proto-Deuteronomic, Deuteronomic, and Deuterono-
mistic communities. But there is another related question that is an
important one. How rigid in actual practice were the boundaries asso-
ciated with this ethnicity? I think that the Deuteronomic “ban the-
ology” (μrj) would at first lead us to think that the boundaries were
very rigid indeed. 111 However, things are not so simple, I think, and to
111. See Deut 7:1–3.
264 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

bring this out more clearly we need to examine in a more direct way
the ethnic criteria of Deuteronomy (the definitions used to define
community membership) as well as the indicia used by the community
to make ready judgments about who was in and who was not.
In Deuteronomy, the most important criterion for community
membership was one’s status with respect to Yahweh, the national deity
of Judah (and Israel). That the priority of this religious standard for
group membership exceeded the ethnic requirement is quite clear, since
it appears that a foreigner who joined himself to the national God (the
assimilating rg) was quite readily accepted into the community. The
foreigner who accepted this arrangement would necessarily have
avoided non-Yahwistic “foreign” gods as well as any religious practices
that were considered “non-Yahwistic” and were by association “foreign”
practices. That Deuteronomy’s preoccupation was more religious than
ethnic is evidenced by the semantic range of rg (‘sojourner’), which was
broad enough to qualify people of almost any origin for a non-Israelite
social position that invited cultural and religious assimilation. 112
This emphasis on the religious criteria employed by the Deutero-
nomic community should not overshadow Deuteronomy’s genuine ex-
pressions of ethnic sentiment. Deuteronomy was certainly interested in
the common identity shared by Judeans and Israelites as the people of
Yahweh and so attempted to integrate the two Yahwistic populations
into one ethnic community. This was accomplished by intensifying ex-
isting Israelite ethnic sentiments, as first expressed in Hosea, and by ex-
tending them through a kinship theology of brotherhood (μyja) to all
Judeans and Israelites. The criteria for ethnic inclusion thus hinged on
one’s status as a ‘brother’ (ja) and also on one’s status as a fellow heir
of the forefathers (μyba). This brotherhood community inherited an
exclusive covenant relationship with the deity of their forefathers, re-
sulting in their common status as “sons of Yahweh” (Deut 14:1). 113
112. Here I tend to agree with P. Dion, who has commented that Israel’s ethos in
Deuteronomy was not inordinately hostile to foreigners (excepting the conquest the-
ology) and that, furthermore, certain texts reveal a general appreciation for other cul-
tures and an ethnographic interest in other peoples (P. Dion, “Deuteronomy and the
Gentile World,” Toronto Journal of Theology 1 [1985] 203–4). Cf. Deut 2:10–23, 3:9–
11, 6:10–11.
113. But see the late addition in 5:1–3, which suggests that the covenant was not
made with the forefathers but with later generations. Mayes suggests that this contra-
diction should not be taken strictly but instead reflects the author’s intent to stress the
covenant’s continuing validity for his own generation (Mayes, Deuteronomy, 165).
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 265

Who would lead this ideal community? Although Mullen has

shown that the Davidic kingship played a vital role in the definition of
this Deuteronomic ethnic community, 114 it seems that kingship itself
actually played a minor role in the Northern headwaters of Deutero-
nomic thought, as evidenced by its slender treatment in Deuteronomy
(17:14–21) 115 and by the negative stance of Hosea toward the monar-
chic institution (Hos 13:10–11). 116 Instead, the primary leadership
roles envisioned by Deuteronomy included the ‘elders of the city’
(ry[h ynqz) and ‘judges’ (μyfpv), 117 with the religious leadership
shared by levitical priests and prophetic intermediaries. Given the
Davidic leanings of Amos and especially of Isaiah, we must assume
that this nonmonarchic leadership perspective originated in Northern
circles, a perspective that no doubt required adjusting in the Judean
context. But no matter how one solves the issue of community leader-
ship, it is clear that the community itself was to be housed in the land
that Yahweh gave to them to possess, an idea that is similar to (but
distinct from) Hosea’s idea that the deity had brought Israel out of
Egypt and into “Yahweh’s land.”
Leaving behind the question of criteria, perhaps more interesting
with respect to ethnic boundaries in Deuteronomy is the question of
indicia, the “ethnic markers” that provided a ready identification of
those within the group and those who were outsiders. Given the over-
arching “nationalism” of Deuteronomy, any features that would read-
ily identify a Judean would seem to have served such a purpose. We do
have some evidence, via Assyrian inscriptions, that Judean practice in-
cluded a distinctive wardrobe, particularly a headdress, which set them
114. E. Theodore Mullen, Jr., Narrative History and Ethnic Boundaries: The Deu-
teronomistic History and the Creation of Israelite National Identity (Semeia Studies; At-
lanta: Scholars Press, 1993), 163–207.
115. In excursus 2 below, I will discuss the possibility that this text is postexilic in
origin.
116. In fact, as Braulik has noted, Deuteronomy represents a “demokratisieren”
which limits the powers of the monarchic institution. See Braulik, Deuteronomium,
2.127–8.
117. See Deut 16:18; 19:17; 21:6–17. The “heads of tribes (μyfbv yvar) are also
mentioned in Deuteronomy, but only in later additions. The leadership role of the
elders is so prominent in Deuteronomy that L. J. Hoppe has suggested that they were
responsible for its composition (“Elders and Deuteronomy: A Proposal,” Église et
Théologie 14 [1983] 259–72). For more regarding the place and function of the elders
in Deuteronomy, see J. Buchholz, Die Ältesten Israels im Deuteronomium (Göttinger
Theologische Arbeiten 36; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988).
 266 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

apart from Philistines, Israelites, Phoenicians, Syrians, Arabs, and other

groups in the region. 118 However, Moabites, Edomites, and Ammo-
nites are not represented and, furthermore, we cannot be sure that the
samples provided are representative of the respective population
groups. Linguistically, we know that the West Semitic dialects in the
region were distinctive, so that in both its early Israelite context and in
its later Judean context, the ethnic community envisioned by Deuter-
onomy might have utilized language as an ethnic marker. 119 But per-
haps more functional in the role of indicias were several legal statutes
in Deuteronomy, particularly its culinary legislation (the community
eats clean foodstuffs), its centralization of the cult, and perhaps its Sab-
bath regulations. 120 The origins of the latter have at times been associ-
ated with Ezekiel (20:12–20, 46:1), 121 but Perlitt and Mayes agree that
our Decalogue text (and with it the Sabbath law) dates no later than
the Deuteronomistic movement, and according to Lohfink its features
fit that redaction (rmv + hc[ in vv. 12–15). 122 In addition to Sabbath-
keeping, adherence to regulations that centralized the cult would have
been a distinctive practice, since foreigners would not have adhered to
them, nor would many Judeans have done so. We cannot be sure about
the impact of either Sabbath or dietary practices on Israelite identity,
since it is difficult to know the extent to which these practices were un-
usual among Israel’s neighbors. It is nevertheless plausible that these
activities functioned as ethnic markers for the Deuteronomic commu-
nity. In addition to these “positive indicia,” Deuteronomy also displays
a number of “negative indicia,” practices and customs that readily indi-
cated that one was operating outside of the bounds established by the
community. These practices included the worship of foreign deities

118. See M. Wäfler, Nicht-Assyrer neuassyrischer Darstellungen (2 vols.; AOAT 26;

Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1975) 1.39, 65–67, 75, 117, 123, 157. As
Kamp and Yoffee have noted, clothing styles often symbolize ethnic identity (K. A.
Kamp and N. Yoffee, “Ethnicity in Ancient Western Asia during the Early Second Mil-
lennium b.c.: Archaeological Assessments and Ethnoarchaeological Prospectives,”
BASOR 237 [1980] 85–104).
119. Gibson, Syrian Semitic Inscriptions, 1.5–8, 21–22; Cross and Freedman,
Early Hebrew Orthography.
120. See Deut 5:12–15, 12:1–14, 14:3–21. Sabbath-keeping comes to the fore
during the exile beginning with Ezekiel. Whether it served any distinguishing role in
defining Israelite identity prior to the exile is debatable.
121. De Vaux, Ancient Israel, 2.476.
122. Lohfink, Das Hauptgebot, 64–70; Mayes, Deuteronomy, 161–69; Perlitt,
Bundestheologie im Alten Teztament, 81–91.

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 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 267

(like Baal) as well as participation in activities that were associated by

Deuteronomy with non-Yahwistic cults, such as divination (Deut
18:9–14) and “death cult” rituals (Deut 14:1). 123
From our historical vantage point, there is probably little about
these prohibited practices that was essentially “non-Israelite.” Instead,
certain norms became associated with proper Yahwism by the proto-
Deuteronomic party and, because Yahweh was the national deity, all
unapproved practices became “foreign” by default. Furthermore, there
is nothing exceptionally “powerful” about the indexes outlined by
Deuteronomy, especially in regard to the “ethnic” aspect of Israelite
identity. It is very difficult to imagine how these indexes could actually
be employed to distinguish Israelites from foreigners on a day-to-day
basis. Instead, it appears that the objective of Deuteronomy was not so
much to distinguish foreigners from Israelites/Judeans as it was to
distinguish proper Yahwism from either improper Yahwism or non-
Yahwistic (i.e., foreign) activities. If this is the case, we should expect
that the foreign/Israelite dichotomy in Deuteronomy was mostly rhe-
torical and polemical, and we should also expect that the boundaries
that excluded foreigners were not as firm as Deuteronomy’s “holy war”
might suggest.

*
* * * *
Excursus 1:
The Tribal List in the “Blessing of Moses” (Deuteronomy 33)
It has until recently been a tendency to see in this text a compila-
tion of several separate tribal sayings (Stämmespruche), but S. Beyerle’s
monograph has questioned whether one can identify common generic
elements within them or a common Sitz im Leben behind their com-
position. 124 But even in lieu of these things, there is nevertheless some
truth to the idea that these were “tribal sayings” of a sort, even if on
formal grounds they are more properly identified as “prayers,” “bless-
ings,” or some other form. Thus the text originated, at least in part, as a
series of independent blessings or sayings that were only subsequently
combined into a list. The collection itself was compiled by nesting

123. T. J. Lewis, Cults of the Dead in Ancient Israel and Ugarit (HSM 39; Atlanta:
Scholars Press, 1989) 100–101; J. C. de Moor, An Anthology of Religious Texts from
Ugarit (Nisaba 16; Leiden: Brill, 1987) 80–81.
124. S. Beyerle, Der Mosesegen im Deuteronomium: Eine text-, kompositions- und
formkritische Studie zu Deuteronomium 33 (BZAW 250; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1997) 274.
268 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

these independent sayings within an older Rahmen psalm, which can

be reconstructed by connecting 33:1–5 with 33:26–29. 125 I do not feel
very optimistic about the prospects for reconstructing the independent
tradition histories of each saying (although Beyerle has attempted to do
so), but I am very interested in the original compilation of the list, its
date, and also the redactional history that followed. Most of the com-
ponents of the text are thought to be of Northern origins and conse-
quently are normally dated no later than the eighth century, or perhaps
earlier, and my discussion of the text will support this conclusion. 126
Assessment of the “Blessing of Moses” requires clarification of sev-
eral questions. How does this tribal list compare to other tribal lists in
the Hebrew Bible, and what does this tell us? How firmly can we iden-
tify the historical provenience of the text and its constituent parts? And
where does this text fall within the redactional history of Deuter-
onomy? Most tribal lists in the Hebrew Bible include twelve tribal
units and follow one of the two patterns represented by Genesis 49 and
Numbers 1. By comparison, this list would appear unusual, because it
eliminates Simeon and is the only text that includes both Levi and
Ephraim/Manasseh. H. Seebass has attempted to argue, albeit unsuc-
cessfully in my view, that Simeon actually appears in the list as “Jeshu-
run.” 127 Von Rad and others have attempted to explain the absence of
Simeon as arising from the fact that no independent saying existed for
that tribe, but this seems an unnecessary effort if we can explain its ab-
sence on other grounds. 128 The saying associated with Judah in 33:7
also presents a few problems. It entreats the deity to bring Judah to “his

125. Braulik, Deuterononomium, 2.238–44; Mayes, Deuteronomy, 396; Von Rad,

Deuteronomy, 205.
126. Beyerle, Der Mosesegen im Deuteronomium, 279; C. J. Labuschagne, “The
Tribes in the Blessing of Moses,” OTS (1974) 98; H-P. Mathys, Dichter und Beter:
Theologen aus spätaltestamentlicher Zeit (OBO 132; Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ru-
precht, 1994) 171; Nielsen, Deuteronomium, 299.
127. Seebass has attempted to show that “Jeshurun,” mentioned in 33:5, 26, is ac-
tually a reference to the missing tribe of Simeon. This suggestion is problematic be-
cause both references in this text belong to the psalmic framework of the blessing and,
moreover, because in the few occurrences of the term elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible,
Jeshurun functions as a synonym for Israel/Jacob (H. Seebass, “Die Stämmeliste von
Dtn. XXXIII,” VT 27 [1977] 158–69).
128. G. von Rad, Deuteronomy (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1966) 204–8;
Mayes, Deuteronomy, 396–97; but see the discussion of Labuschagne, who argues that
some of the sayings are independent in origin and others are part of the original com-
position (“The Tribes in the Blessing of Moses,” 97–112).
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 269

people,” which might be profitably connected with any number of his-

torical contexts. Beyerle has suggested that it should be associated with
the Babylonian exile and thus may date some time after the Cyrus
edict, but this is not a common viewpoint. 129 More often the clause is
taken as evidence of the text’s Northern provenience because it calls for
Judah to join with the Northern tribes, most likely sometime before
the Syro-Ephraimite war. 130 This date corresponds with D. A. Robert-
son’s analysis of the text’s linguistic features and makes sense of the sec-
ond half of the saying, which requests help in the struggle against
Judah’s adversaries. 131
The uniqueness of the text is heightened if one is prepared, as I
am, to follow Labuschagne, Mayes, and others in the suggestion that
the Levitical blessing in vv. 8–10 is a later addition. 132 If one does this
and then recognizes that the text actually contains a “Joseph blessing”
rather than separate blessings for Ephraim and Manasseh, then it be-
comes clear that we are dealing with a list of only ten tribes: Reuben,
Judah, Benjamin, Joseph, Zebulun, Issachar, Gad, Dan, Naphtali, and
Asher. This list probably stands somewhere between the tribal list
found in the older Song of Deborah (which also contains ten tribal

129. Beyerle, Der Mosesegen im Deuteronomium, 108–12, 285.

130. On the association of this text with the Assyrian threat, see Nielsen, Deutero-
nomium, 300.
131. D. A. Robertson, Linguistic Evidence in the Dating of Early Hebrew Poetry
(SBLDS 3; Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1972) 49–56. Buis and Leclercq, follow-
ing previous suggestions by F. M. Cross and D. N. Freedman, dated the text as early as
the eleventh century (Le Deutéronome, 206).
132. Labuschagne, “The Tribes in the Blessing of Moses,” 101; Mayes, Deuter-
onomy, 402; F. M. Cross and D. N. Freedman, “The Blessing of Moses,” JBL 67
(1948) 202–3. Nielsen views only a part of the Levi blessing as redactional (Deuter-
onomium, 294–303). Mayes outlines the reasons for viewing the Levi saying as a later
addition as follows: (1) the Levi blessing is unusually long; (2) the descriptions in
v. 11 and the linguistic variations between vv. 8–10 and v. 11 argue that 8–10 is an
addition; (3) the text of vv. 8–10 includes relatively late features, such as the definite
article, the sign of the definite object, and relative pronoun; (4) If one removes vv. 8–
10, then v. 11 fits very well as the original ending of the short Judah saying, which
would then read as follows:
And this he said of Judah:
Hear O Lord, the voice of Judah and bring him in to his people.
With thy hands contend for him, and be a help against his adversaries.
Bless, O Lord, his substance, and accept the work of his hands;
Crush the loins of his adversaries, of those that hate him, that they rise not again.
270 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

groups) 133 and later tribal lists that contain twelve groups and that
clearly differentiate Simeon from Judah and Ephraim from Manasseh.
This theory supports the usual dating of the collection to the eighth
century, since we have concluded that the Song of Deborah is likely a
work, at least in its final form, from the ninth century b.c.e. 134 Be-
cause Judah is not listed in Deborah’s Song, we can conclude that it
was a latecomer to the tribal list tradition, which makes sense given the
potentially old tradition that Judah’s origin was not tied to the other
tribes. 135 One can also conclude, I think, that the Levites were added
to the list even later, probably when they were granted tribal status to
protect them during the vulnerable period reflected in Deuteronomy, a
context that we have already discussed. 136 The incorporation of the
collection into Deuteronomy was probably done by the Deuterono-
mistic Historian, since it was he who introduced the account of Moses’
death in chap. 34, and this necessarily comes after both the “Blessing
of Moses” (chap. 33) and the “Song of Moses” (chap. 32), as we see
elsewhere in the Hebrew scriptures. 137
This list of tribal blessings greatly enhances the view of eighth-
century Israelite identity that was gleaned from the prophetic sources
and to a certain extent reveals just how limited those sources turn out
to be, at least in some respects. The tribal list in the “Blessing of
Moses” (Deuteronomy 33) seems to imply additional patriarchal-type
figures who should be associated with the individual tribes. I have
pointed out above that Joseph, Ephraim, and Manasseh were already
associated with each other via genealogy during the eighth century,
and this relationship is reflected in Deut 33:13–17. We can expect,
then, that genealogy played an important role in the list, as is more
clearly evinced in 33:24, where the tribe of Asher was ‘blessed beyond
sons’ (rva μynbm ˚wrb) and was enjoined to become the favorite
among his brothers (wyja ywxr yhy). Geographically, the text often re-
133. For additional comments on the relationship between this list and the Song
of Deborah, see Buis and Leclercq, La Deutéronome, 205–6.
134. See above, pp. 110–113. J. Van Seters has attempted to trace the history of
the Machir and Gilead traditions within the biblical tradition, a discussion that in-
cludes, of course, the Song of Deborah (see his Life of Moses, 447–48).
135. See Genesis 38 and discussion in Van Seters, Prologue to History, 278–80.
136. For a brief overview of issues related to the Levitical priesthood and the
priesthood in general, see J. M. O’Brien, Priest and Levite in Malachi (SBLDS 121; At-
lanta: Scholars Press, 1990) 1–26.
137. Cf. Genesis 27:27–40; 48–49; 2 Samuel 22–23.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 271

fers to the regions associated with each tribe, so that Gad “chose the
best of the land for himself,” Issachar and Zebulun “suck the affluence
of the seas,” Naphtali possessed “the lake and the south,” and Dan
“leaps forth from Bashan.” 138 Implicit in these comments is a sketch of
certain social modalities, ‘tribes’ (μyfbv) according to the final form of
the text, in which each group shared a common territory and was un-
derstood as the progeny of an eponymous ancestor. We cannot be sure
that the compiler (or compilers) of the text would have extended these
social features to every group mentioned in the blessing nor can we
recklessly assume that these “tribal” ancestors were brothers to each
other by virtue of a common lineage through Jacob, although this was
certainly the case by the late seventh century. Nevertheless, it seems
clear that the text was informed by certain genealogical notions and
that a degree of ethnic sentiment was present within the community
that produced this text.
That the list provides more detail than either Hosea or Amos
should come as no surprise, since they were hardly exhaustive source
materials. And what we actually have in Deuteronomy 33 is more or
less in step with the ethnic sentiments of the eighth-century prophetic
traditions, particularly in the high status that it gives to Joseph com-
pared to Ephraim/Manasseh. The reference to Judah cannot necessar-
ily be viewed as evidence of an ethnic connection between Israel and
Judah (which would seem to be contrary to the views of Hosea, Amos,
and Isaiah), since the call to “bring him [Judah] in to his people [Yah-
weh’s people]” may stem from the common Yahwistic heritage of
Judah rather than any supposed ethnic ties. 139 In this regard, the bless-
ing has something in common with the Song of Deborah, where the
primary tie between the groups was also religious, and it stands apart
from the clear genealogical schematics that are characteristic of later
tribal lists. As we examine the Song of Deborah and recognize the pro-
cess of growth within the “Blessing of Moses” and within later tribal
lists, the aggregate character of the Israelite ethnic tradition reveals
itself. The ancient tradents adjusted the tribal-list tradition in an

138. Cf. Deut 33:18–23. Naphtali’s region, “the lake and south,” might also be
translated ‘the west and south’.
139. However, it should be remembered that, although ethnic sentiments for
Judah were rather shallow when the blessing was composed, there can be little doubt
that both the Deuteronomic movement and later Deuteronomistic editors understood
Judah as ethnically related to the other tribes listed here.
272 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

ongoing effort to account for the introduction of new groups, the

passing of old groups, and at the same time to preserve a certain num-
ber (10 or 12) of groups within lists. This aggregative tendency is very
similar to patterns that we have noted in Greek ethnic behaviors.

*
* * * *
Excursus 2:
The Deuteronomistic History
The fact that I am already addressing a formidable body of biblical
literature here precludes thoroughly evaluating the Deuteronomistic
History, but this desideratum is partially compensated by two factors.
First, we have already discussed the book of Deuteronomy in detail,
and much of the ethnic ideology reflected in it is characteristic of the
history that follows. Second, E. T. Mullen has devoted a monograph to
the topic of ethnicity in Dtr, so that much of the appropriate “spade
work” has already been done. 140 I will briefly summarize the work of
Mullen, offer criticisms where appropriate, and then point out a few
additional details that require attention.
In my view, Mullen’s work tends to focus much more on the defi-
nition of the Israelite community than on the place and function of
ethnic sentiments within that definition. Because of this, although
Mullen provides a careful analysis of religious identity in Deuter-
onomy, one will notice his rather thin treatment of some important
issues that are integrally related to ethnicity. Questions about the fore-
fathers, the patriarchs, “brother theology,” holy war, and ethnic sepa-
ratism, among other things, are largely unexplored. This tendency
characterizes his treatment of the history as a whole, which in my view
means that a there is more work to be done on the issue of ethnic iden-
tity and its place in the Deuteronomistic History. Nevertheless, Mul-
len’s emphasis on the essentially religious boundaries that define
Deuteronomic identity is fundamentally correct, because my study also
suggests that Deuteronomy’s primary concern was religious and Yah-
wistic, with ethnic sentiments playing a secondary role in support of
those priorities.
Outside of a complete analysis of the source, there are two key is-
sues raised by the Deuteronomistic History that should be discussed.
140. Mullen, Narrative History and Ethnic Boundaries.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 273

First, Mullen’s work identifies kingship as a central tenet of Deuterono-

mistic identity, and this is certainly correct. However, he tends to read
this ideology also into Deuteronomy, which is not necessarily accurate.
As in proto-Deuteronomic Hosea, kingship in Deuteronomy plays a
very secondary role and serves no primary purpose in the community
defined by the text. Furthermore, Bultmann has suggested that even
the brief treatment of kingship in Deuteronomy 17 is secondary and
addresses a much later, fifth-century, postexilic context. 141 We might
debate with Bultmann on this point, but it remains clear that for Deu-
teronomy it was the local elders (μynqz) who filled the primary leader-
ship role in the civic arena. 142 One important transformation of
Deuteronomy’s ideology in the history that followed was therefore the
integration of monarchic ideology into it, and this emphasis on king-
ship no doubt stemmed from Judean (Davidic) influences on the previ-
ously “kingless” Deuteronomic movement. 143 The second adjustment
made by the Deuteronomistic History was the extension of Deuter-
onomy’s “rhetorical other” to the realm of the “objective other.” J. Van
Seters has pointed out that the history often combines Deuteronomy’s
primeval inhabitants with actual groups on Israel’s periphery. 144 For in-
stance, in Judg 3:5, the Philistines and Sidonians are included with the
primeval inhabitants, the Canaanites and Hivites, even though it is
hard to see how these primeval inhabitants might have fit into the con-
text. Similarly, 1 Kgs 11:1–2 condemned Solomon for his associations
with Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Egyptian, and Hittite women,
even though the Hittites could not have served as a meaningful objec-
tive referent either in the day of Solomon or the day of the Deuterono-
mistic Historian. This rhetorical strategy connected existing groups
with Israel’s much detested ancient enemies and in doing so heightened
the sense of ethnic distinction between Israel and its neighbors.

141. Bultmann, Der Fremde in antiken Juda, 145–57.

142. See especially Buchholz, Die Ältesten Israels im Deuteronomium; and L. J.
Hoppe, “The Levitical Origins of Deuteronomy Reconsidered,” BR 28 (1983) 27–36.
143. The fact that Dtr contains traditions that opposed kingship (see 1 Samuel 8)
might suggest that a preexilic edition of the work was prepared by those associated with
Deuteronomy, i.e., those who held a more negative view of kingship than that which
exists in the final form of the Dtr.
144. J. Van Seters, “The Terms ‘Amorite’ and ‘Hittite’ in the Old Testament,” VT
22 (1972) 68.
274 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

Jeremiah
I will examine several texts from Jeremiah that supplement what
we have learned during our examination of Deuteronomy. These texts
address three issues: (1) the place of Israel in Judean thought during
the late monarchy; (2) the place of circumcision in Israelite identity;
and (3) the ideological struggle between the exiles and the Palestinian
remnant. Before examining these texts, I would like briefly to charac-
terize Jeremiah’s relationship to Deuteronomy and the reforms asso-
ciated with Deuteronomy. Although Jer 7:4–11 appears somewhat
critical of Josiah’s reform effort, there is evidence that, in principle,
Jeremiah supported the reform itself. E. Holt has argued—and it seems
to me self-evident—that Jeremiah stood along with Deuteronomy in
the prophetic tradition of Hosea, within the “stream of consciousness
flowing from the north via Judah to Babylon.” 145 According to Dtr
(2 Kings 22) and Jeremiah, the prophet enjoyed the support of two
families that were heavily involved in the reform, and he received pro-
tection from them before the exile took place. The same families also
served Jeremiah as messengers after the exile. 146 On the other hand, the
data one gleans from Jeremiah is surprisingly thin on the issue of the
reform. The most logical explanation for this, says W. L. Holladay, is
that Jeremiah was only five years old when Josiah’s reforms took place
in 622 b.c.e. The paucity of Jeremiah’s comments about the reform
therefore stem from the fact that it occurred many years previous to his
ministry. 147 From such a vantage point, the problem of Jeremiah’s rela-
tionship to the reform is largely secondary. What is clear from Jere-
miah is that he granted the charter reform document, Deuteronomy, a
central and authoritative role in his evaluation of Judean society. 148

Israel and Judah in the Temple Sermon (Jeremiah 7:12–20)

A number of scholars have followed Mowinckel’s conclusion that
Jer 7:12–20 is a product of the Deuteronomistic redactor and there-

145. E. K. Holt, “The Chicken or the Egg—Or: Was Jeremiah a Member of the
Deuteronomist Party?” JSOT 44 (1989) 109–22.
146. See Jer 26:24 and 29:3.
147. Holladay, Jeremiah, 1.1.
148. See H. Cazelles, “Jeremiah and Deuteronomy,” A Prophet to the Nations: Es-
says in Jeremiah Studies (ed. L. G. Perdue and B. W. Kovacs; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisen-
brauns, 1984) 89–111. See also J. P. Hyatt’s article by the same name, “Jeremiah and
Deuteronomy,” and in the same volume, pp. 113–27.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 275

fore does not originate with the prophet. 149 E. W. Nicholson is correct
to point out that the text shares many features with the Deuterono-
mistic History and also with other Jeremianic texts that are normally
associated with the Deuteronomistic redaction of Jeremiah. 150 On the
other hand, O. Eissfeldt, A. Weiser, W. L. Holladay, and others have
long argued that Jeremiah used prose sermons that had a Deuterono-
mistic style, suggesting that prose features must be used with care to
isolate secondary material in the collection. 151 For instance, regarding
this text, Holladay points out that numerous features in the text are
characteristic of Jeremiah’s poetry and that the terminology used here,
while overlapping with the terminology of Deuteronomy, is hardly
Deuteronomistic. 152 But he arrives at this conclusion by minimizing
each feature that is Deuteronomistic, such as the phrase “walk after
other gods,” and by failing to deal with the fact that 7:1–15 is nested
within a much larger pericope, 7:1–8:3, which is “filled with D
phraseology, and is in D’s characteristic style.” 153 In my view, while it
is possible that this text goes back to the Jeremiah tradition, the pres-
ence of Deuteronomistic features within it robs us of any confidence.
We must assume, therefore, that the text may have been formulated as

149. S. Mowinckel, Zur Komposition des Buches Jeremia (Kristiania: Dybwad,

1914) 31; W. Rudolph, Jeremiah (HAT; Tübingen: Mohr, 1958) xvi–xvii, xix, 51–52.
Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, 325, 352. See also the idiosyn-
cratic work of Carroll, who suggests that there was no Jeremiah (R. P. Carroll, Jeremiah
[OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986] 38–49).
150. E. W. Nicholson, Preaching to the Exiles (Oxford: Blackwell, 1970) 34, and
esp. 68–69.
151. W. L. Holladay, “A Fresh Look at ‘Source A’ and ‘Source B’ in Jeremiah,” VT
25 (1975) 394–412; “Prototype and Copies: A New Approach to the Poetry-Prose
Problem in the Book of Jeremiah,” JBL 79 (1960) 351–67. See also O. Eissfeldt, The
Old Testament: An Introduction (New York: Harper & Row, 1965) 352–53; A. Weiser,
Das Buch des Propheten Jeremia (2 vols.; ATD; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1952–55) 1.60–61.
152. Holladay points out that the Hiphil of bfy is not Deuteronomistic. Neither
is the pairing of μykrd and μyll[m. The triad of “stranger, orphan, and widow,” is
characteristic of Deuteronomy, not Dtr. The phrase “walk after other gods,” is Deuter-
onomistic, but its component parts are found in the undeniably Jeremianic texts (cf.
2:5, 23, 36; 5:19). Also, “the house that bears my name” is distinctly Jeremianic. See
Holladay, Jeremiah, 1.240. In support of this view, see also Jones, Jeremiah, 142–46;
Georg Fohrer, “Jeremias Tempelwort,” Studien zur alttestamentlichen Prophetie (1949–
1965) (Berlin: Alfred Töpelmann, 1967) 190–98.
153. J. P. Hyatt, “The Deuteronomistic Edition of Jeremiah,” A Prophet to the
Nations: Essays in Jeremiah Studies (ed. L. G. Perdue and B. W. Kovacs; Winona Lake,
Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1984) 254.
 276 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

late as the early exilic period. This conclusion is only partially relevant
for my work here, since I am primarily concerned with sources that
describe how Judah viewed Israel during the late monarchy, and this
text can adequately serve that role.
I have argued that one of the central purposes of Deuteronomy
was to establish a unity among people who worshiped Yahweh, specifi-
cally a unity between Judah and the remnants of Israel. Although Deu-
teronomy makes no distinction between the two entities, the Temple
Sermon shows us that, even in the late Judean monarchy, the distinc-
tion between the North and South had not been forgotten:
Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name
dwell at first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people
Israel. . . . Therefore I will do to the house which is called by my
name, and in which you trust, and to the place which I gave to you
and to your fathers, as I did to Shiloh. And I will cast you out of my
sight, as I cast out all your kinsmen, all the offspring of Ephraim.
(Jer 7:12, 14–15)
On the one hand, the Northern temple site at Shiloh was accepted as a
part of the common Judean/Israelite tradition. 154 In this respect, the
religious identity of Israel and Judah had become one, as was the de-
sign of Deuteronomy. On the other hand, the phrase ‘my people Israel’
(larcy ym[) in v. 12 appears to refer exclusively to the North, as is the
case more explicitly in v. 15: ‘all of your brothers (μkyja), all the off-
spring of Ephraim (μyrpa [rz)’. The relationship between Israel and
Judah is entirely ethnic at this point, since Ephraim is the brother (ja)
of Judah. So the major goal of Deuteronomy’s “brother theology”—
the ethnic unification of Israel and Judah—was ultimately achieved.
Still, in Jeremiah the term “Israel” served two differing functions, at
times referring to the Northern Kingdom and at other times referring
to the united people of Yahweh.
The ethnic connections between Israel and Judah naturally bring
to mind their common forefather, Jacob. At this point, we are able to
sketch an outline of this figure and his place in Israelite ethnicity. In
chap. 3, I noted that the Israelite forefather Jacob was viewed unfavor-
ably by Hosea (and we assume, by the proto-Deuteronomists) and that
154. Whether the temple was destroyed in the eleventh century or as late as the
eighth century is irrelevant, since the major point of this text is that it was in ruins. For
a discussion of the date of destruction of Shiloh’s temple site, see J. Day, “The Destruc-
tion of the Shiloh Sanctuary and Jeremiah 7:12–14,” VT 30 (1970) 87–94.

Spread is 6 points short

 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 277

he appeared to have no connection with Judean identity as represented

by Amos and Isaiah. In this chapter we saw that, despite Deuter-
onomy’s efforts to connect Judah and Israel as a common ethnic
people, the forefather Jacob played no vital role in this endeavor. In-
stead, this ethnic connection was accomplished via Deuteronomy’s
“brother theology” and an appeal to the forefathers. Finally, in Jere-
miah we see that later in the seventh century the referent of “Jacob”
became somewhat ambiguous, at times referring to the Northern King-
dom, at other times addressing Judah, and on still other occasions ad-
dressing the two as a single unit. 155 In other words, while it might be
natural to assume that the brotherhood of Israel and Judah was accom-
plished by an appeal to their common ancestor named Jacob, the op-
posite is true. It was Deuteronomy’s “brother theology” that preceded
the connection of North and South via the forefather Jacob.
In sum, during the late monarchy and early exile, the Israel and
Judah traditions were at points united and at other points divided, pri-
marily because the example of Israel’s failure continued to serve Jere-
miah and others as an instructional paradigm in the South. As we will
see, during and after the exile Judah served as its own example, and the
historical distinction between Israel and Judah, while still known in
the sources, retreated into the rhetorical background.

The Exiles and the Judean Remnant in Jeremiah 24

The clear, Ezra-like distinction that Jeremiah 24 makes between
the exiles, who are promised success, and the Judean remnant, which
is promised ruin, has naturally prompted the suggestion that this text
is postexilic. 156 But beyond this fundamental similarity between our
text and the situation after the return, the evidence for such a conclu-
sion is wanting and the idea has not been widely embraced. Still, we
must deal with the question of whether the text can be dated to the
context it purports to address, namely, the Judean situation between
the exile of 597 and the final destruction of the Temple in 586 b.c.e.
The scholarly support for the text’s authenticity—Rudolph, Holla-
day, and Jones—is formidable. Jones has summarized the more im-
pressive arguments, pointing to the text’s “stong marks of the Jeremiah
155. Cf. Jer 2:4 (Judah); 5:20 (Judah? Israel?); 10:16 (Judah/Israel); 10:25
(Israel).
156. H. G. May, “Towards an Objective Approach to the Book of Jeremiah: The
Biographer,” JBL 61 (1942) 148–49; Carroll, Jeremiah, 482–88.
 278 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

tradition.” 157 Specifically, he points out the following: (1) the vision is
recounted in first person (cf. Jer 1:11–13); (2) twlg is characteristic of
Jeremiah (cf. 28:4, 29:22, 40:1); (3) the phrase “for good” is Jere-
mianic (14:11, 21:10, 39:16, 44:27); (4) “build . . . tear down” is an
echo of 1:10; and (5) the terms h[wz (‘horror’), hprj (‘reproach’), and
hllq (‘curse’) are not characteristic of Dtr. To this we can add Holla-
days observation, “How likely are we to have a pseudepigraphic vision
report in the book? A sermon on the sabbath (17:19–27) or prophetic
torah (23:34–40) is one thing, but an autobiographical vision report
is surely less likely.” 158 Although this last claim is debatable, I think
that all of the above combined evidence demonstrates the decidedly
supportive stance that most scholars have taken toward the Jeremianic
origins of Jeremiah 24. 159
The strongest arguments against the Jeremianic origin of chap. 24
are probably the arguments of C. R. Seitz, who postulates a non-
Deuteronomistic “exilic redaction” that has affinities with the Ezekiel
tradition. He points out that Ezekiel, like the present text, held the ex-
iled Jehoiachin in high esteem and pronounced judgment on Zedekiah
and the Judean remnant (see Ezekiel 17, 19, 20). This is in stark con-
trast to what Seitz sees elsewhere in Jeremiah, where the prophet was
actually a supporter of Zedekiah and pronounced evil omens on Jehoi-
achin (cf. Jer 22:19, 26; 36:30–31; 37:21; 38:14–28). This being the
case, in the view of Seitz Jeremiah 24 is in tension with the rest of Jere-
miah but fits nicely with Ezekiel. The natural conclusion to draw, he
says, is that Jeremiah has undergone an exilic redaction by the Ezekiel
school and that this redactional material included Jeremiah 24. There
are, of course, other important elements in Seitz’s argument, but they
are only helpful if his major point can be sustained. However, a careful
examination of the texts cited by Seitz will show that it cannot be.
First, a number of texts that Seitz uses to support his view of Jere-
miah are often regarded as Deuteronomistic (e.g., Jer 22:26, 36:30–
31). 160 Second, the texts do not supply the data that Seitz suggests they
do: Jeremiah was hardly supportive of Zedekiah but rather warned
157. Jones, Jeremiah, 317–18.
158. Holladay, Jeremiah, 1.655.
159. But see especially W. McKane, who does not support the notion of Jere-
mianic authorship ( Jeremiah [ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1986] 597–617).
160. Hyatt, “The Deuteronomic Edition of Jeremiah,” 258, 261; Nicholson,
Preaching to the Exiles, 42; W. Thiel, Die deuteronomistiche Redaktion von Jeremia 26–
45 (WMANT 52; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1981) 49–51.

Spread is 6 points short

 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 279

Zedekiah of impending judgment and suggested that he take appropri-

ate actions to avoid this judgment (Jeremiah 37; 38:14–28). Third,
after 597, Jeremiah predicted a long, three-generation exile (27:7), and
the resulting message was the same for both the Judean remnant and
the exiles.
To the Judeans ( Jer 27:16–17) : Thus says the Lord: “Do not listen to
the words of your prophets who are prophesying to you, saying, ‘Be-
hold, the vessels of the Lord’s house will now shortly be brought
back from Babylon,’ for it is a lie which they are prophesying to you.
Do not listen to them; serve the king of Babylon and live. Why
should this city become a desolation?”
To the Exiles ( Jer 29:4–7) : Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of
Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to
Babylon: “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their
produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for
your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear
sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek
the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to
the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”
These verses show that in Jeremiah’s view there was no immediate
hope for any of the parties involved: not for the exiles and not for the
Judean remnant. The only appropriate response was submission to the
overwhelming sovereignty of Yahweh as expressed through Babylonian
imperialism. Therefore, while Seitz’s thesis remains plausible, it fails to
best the view that chap. 24 is Jeremianic.
It is common to set aside vv. 6–7, 9–10 as belonging to the Deu-
teronomistic redaction, but because this assessment is debatable I will
isolate the more certain materials by focusing attention only on vv. 1–
5 and 8. 161 The vision distinguishes between “good figs, very good,”
that is, the exilic community; and “bad figs, very bad, so bad that they
cannot be eaten,” that is, the remnant community in Judah, in this
case summarily including Judean refugees in Egypt. While the text at
first seems to cast moral aspersions on the Jerusalem remnant and
moral compliments on the exiles, it is generally agreed that this is not
the intention of the text. 162 Rudolph and Raitt have pointed out that

161. Carroll, Jeremiah, 1.655; W. J. Wessels, “Jeremiah 24:1–10 as a Pronounce-

ment of Hope?” OTE 4 (1991) 399.
162. Carroll, Jeremiah, 1.657–60; Jones, Jeremiah, 319; Wessels, “Jeremiah 24:1–
10 as a Pronouncement of Hope?” 401.
280 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

Jeremiah withheld his proclamation of future hope until after the exile
took place. 163 This suggests that the focus should not be placed on the
exiles themselves and on their superior moral qualities but on the
meaning of the exile in Jeremiah’s theology. As Raitt says, “Jer 24
never says that God is going to treat the Golah with favor because they
are good . . . the ‘good’ finds its primary rootage in the intention of
Yahweh’s action: ‘I will regard them as good.’ ” The theology inform-
ing Jeremiah’s perspective was no doubt the theology that informed
Deut 30:1–6, which promised that the exilic curse would be followed
by a return to the land and to authentic Yahwism via the direct inter-
vention of the deity: “And the Lord your God will circumcise your
heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord
your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may
live.” But for Jeremiah these predictions were relevant only for those
who faced the purifying experience of the exile, as evidenced by his vi-
sion in chap. 24.
It is difficult to isolate the perspectives and concerns that contrib-
uted to this theological view of the exile. The primary problem in any
discussion of exile-theology and its development is the fall of Samaria,
because that event makes it hard to distinguish preexilic ideas about
exile-theology (derived from the Assyrian deportation experience) from
ideas that were prompted by the Babylonian exile itself. But this diffi-
culty aside, it is quite clear that the conflict between the exiles and the
Judean remnant, commonly associated with the restoration after Cyrus,
began much earlier, during the period that immediately followed the
exile. We will trace these theological trajectories into the book of Ezek-
iel during our discussion of the exile in the following chapter.

Judgment on the Circumcised Nations: Jeremiah 9:24–25

The Jeremianic origins of this text have not been questioned, but
the text presents a few minor problems. The RSV is influenced by the
inferior Greek translation and somewhat obscures the conclusion of
v. 25. 164 J. A. Thompson reads the text as follows:

163. T. M. Raitt, “Jeremiah’s Deliverance Message to Judah,” Rhetorical Criticism:

Essays in Honor of James Muilenburg (ed. J. J. Jackson and M. Kessler; Pittsburgh: Pick-
wick, 1974); Rudolph, Jeremia, 172–73.
164. Ì and ˜ do not correspond precisely at the end of 9:25. The Greek reads ejpi;
pavntaÍ peritetmhmevnouÍ ajkrobustivaÍ aujtΩn ‘I will visit upon all who are circum-
cised their uncircumcision’, while the Hebrew reads hlr[b lwmAlkAl[ ytdqpw ‘I will
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 281

Look! Days are coming—Yahweh’s word—when I will punish all

who are circumcised physically: Egypt, Judah, Edom, Ammon,
Moab, and all whose temples are shaved who live in the steppelands,
for all these nations are uncircumcised —and all the house of Israel is
uncircumcised in heart.
J. M. Sasson has examined the evidence for circumcision in the ancient
Near East and has concluded that the practice, which followed various
cultural permutations, 165 dated back at least to the early third millen-
nium. 166 However, its place in the biblical sources is not so pro-
nounced. Circumcision’s earliest appearance in the Hebrew Bible—
except perhaps Genesis 34—is in Deut 10:16 and 30:6, both of which
are concerned not so much with the practice itself as with Israel’s inter-
nal religious disposition: was Israel “circumcised” in the heart? 167 For
Deuteronomy, to be uncircumcised in the heart was to be religiously
“stubborn,” and this image was taken up by Jeremiah at several points,
the present text included. However, despite its association with Israel-
ite religious affections, circumcision was not a distinctly Israelite cul-
tural feature in this text or in the Deuteronomic texts that preceded it.
The surrounding peoples—Egyptians, Moabites, Ammonites, and so
on—practiced the same ritual. 168 That these “circumcised” cultures
felt a common bond with each other and, at the same time, harbored a
sense of superiority toward the uncircumcised peoples around them
seems clear from texts in Ezekiel 28, 31, and 32. These texts predicted

visit upon all who are circumcised in the flesh’. In v. 26, Ì reads Idoumaivan (‘Idumean’)
for the Hebrew hdwhy (‘Judah’= Ioudaivan). In both cases, ˜ is to be preferred. The
Greek translation in v. 25 is a theological interpretation of the text and in v. 26 Judah’s
second place in the list prompted translators to suggest ‘Idumea’ in its place.
165. The surgical procedure seems to have varied in Israel and Egypt. In Israel the
entire prepuce was removed, while in Egypt a dorsal incision in the foreskin liberated
the glans penis. See J. M. Sasson, “Circumcision in the Ancient Near East,” JBL 85
(1966) 474.
166. Ibid., 473–76.
167. The dating of Genesis 34 is problematic. As observed by Westermann, the
text in its present form appears to presuppose the commands in Deuteronomy 7 and
also has an affinity for the language of P. Westermann nonetheless postulates a very old
tradition behind the text that included as its fundamental basis the issue of circumci-
sion. Still, the text does not indicate that circumcision was a uniquely Israelite practice,
only that some of the land’s inhabitants did not follow the practice. See Van Seters,
Prologue to History, 277–78; Westermann, Genesis, 2.535–37.
168. The bond envisioned here perhaps goes beyond the rite itself. Rudolph has
suggested, probably correctly, that the nations listed in this text participated together
in an anti-Babylonian coalition (Jeremia, 70–71).
282 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

the demise of various peoples and also scandalized their afterlife with
these predictions: those who were circumcised would “lie among the
uncircumcised,” and those who were uncircumcised would go down to
Sheol in their uncircumcision. Among the circumcised were the Egyp-
tians and Edomites; among the uncircumcised were the Assyrians,
Elamites, Sidonians, and the peoples of Meshech and Tubal. The clear
inference from this text is that one should be pitied if he is either uncir-
cumcised or if he is compelled to associtate with the uncircumcised.
We should derive from this the conclusion that circumcision served no
unique role in the Israelite sense of identity prior to the seventh cen-
tury b.c.e. Israel was instead a part of the broader cultural community
that followed the practice. 169
The terms that are semantically related to circumcision—lr[,
hlr[, and lwm—are narrowly distributed in the Hebrew text. One can
deduce from the biblical sources a certain development in the attitudes
and ideas related to circumcision. In the earliest sources from Deuter-
onomy and Jeremiah, circumcision was a common rite practiced by
many of Israel’s neighbors, and those who failed to practice it were
considered culturally inferior. At this same historical juncture, circum-
cision, which by its nature involved the exposure of sensitive tissues,
became symbolically related to the heart that was responsive to Yah-
weh. In the exilic context, Ezekiel appears to have come face to face
with Israel’s distinctiveness in regard to the practice of circumcision, as
suggested by his list of exilic neighbors who did not practice the rite
(Assyria, Elam, Tubal, Meshech, etc.). Finally, after the exile, circumci-
sion became a unique aspect of Israelite identity, no doubt the result of
the Jews’ long stay in Mesopotamia. In this late period, circumcision
became a sign of community membership (Genesis 17), and assimi-
lating foreigners were required to undergo the ritual: “And when a
stranger (rg) shall sojourn with you and would keep the Passover to the
Lord, let all his males be circumcised; then he may come near and keep
it; he shall be as a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person shall
eat it” (Exod 12:48). In sum, prior to the exile, circumcision as a dis-
tinctive mark of Israelite identity had not yet emerged.

169. Holladay has noted that “the most remarkable single feature of the passage is
the listing of Judah second, after Egypt and before Edom.” This arrangement is per-
haps due to geographical concerns, but it might also reflect the lack of distinction be-
tween Judah and Egypt in regard to circumcision (see Holladay, Jeremiah, 1.319).
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy 283

Summary:
Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy
The proto-Deuteronomic traditions that originated with Hosea
took root in the South and continued his original mission, to establish
Israel as a mono-Yahwist community. In the process, the Deuteronomic
movement intensified existing ethnic sentiments—especially in its de-
velopment of “brother theology”—and employed them in support of
its religious agenda. But the agenda should not be characterized only by
its support for Yahweh, since there was a decidedly humanitarian con-
cern in Deuteronomy as well, especially in its effort to protect Northern
refugees, which the community considered to be the ethnic brothers of
the Judeans. It is to a certain extent natural that the discourse employed
to achieve these aims included a decidedly caustic ethnic exclusiveness,
but there were mediating features that suggested that the separatism was
largely polemical. We can cite three characteristic examples.
The first is that Deuteronomy embraced a very supportive stance
toward foreign “sojourners” (μyrg). This tendency probably emerged
alongside the effort to protect Israelite sojourners from the North and
stemmed from the obviously close sociological association that existed
between Israelite sojourners and non-Israelite sojourners. As a result,
non-Israelite sojourners were able to assimilate to the Israelite religious
community rather easily, although it is clear that some of the sojourn-
ers chose not to do this. The second feature is that in Deuteronomy the
primary criterion for community membership was religious—a com-
mitment to Yahweh—and not ethnic, and this explains why foreign so-
journers could so easily be assimilated; assimilation required only one’s
commitment to Yahweh. All of this suggests that the ethnic sentiments
of Deuteronomy were more rhetorical than actual, and this interpreta-
tion of the data is supported by the third feature of Deuteronomic eth-
nicity. We could identify no clear and useful indicia that existed to help
the community readily distinguish between insiders and outsiders.
This supports our thesis that Deuteronomy’s ethnic concern was much
more the establishing of a sense of ethnic kinship among Israelites and
Judeans than it was the excluding of foreigners from participation
within the community. Ethnic exclusivity came to the fore only in a
few legal statutes that excluded ‘foreigners’ (twyrkn that had no interest
in community participation), nonassimilating sojourners (μyrg within
Israel that had no interest in community participation), and ‘bastards’
284 Ethnicity and Identity in the Judean Monarchy

(rzmm that were born of foreign cultic activities). In other words, Deu-
teronomy invited religious and cultural assimilation as long as one was
interested in doing so and as long as one avoided contacts with foreign
deities and foreign religious practices. Only in later periods did addi-
tions to Deuteronomy place specific limitations on community partici-
pation by Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites, and others.
Our comparison of Deuteronomy with the later law codes in HC,
BC, and P was also highly instructive. The sources reflect a healthy le-
gal tradition that was dedicated to clarifying the details of previously
existing statutes, which were themselves concerned with Israel’s ethnic
distinctiveness. This legal tradition and its effort to clarify Israelite
identity and ethnicity began with the preexilic Deuteronomic move-
ment and continued through the exile (HC and BC) until the post-
exilic P corpus made its appearance. The legal materials reflected a
marked intensification of ethnic identity during the early exilic period,
in which the Holiness Code became preoccupied with establishing
clear boundaries between foreigners who were assimilating into the Is-
raelite community (rg) and those who remained outside of it (bvwt).
During the course of our discussion, several other secondary items
were explored. First, Jeremiah shows that, early in the exilic experience,
a schism developed between the exiles and the people left behind in
Judea, and this schism centered on the question of who represented the
true heir of Israel and its land. Second, the term yrb[ (‘Hebrew’) was
examined. It was determined that this ethnic designation originated
late in the history of Israel as an exonym that Israel borrowed from the
surrounding peoples. The term was probably coined as a description of
the language spoken by the Israelites. Third, the tribal list in the
“Blessing of Moses” (Deuteronomy 33) was examined and its approxi-
mate date established. The list is best understood as an eighth-century,
ten-tribe list that stands between the ten-tribe list in the Song of Debo-
rah (Judges 5) and later tribal lists, which contain twelve tribes. How-
ever, in its present form, the “Blessing” has been updated to include
the full complement of twelve tribal names, albeit with a scheme not
found in any other twelve-tribe list of the Hebrew Bible.
In spite of the obvious similarities that we can observe among the
Hebrew sources that we have examined during our study thus far, it
has become clear that the path from the late eighth to the early sixth
centuries included a marked increase in the complexity and intensity of
Israelite ethnic ideology. From a comparative standpoint, these ethnic
features relate more closely to the Greek materials than to any others.
2 pica chapter drop

Chapter Six

Ethnicity and Identity

in the Exilic Period

Due to traditiohistorical concerns, we have already discussed por-

tions of the exilic material available to us. Specifically, this included
several texts from Ezekiel, legal materials in the Holiness Code, and
also portions of the Deuteronomistic redaction of Jeremiah. These ma-
terials reflect a marked intensification of ethnic sentiments in the exilic
community, a characteristic that became most evident during our com-
parison of the Deuteronomic legislation and the Holiness Code. Also
clear from these sources was the fact that early in the exile an ideologi-
cal conflict erupted between the exilic community and the Jerusalem
remnant. In this chapter I will extend the discussion of these issues by
focusing attention on three primary areas.
First, during our discussion of the relevant texts, we will give at-
tention to the secondary literature that highlights sociological and
theological aspects of the exilic experience. 1 Second, although I have
already examined several texts from Ezekiel, I will present additional
texts from this source that will help to flesh out our understanding of
ethnicity and identity during the early exilic period. And finally, an ex-
amination of texts from Deutero-Isaiah will complete my study of the
exile, since this source brings us to the close of that chapter in Israel’s
history.

1. I am thinking here primarily of D. L. Smith’s recent work, The Religion of the

Landless: The Social Context of the Babylonian Exile (Bloomington: Meyer/Stone,
1989). We can add to this the works of R. W. Klein, Israel in Exile: A Theological Inter-
pretation (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979); E. W. Nicholson, Preaching to the Exiles (Ox-
ford: Blackwell, 1970); T. M. Raitt, A Theology of Exile (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977);
C. R. Seitz, Theology in Conflict: Reactions to the Exile in the Book of Jeremiah (BZAW
176; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1989).

285
286 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period

Ezekiel
On the surface, the book of Ezekiel presents us with the most
properly organized prophetic collection of the Hebrew Bible. Chapters
1–24 detail oracles against Jerusalem and Judah, chaps. 25–32 oracles
against the nations, and chaps. 33–48 include oracles of salvation. 2
Nevertheless, the book shows many signs of redactional activity
(among them, this clear organization) and also presents numerous text-
critical problems. 3 These issues will be handled only as they relate to
the specific texts in question. As the reader may already have recog-
nized, my discussion tends to assume the long-standing association of
Ezekiel with the Holiness School of early P, an association that I view
as contextual, chronological, and ideological. I feel that that the discus-
sion in the previous chapter and also in this chapter only adds support
to this common perspective.

The Exiles and the Judean Remnant in

Ezekiel 11:1–25, 33:23–24
Despite the fact that Ezekiel 11 has been secondarily added to its
present location in the “Temple Vision” (Ezek 8:1–11:25), it is gener-
ally agreed that its proper temporal setting is still Ezekiel’s ministry,
not some later context. 4 The text falls into two parts, vv. 1–13 and 14–
21, each associated with its own separate Sitz im Leben but related to
the other in content, which is why the editor joined the two. The end
of the chapter (vv. 22–25) belongs to the larger pericope of Ezekiel 8–
11. 5 Although Zimmerli’s perspective, that there are “strong grounds
for its composition in the time when Jerusalem was still standing,” is a
common one, the reference in v. 10, “I will judge you at the border of
Israel,” no doubt refers to the events at Riblah in 587 b.c.e. (cf. 2 Kgs
25:20–21) and therefore suggests that the original text was expanded at
that time. 6 The other text, Ezek 33:23–24, refers to “the inhabitants of

2. J. A. Soggin, Introduction to the Old Testament (OTL; Louisville: Westminster,

John Knox, 1989) 358.
3. J. W. Wevers, Ezekiel (NCBC; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1969) 36–39;
W. Zimmerli, Ezekiel (2 vols.; Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979–83) 1.71–77.
4. G. A. Cooke, Ezekiel (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1951) 121; W. Eich-
rodt, Ezekiel (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970) 112–19; Wevers, Ezekiel, 78–
79; Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 1.230–31, 257.
5. See Zimmerli’s reconstruction, ibid., 1.233–34.
6. Cooke, Ezekiel, 121; Wevers, Ezekiel, 76; Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 1.259.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period 287

these waste places” and consequently must date after 587 b.c.e. Taken
together, these texts provide us with a glimpse into the conflict be-
tween the Judean remnant and the exiles as seen through the eyes of
the exiles themselves, a debate already familiar to us from Jeremiah.
As we saw in the previous chapter, the conflict between the Judean
remnant and the exilic community began after 597 b.c.e. and was a
topic of dispute even in Palestine itself. Jeremiah, and no doubt some
others in Judah, viewed the exilic community as the true heir of Israel’s
future. Ezekiel, like his prophetic predecessor, previewed for his audi-
ence the coming destruction that awaited the evil Judean remnant
(11:1–13). 7 A later addition in vv. 9–11 records the fulfillment of this
prophecy at Riblah, here called “the border of Israel,” which shows
clearly that Ezekiel’s concept of homeland included all of the territory
previously controlled by Judah and Israel. The heart of the debate be-
tween the two factions is recorded in 11:14–21. On the one hand, in
language clearly influenced by preexilic Deuteronomic language, the
inhabitants of Jerusalem were saying of the exiles, ‘They have gone far
from the Lord; to us this land is given for a possession’ (hvrwml ≈rah
hntn ayh wnl). For the homeland remnant, the exiles were outside of
the land and therefore outside of Yahweh’s purview.
Ezekiel’s perspective was also influenced by Deuteronomy, particu-
larly its “brother theology,” but in his view only the exilic community
(and not the Judean remnant) represented the true community of Is-
rael: “Son of man, your brethren (μyja), even your brethren, your fel-
low exiles (μtlag yvna), the whole house of Israel (larcy tybAlk).”
The prophet’s use of apposition makes clear that the exiles were his
ethnic brothers and the sole representatives of Israel. But he added to
this Deuteronomic theology several ideas that we have come to associ-
ate more closely with the Deuteronomistic developments of the early
exile:
Therefore say, “Thus says the Lord God: ‘Though I removed them
far off among the nations, and though I scattered them among the

7. D. J. Halperin interprets this text as a judgment oracle against the exiles rather
than against the Judean remnant community, primarily because he sees a parallel be-
tween the punishment “at the border of Israel” in 11:10–11 and the wilderness judg-
ment of the exiles Ezek 20:36–38. In my view, the two texts share some similarities but
do not address the same audiences. The evil city in view here is clearly Jerusalem, as the
contextual pointers in 11:1, 22–25 show (D. J. Halperin, Seeking Ezekiel: Text and Psy-
chology [University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1993] 74–79).
288 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period

countries, yet I have been a sanctuary to them for a while in the

countries where they have gone.’ ” Therefore say, “Thus says the
Lord God: ‘I will gather you from the peoples, and assemble you out
of the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you
the land of Israel.’ And when they come there, they will remove from
it all its detestable things and all its abominations. And I will give
them one heart, and put a new spirit within them; I will take the
stony heart out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they
may walk in my statutes and keep my ordinances and obey them;
and they shall be my people, and I will be their God. But as for those
whose heart goes after their detestable things and their abomina-
tions, I will requite their deeds upon their own heads, says the Lord
God.” (Ezek 11:16–21)

As we see in this text, in at least one sense, Deuteronomistic theology

was a necessary development of Deuteronomic theology because it
helped to transfer the land-promise theme from the Judean context
to the exilic context in Babylon. For both Ezekiel and Jeremiah, this
was an important development because the future of Israel lay with
the exilic community, and this was precisely because Yahweh had
promised to secure what was missing prior to the exile, “a heart com-
mitted to covenant fidelity,” and he had promised to do this primar-
ily for the exiles.
We see, then, that early in the exilic experience, even prior to the
fall of Jerusalem, the exilic community and their supporters in Judah
understood that the exiles were Israel. This represents a transformation
of the ethnic identity and sentiment found in Deuteronomy. While
Deuteronomy utilized ethnic sentiments and “brother theology” in
part to support its agenda of inclusiveness, here Ezekiel employs ja
with precisely the opposite goal: to distinguish between his fellows and
the Judean remnant. In doing so he removed the “obvious” ethnic ties
that had previously joined the exiles to their Judean counterparts.
Consequently, while we might rightly ask ourselves why Ezra and Ne-
hemiah displayed so little affection for the people they met upon re-
turning to Judah, we need not look to that late period for an answer.
These exclusivistic sentiments originated among the exiles (and their
Judean supporters) even before the first Temple was destroyed.
After the fall of Jerusalem, the debating factions continued their
ideological struggle. One of the more interesting claims of the Judean
faction was recorded in Ezek 33:23–24:
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period 289

The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, the inhabitants of
these waste places in the land of Israel keep saying, ‘Abraham was
only one man, yet he got possession of the land (vryyw ≈rahAta);
but we are many; the land is surely given us to possess (hntn wnl
hvrwml ≈rah).’ ”
As in Ezekiel 11, the claims of the remnant community seem to reflect
Deuteronomic terminology. But the reference to the patriarchal figure
sets this text apart from Ezekiel 11 and is important because, if one
grants that Jer 33:26 is part of the exilic Deuteronomistic redaction of
Jeremiah, then it becomes our earliest prophetic witness to the patriar-
chal figure Abraham. Because most commentators mistakenly assume
that the pentateuchal sources are early, they fail to ask the important
question that the text raises: what was the state of the Abrahamic tradi-
tion in the early exilic period and how does this compare with the tra-
dition in the pentateuchal materials? The works of J. Van Seters and of
T. Römer are helpful in this regard. 8
Römer is correct that the Abraham tradition that appears here
should be viewed as a nichtexilierten tradition that originated within
the Judean remnant community. 9 The text has connections with Deu-
teronomic language (≈rah, ˆtn, vry) and finds its chief parallel in
Genesis 15. 10 All of these data must be addressed. Van Seters has sug-
gested that the theology that informs the Judean remnant’s perspective
in Ezek 33:24 should be distinguished from the theology assumed by
Ezekiel, the exodus-settlement tradition. While the Judeans preferred
an unconditional arrangement in which they, like Abraham, simply
took possession of the land, Ezekiel assumed the conditionality of land
inheritance as expressed in Deuteronomy. This is why, according to
Van Seters, Ezekiel’s response to the Judeans focused on their violence
and idolatry: they had failed to meet the preconditions for land posses-
sion. 11 If true, this suggests that the Abraham tradition and the exodus-
settlement tradition were still independent origin traditions during the

8. J. Van Seters, Prologue to History (Louisville: Westminster, John Knox, 1992);

idem, Abraham in History and Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975);
T. Römer, Israels Väter: Intersuchungen zur Väterthematik im Deuteronomium und in der
deuteronomistischen Tradition (OBO 99; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990).
9. Römer, Israels Väter, 514–16.
10. Ibid., 515–17; C. Westermann, Genesis (3 vols.; Minneapolis: Augsburg,
1985) 2.224.
11. Van Seters, Prologue to History, 239–40.
 290 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period

early exilic period. Although I agree that they were probably indepen-
dent traditions, I would offer several refinements to this discussion.
I want to begin with a discussion of the Abraham tradition as
understood by the Judean remnant in Ezek 33:24. First, contra Van
Seters, it seems to me unlikely that the Judeans viewed Abraham’s pos-
session of the land as unconditional and at the same time expressed
their view in language highly reminiscent of Deuteronomy, which was
itself a source in which land possession was highly conditional. 12 There
are several texts that suggest that, at least in some quarters, the remnant
community viewed themselves as meeting any and all relevant condi-
tions. Ps 44:17–19 reflects this: 13
All this has come upon us, though we have not forgotten thee, or
been false to thy covenant. Our heart has not turned back, nor have
our steps departed from thy way, that thou shouldst have broken us
in the place of jackals, and covered us with deep darkness.
Perhaps more important in this regard is Isa 6:11–13, a text that, as
S. Japhet has noted, could not have escaped the attention of the Judean
remnant community: 14
Then I said, “How long, O Lord?” And he said: “Until cities lie
waste without inhabitant, and houses without men, and the land is
utterly desolate, and the Lord removes men far away, and the for-
saken places are many in the midst of the land. And though a tenth
remain in it, it will be burned again, like a terebinth or an oak,
whose stump remains standing when it is felled. The holy seed is its
stump.”
In a post-586 Judean context, this passage would have reinforced the
notion that they as the remnant were the ‘holy seed’ (vdq [rz) and that
the exiles had been moved “far away.” In this text, hope lay with the

12. See my discussion above (pp. 225–228); and also Van Seters, Prologue to His-
tory, 239–39, 232–33.
13. See Klein, Israel in Exile, 18–19. According to Klein, Psalm 44 must date just
after the exile for the following reasons: (1) Israel’s armies have been beaten; (2) her
foes have plundered her; (3) many people have been killed while others have been scat-
tered among the nations; (4) her neighbors view her with scorn.
14. S. Japhet, “People and Land in the Restoration Period,” in Das Land Israel in
biblischer Zeit: Jerusalem-Symposium 1981 der Hebräischen Universität und der Georg-
August-Universität (ed. G. Strecker; Göttinger Theologische Arbeiten 25; Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983) 107–8.

Spread is 1 pica short

 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period 291

Judean remnant community, and this is virtually identical with the

theology that informed the Judean side of the debate in Ezekiel 11 and
33:24. 15 What seems most likely is that the Judean remnant, faced with
its own crisis—anarchy, poverty, religious chaos, political domination,
ecological competition with the surrounding peoples, and ideological
competition with the exiles 16—produced (or enhanced) a forefather
tradition that stood on the shoulders of the previously dominant theo-
logical (and therefore Deuteronomic) ideas. The need for this new tra-
dition was prompted by the fact that Deuteronomy only partially
corresponded to the remnant situation. Unlike the exodus generation,
these Judeans were already in the land and yet were at the same time
dispossessed. It is therefore reasonable to assume that, unlike the exo-
dus-settlement tradition, the Abraham forefather was a dweller of the
land who finally came to possess it. In addition to this land-inheritance
theme, the Judeans appear to have inherited or created traditions about
Abraham’s posterity, for the phrases “he was one” and “we are many”
would seem to presuppose this. 17 So, although for our purposes the
Abraham tradition first appears in Ezekiel, the reference to a posterity
tradition makes it likely that the Abraham figure was not an ex nihilo
figure but that some traditions associated with him preceded the land-
possession tradition that we find in Ezekiel.

The Register of the House of Israel: Ezekiel 13:8–9

In addition to tensions between the exilic community and the
people in Judea, the prophet had to deal with internal pressures experi-
enced by the exiles themselves. The larger context of 13:8–9, that is,
Ezek 13:1–23, depicts the ongoing prophetic dispute between Ezekiel
and the false prophets and prophetesses of the exilic community. It is
sometimes suggested that 13:9 is a later addition, especially by scholars
who believe that Ezekiel 13 dates before 586 b.c.e. 18 But the allusion
to a Judean restoration in this verse cannot be denied to the pre-586
exilic community, since a return home applied to them as easily as to
later exiles. It is in fact difficult to say whether the text dates prior to or
15. Ezek 11:14–15.
16. See Lam 1:3–4, 10, 17; 2:20; 4:10; 5:1–14; Ezekiel 35, 36:1–7.
17. Japhet, “People and Land in the Restoration Period,” 108.
18. V. Herntrich, Ezekielprobleme (BZAW 61; Giessen: Alfred Töpelmann, 1933)
99; Wevers, Ezekiel, 85.
292 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period

after the fall of Jerusalem; so Zimmerli is correct when he says that the
question of date must remain open. 19
The judgment that was pronounced on these false prophets was
threefold: (1) they would be excluded from the ‘council of the people’
(ym[ dws); (2) they would be excluded from the ‘register of the house of
Israel’ (larvyAtyb btk); (3) they would not return to the land of Is-
rael. In essence, it is usually understood that here the false prophets
were stripped of their community citizenship. What interests me at
this point is how this Judean community was defined in the early exilic
period. First, exclusion from the ym[ dws was not an exclusion from the
community as a whole but rather, as I. M. Duguid has pointed out,
from the inner circle that claimed to lead via its intimate contact with
the deity. 20 Upon losing his prized position of community leadership,
a prophet was next removed from the document that identified him as
part of the larger Israelite community, from the larvyAtyb btk. Al-
though Zimmerli and Eichrodt have attempted to associate this “regis-
ter” with the one alluded to in Jer 22:30 (which seems to me highly
questionable), 21 it should not be associated with any preexilic practice.
If it was a very old “tribal roll,” as suggested by Zimmerli, we would ex-
pect a Hebrew technical term in reference to it. Instead, we have here
Aramaic bt:K,} which suggests that the larvyAtyb btk was a develop-
ment of the exile.
As commentators have long pointed out, we cannot fail to posit a
relationship between the larvyAtyb btk in our text and the list of re-
turning exiles provided in Ezra 2 and Nehemiah 7. Several questions
arise from these postexilic lists. Were they an authentic record of the
first returnees? What was the function of the lists? What was their rela-
tionship, if any, to the larvyAtyb btk of Ezek 13:9? The question of
authenticity is a difficult one. On the one hand, Rudolph has argued
that the Golah list is authentic because it shows signs of growth, par-
ticularly in that there are shifts from ‘sons of . . .’ (ynb) to ‘men of . . .’
(yvna) and in that the priestly list was separate and added after the

19. Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 1.298.

20. See Jer 23:18 and I. M. Duguid, Ezekiel and the Leaders of Israel (VTSup 56;
Leiden: Brill, 1994) 100–101.
21. The text says of Jehoiakin, “Write this man down as childless . . . ,” which, if
it is a reference to such a document, is a very vague one. See Eichrodt, Ezekiel, 166;
Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 1.294.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period 293

Temple was built. 22 To this argument for authenticity we can add

D. Smith’s observation that, although the “sons of Hakkoz” were un-
able to authenticate their priestly pedigree in the return list (Ezra 2:61–
63, Neh 7:63–65), in Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles they are none-
theless serving as priests (cf. Ezra 8:33; Neh 3:4, 21; 1 Chr 24:10). 23
Although this suggests, of course, that the list predates the composition
of Ezra and Nehemiah, contrary to Smith’s conclusion, it does not en-
sure that the list dates before the historical period of their ministries.
There are in fact good reasons for regarding the Golah list as late, at
least in its final form. J. Blenkinsopp for instance, although he does not
agree with Torrey that the list is pure fabrication, nonetheless points
out that “the numbers [of returnees] are too high” and that the Golah
list was “certainly compiled after the settlement since it names localities
in which immigrants settled.” 24 Taken together, this evidence would
seem to argue for a composition, broadly speaking, after the return un-
der Zerubbabel (because it assumes the settlement) and before the
writing of Ezra and Nehemiah (because of the status of the Hakkoz
household). Within these parameters, the data further suggest that the
list was compiled over a period of time and that it was probably up-
dated periodically to account for several repatriations. 25 The sources
used to compile the list might easily have existed prior to the return,
but this possibility is difficult to assess. In sum, regardless of whether it
actually goes back to a specific source associated with Zerubbabel’s re-
turn, the Golah list itself witnesses to a postexilic phenomenon that

22. W. Rudolph, Esra und Nehemia (HAT; Tübingen: Mohr, 1949) 16–20.
23. Smith, The Religion of the Landless, 104.
24. Blenkinsopp, Ezra–Nehemiah: A Commentary (OTL; Philadelphia: Westmin-
ster, 1988) 83. Similar sentiments are expressed by L. W. Batton, Ezra and Nehemiah
(ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1913) 71–74; D. J. A. Clines, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther
(NCBC; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1984) 43–45. For the view that the list is
fabricated, see C. C. Torrey, The Composition and Historical Value of Ezra–Nehemiah
(BZAW 2; Giessen: Alfred Töpelmann, 1896) 39–50. Notice that Ezra 2:1 calls the
population ‘the people of the province’ (hnydm ynb), which, as S. Japhet has noted,
probably betrays the actual point of departure for the list (“People and Land in the Res-
toration Period,” 113).
25. Blenkinsopp, Ezra–Nehemiah, 83, 85; Clines, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, 44.
That this was the case seems assured by the fact that the leaders mentioned at the head
of the Golah list of Ezra 2:1–2 and Neh 7:5–6—Zerubbabel, Joshua, Nehemiah, Aza-
riah/Seriah (= Ezra/father of Ezra; cf. Ezra 7:1), Bigvai—cover a much broader histori-
cal period than the phrase “those who came up at the first” (Neh 7:5) might suggest.
294 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period

included the compilation and transmission of such sources. The func-

tion of the Golah list as used in Ezra and Nehemiah is quite clear. As
S. Japhet has noted, the list answered the question, who is the “true Is-
rael?” The answer to this question reflected the strong ethnic senti-
ments present within the postexilic community:
The following were those who came up from Telmelah, Telharsha,
Cherub, Addan, and Immer, though they could not prove their fa-
thers’ houses (μtwbaAtyb) or their descent (μ[rz), whether they be-
longed to Israel (μh larcym μa): the sons of Delaiah, the sons of
Tobiah, and the sons of Nekoda, six hundred and fifty-two. Also, of
the sons of the priests: the sons of Habaiah, the sons of Hakkoz, and
the sons of Barzillai (who had taken a wife from the daughters of
Barzillai the Gileadite, and was called by their name). These sought
their registration among those enrolled in the genealogies μbtc
(μycjytmh), but they were not found there, and so they were ex-
cluded from the priesthood as unclean. (Ezra 2:59–62)
Although it is possible, as Mowinckel suggested, that we are dealing
here at least in part with a fictionalized lineage system, 26 it was none-
theless believed that one was a true Israelite only when he/she could
demonstrate an ethnic origin within the people of Israel and only when
this pedigree could be established with written documentation. The
necessity of such a pedigree rested in the special emphasis that these
postexilic sources placed on ethnic purity (Ezra 9:1–2, 11–12):
The land which you are entering, to take possession of it, is a land
unclean with pollutions of the peoples of the lands, with their
abominations which have filled it from end to end with their un-
cleanness. Therefore give not your daughters to their sons, neither
take their daughters for your sons, and never seek their peace or
prosperity, that you may be strong, and eat the good of the land, and
leave it for an inheritance to your children for ever.
The people of Israel and the priests and Levites have not separated
themselves from the peoples of the lands with their abominations.
. . . For they have taken some of their daughters to be wives for
themselves and for their sons; so that the holy race has mixed itself
with the peoples of the lands.
The Golah community of Ezra considered ethnic pollution to be a pri-
mary cause of the exilic experience and, because of this, the commu-
26. S. Mowinckel, Studien zum Buche Ezra–Nehemiah (3 vols.; Oslo: Univer-
sitetsforlaget, 1964) 1.75.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period 295

nity was preoccupied with the notion of ethnic purity. Japhet has
suggested that this concern for ethnic purity precluded the notion of
proselyte conversion. 27 However, even in Ezra there is room for the
willing outsider (Ezra 6:19–21).
This observation makes it very difficult to link the larvyAtyb btk
of Ezekiel 13 directly with the Golah lists of Ezra/Nehemiah. Ezekiel
stands very close to the Holiness Code, and both of them reflect sup-
port for the proselyte rg and for his protected status within the Israelite
community. Although ethnic purity was becoming an issue for HC, its
openness to foreigners precludes a document that functions like the ge-
nealogical Golah lists of Ezra/Nehemiah. Instead, the purpose and
function of the larvytyb btk must be sought in the situation faced by
Ezekiel and the early exilic community. As we saw during our discus-
sion of Ezekiel 11 and 33:23, the exilic community faced a predica-
ment: the Judeans who did not go into exile were seizing the property
of the departing exiles. Nevertheless, the hope of restoration expressed
in Ezekiel and Jeremiah assumed that these exiles would some day re-
turn to these ancestral lands. In such a context, the larvyAtyb btk of
Ezek 13:9 is best understood as a record of family landholdings, and it
is for this reason that the disenfranchised prophets of Ezekiel 13 were
also told that they would not return to Israel, since this naturally fol-
lowed from the fact that elimination from the records meant the loss of
ancestral property.
Therefore, the function of the exilic larvyAtyb btk was distinct
from the function of the postexilic Golah list in Ezra/Nehemiah, and
this fact rules out a direct link between the documents. However, it
does not mean that there is no link between them. A. Alt long ago sug-
gested that the Golah lists were derived from attempts to define the
property rights of returning exiles and, although it is partly conjecture,
this view suggests that a straight line can be interpolated between the
two types of documents. 28 The original property lists would have been
constructed in part according to the social organization of the exiles,
which appears to have centered on the “heads of families,” the elders
(μynqz). 29 Assuming, then, that the exiled groups were moved and then
27. Japhet, “People and Land in the Restoration Period,” 117.
28. A. Alt, Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte des Volkes Israel (3 vols.; Munich: Beck,
1953–59) 2.334–35.
29. See Duguid, Ezekiel and the Leaders of Israel, 110–11. Cf. Jer 29:1; Ezek 7:26,
8:11, 14:1, 20:1–3. We therefore see a similar pattern after the fall of the Northern
296 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period

settled together, we should conclude that the property records were or-
ganized first by location within Judah and then by family. During the
course of the exile, these lists would have been frequently updated to ac-
count for changes in family circumstances, deaths, and so on. However,
after the exile, competition between the returning exiles and the people
living on their ancestral property intensified ethnic sentiments; these
property documents then served a new role in defining the ethnic com-
munity. 30 Not only did they serve as a record of ancestral properties,
but by extension they served to authenticate one’s identity as a Jew. And
in these documents the restored community was none other than the
ethnic Israelites that returned from Babylon.

Restoring the Community in Ezekiel 40–48

As Ezek 13:9 shows, from the onset of their exilic experience, the
community in Babylon organized itself for a return to the land. They
viewed themselves as the true heirs of God’s promises to the forefathers
and the future inheritors of the homeland. The imagination and en-
ergy devoted to the coming return was nowhere more animated than
in Ezekiel 40–48, which provided a vision of the reconstituted com-
munity in its motherland. Specifically, there are three issues that I will
examine.
First, it is important to recognize that the whole complex of chaps.
40–48 reflects a rather “lively history of growth.” 31 In addition to the
“guidance vision” that provides the core of the materials, 32 the text has
been expanded by Ezekiel’s followers and shows signs of editorial activ-

Kingdom and in the exile. In both cases, the demise of monarchic political leadership
resulted in a new emphasis on “lay leadership,” i.e., the elders. See also J. Buchholz,
Die Ältesten Israels im Deuteronomium (Göttinger Theologische Arbeiten 36; Göt-
tingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988).
30. That this was the case is perhaps evidenced by the fact that the Golah list in
large part provided the regional origins of peoples rather than their ancestral heritage.
Its use to authenticate ethnic origins was secondary to its original purpose.
31. Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2.547. Here and below I rely heavily on the literary analysis
of Zimmerli, who in turn was heavily dependent on H. Gese’s work, Der Verfassungs-
entwurf des Ezechiel (Kap. 40–48) traditionsgeschichtlich untersucht (Beiträge zur His-
torischen Theologie 25; Tübingen: Mohr, 1957).
32. Ezek 40:1–37, 47–49; 41:1–15a; 42:15–20; 43:1–11. See Zimmerli’s summary
in Ezekiel, 2.547–48. For more detail, see the appropriate sections of his commentary.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period 297

ity into the late exile and, in a few cases, into the postexilic period. 33 As
S. Tuell has noted, we should not view this growth as isolated layers
but as a continuous tradition of deliberative reflection on the Vorlage
that preceded each layer. 34 The vision included a restoration of the
Temple, of the religious leadership, of Israel’s ancestral property, and
also of the Davidic monarch, who in Ezekiel was represented as the
‘prince’ (aycn). 35 The continuous editorial interest in this material
(Ezekiel 40–48) shows that throughout the exile a primary element in
the identity of the Golah community was, on the one hand, their status
as a displaced community, and on the other, their status as a commu-
nity that was “homebound.” It was precisely this preoccupation with
going home that served to intensify feelings of Judean distinctiveness
in the Babylonian context, and this no doubt contributed to the inten-
sification of ethnic sentiments and prevented wholesale assimilation in
that foreign context.
The second issue that arises from this text is the tribal list in Ezek-
iel 48 and the associated division of the land. The chapter actually in-
cludes two tribal lists, one in vv. 1–29 and a later addition in vv. 30–
35, and we will discuss both of them. Because we have already
discussed the development of the tribal list tradition in the Song of
Deborah and Deuteronomy 33, we are now in a position to offer a
chronological history of the tradition as revealed in the biblical sources
(see Table 5.1). The oldest tradition, reflected in the Song of Deborah,
should be dated no later than the early ninth century on the basis of its
linguistic features, as we have previously discussed. That this list was a
“tribal list” is debatable, since neither hfm nor fbv occurs in the text,
but the list nonetheless includes ten groups that later sources identified
as “tribes.” The earliest form of the Blessing in Deuteronomy 33,
which dates to the eighth century, was also a ten-tribe list. It elimi-
nated Machir and Gilead and added Joseph and Judah. The Joseph
blessing mentions two units, Ephraim and Manasseh, but it nonethe-
less serves as one tribal unit in the text. In the seventh century, a Deu-
teronomic edition of the Blessing was prepared that, in accordance
with Deuteronomy’s support for the Levites, updated the collection of
33. See Zimmerli’s discussions of Ezek 41:15b–21; 43:13–27; 44:4–5, 6–31.
34. S. Tuell, The Law of the Temple in Ezekiel 40–48 (HSM 49; Atlanta: Scholars
Press, 1992) 175. That the growth visible in the text is closely related to what pre-
ceeded it has also been carefully worked out by Gese and Zimmerli.
35. Duguid, Ezekiel and the Leadership of Israel, 10–90, 133–43.
298 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period

Table 5.1 Tribal Lists in the Hebrew Bible

Song of Deborah Blessing of Moses Blessing of Moses Ezekiel 48:1–29 Ezekiel 48:30–35
(Judges 5) A (Deut 33) B (Deut 33)
9th century 8th century 7th century 6th century 6th century
1. Ephraim 1. Ephraim (5) 1. Ephraim (5)
2. Benjamin 1. Benjamin (3) 2. Benjamin (4) 2. Benjamin (8) 1. Benjamin (5)
3. Machir
4. Zebulun 2. Zebulun (5) 3. Zebulun (7) 3. Zebulun (11) 2. Zebulun (9)
5. Issachar 3. Issachar (6) 4. Issachar (8) 4. Issachar (10) 3. Issachar (8)
6. Reuben 4. Rebuen (1) 5. Reuben (1) 5. Reuben (6) 4. Reuben (1)
7. Gilead
8. Dan 5. Dan (8) 6. Dan (11) 6. Dan (1) 5. Dan (6)
9. Asher 6. Asher (10) 7. Asher (12) 7. Asher (2) 6. Asher (11)
10. Naphtali 7. Naphtali (9) 8. Naphtali 8. Naphtali (3) 7. Naphtali (12)
8. Judah (2) 9. Judah (2) 9. Judah (7) 8. Judah (2)
9. Gad (7) 10. Gad (9) 10. Gad (12) 9. Gad (10)
10. Joseph (Joseph) (Joseph) 10. Joseph (4)
(= Ephraim,
Manassah) (4)
11. Manasseh (6) 11. Manasseh (4)
12 Levi (3) (Levi) 11. Levi (3)
12. Simeon (9) 12. Simeon (11)

Note: Numbers in parentheses represent the actual order within that tribal list.

blessings to grant tribal status to Levites. But the addition of Levi made
it impossible to follow the ten-tribe tradition. Because eleven was not
an “acceptable” number, the editor was satisfied to view the two Joseph
groups, Ephraim and Manasseh, as a suitable solution. 36 The result was
the twelve-tribe scheme which became standard from that point on.
The lists in Ezek 48:1–29 and 48:30–35 witness the two latest forms of
the tribal list. Because of the addition of Simeon to these lists, 37 the
twelve-tribe pattern could only be preserved by eliminating one of the
other tribal groups. One method of accomplishing this, illustrated in
the first text, was to distinguish Levi from the other tribes. In this case,

36. For a similar numerological convention, see pp. 74–75.

37. It is often presumed that Simeon, which appears in tribal lists of the Pen-
tateuch (which is also presumed early), was an older tribe that was absorbed into
Judah. Although the history of the group is far from clear, the evidence suggests that
Simeon was one of the youngest tribes, appearing in the lists only during the exile and
afterward. Arriving at the same conclusion along a different path is B. Halpern, The
Emergence of Israel in Canaan (SBLMS 29; Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1983) 129.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period 299

the allotment of the Zadokites/Levites was considered the ‘portion of

Yahweh’ (hwhyl wmyrt rva hmwrth), which of course made that allot-
ment distinct from the other twelve tribal allotments. A similar effort is
made in Numbers 1 and Judges 15–19, where the Levites were not
numbered with the tribes because of their appointment to temple ser-
vice. The other method of compensation, as seen in the second text
(Ezek 48:30–35), was to count Ephraim and Manasseh as one tribe,
Joseph. This practice was followed whenever brief tribal lists pre-
empted the first compensation method (to distinguish Levi), as seen in
several other texts. 38 On the basis of this evidence it appears that the
classical tribal schemes that we find in the Tetrateuchal sources should
be dated more closely to the exile than to some of the earlier periods
frequently suggested.
The later dating of tribal schemes also raises several issues regard-
ing the division of the land itself and the establishment of its limits and
borders (Ezek 47:13–48:29). Ezekiel 48 is exilic but was composed
after Ezekiel himself and should instead be associated with the “Ezekiel
school.” 39 As Tuell, has noted, the tribes listed here did not exist during
or after the exilic period, so that the tribal plan would seem to be in-
feasible. 40 In this sense the text is perhaps best described as a “utopian
vision” 41 that demonstrates the long-standing grip of tribal identity on
Israelite expressions of identity. Here we should not think of “tribal
identity” in the sense of concrete social modalities but as the notion
that an ideal restored community must necessarily be composed of
twelve tribal units. Zimmerli has reconstructed the tribal arrangements
as depicted by the text. 42 The tribal regions run north and south of the
sacred precinct, which was a royal/priestly hmwrt to Yahweh that sur-
rounded Jerusalem. To the north lay Judah, and then beyond it Reu-
ben, Ephraim, Manasseh, Naphtali, Asher, and Dan, respectively. To
the south lay Benjamin and then Simeon, Issachar, Zebulun, and Gad.

38. Gen 35:22–26, 49:1–28; Exod 1:2–4; Deut 27:11–14; 1 Chr 2:1–2.
39. As evidenced by the lack of any urgency concerning the return to the land and
also by the fact that the late-exilic critcisms of the Levites do not come into play here
(Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2.542).
40. Tuell, The Law of the Temple in Ezekiel 40–48, 170–71.
41. Cooke, Ezekiel, 524; Eichrodt, Ezekiel, 591; J. D. Levenson, Theology of the
Program of Restoration of Ezekiel 40–48 (HSM 10; Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press,
1976) 115–16; Wevers, Ezekiel, 231.
42. See Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2.535–37.
300 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period

The picture was purely schematic and made no attempt, as would later
texts, to reconcile the individual tribes to their historical locations.
This was not the case in the historiographic texts of Deuteronomy 3
and Numbers 32. In these texts, both the Deuteronomist and the Yah-
wist were concerned precisely with the specific regions that should be
associated with the various tribal groups. 43 Under the influence of
these sources, P’s later depiction of the tribal allotment was even more
precise in assigning the tribes to an appropriate geographical setting. 44
The other related issue in this text is the description of land
boundaries in Ezekiel 47–48. The borders described there correspond
to the P delineations in Numbers 34 and Joshua 15 but differ from P
in that they extended beyond Sidon to the north and did not include
Transjordan, a territory long associated with Israel. 45 Aharoni has sug-
gested that these boundaries correspond to the old Egyptian holdings
in Syria–Palestine, while Tuell, on the other hand, has suggested that
they should be associated with the Persian satrapy of Abar-Nahara. 46
The exilic date of the text seems to preclude both options. More likely,
the boundaries should be connected with the nations oracles in chaps.
25–28. There the Transjordanian states Ammon and Moab were given
to the “people of the East,” while more trenchant predictions were of-
fered for Tyre and Sidon, who would “never be found again” (Ezek
26:21). This would account for the borders described in the text, since
Transjordan would one day be under foreign control, and the uninhab-
ited Phoenician region could then fall under Israelite control.
The final concern raised by Ezekiel 40–48 is the apparent conflict
between 47:22–23 and 44:6–9. The two texts read as follows:
You shall allot it as an inheritance for yourselves and for the aliens
who reside among you and have begotten children among you. They

43. For a discussion of these texts, see Van Seters, The Life of Moses: The Yahwist
as Historian in Exodus–Numbers (Louisville: Westminster, John Knox, 1994) 436–50.
44. Cf. Joshua 13–19; Judg 1:1–2:5, 2:22–3:4. For a discussion of these texts, see
J. Van Seters, In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of
Biblical History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983; repr., Winona Lake, Ind.:
Eisenbrauns, 1997) 324–46.
45. J. Van Seters has assigned Joshua 15, along with a large portion of both
Joshua and Judges, to P. He has done this because the tribal allotment process in Joshua
14–19 differs from that of Dtr, follows patterns in P, and uses P’s allotment terminol-
ogy (ibid., 324–46); on Israel’s ancient ties to Transjordan, see especially the Mesha
Stela in ANET 320.
46. Y. Aharoni, The Land of the Bible: A Historical Geography (Philadelphia: West-
minster, 1967) 61–70; Tuell, The Law of the Temple in Ezekiel 40–48, 156–74.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period 301

shall be to you as native-born sons of Israel; with you they shall be al-
lotted an inheritance among the tribes of Israel. In whatever tribe the
alien resides, there you shall assign him his inheritance, says the Lord
God. (Ezek 47:22–23)
And say to the rebellious house, to the house of Israel, “Thus says the
Lord God: ‘O house of Israel, let there be an end to all your abomi-
nations, in admitting foreigners, uncircumcised in heart and flesh, to
be in my sanctuary, profaning it, when you offer to me my food, the
fat and the blood. You have broken my covenant, in addition to all
your abominations. And you have not kept charge of my holy
things; but you have set foreigners to keep my charge in my sanctu-
ary.’ Therefore thus says the Lord God: ‘No foreigner, uncircum-
cised in heart and flesh, of all the foreigners who are among the
people of Israel, shall enter my sanctuary.’ ” (Ezek 44:6–9)
In tone and spirit, these texts appear to address two quite different
contexts. The former, which reflects the stance of the Holiness Code
precisely, is highly supportive of the foreigner who is seeking commu-
nity assimilation. This suggests a date during the early exilic experi-
ence. The texts that sound like the second text (Ezek 44:6–9) may
quite easily date to the postexilic period. 47 Furthermore, 44:6–9 has a
number of features that are not characteristic of Ezekiel (rkn and 3d-
person plural address) 48 and fits best into the context of Neh 13:4–9,
which describes how the foreigner, Tobiah the Ammonite, was thrown
out of the Temple. Prior to the exile, there was very little polemic of
this nature and, barring animated creativity, the exile itself presented
no real opportunity for such an “abomination” to arise. We must
therefore conclude with Zimmerli that Ezek 44:6–16 is a postexilic ad-
dition to the prophetic collection. 49 Nevertheless, it is possible that the
sentiments in this text were shared by some who lived during the exilic
period.

47. Deuteronomy 23 and Lev 22:25. Regarding Deuteronomy 23, see my previ-
ous discussion (pp. 253–258). With respect to Lev 22:25, which legislates against
taking sacrificial foodstuffs from a foreigner’s hand, see K. Ellinger, Leviticus (HAT;
Tübingen: Mohr, 1966) 300; A. Cholewinski, Heiligkeitsgesetz und Deuteronomium
(AnBib 66; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1976) 77–78.
48. Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2.453; Wevers, Ezekiel, 219–20. But see Fohrer, who ar-
gues that the text comes from Ezekiel, that it has been influenced by Deuteronomy 23
and HC, and that it deviates from the younger P (G. Fohrer, Ezechiel [HAT; Tü-
bingen: Mohr, 1955] 246–47).
49. Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2.454–55.
302 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period

The Foundations of Restoration: A New Heart

(Ezekiel 36:16–38)
Although the details of the restoration were provided in Ezekiel
40–48, according to the final form of Ezekiel, the foundational the-
ology that made this restoration possible was a change in the funda-
mental religious receptivity of Israel. This change should be closely
identified with the ‘new covenant’ (hvdj tyrb) mentioned in Jer
31:31–34, as Fohrer has pointed out. 50 The potential influence of a
‘new covenant’ idea on community identity is evidenced by the much
later rift that it created between the Essenes and Christians, on the one
hand, and the rest of Judaism, on the other. 51 Although some recent
studies have questioned the Jeremianic origins of Jer 31:31–34, 52 it is
generally believed to share features with the authentic corpus. 53 Thus,
we should conclude that the new covenant tradition dates no later than
the early exilic period, probably earlier. The previous weakness of Is-
rael’s covenant relationship with Yahweh, according to this new cove-
nant tradition, rested in the fact that Israel was unable to remain
faithful to him because their internal religious disposition, their ‘heart’
(bbl/bl), was deficient. The impasse could only be broken by means
of a new covenant that changed the heart of Israel and secured its fidel-
ity to the covenant. Although it is not entirely clear in this early expres-
sion of the new covenant theme, subsequent developments by the
Deuteronomistic school unambiguously connected this new covenant
promise with the exilic community:
Behold, I will gather them from all the countries to which I drove
them in my anger and my wrath and in great indignation; I will
bring them back to this place, and I will make them dwell in safety.
And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. I will give
them one heart and one way, that they may fear me for ever, for their

50. Fohrer, Ezechiel, 205.

51. G. Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Penguin, 1987) 37–38, 42, 81.
52. Nicholson, Preaching to the Exiles, 82; W. Thiel, Die deuteronomistische Redak-
tion von Jeremia 26–45 (WMANT 52; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag,
1981) 27–28.
53. W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah : A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah
(2 vols.; Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989) 2.197; D. R. Jones, Jeremiah
(NCBC; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1992) 399–400; Rudolph, Jeremia, 201–4;
A. Weiser, Das Buch des Propheten Jeremia (2 vols.; ATD; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1952–55) 2.285–88.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period 303

own good and the good of their children after them. I will make with
them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing
good to them; and I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they
may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will
plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my
soul. (Jer 32:37–41)
It was this exilic development of the new covenant theme that stood
behind Ezekiel 36.
Although it is sometimes thought that Ezekiel 36 originated with
the prophet himself, 54 the tradition is usually assigned to the late exile,
when the Heimkehr was imminent. 55 Every element within the text
links to ideas found in the earlier Deuteronomistic additions to Jere-
miah and Deuteronomy. Taken together, these three sources—the sup-
posedly authentic Jeremiah text (Jer 31:31–34), the Deuteronomistic
redaction of that book (Jer 32:37–41), and Ezek 36:16–38—show
that the concept of a new heart was an influential idea throughout the
exilic period. This concept naturally facilitated a sense of distinctive-
ness in exilic identity, since the exiles—and not those left behind in
Judea—had experienced the change of heart wrought by Yahweh him-
self. That this was the case among the exiles is still more evident in
some of the texts that we will examine from Deutero-Isaiah.

The History of Israel in Ezekiel 20

In comparison with our previous discussion, Ezekiel 20 is extra-
ordinary in that it clearly outlines the sacred history of Israel in four
stages, followed by the exile: the exodus (vv. 5–9), the first wilderness
generation (vv. 10–17), the second wilderness generation (vv. 18–
26), 56 the residence in Canaan (vv. 27–29), and the exile (vv. 30–38). 57
As Van Seters and Römer have pointed out, there is no room for a pa-
triarchal generation in this scheme. 58 But this is not surprising since
54. Cooke, Ezekiel, 385–86.
55. Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2.245–46; Wevers, Ezekiel, 190–91.
56. That there are two wilderness generations here seems clear (Wevers, Ezekiel,
117–18; Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 1.410).
57. See a brief but similar historical outline in Jer 2:2–8. The outline that stands
behind Ezekiel’s work, especially in its recognition of two wilderness traditions, reflects
a rather advanced stage of historical reflection. The traditions that inform the prophet
here are no doubt those taken up by the Yahwist in his historiographic effort.
58. Römer, Israels Väter, 495–506; Van Seters, Prologue to History, 233–35.
304 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period

Ezekiel 20 appeared several years before our first contact with the Abra-
ham tradition in Ezekiel 33. 59 On the other hand, as Zimmerli has
pointed out, Ezek 20:5 comes quite close to making a connection be-
tween the patriarchal figure and the Exodus generation: “On the day
when I chose Israel, I swore to the seed of the house of Jacob, making
myself known to them in the land of Egypt. . . .” But even if this does
represent a tendency to combine the two origin traditions, the process
must have been in its nascent stages, and the phrase bq[y tyb [rz
makes the whole proposition less likely, since a reference to the “house
of Jacob” is slightly more ambiguous than something like ‘the seed of
Jacob’ (bq[y [rz).
The remarkable feature of this historical Rückblick is that Israel’s
history is portrayed in entirely negative terms. There is no wilderness
“golden age” like the one described by Hosea (9:10, 13:5), no period of
faithfulness like the wilderness period in Jeremiah (2:2). The reason for
this new historical perspective is perhaps foreshadowed by my previous
discussion of Ezekiel 36. If Ezekiel’s Israel was in need of a “new cove-
nant,” then this necessarily dictates that its prior history was entirely
negative, at least rhetorically speaking. That this was Ezekiel’s perspec-
tive on the matter is indicated by 20:38: “I will purge out the rebels
from among you, and those who transgress against me.” Only after this
basic change in Israel’s corporate constitution could Yahweh return
them to the land (vv. 40–44).
In addition to his somewhat unique historical perspective, Ezek-
iel’s polemic in this text is also unusual. Although like Jeremiah he in-
cludes the expected polemic against idolatry, on five occasions in this
text he reprimands the exiles for profaning the ‘sabbaths’ (twtbv). 60
Here the custom of sabbath-keeping moves well beyond its previous
importance; it has become a ‘sign’ (twa) of the relationship between
Israel and its god, Yahweh. The appearance of this new emphasis
within a foreign context, coupled with the ‘sign’ terminology, suggests
that we are dealing here with an ethnic marker or indicium that clearly
distinguished the “seed of the house of Jacob” from the surrounding
peoples. 61 And as in Deuteronomy, this ethnic marker was closely asso-
ciated with religious identity and thus marked the exiles not only as
59. Zimmerli dates the text to 591 b.c.e. (Ezekiel, 1.406).
60. Jeremiah also showed some concern for sabbath-keeping (Jer 17:21–27), but
it played no central role in his prophetic criticisms.
61. Cooke, Ezekiel, 216–17.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period 305

Jews, but especially as the people of Yahweh. After the exile, sabbath-
keeping continued to serve in this role and became one of the more
important practices that identified an assimilating foreigner, as one can
see in Isa 56:6–8. 62

Deutero-Isaiah
If we follow the most common approaches to the book of Isaiah,
Isaiah 40–55 brings us to the late exilic period and to the ministry of
Deutero-Isaiah, who worked several decades after the ministry of Ezek-
iel, during a time when the return to Palestine was imminent. 63 We are
fortunate to have two prophetic sources from the exilic period and even
more fortunate that one dates to the early exile and the other to its end.
This provides us with the material necessary to trace the development
of Israelite thought through that brief parenthesis in Jewish history and
to draw conclusions relating to the problems of ethnicity and identity.
As D. Baltzer has demonstrated, there are many links between the con-
cepts expressed in Ezekiel and those found in Deutero-Isaiah. 64 At cer-
tain points Deutero-Isaiah’s development of these themes was minimal,
but in some cases he quite transformed the ideas that he inherited from
the earlier prophet. 65 There are four issues that are of interest for my
work in Deutero-Isaiah, and these may be profitably compared to is-
sues that were raised by the Ezekiel tradition: (1) the Abraham fore-
father figure, (2) the place of the “new covenant” in Deutero-Isaiah,
(3) the foreigner in Deutero-Isaiah, and (4) the problem of the “Ser-
vant Songs.” We will begin with the Abraham tradition.

62. For a discussion of the sabbath tradition, see H. A. McKay, Sabbath and Syna-
gogue: The Question of Sabbath Worship in Ancient Israel (Religions in the Graeco-
Roman World 122; Leiden: Brill, 1994).
63. Although the central topic of B. Schramm’s monograph is Trito-Isaiah and
the postexilic period, the book offers a very useful summary of the scholarly debate
about Deutero- and Trito-Isaiah, both with respect to issues of composition and with
respect to the relationships that we might draw between the two sections (Schramm,
The Opponents of Third Isaiah: Reconstructing the Cultic History of the Restoration
[JSOTSup 193; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1995] 11–111).
64. D. Baltzer, Ezechiel und Deuterojesaja: Berührungen in der Heilserwartung der
beiden großen Exilspropheten (BZAW 121; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1971).
65. For instance, their ideas about a “new exodus” from Babylon are quite close.
On the other hand, the prophets differ markedly in the details of their deliverance the-
ology (ibid., 24–26, 98–99).
 306 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period

Abraham in Deutero-Isaiah: Isaiah 41:8–10, 51:1–3, 54:1–3

In this section, I have three primary concerns: first the question of
the Abraham tradition’s development between the early exile (Ezekiel)
and the late exile (Deutero-Isaiah); second, the relationship of this de-
velopment to the land-promise theme; and third, the relationship be-
tween this patriarchal tradition and the exodus origin tradition. In Isa
41:8–10, 51:1–3, and 54:1–3, it becomes clear that the Abraham of
Deutero-Isaiah was a more clearly developed character than the early-
exilic figure known to the Judean remnant and to Ezekiel (see pp. 289–
291). In Deutero-Isaiah the tradition is no longer expressed in Deuter-
onomistic language, and all the major features of the pentateuchal tra-
dition are reflected in the materials. Abraham’s wife (51:2, 54:1), his
relationship to Jacob (41:8), the promise of progeny and blessings
(51:2, 54:1–3), the issue of barrenness (51:3, 54:1), and the theme of
personal righteousness (qdx in 51:1) are all quite pronounced, and the
theme of land promise is clearly implied in 51:3, “For the Lord will
comfort Zion; he will comfort her waste places.” Even more explicit in
this regard is Isa 54:3: “your descendants [those of Sarah, Abraham’s
wife] will possess the nations and will people the desolate cities.” All of
this evidence suggests that the patriarchal tradition that stood behind
these texts was much more complex than the tradition reflected in
Ezek 33:24 and that ownership of the tradition had shifted from the
Judean remnant community to the exilic community. The tradition
should not be viewed, as Römer has suggested concerning Isa 51:1–2,
as nichtexilierten in origin but as a predominantly exilic development. 66
After all, is it an accident that the Abraham of the Yahwist comes to
possess Canaan not from within the land, as in the Judean tradition re-
flected in Ezek 33:24, but after his trek from Mesopotamia (cf. Genesis
12)? 67 Furthermore, the fact that Abraham’s trip via Haran mirrors the
“new exodus” envisioned by Deutero-Isaiah suggests that the ideas of
the prophet and of the Yahwist stand close together because both see
the exilic community as the heir to the Abrahamic land promise. 68
66. Römer, Israels Väter, 516, 535–36.
67. J. Van Seters argued several years ago that the statement in Gen 15:7, “I am
Yahweh your God who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this
land to possess it,” is a reformulation of the common exodus formula, “I am Yahweh
your God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt” (see “Confessional Reformu-
lation in the Exilic Period,” VT 22 [1972] 448–59).
68. For a discussion of this theme in Deutero-Isaiah, see Baltzer, Ezechiel und
Deuterojesaja, 12–23; Van Seters, Prologue to History, 241–42, 250, 299.

Spread is a pica long

 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period 307

Not only can we observe a certain degree of growth and develop-

ment in the patriarchal story, but we can also recognize new exilic
efforts to relate it to previous Israelite traditions. For example, in the
sources that we have examined so far, the patriarchs and the forefathers
of the exodus have existed side by side as two apparently independent
origin traditions. But in contrast to the earlier sources that we have ex-
amined, Deutero-Isaiah mentions not only the departure from Egypt
but also the arrival in Egypt (Israel “went down at first into Egypt,”
52:4). 69 This can be explained as an apparent effort to make space for
the patriarchal traditions that found their proper setting in the period
before the sojourn in Egypt. The only text that predates Deutero-
Isaiah and that also shares a similar viewpoint is the Deuteronomist’s
so-called “little credo” addition in Deut 26:5–9:
And you shall make response before the Lord your God, “A wander-
ing Aramean was my father; and he went down into Egypt and so-
journed there, few in number; and there he became a nation, great,
mighty, and populous. And the Egyptians treated us harshly, and af-
flicted us, and laid upon us hard bondage. Then we cried to the Lord
the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice, and saw our
affliction, our toil, and our oppression; and the Lord brought us out
of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great
terror, with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and
gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.”
It seems that this early-exilic text is the first to combine the patriarch
origins with the exodus, but in doing so it attests to a tradition that
stands somewhat apart from what was known in Genesis. As Van
Seters has pointed out, it recognizes no patriarchal sojourn in
Canaan. 70 To this Mayes adds that the “wandering Aramean” cannot
readily be identified with Jacob (although such an identification seems
likely to me). 71 And even though one would expect it in such a confes-
sional summary, there is no room in this text for the Abraham figure
(or for Isaac). All of this suggests that the effort to combine the patriar-
chal and exodus traditions was probably in its nascent stages during the
early exile, as is perhaps suggested by the fact that the roughly contem-
porary source Ezekiel 20 was apparently unaware of or uninterested in

69. See, for example, my discussion of Ezekiel 20, above, pp. 303–304.
70. Van Seters, Prologue to History, 216.
71. A. D. H. Mayes, Deuteronomy (NCBC; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans,
1979) 334–35.
 308 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period

the connection. This means that Deutero-Isaiah was informed by a

more complete patriarchal/exodus tradition, one in which Abraham
was a prominent figure. According to Van Seters the appearance of this
tradition in Deutero-Isaiah should be associated with historiographical
efforts during the exilic period, namely the history of the Yahwist,
which sought to combine the patriarchal traditions with the older exo-
dus-settlement tradition of Deuteronomy. This theory does find some
support in what we are saying here, since the Abraham tradition seems
to have been largely unknown to the historical summaries in Ezekiel 20
and Deut 26:5–9 and, on the other hand, to have exerted considerable
influence on the late-exilic work of Deutero-Isaiah.
In addition to the question of the patriarchal tradition and its rela-
tionship to the Exodus tradition, the theme of ‘righteousness’ (qdx)
that appears in connection with Abraham in Isa 51:1–2 and in 51:7 is
also important. These texts are usually associated with the “new cove-
nant” of Jer 31:31–34 and read as follows: 72
Hearken to me (yla w[mv), you who pursue righteousness (ypdr
qdx), you who seek the Lord; look to the rock from which you were
hewn, and to the quarry from which you were digged. Look to Abra-
ham your father and to Sarah who bore you. . . . (Isa 51:1–2)
Hearken to me (yla w[mv), you who know righteousness (qdx y[dy),
the people in whose heart is my law; fear not the reproach of men,
and be not dismayed at their revilings. (Isa 51:7)
The similarity between these excerpts is quite pronounced. If one as-
sumes a correspondence between those who “pursue righteousness”
and those who “know righteousness,” which seems to me quite reason-
able, then Abraham takes on a unique role in the prophet’s understand-
ing of the new covenant tradition and the “heart” associated with it.
Abraham is the “rock” from which new covenant Israelites are “hewn,”
the paradigm of those who have the law (hrwt) in their heart (bbl/
bl). 73 From this one should conclude that Deutero-Isaiah was respon-
sible for the integration of two important streams of tradition, the his-

72. P. E. Bonnard, Le Second Isaïe: Son disciple et leurs editeurs—Isaie 40–66

(Ébib; Paris: Gabalda, 1972) 251; C. Westermann, Isaiah 40–66 (OTL; Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1969) 236; R. N. Whybray, Isaiah 40–66 (NCBC; Grand Rapids,
Mich.: Eerdmans, 1975) 157.
73. As seen in formulaic expressions: (1) you who pursue righteousness = like
Abraham; (2) you who know righteousness = law in heart.

Spread is 6 points short

 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period 309

torical tradition of the patriarch and the theological tradition of

Jeremiah’s new covenant. These texts would seem to imply two com-
peting elements within Deutero-Isaiah’s immediate context, those who
had the “law in their heart” and those who did not. Specifically, I think
that we should see behind this debate the texts in Genesis 12 and 15,
in which the forefather Abraham was declared ‘righteous’ (hqdx) be-
cause he trusted (hwhyb ˆymah) Yahweh’s promise of a progeny and a
homeland, two promises that were fulfilled only after the patriarch’s
departure from his home in Mesopotamia. In a similar way Deutero-
Isaiah called upon Israelites with a heart like Abraham’s to believe that
Yahweh would “comfort Zion . . . and make her wilderness like Eden”
(Isa 51:3). These observations support the recent conclusion of N. K.
Gottwald that Deutero-Isaiah’s work must be understood chiefly as an
effort to enlist support for a program of return to Judah. 74 The close
link between “faith-righteousness” and “salvation” that emerges in
Deutero-Isaiah also fits this agenda, since only a return to the home-
land by faith would secure the salvation (or restoration) of the people
of Israel. 75 On the other hand, there are other texts in Deutero-Isaiah
that suggest the prophet’s interest was not in Israel alone.

A Light to the Nations: Isaiah 42:6–7, 44:5, and 49:1–6

As they are commonly understood, the Isa 42:6–7, 44:5, and
49:1–6 texts encapsulate an advanced stage of ethnic inclusiveness that
we have not observed in the older Hebrew sources. Yahweh’s servant,
who for the time being remains anonymous, has been given as “a light
to the nations (μywg), to open the eyes that are blind” (42:6–7). Accord-
ing to Whybray the text does not refer to “missionary work” but in-
stead to the fact that Yahweh’s universal rule, so prominent in Deutero-
Isaiah, will oblige foreigners to accept His sovereignty. 76 Similarly,
H. M. Orlinsky suggests:

74. N. K. Gottwald, “Social Class and Ideology in Isaiah 40–55: An Eagletonian

Reading,” Semeia 59 (1992) 43–58. For a critique of Gottwald’s article, see responses
in the same Semeia volume.
75. C. R. North, The Second Isaiah (Oxford: Clarendon, 1964) 93, 95, 118. See
also G. von Rad’s discussion of qdx/hqdx in his Old Testament Theology (2 vols.; New
York: Harper & Row, 1962–65) 1.370–83.
76. Whybray, Isaiah 40–66, 75; contra G. A. F. Knight, Servant Theology (Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmanns, 1979) 48–49.
 310 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period

In a word: Israel will be “a light to the nations” in the sense that

Israel will dazzle the nations with her God-given triumph and resto-
ration; the whole world will behold this single beacon that is God’s
sole covenanted people. Israel will serve to the world at large as the
example of God’s loyalty and omnipotence. 77
The observations of Whybray and Orlinsky are no doubt accurate to a
certain extent. But the “covenant to the people” in 42:6 is almost al-
ways interpreted as a collective reference to the peoples, not to Israel,
and this seems to have implications beyond the ones envisioned by Or-
linsky. 78 Orlinsky is rather adamant in his assertion that Deutero-
Isaiah was not really concerned with the salvation of people outside of
the Israelite community. He does concede that the text of Isa 49:6 (“so
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth”) might be taken,
at least at face value, as a call to “bring God’s teachings to the heathen
nations and thereby afford the entire world the rewards that derived
from acknowledging Him as their Deity.” 79 But according to Orlinsky,
this reading would not account for the surrounding context, in which
the text explicitly states that God had destined the prophet to restore
only the people of Israel, not their foreign neighbors.
But in my view this seems to be a convenient case of eisegesis, be-
cause the explicit point of 49:6 is that it was “too small a thing” for
Yahweh’s servant to restore only the “tribes of Jacob,” and this implies
that something other than ministry to Israel is in view, as is explicitly
stated at the end of the verse: “I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach the end of the earth.” So in both Isaiah 42
and 49 there are good reasons for supposing that the prophet was inter-
ested not only in Israel but in foreigners as well, and, as we will see,
there are also important reasons for supposing that his interest in for-
eigners was of a spiritual nature.

77. H. M. Orlinsky, Essays in Biblical Culture and Bible Translation (New York:
KTAV, 1974) 186.
78. W. Grimm, Deuterojesaja: Deutung, Wirkung, Gegenwart—Ein Kommentar zu
Jesaja 40–55 (Calwer Bibelkommentare; Stuttgart: Calwer, 1990) 145–46; North, Sec-
ond Isaiah, 112; Westermann, Isaiah 40–66, 100.
79. Orlinsky, Essays in Biblical Culture and Bible Translation, 169. Similar senti-
ments are expressed by N. H. Snaith, “The Servant of the Lord in Deutero-Isaiah,” in
Studies in Old Testament Prophecy: Presented to Theodore H. Robinson on His Sixty-Fifth
Birthday (ed. H. H. Rowley; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1950) 187–200.

Spread is 6 points short

 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period 311

In addition to the very explicit statements that we have just dis-

cussed, there are three important lines of evidence that lend support to
the conclusion that Deutero-Isaiah had in mind more than the effort to
dazzle the nations with Yahweh’s power or to extend Yahweh’s rule over
the nations. In the first place, I think that we should not overlook the
blindness motif (rw[) that was utilized in both Isaiah and Deutero-
Isaiah to emphasize the spiritual poverty of the people. 80 The servant’s
role was to restore Israel by healing its blind eyes and by “turning the
darkness before them into light” (49:16). But Deutero-Isaiah did not
limit this ministry of enlightenment to Israel alone, as seems clear from
Isa 49:6–7: “I have given you as a covenant to the people (μ[), as a light
to the nations (μywg), to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the
prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.”
An almost identical description of the servant’s ministry was offered in
Isa 49:6, where the servant was given as a ‘light to the nations’ (rwal
μywg) so that the salvation of Yahweh could reach the ‘ends of the earth’
(≈rah hxqAd[). Whybray’s argument that “salvation” refers here “not
to spiritual blessings but to Yahweh’s coming victory over Babylon”
cannot hold, in my view, because the motif of light and restored sight is
a spiritual motif, not a political one. 81 And if these texts have in mind
“spiritual blindness,” as seems to be the case, then we should conclude
that the servant’s charge was not only to extend Yahweh’s political juris-
diction (his hrwt) to the “coastlands” (42:4) but also to extend spiritual
freedom to all peoples—that is, to invite religious assimilation. 82
A second feature that implies the prophet’s spiritual interest in
non-Israelites is the connection between Deutero-Isaiah’s thought and
the Abrahamic promise in Gen 12:1–9. J. Van Seters has pointed out
80. Isa 6:9–13, 42:18–25. S. R. Driver interprets the text primarily in spiritual
terms (Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament [New York: Meridian, 1956]
232).
81. Whybray, Isaiah 40–66, 139. Bonnard interprets the text along the lines of Is-
rael’s mission to the nations in Le Second Isaïe, 221–22.
82. Whybray, Isaiah 40–66, 126; North, Second Isaiah, 112–13. According to
Bonnard, what the text envisions is Cyrus’ defeat of Babylon, followed by the conver-
sion of the liberated peoples to Yahweh. Westermann disagrees: “the opening of the eyes
of the blind and the freeing of prisoners are intended to typify human suffering . . . the
reference is not specifically to the blindness of Israel, a subject treated by Deutero-Isaiah
in another context” (Westerman, Isaiah 40–66, 100). See also Grimm, who believes
that here a new exodus of Israel will take place before the eyes of the peoples (Deutero-
jesaja, 145–46).
312 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period

that the foreign nations of Gen 12:1–3 were blessed through their asso-
ciation with the ‘great nation’ (lwdg ywg) 83 that God would make of
Abraham. 84 The language of this promise speech was taken from royal
terminology like the terminology associated with the Jerusalem monar-
chy, 85 and this suggests the original Sitz im Leben that lay behind the
text. As in Assyrian royal ideology, in which the nations that honored
the monarch received the expected blessings, so too the nations that
honored the seed of Abraham were to be blessed. Deutero-Isaiah’s
vision of the future is also heavily colored with Zion theology and
with the restoration of Jerusalem. Furthermore, like the Yahwist, the
prophet carried forward a very corporate and royal conception of Is-
rael, which he identified as the ‘seed of Abraham’ (41:8, μhrba [rz). 86
In light of these similarities, it is difficult to imagine that Deutero-
Isaiah’s vision of a servant to the nations was unrelated to the blessing
mentioned in Gen 12:3. Just as the blessing of Genesis 12 takes on
universal and international proportion, Deutero-Isaiah’s “light to the
nations” implies something more than Yahweh’s victory over Babylon.
As S. R. Driver has concluded, the mission of the servant was “to teach
the world true religion.” 87
The third piece of evidence that clarifies Deutero-Isaiah’s program
for the nations is the text of Isa 44:5, which most commentators inter-
pret as a reference to the assimilating proselyte: 88
This one will say, “I am the Lord’s,” another will call himself by the
name of Jacob, and another will write on his hand, “The Lord’s” and
surname himself by the name of Israel.
It is curious that such unanimity exists when, as Grimm concludes, the
entire context of vv. 1–4 addresses the Israelites. But this context none-
83. As Westermann points out, the term ywg is a political designation (see his
Genesis, 2.149).
84. My discussion here depends on the work of Van Seters, Prologue to History,
252–57.
85. See 2 Sam 7:9, 8:13; 1 Kgs 1:47; Ps 21:4; and Psalm 72.
86. For this reason it has sometimes been suggested that the servant in Isaiah’s
“servant songs” was none other then King Cyrus himself. For a recent discussion, see
A. Laato, The Servant of YHWH and Cyrus: A Reinterpretation of the Exilic Messianic
Programme in Isaiah 40–55 (ConBOT 35; Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1992).
87. Driver, Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, 232.
88. Westermann, Isaiah 40–66, 137–38; Whybray, Isaiah 40–66, 95. But see
Grimm, who associates the reference with the Israelites mentioned in vv. 1–4 (Deu-
terojesaja, 219–21).
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period 313

theless lends support to the proselyte interpretation of v. 5, because the

oracle predicts rapid multiplication of the Israelite people upon return
to their land. Part of this growth would come from the ethnic foreign-
ers who: (1) joined themselves to Israel (larcy μvb/bq[yAμv arqy
hnky) and (2) confessed Yahweh as God (hwhyl wdy btky/hwhyl rmay),
two steps that Deutero-Isaiah no doubt saw as one process. Although
Deutero-Isaiah’s familiarity with the ethnic traditions of Abraham and
Jacob cannot be doubted, it is curious that the conversion process out-
lined in v. 5 barely touches on the issue of ethnic identity. Contrary to
the Holiness Code, here there is no rhetorical distance between the for-
eigner and the proselyte or between the proselyte and the Israelite. As-
similation to the Israelite people is virtually synonymous with the
acceptance of Yahweh, which confirms one’s status, not as a rg, but as a
member of the Jacob (bq[y) community itself. In other words, for
Deutero-Isaiah, a change in one’s religious identity was ethnic assimila-
tion. This evidence supports the conclusion that Deutero-Isaiah did
envision the spiritual restoration of foreigners as a part of his ministry
program.
The pressing problem that remains for us in these “servant songs”
is the servant figure himself, who has been variously identified as
Cyrus, corporate Israel, pious Israel, Deutero-Isaiah, anonymous fig-
ures, the prophetic minority, Hezekiah, Zerubbabel, and various kinds
of messianic figures. 89 Qohelet’s words “there is nothing new under the
sun” apply most pointedly to the scholarly discussion of the topic.
Although I have no desire to add to the growing menagerie of interpre-
tations, the servant figure raises an important issue for my work,
primarily because almost every approach to “the servant” sees in the
background a conflict between two or more ideological factions. This
means that the servant songs are very important texts in any discussion
of identity in the late exilic period. In certain respects, I have attempted
to uncover what these songs can tell us about ethnicity and identity
apart from a clear identification of the servant figure. This seems neces-
sary to me, because none of the approaches to the servant figure seem
to be much more probable than others that have been suggested. If we
89. The best summaries of the history of the discussion are dated but very helpful.
See C. R. North, The Suffering Servant in Deutero-Isaiah (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1950) 1–116; H. H. Rowley, The Servant of the Lord and Other Essays on the Old
Testament (Oxford: Blackwell, 1965) 3–60. For a more recent bibliography, see Soggin,
Introduction to the Old Testament, 368–71, 376–78.
314 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period

suppose, for instance, that the servant should be associated with a

minority position within the exilic community, in what sense would
Deutero-Isaiah’s perspective on Israelite ethnic identity be representa-
tive of the whole? And what if his position was with the majority? Or
suppose that Duhm was correct and that we should distinguish the
“servant songs” from the prophetic corpus itself. 90 As one can see, I
have no firm convictions about the servant figure, apart from the fact
that he should in some way be connected with corporate Israel, at least
in the text’s present form. 91 In spite of this impasse, however, the ser-
vant texts that I have discussed here make it possible to summarize
some of the important changes in ethnicity and identity that took place
between the early exile as represented by Ezekiel/HC and the late exile
as represented by Deutero-Isaiah.

Summary:
Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period and Beyond
The early exilic sources, Ezekiel and the Holiness Code, demon-
strate that ethnic sentiments and the boundaries associated with them
intensified for the Golah community after they settled in Babylon.
These sentiments took shape in response to two different threats to
their corporate identity. The first threat was the threat of cultural as-
similation in the Babylonian context. 92 This was met by an effort to
develop a new set of ethnic indicia that included, among other things,
an emphasis on sabbath-keeping (Ezekiel 20), a concern for ritual pu-
rity (the Holiness Code), and participation in the assembly activities of
the community. 93 These indicia “marked” a person as a member of the

90. B. Duhm, Das Buch Jesaia (5th ed.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1968) 311–411.
91. On this there is at least partial agreement.
92. As Blenkinsopp points out, the enticements of Mesopotamian economic
prosperity during the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid periods were considerable.
Assimilation was therefore much more than a passive threat. Perhaps instructive in this
regard are the “Murashu documents” (J. Blenkinsopp, “Temple and Society in Achae-
menid Judah,” in Second Temple Studies [ed. P. R. Davies; JSOTSup 117; Sheffield:
JSOT Press, 1991] 50–53). See also G. Cardascia, Les archives des Murasû (Paris: Im-
primerie Nationale, 1951); E. M. Yamauchi, Persia and the Bible (Grand Rapids,
Mich.: Baker, 1990) 243–44.
93. On the development of new leadership and community structures in the ex-
ilic period, see Smith, The Religion of the Landless, 93–126.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period 315

ethnic community and so established the kind of social discourse pos-

sible within these parameters. However, serious efforts to establish and
preserve ethnic distinctions also required adjustments in the criteria
used to decide who was “in” and who was not, and this effort was par-
ticularly evident in the development of the term bvwt. This term was
employed rhetorically by the Holiness Code (and was probably coined
by HC) to distinguish more clearly between the assimilating foreigner
(rg) and the nonassimilating foreigner (bvwt). We should assume that
this was designed to place greater social distance between the Israelites
and the foreigners who were not interested in assimilation and there-
fore represented an ideological threat to the community.
The second threat that faced the exiles was the potential loss of the
ethnic homeland to the Judean remnant community, a community
that had adopted (or produced) a forefather tradition in which they,
like the ancient patriarch Abraham, were the proper heirs to the home-
land properties. The response of the exilic community to this circum-
stance was threefold. First, it added to its set of ethnic criteria the most
important criterion of all: group membership required participation in
the exile experience itself (Ezek 11:14–21). 94 Second, it adopted the
Abraham tradition as its own and then adapted it to the exilic situa-
tion. And third, in an effort to preserve ancestral property rights, the
exiles compiled and documented the family land holdings as they were
in Palestine prior to the exile. It appears that over the course of the ex-
ile these documents gradually came to be viewed not only as one’s
property records but also as a means of verifying one’s status as an eth-
nic Israelite.
On the other hand, in spite of first appearances, the strong ethnic
sentiments of the exiles did not prevent them from embracing the non-
Israelites who desired to join their community. This was especially evi-
dent in the very supportive attitude that both the Holiness Code and
Ezekiel had toward the rg. The exiles seem to have feared only those
foreigners who came into frequent contact with the Israelites but who
showed no signs of openness to assimilation. So with respect to ethnic

94. At face value, this seems to preclude the notion of ethnic assimilation, since it
is hard to see how neighboring foreigners could ever be viewed as having experienced
the exile. But Schramm has pointed out that a similar issue was faced by Ezra in the
postexilic period, and his community apparently had no problem identifying assimi-
lated foreigners as hlwg ynb ‘sons of the exile’ (B. Schramm, The Opponents of Third
Isaiah, 60–61).
316 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period

inclusiveness, there is a great deal of continuity between our early exilic

sources and Deutero-Isaiah. However, complete ideological continuity
does not exist here. In the Holiness Code, the foreigners (μywg) contin-
ued to stand apart from Israel as a social category (Lev 18:24) and were
closely associated with the nonassimilating foreigner, the bvwt (Lev
25:44–45), who was also kept at arm’s length. By comparison, the lin-
guistic and semantic boundaries found in the Holiness Code have to-
tally collapsed when we get to Deutero-Isaiah. Not only were the
culturally assimilating foreigners welcomed, but even the foreigner
from a distant land, the ywg, was invited to accept Yahweh and to “call
himself by the name of Jacob.” In this respect, the outlook of Deutero-
Isaiah represented something of a revolution, in which religious iden-
tity had almost totally supplanted the role of ethnicity in defining
group identity. We must wonder if the influence of the Yahwist was felt
here, since his “table of nations” in Genesis 10 suggested that all
peoples—including the Hebrews (rb[, 10:21–25)—were ethnically
related, to a greater or lesser extent. 95
There is another very important and essential difference between
Deutero-Isaiah and his early exilic predecessors, and it can be appreci-
ated only when care is taken to distinguish between ethnic boundaries
and the intensity of ethnic boundaries. With regard to ethnic senti-
ments and group definition, Deutero-Isaiah reflects a much greater
familiarity with Israel’s ethnic traditions—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the
Exodus—than does any other prophetic source that we have examined.
In this respect it has much in common with the most comprehensive
and detailed explication of Israel’s ethnic history, the pentateuchal J
narrative. From this we should conclude that, during the late exilic pe-
riod, Israelite ethnicity and identity was founded on a well-integrated
history of its ancestors and its corporate life. In this sense, ethnic senti-
ments and their associated boundaries became more complex and de-
tailed during the course of the exile. But nothing in Deutero-Isaiah
suggests that the increasing detail of these ethnic traditions made its
ethnic sentiments more intense or its ethnic boundaries become less
permeable during the progress of the exile. The semantic and rhetori-
cal distinctions that played such an important role in the early-exilic
95. See the discussion of Van Seters, Prologue to History, 174–87; see also
F. Crüsemann, “Human Solidarity and Ethnic Identity: Israel’s Self-Definition in the
Genealogical System of Genesis,” in Ethnicity and the Bible (ed. M. G. Brett; Biblical
Interpretation Series 19; Leiden: Brill, 1996) 57–76.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period 317

Holiness Code are not found in Deutero-Isaiah. Even when ywg is em-
ployed to describe foreigners, it is used only as a means of inviting their
religious and cultural assimilation to the Israelite community. In Deu-
tero-Isaiah, the assimilating foreigner was not distinguished as a rg but
was associated with Israel and with its forefather, Jacob (Isa 44:5).
Deutero-Isaiah therefore reflects a marked abatement in the intensity
of ethnic boundaries over the course of the exile. This fact demon-
strates that there is no ready connection between ethnic sentiments,
which were quite pronounced in Isaiah and in the pentateuchal J docu-
ment, and the intensity of the ethnic boundaries that circumscribed
them. Rather, like almost every source prior to his time, Deutero-
Isaiah’s emphasis on religious identity was very strong, and these reli-
gious sentiments preempted and overshadowed the ethnic components
of Israelite identity.
Was Deutero-Isaiah a typical representative of the late-exilic Golah
community? In certain respects I think that he certainly was not. We
are able to trace two different lines of tradition that passed from the ex-
ile into the postexilic period. The first runs from Ezekiel and the Holi-
ness Code to the postexilic Priestly Code and Ezra/Nehemiah. All of
these sources reflect rather intense ethnic boundaries, and it is difficult
to imagine Deutero-Isaiah playing a significant role in that tradition.
The other line of tradition runs from Deutero-Isaiah to the postexilic
Trito-Isaiah and features less rigid ethnic boundaries. A brief compari-
son of the two traditions in their postexilic garb displays the ideological
rift that separates them:
Let not the foreigner (rkn) who has joined himself to the Lord say,
“The Lord will surely separate me from his people. . . . And the for-
eigners (rkn) who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to
love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, every one who
keeps the sabbath, and does not profane it, and holds fast my cove-
nant—these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joy-
ful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of
prayer for all peoples. (Isa 56:3–7)
After these things had been done, the officials approached me and
said, “The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not
separated themselves from the peoples of the lands with their
abominations, from the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the
Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the
318 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period

Amorites. For they have taken some of their daughters to be wives

for themselves and for their sons; so that the holy race has mixed it-
self with the peoples of the lands. And in this faithlessness the hand
of the officials and chief men has been foremost.” (Ezra 9:1–2)
While the first tradition traced its heritage back to Deutero-Isaiah and
embraced the foreigner (rkn), the priestly Ezra tradition, which had its
roots in the Holiness Code, rejected them. From this evidence we must
assume that in Deutero-Isaiah we have only one side of the quite ener-
getic debate that absorbed the attention of the late-exilic Golah com-
munity and also of the postexilic Judean community. 96 But to stop
here makes the issues too simple. Like Trito-Isaiah, Ezra’s community
also welcomed the assimilation of foreigners to the ethnic community:
On the fourteenth day of the first month the returned exiles kept the
Passover. For the priests and the Levites had purified themselves to-
gether; all of them were clean. So they killed the passover lamb for all
the returned exiles, for their fellow priests, and for themselves; it was
eaten by the people of Israel who had returned from exile, and also by
every one who had joined them and separated himself from the pollu-
tions of the peoples of the land to worship the Lord, the God of Israel.
(Ezra 6:19–21, italics mine)
These passages show that Deutero-Isaiah and Ezra shared both a devo-
tion to Yahweh and an interest in foreigners who wanted to accept him
as their deity. The difference was in certain respects polemical and
shows that the community of Deutero-Isaiah felt less threatened by the
surrounding foreign populations than Ezra’s party did. In my view, the
core of this debate was the theology of Deutero-Isaiah and his follow-
ers, which was so fixed on the religious status of one’s heart toward
Yahweh that a preoccupation with one’s ethnic origins seemed unim-
portant. This should be contrasted with the stance of Ezra’s commu-
nity, which is best understood in the light of the legal tradition that it

96. There are several recent studies of Israelite identity in its sociological context
in the postexilic period. See T. C. Eskenazi and E. P. Judd, “Marriage to a Stranger in
Ezra 9–10,” in Second Temple Studies (ed. P. R. Davies; JSOTSup 175; Sheffield: JSOT
Press, 1994) 266–85; Schramm, The Opponents of Third Isaiah; D. L. Smith-Christo-
pher, “The Mixed Marriage Crisis in Ezra 9–10 and Nehemiah 13: A Study of the So-
ciology of the Post-Exilic Judean Community,” in Second Temple Studies, 243–65; also
by Smith-Christopher, “Between Ezra and Isaiah: Exclusion, Transformation, and In-
clusion of the Foreigner in Post-Exilic Biblical Theology,” in Ethnicity and the Bible
(ed. M. G. Brett; Biblical Interpretation Series 19; Leiden: Brill, 1996) 117–42.
 Ethnicity and Identity in the Exilic Period 319

had inherited and to which it was loyally dedicated. This tradition on

the one hand was very open to religious assimilation and, on the other
hand, contained numerous warnings about the dangers of foreign in-
fluence to the Israelite community. This means that, as we have reiter-
ated time and again during our discussion, religious identity rather
than ethnic identity turns out to be the most important issue for the
authors of the Hebrew Bible.
In the course of this chapter, we also examined two other topics
that are closely related to the question of ethnic identity. Regarding the
biblical “tribal-list” tradition, it was determined that the lists in Ezekiel
48 represent the last stage in the tradition of the Hebrew Bible and that
these lists correspond to the ones cited by the Chronicler and especially
by the Tetrateuchal sources, which should now be associated with exilic
or postexilic contexts. Regarding the biblical “tribal-settlement” tradi-
tion in Ezekiel 47–48, it was determined that this represents the first
effort in the Hebrew Bible to depict the settlement of the tribes in their
corresponding lands. This record was highly schematic and made no
attempt to achieve geographical precision. But later descriptions of the
settlement, influenced by an emerging Israelite historiographical tradi-
tion (Dtr and J), would attempt a more detailed description of the
tribes and of their associated territories.
 Chapter Seven

Summary and Conclusions

The History of Israelite Ethnicity

When the results of the present study are weighed against common
scholarly ideas about Israelite ethnicity, it becomes clear that the two
views stand quite apart from each other. Scholarship has tended to date
the J and E sources of the Pentateuch rather early, and these are the
Hebrew sources that offer some of the clearest explications of Israelite
ethnic distinctiveness. But I have argued to the contrary that an in-
quiry that is based largely on our most datable sources—the prophetic
corpus and Deuteronomy—provides a quite different picture of Israel-
ite identity and of the history of its ethnic sentiments. The difference is
that one can discern a development of Israelite ethnicity from the more
simple to the more complex, with the most complete explications of Is-
raelite ethnicity emerging rather late in Israel’s history. This implies, of
course, that the ethnic traditions of the Pentateuch are perhaps later
than we have previously supposed.
If we are willing to confess that it is somewhat speculative, our his-
tory of Israelite ethnicity can begin with Merneptah’s late-thirteenth-
century stele. This source represents our earliest tangible contact with a
people called Israel and suggests a context in which this sociocultural
entity stood alongside other groups, specifically alongside the people of
Canaan. There is evidence, though slim, that the identity of the people
Israel included a pronounced emphasis on the deity El, as seen in the
theophoric character of the name Israel, and in certain ways this re-
minds us of the biblical depiction of the Israelites. But there are many
interpretive ambiguities in the text, and a rather long time-span sepa-
rates Merneptah from our earliest biblical sources. In light of these
problems, I do not believe that this is the only possible interpretation of
the text, nor would I suggest that it is a highly probable reading of the
stele. But it does seem to me a more probable reading than the others

320
 Summary and Conclusions 321

that have been offered and therefore provides us with the first context
in which Israelite ethnicity might have either emerged or intensified.
Like Merneptah’s Stele, the Song of Deborah also presents us with
many interpretive problems, both in terms of its date and in terms of
how its content ought to be construed. The final form of the song
probably dates no later than the ninth century, but its contents do not
fit that context and thus attest to a tradition that is somewhat older.
How much older is hard to say. It shares with the Merneptah text a ref-
erence to people called Israel, a contrast between Israelites and Canaan-
ites, and an emphasis on the shared religious identity of the Israelites.
The song preserves the memory that Israel was composed of ten sepa-
rate units, each associated with a particular geographical environ, and
that these units were associated with each other by virtue of a common
devotion to the god Yahweh. Just how this list of tribal units relates to
other lists in the Hebrew Bible will be discussed below. But there are
several points at which the text hints at ethnic identity, and the context
of ecological and military competition is of the type that promotes the
development and intensification of ethnic sentiments. On the basis of
this evidence, it seems to me very likely that the song presumes an eth-
nic context and that the origins of Israelite ethnicity should be assigned
a date no later than the ninth century b.c.e.
Given that both the Merneptah and Deborah texts present us with
certain problems, our earliest substantive sources in the study were
eighth-century prophetic collections. These sources seem to indicate
that, although ethnicity was common among the smaller Levantine
states in this period, ethnic boundaries were not particularly intense
and played a rather secondary role in defining national identity. On the
other hand, one should not conclude from this that ethnicity was an
unimportant sentiment in the region, since the polemic of both Hosea
and Amos presupposes a certain allegiance to an ethnic tradition.
These ethnic ancestral traditions were common in the Greek materials
as well, and it is possible that the Levantine traditions borrowed the
conception from the Greeks via Phoenician influence or, perhaps more
likely, that all of the parties involved inherited these ethnic models
from the Phoenicians. The eighth century would have been the proper
context for such a cultural transaction, since this period featured an ac-
celerated exchange of ideas between the east and west. This date is also
consonant with the evidence from the ninth-century Song of Deborah,
which failed to mention ancestral origin traditions that could have lent
322 Summary and Conclusions

support to its message of Yahwistic solidarity. On the other hand, we

cannot categorically attribute Israel’s ethnic traditions to Greek influ-
ences, because both the anthropological data and the Old Babylonian
data show that there are other possible explanations for the emergence
of Israelite ethnicity. These sources demonstrate the very natural ten-
dency for any culture to exhibit ethnic behaviors under the proper con-
ditions. Thus there is no obligation to attribute the origins of Israelite
ethnicity to a process of cultural diffusion.
Although popular ethnic sentiments were well established by the
late eighth century, when Hosea, Amos, and Isaiah did their work, it
was the task of Hosea and his proto-Deuteronomic community to take
these preexisting ethnic sentiments and to intensify them in support of
a national mono-Yahwist agenda, which rejected all other deities as
“foreign.” This suggests that we should understand the intense Israelite
ethnic sentiments of Hosea’s community as a development of very in-
tense religious sentiments, and not vice versa. The prophet’s preference
for the exodus migration tradition over the Jacob tradition was also
based on this ethnic agenda, since a major reason for his rejection of Ja-
cob was the patriarch’s marriage to foreign women. Hosea’s brand of
ethnicity was a uniquely Northern tradition, as is implied by his failure
to include the Judeans in his mono-Yahwist program and as is sug-
gested by the fact that the eighth-century Southern prophets never ap-
plied the Israelite ethnic traditions to the Judean people.
Although it is clear that Amos and Isaiah were aware of the Israel-
ite ethnic origin traditions, they employed no “foreign” polemic, as did
their Northern counterparts. In fact, the polemic of Amos tended to
stress the similarity between Israel and foreigners rather than to point
out the distinctions between them. Instead of an intense ethnicity, the
Southerners embraced an intense Yahwistic universalism, which proba-
bly explains why they were more interested in promoting Yahwistic
unity between the Northern and Southern monarchies than was Ho-
sea. The contexts that created the specific concerns of Hosea, on the
one hand, and Isaiah, on the other, were quite different. Hosea re-
sponded to a perceived threat from within, particularly in the form of
non-Yahwistic religious influences in Israel, while the external threat
that confronted Isaiah was the Assyrian monarch, who claimed to be
the “king of the universe.” In response to the core/periphery situation
created by Assyrian imperialism, Isaiah formulated a theology that
stressed the universal kingship of Yahweh. That this was a common
 Summary and Conclusions 323

theological perspective in Southern prophetic circles seems confirmed

by the similar perspective of his Southern cohort, Amos.
Chronologically, the next important literary witness in the history
of Israelite ethnicity was Deuteronomy. In my view, the older, pre-
Josianic core of Deuteronomy was composed after the fall of Samaria,
when scores of Northern refugees moved South into Judah (although it
is rather obvious that this pre-Josianic edition was informed at points
by even older legal materials). Two of the primary purposes of this
effort were: first, to preserve the mono-Yahwist agenda of the proto-
Deuteronomic movement, and second, to employ its ethnic sentiment
in support of Northern and Southern unity, especially with regard to
the integration of the North’s refugees. The first goal was accomplished
by focusing on the exclusive covenant relationship between Yahweh
and his people and by enumerating a number of features that were and
were not characteristic of the Yahwistic faith. These features became
ethnic markers in the sense that they clearly delineated authentic Yah-
wism in contrast to “foreign” religious activities. The second goal was
accomplished with the creation of Deuteronomic “brother theology,”
which stressed the essential ethnic brotherhood of Northern and
Southern Yahwists and their common ethnohistorical heritage in the
exodus event. Also important in this effort to protect the Northern ref-
ugees was a new Deuteronomic emphasis on the ‘sojourner’ (rg), an
emphasis that was prompted by the many Northerners who now lived
in the South as a part of this sociological niche. But because many of
the sojourners in Judah were not Israelite refugees, the effort to pro-
mote support for the Northern sojourners inevitably resulted in sup-
port for non-Israelites as well, which explains why Deuteronomy
embraced the sociologically disadvantaged foreign sojourner and at the
same time employed such a strong “foreign” polemic. With regard to
this polemic, it is important to notice that Deuteronomy was much
more opposed to foreignness—either non-Yahwism or “corrupted”
Yahwism—than it was to foreigners in particular. That this was the
case is confirmed by two features. First, Deuteronomy provided little
in the way of ethnic markers that could serve in making ready distinc-
tions between foreigners and native Israelites. And second, the foreign-
ers that provoked the ire of Deuteronomy—the Canaanites, Hittites,
Amorites, and so on—were rhetorical “others” rather than actual peo-
ples on the seventh-century social periphery.

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324 Summary and Conclusions

The book of Jeremiah brings us to the end of the Judean monar-

chy and serves as a bridge into the early exilic period. Like Deuter-
onomy, Jeremiah shows little evidence of intense ethnic competition
with concrete foreign populations, and the prophet seems to have fol-
lowed the Deuteronomic pattern of condemning supposedly foreign
religious influences rather than assailing foreign peoples. Practices that
have often been labeled ethnic, such as circumcision and sabbath-
keeping, were not employed within an ethnic paradigm by Jeremiah,
and circumcision at least was not viewed as a distinctively Israelite
practice but rather as a ritual common to its neighbors. However, dur-
ing the early exile, all of this changed. In the book of Ezekiel and in the
Holiness Code, sabbath-keeping, circumcision, and ritual cleanliness
became important ethnic distinctives for the exilic community. The
Holiness Code established more stable ethnic criteria by distinguishing
between the foreigners who were assimilating to the Golah community
(rg) and those who were not (bvwt). All of this reflects a marked in-
tensification of ethnic sentiments among the exiles, which arose, no
doubt, from an effort to preserve community identity in the midst of a
foreign context.
The struggle of the exilic community was not only against the tide
of Mesopotamian culture but also against the Judean remnant commu-
nity, which had annexed the exiles’ family properties. One conse-
quence of this was that the exiles quickly organized themselves for a
return to their ancestral lands and initiated a program to record the
names and family holdings of the disinherited. Essentially, the end re-
sult of this process—as seen in Ezra and Nehemiah—was that the ex-
ilic community came to view itself as the true ethnic Israel. Another
consequence of this conflict centered on the Abraham tradition, which
appears to have originated in the Judean context and featured a patriar-
chal forefather who took possession of the empty land. But the exile
community viewed themselves as the land’s future inhabitants and
eventually adopted the tradition, so that in Deutero-Isaiah it applied to
themselves.
Although the distinctiveness of the exiles in contrast to the Judean
remnant community was preserved throughout the exilic experience, it
seems clear that the intense ethnic distinctiveness evidenced in Ezekiel
and the Holiness Code dissipated during the course of the exile, at least
among some of the Israelites. While the early-exilic Holiness Code
 Summary and Conclusions 325

went to great lengths to distinguish assimilating foreigners from non-

assimilating foreigners, Deutero-Isaiah skipped the category altogether
and identified assimilating foreigners as a part of “Jacob.” This prophet
of the late exile embraced a highly universalistic vision that joined all
peoples under the kingship of Yahweh, and such a vision necessarily
precluded very intense ethnic sentiments. From this we should con-
clude that, in contrast to the early-exilic community, the late-exilic
community of Deutero-Isaiah no longer viewed the exilic context as a
threat to the survival of the Israelite people. This should not be mis-
construed to mean that Deutero-Isaiah was blind to the sense of Israel-
ite ethnicity. On the contrary, his theoretical sense of ethnicity was
highly developed, as revealed by his intimate familiarity with the exo-
dus, Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham traditions. But Deutero-Isaiah was
unique precisely because this well-developed sense of ethnicity was not
linked to the intense ethnic separatism that characterized the early
exile. Even after the exile, Deutero-Isaiah’s highly universalistic per-
spective found some support among the returning exiles (see Trito-
Isaiah). However, the stiff competition for land and resources naturally
intensified Jewish ethnic sentiments, and the postexilic ethnic separat-
ists (Ezra–Nehemiah) seem to have won the day over the Isaiah school.
But in light of all of this discussion, there are two predominant themes.
First, as it is presented in the biblical sources, throughout the period
that we have examined, ethnicity seems to have played a secondary role
to Israelite and Judean concerns about religious identity. And second,
even in the most rhetorically ethnic sources, such as Deuteronomy and
Ezra–Nehemiah, the Israelites tended nevertheless to have a keen inter-
est in the assimilation of foreigners to their religious community.

Tribal Organization in Ancient Israel

As we pointed out in chapter one, the idea that Israel’s twelve-tribe
league developed along the lines of ancient Greek amphictyonies has
been thoroughly discredited, and there remains very little conclusive
evidence that Israel originated as a religious confederation centered
around a central cult shrine. On the other hand, our analysis of the
sources revealed that the earliest Israelite tribal list, the Song of Debo-
rah, provides evidence that by the ninth century Israel did conceive of
its early history as a religious confederation of tribes that shared com-
mon obligations to their god, Yahweh. The ninth-century date that we
326 Summary and Conclusions

assigned to this source represents a terminus ad quem; the tradition of

the confederation may be older. The tribal list contained in the song
shares a numerological similarity with the Greek amphictyonies in that
it contains ten tribal units, a similarity that I will address below.
The eighth-century tribal list from the Blessing of Moses (Deuter-
onomy 33 ) was also a ten-tribe list, but a comparison of this list with
the older Song of Deborah shows that some tribal groups have been
added and others removed. Moreover, the eighth-century prophetic
sources reveal that only some of the tribal names in the blessing can be
associated with functioning tribal units during that period (Ephraim,
Manasseh, and Gad, for instance). From this we should probably con-
clude that this list—and most likely the ninth-century list before it—
followed a literary convention that portrayed early national history ac-
cording to ten-tribe schemes, and this is all the more attractive in light
of the ten-tribe amphictyonies described in the Greek materials. Al-
though there is no way to prove it at this point, the obvious differences
between the Greek amphictyonies and the early Israelite confederation
tradition should not preclude the possibility that the numerological
similarity between them is no coincidence.
During the seventh century the tribal list of Deuteronomy 33 was
edited to include Levi, but because the tribal-list convention required
either ten or twelve tribes, the previously united Joseph tribe was re-
conceived as two tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh, thus preserving a
twelve-tribe scheme. The sixth-century appearance of Simeon within
the tribal lists introduced a new problem for the tribal-list tradition be-
cause it appeared to create thirteen tribes. However, we saw in Ezekiel
that the twelve-tribe model was easily preserved in one of two ways:
(1) by setting aside Levi as a special tribe or (2) by reuniting Ephraim
and Manasseh as a Joseph tribe. All of this is similar to the aggregative
tendencies of the Greek ethnic traditions and testifies to the fact that
the tribal configurations of the Tetrateuch correspond most closely to
the lists that are associated with the end of this aggregative process, that
is, to the sixth-century milieu or later.

The Forefather Traditions of Ancient Israel

The development of the patriarchal tradition as it appeared in this
study was quite different from the development suggested by the
present arrangement of the biblical materials. The earliest patriarchal
 Summary and Conclusions 327

tradition that we meet in the sources is that of Jacob, who probably

originated in the Northern Kingdom as an epic hero and was subse-
quently adopted as the Israelite forefather, an adoption that occurred
prior to the eighth-century ministry of Hosea. That this adoption may
have occurred during the early eighth century is suggested first by the
patriarch’s absence from the ninth-century Song of Deborah, second
by the fact that he first appears in the eighth-century prophets, and
third because similar traditions appear to have circulated in the Levant
during that period. This ethnic conception of national origin may have
originated in either Greece or Phoenicia, but this is not something that
can be easily proved, as we have already pointed out. Other important
forefathers known to the eighth-century Israelite prophets included
Isaac, Joseph, and Ephraim/Manasseh. When joined to the Jacob tra-
dition, they created four generations of forefathers, with the middle
generations (Jacob and Joseph) associated with substantial traditions
and the first and last generations (Isaac and Ephraim/Manasseh) asso-
ciated with very minor traditions. This suggests that the primary role
of the Isaac figure was to serve as the father of Jacob and makes it un-
likely that the Abraham tradition, if it did at that point exist, had been
integrated with the other patriarchal stories by the eighth century.
The Abraham figure first appeared in the book of Ezekiel as the
forefather of the Judean remnant community. This tradition existed
alongside the Exodus origin tradition and was quickly appropriated by
the exilic community, which transformed Abraham into an exile re-
turning to Palestine and integrated him into the previously existing pa-
triarchal and exodus origin traditions. As was the case with the Israelite
tribal traditions, so too in the case of the forefather traditions, we see
that the Tetrateuchal sources seem to presume certain traditions and
processes that date to the sixth century or later.
We can add one more observation to our summary of the historical
development of Israel’s ancestral traditions. On the basis of the eighth-
century Blessing of Moses in Deuteronomy 33 we concluded that the
various tribes in the list were very likely associated with other patriar-
chal characters that did not figure prominently in our prophetic
sources. This is more evidence that we should not suppose that our
eighth-century prophetic sources are exhaustive windows into that pe-
riod of Israel’s history. They are able to help us see what was there, but
they are not very useful for disclosing to us what was not there.

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 Subhead drop

328 Summary and Conclusions

Implications for Ethnicity Studies

A number of the generally accepted predictions made by ethnicity
studies were sustained by our examination of the biblical data. Barth’s
notion of “ethnic boundaries” was particularly useful in our analysis of
Hosea, Deuteronomy, and Ezekiel, and the idea that competition in-
tensifies ethnic sentiments was supported by several contexts, includ-
ing the proto- and classical Deuteronomic periods and also the early
exilic period. The relationship predicted between various modes of
identity was also confirmed, especially by the dynamic interplay be-
tween ethnic and religious modes of identity. On the other hand, the
most common markers of ethnic identity—language and phenotypical
appearance—played no vital role in Israelite ethnicity. Thus one must
be careful to appreciate the uniqueness of Israelite ethnicity and its de-
velopment, particularly in its dependence on religious sentiments and
in its highly rhetorical nature.
On the theoretical level, two models of ethnic identity—Waller-
stein’s core/periphery model and van den Berghe’s kinship model—
were, with some modification, especially useful predictors of social be-
havior. Wallerstein’s theory predicted that ethnic sentiments appear
and intensify when peripheral social modalities fall under the domina-
tion of a core imperialist power, and the prophetic work of Hosea
seems to bear this out. On the other hand, although the Assyrian threat
probably contributed to it, Hosea’s ethnic intensity seems to have been
prompted more by his location on the periphery of his own society
than by any imperialist pressures on his community. The case of Judea
and its domination by Assyria raises still more questions because, con-
trary to Wallerstein’s predictions, Isaiah displayed an intensification
not of ethnic identity but of religious identity. In this case Wallerstein
is correct to suppose that the peripheral experience intensifies identity
but is wrong that it tends to create ethnic sentiments. So we can see
that, although Wallerstein’s theories have their merits, they are also
plagued by a preoccupation with the effects of western expansion over
the last few centuries and the many ethnic groups that have been vic-
tims of it.
Van den Berghe’s theory, that ethnicity is a natural extension of
kinship, finds particularly strong support in the biblical materials, espe-
cially in Deuteronomy. Deuteronomic “brother theology” was a delib-
 Summary and Conclusions 329

erate attempt to extend the natural affiliations of kinship beyond the

immediate family to fellow Judeans and Israelites. The presumption in
Deuteronomy and elsewhere is that the notion of common ancestral
origins would heighten one’s sense of commonality with others in the
community. This evidence seems to confirm what is intuitively appeal-
ing in my view: that ethnicity is primarily an extension of either real or
fictive kinship affiliations. On the other hand, there is a slightly differ-
ent situation that is involved in abstract uses of ethnicity to explain the
origins of out-groups, as in the case of the Greek theory that the Scyth-
ians were sons of a fellow named Scythus (Herodotus Histories 4.10).
Here the purpose of ethnicity is not to extend one’s family and kinship
affiliations to the broader group in which one participates but rather to
explain the origins of another group, which seems to me a very differ-
ent motive and process. So in the case of both Van den Berghe and
Wallerstein, the alternating success and failure of the theories under-
scores the difficulties associated with using simplistic schematic models
for describing and predicting highly complex human behaviors. Be-
cause of this, although I believe that ethnicity as a field of study will
continue to raise valuable questions and make important observations
relating to social organization and behavior, it is perhaps wise to bring
the search for a single and fundamental theory of the ethnic process to
a halt.

The Task That Remains

The present work is only a prolegomenon to the study of ethnicity
in ancient Israel, and this means that many tasks remain for us in this
avenue of research.
First, I have attempted to provide a general history of Israelite eth-
nic sentiments, and this reconstruction has been based on the most
datable sources of the Hebrew Bible, namely, the prophetic corpus and
Deuteronomy. Other biblical materials that are outside of the immedi-
ate purview of this monograph can now be evaluated against this chro-
nological backdrop. I am thinking foremost, of course, about the
pentateuchal materials and the Deuteronomistic History, as well as
about the various form-critical and literary units that scholars see em-
bedded within them.
Second, historically speaking my work has only touched on the
postexilic period and the biblical sources that disclose it to us. This
330 Summary and Conclusions

means that much remains to be done with Ezra/Nehemiah, the Chron-

icler, and the postexilic prophets, as well as in the area of postbiblical
Judaism.
Third, here we have concluded that at certain points Israelite eth-
nic sentiments share many similarities with ethnicity as expressed else-
where, particularly in Greece. Was this a case of ideological diffusion?
And, if so, how and why did ethnic modes of identity arise in Greece?
And to follow up on this question, how was this notion transmitted to
the Israelite traditions? All of this needs to be examined more closely.
Perhaps the most pressing questions that remain for us, however, are
the many issues that my own study implies but leaves unaddressed and
unresolved. Thoughtful readers will find in every chapter important
questions that are not addressed explicitly, questions that I continue to
find myself. Nevertheless, it is my hope that this monograph has
helped in some small way to point the study of Israelite ethnicity in the
right direction.

* * * * *
Theological Reflections
As R. P. Knierim has pointed out, the Hebrew Bible presents us
with a diversity of theological perspectives, 1 and in the case of ethnicity
these variations have been recognized even by rather conservative
scholars. 2 But in the midst of these perspectives, there are important
ideas that appear in all of the biblical sources that we have examined.
This theological coherence appears in the form of three key themes,
two of them explicit and the other implicit.
First, our biblical sources are, from a religious perspective, un-
abashedly particularistic and Yahwistic. The common focus in each
text, from the Song of Deborah to the postexilic period, was religious
identity centered in the person of Yahweh. Participation in the com-
munity of the text required exclusive commitment to him as God,
along with a careful abstention from practices that appeared to place
this allegiance elsewhere. It can be averred that there were many other
perspectives in ancient Israel, but here our concern is with biblical the-

1. R. P. Knierim, The Task of Old Testament Theology: Substance, Method, and

Cases (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995) 1-7.
2. On the very different ethnic spirit that separates the Chronicles from Ezra/Ne-
hemiah, see R. B. Dillard, 2 Chronicles (WBC; Waco, Tex.: Word, 1987) 50.
 Summary and Conclusions 331

ology rather than with the ideologies that competed with it. So, while
religious pluralism finds a home in some modern readings of the He-
brew Bible, those readings are entirely foreign to the communities that
composed these texts.
Second, even in their most rigid form (i.e., Ezra), the ethnic
boundaries of these Yahwistic communities made room for the assimi-
lation of outsiders. This reflects the important place that religious as-
similation had for their God, who desired that all human beings enjoy
the benefits of covenant life. These theological perspectives are not
alone the parlance of the Hebrew Bible but also appear, no doubt be-
cause of its influence, in New Testament theology at many points, as is
so visible in Rom 3:6–7: “Consider Abraham: ‘He believed God, and it
was credited to him as righteousness.’ Understand, then, that those
who believe are children of Abraham.”
Finally, the supposed theological diversity that one observes in the
sources with respect to ethnic boundaries actually reflects, in a certain
sense, a kind of theological coherence. It supports the theological legiti-
macy of efforts to adjust the character and intensity of community
boundaries in response to both the threats and the opportunities that
are presented to the community of faith. But such efforts must neces-
sarily be circumscribed, as they were in all of our sources, by an un-
yielding allegiance to Yahweh and by a community life that reflects a
commitment to his revealed word. This reminds us again that theolog-
ical diversity is frequently a product of the more general and pervasive
truths that gave shape to the biblical materials. Although these general
truths implicitly guided the biblical authors, we are sometimes fortu-
nate, from our later theological and biblical purview, to lay them out
explicitly.
viii
 Index of Authors

A Bergsträsser, G. 110
A˙ituv, S. 99 Beyerle, S. 267–69
Aharoni, Y. 111, 300 Biran, A. 96
Ahlström, G. W. 9, 95, 97, 105, 109, Blackman, A. M. 77
112, 114 Blenkinsopp, J. 254, 293, 314
Albertz, R. 95, 111 Blum, E. 15
Albright, W. F. 6, 12, 107 Blundell, S. 66, 68
Alt, A. 6, 12, 233–34, 246, 295 Boecker, H. J. 240, 242
Anbar, M. 46–47 Bohannan, L. 20
Andersen, F. I. 127, 130, 136–38, 147, Boling, R. G. 111, 123
151, 171, 187, 189 Bonnard, P. E. 308, 311
Anderson, A. A. 178, 189, 253 Borger, R. 36, 247
Arnaud, D. 149 Bowra, C. M. 114
Arnold, P. 160 Braulik, G. 231, 242, 257, 265, 268
Astour, M. 149, 247 Brett, M. G. 1, 252, 316
Austin, M. M. 243 Breytenbach, A. 160
Auvray, P. 196, 199–200, 205, 209, Broadbent, M. 55
211 Brown, J. P. 24
Axelsson, L. E. 112 Brueggemann, W. 158
B Buchholz, J. 265, 273, 296
Baines, J. 77–78, 80 Budde, K. 116
Balcer, J. M. 60–61 Budge, E. A. W. 26, 29
Baldwin, B. 58 Buis, P. 231, 269–70
Baltzer, D. 305–6 Bultmann, C. 239, 241–43, 253–54,
Banks, M. 5 256, 273
Banton, M. 19 Burkert, W. 24, 56, 64, 67
Barnes, J. W. B. 77 Burney, C. F. 110, 116, 123
Barth, F. 3, 18 C
Barton, J. 170–74 Cardascia, G. 314
Batton, L. W. 293 Cardellini, I. 247
Bechmann, U. 112 Carr, D. M. 189
Beck, P. 141 Carrasco, D. 65
Becker, U. 118, 120 Carroll, R. P. 275, 277, 279
Begrich, J. 196 Cashmore, E. 2–3, 18
Bentzen, A. 174 Cauer, F. 7
Berghe, P. L. van den 19, 328 Cazelles, H. 274

333
334 Index of Authors

Chambers, H. E. 8, 121 Emerton, J. 141

Chaney, M. L. 7 Engels, F. 9
Charpin, D. 98 Eskenazi, T. C. 318
Childs, B. S. 8 Evans, J. A. S. 58
Chirichigno, G. C. 245 Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 21
Cholewinski, A. 301 Evelyn-White, H. G. 54
Clements, R. E. 195–97, 199, 201, F
205, 207–11 Faulkner, R. O. 109
Clines, D. J. A. 293 Fehling, D. 58–61, 74
Coogan, M. D. 12 Filippi, W. de 26
Cook, J. M. 7 Finkelstein, I. 9–10, 113
Cooke, G. A. 286, 299, 303–4 Finkelstein, J. J. 45–46
Coote, R. B. 95, 130 Fitzmyer, J. A. 38, 154
Cross, F. M. 6, 12, 111, 221, 226, 249, Fohrer, G. 7, 301–2
266, 269 Fornara, C. W. 57, 72
Crüsemann, F. 245, 316 Fortes, M. 21
D Foster, J. L. 79
Daniels, D. R. 156 Fox, R. 2
Davies, E. W. 196 Frandsen, P. J. 76
Davies, G. I. 127, 130, 132–33, 136– Frankena, R. 38
37, 143, 146, 156, 161, 189 Freedman, D. N. 111, 127, 130, 136–
Day, J. 276 38, 147, 151, 171, 187, 189,
Dever, W. G. 5, 12, 95, 141 249, 266, 269
Diebner, B.-J. 112 Frerichs, E. S. 5
Dietrich, M. 98 Friedman, J. 19
Dillard, R. B. 330 Fritz, V. 169
Dion, P. 264 G
Dossin, G. 98 Gadd, C. J. 32
Dothan, M. 176 Garbini, G. 112
Dothan, T. 176 Gardiner, A. H. 82, 103
Douglas, M. 244, 260 Garelli, P. 41
Drinkard, J. F. 149 Geertz, C. 19
Driver, S. R. 311–12 Gelb, I. J. 44
Du Buit, M. 258 Gerleman, G. 114
Duguid, I. M. 292, 295, 297 Gertner, M. 131
Duhm, B. 196, 199, 205, 209, 211, Gese, H. 296–97
314 Geus, C. H. J. de 7, 114
Dumézil, G. 69 Gibson, J. C. L. 57, 110, 113–14, 212,
E 235, 249, 266
Edelman, D. 3–5, 97, 105 Giveon, R. 106, 109, 248
Eichrodt, W. 286, 292, 299 Glock, A. 88
Eisenstat, S. N. 20 Godley, A. D. 57
Eissfeldt, O. 275 Gordon, M. M. 22
Ekholm, K. 19 Goss, K. 140
Ellinger, K. 301 Gosse, B. 170
Emberling, G. 4 Gottwald, N. K. 7, 9–10, 44, 117, 309
 Index of Authors 335

Gould, J. 64, 67 Huffmon, H. B. 147

Gray, G. B. 123, 205, 207, 211 Hyatt, J. P. 274–75, 278
Gray, J. 113, 116 I
Gray, M. P. 247 Irwin, H. I. 8
Grayson, A. K. 26, 30, 38, 41, 43, 48 Isaacs, H. R. 2, 19, 158–59
Grimm, W. 310–12 J
Grosby, S. 125 James, T. J. H. 204
Guthrie, W. K. C. 66 Japhet, S. 290–91, 293–95
H Jeremias, J. 127, 130, 133, 137, 147,
Hackett, J. A. 13 156
Haldar, A. 33 Johnson, J. H. 89–90
Hall, J. M. 14, 53–55 Jones, D. R. 260, 277–79, 302
Hallo, W. W. 204–5 Judd, E. P. 318
Halperin, D. J. 287 K
Halpern, B. 10, 94, 111, 114, 118, Kaiser, O. 196, 199, 208–9, 211, 256
229, 298 Kamp, K. A. 5, 266
Hamilton, J. M. 250 Kellerman, D. 239–40
Hammershaimb, E. 171 Kienitz, F. K. 90
Harden, D. 24 King, L. W. 26, 29
Harper, W. R. 136–38, 142, 147–48, Kitchen, K. A. 95, 203, 205–6
151, 154, 156, 170, 173–74, Klein, R. W. 285, 290
183, 186, 188–89 Knapp, A. B. 85
Hartog, F. 61–62, 64, 67, 69–70, 202 Knierim, R. P. 330
Hasel, M. G. 95, 97, 105 Knight, D. A. 12
Hayes, J. H. 9, 171, 174–75 Knight, G. A. F. 309
Hegyi, D. 60 Knoppers, G. N. 9, 211
Helck, W. 87, 100–101 Knudson, S. J. 4
Hendel, R. S. 132 Koch, R. 77
Herntrich, V. 291 Köckert, M. 159
Hertzberg, A. W. 111, 115–16 Kramer, S. N. 37
Hess, R. S. 175 Kraus, F. R. 46
Hestrin, R. 141 Kroll, P. W. 5
Hillers, D. 255 Kruger, P. A. 140
Hoffman, Y. 166 L
Hogbin, H. I. 21 Laato, A. 312
Høgenhaven, J. 210 Labuschagne, C. J. 268–69
Holladay, J. S. 12, 144–45 Landsberger, B. 46, 48–49
Holladay, W. L. 260, 274–75, 277–78, Larsen, M. T. 27, 43, 46
282, 302 Leclercq, J. 231, 269–70
Holt, E. K. 274 Lemaire, A. 112
Hoppe, L. J. 265, 273 Lemche, N. P. 9–10, 97–99, 102–4,
Hornblower, S. 52 107, 112, 117–19, 121, 135,
Horowitz, D. 22 145, 247–48
Houten, C. van 239, 241–42, 250, 252 Levenson, J. D. 299
How, W. W. 70 Levi, P. 60
Huber, F. 200 Levine, B. A. 250
336 Index of Authors

Levy-Feldblum, A. 246 McKenzie, S. L. 130

Lewis, T. J. 13, 111, 267 Meek, T. J. 252
Lichtheim, M. 77, 86, 88, 96, 204 Mendenhall, G. E. 7, 44, 117
Lind, M. C. 221 Meshel, Z. 141
Lindars, B. 110, 112–14, 116–17, 119, Meyenfeldt, F. H. von 207
122 Milgrom, J. 241
Linforth, I. M. 68 Miller, J. M. 8–9
Lipinski, É. 111 Miller, P. D. 221
Liverani, M. 25, 35–36, 41 Moor, J. C. de 267
Lloyd, A. B. 60 Moore, G. F. 110, 116
Lohfink, N. 161, 225, 227–29, 255, Moran, W. L. 98, 101–2, 258
257, 266 Moscati, S. 114
Long, C. H. 5 Mowinckel, S. 275, 294
Loprieno, A. 76 Mullen, E. T. 137, 144, 265, 272–73
Loretz, O. 98, 246–48 Müller, H.-P. 113, 119
Luckenbill, D. D. 26, 28, 30–32, 34– Murray, O. 24, 75
36, 39, 42, 203 N
Luke, J. T. 44 Naªaman, N. 98–99, 101–2, 119, 223
M Nassouhi, E. 44
Machinist, P. 119, 199–200, 210 Naveh, J. 96, 235
Maier, J. 37 Neef, H.-D. 113–14, 130, 133
Maier, W. A. 141 Nelson, R. D. 226
Malamat, A. 20, 44, 46 Neu, R. 123
Marello, P. 165 Neusner, J. 5
Margalit, B. 141 Nibbi, A. 96–99, 104
Margalit, O. 95–96, 107 Nicholson, E. W. 152–53, 156, 275,
Markoe, G. 24 278, 285, 302
Marti, K. 174 Nielsen, E. 225, 234, 257–58, 268–69
Marx, K. 9 North, C. R. 309–11, 313
Maspero, G. 79, 82 Noth, M. 14, 115, 119, 225
Mathys, H.-P. 119, 268 Nougayrol, J. 102
Mauchline, J. 132 Nukunya, G. K. 21
May, H. G. 277 Nyberg, H. S. 130
Mayes, A. D. H. 8, 157, 231, 233, 255, O
257–58, 260, 262, 264, 266, O’Brien, J. M. 270
268–69, 307 O’Connor, M. 112
Mays, J. L. 127, 130, 132, 134, 137– Oded, B. 32–33, 35–36
38, 142, 147, 149, 151, 154, Ollenburger, B. C. 221
162, 170, 172, 175, 178, 183– Olmstead, A. T. 26, 28
85, 187–88 Olyan, S. 141
Mazar, A. 9, 76 Olzak, S. 19
Mazar, B. 98, 135 Oppenheim, A. L. 30
McCarthy, D. J. 152 Orlinsky, H. M. 8, 309–10
McCown, C. C. 90 Otto, E. 245
McKane, W. 278 Otzen, B. 199
McKay, H. A. 305 Özgüç, T. 4
 Index of Authors 337

P Römer, T. 134, 161, 225–27, 289, 303,

Panitschek, P. 59 306
Panofsky, H. 58 Römer, W. H. 260
Parpola, S. 26, 38–41 Romerowski, S. 132
Parsons, T. 1 Rösel, H. N. 122
Parzen, H. 247 Rothschild, M. 239
Paul, S. 169–72, 174–75, 178–79, Roux, G. 29, 175
187–90, 193 Rowley, H. H. 313
Penglase, C. 56 Rudolph, W. 127, 131–33, 137, 156,
Penrose-Harland, J. 7 170, 186, 255, 275, 277, 279,
Perlitt, L. 152–53, 231–32, 236–38, 281, 292–93, 302
266 S
Pfeifer, G. 169, 190 Saggs, H. W. F. 179
Piepkorn, A. C. 36 Said, E. 6, 9
Pitard, W. T. 100–101 Sandman, M. 88
Porter, B. N. 38 Sasson, J. M. 281
Posener, G. 77 Sayce, A. H. 58
Pritchett, W. K. 59–61 Schmid, H. H. 11
Procksch, O. 197, 209, 211–12 Schmidt, B. B. 13, 235
Provan, I. 256 Schmidt, P. 240–41
Puech, E. 178 Schramm, B. 305, 315, 318
Pury, A. de 134 Seebass, H. 268
R Seitz, C. R. 278–79, 285
Rad, G. von 8, 14, 221, 235, 259, 268, Sethe, K. 87
309 Shils, E. 19
Rainey, A. F. 99, 101–2, 104–5, Simpson, W. K. 204–5
135 Skjeggestad, M. 1
Raitt, T. M. 279–80, 285 Smend, R. 115
Read, K. A. 65 Smith, A. D. 48–49
Reade, J. 30 Smith, D. 293
Redford, D. B. 25, 81, 84–85, 87–90, Smith, D. L. 244, 285, 293, 314
100, 102–3, 109, 176, 189, Smith, G. 171
203–6, 247–48 Smith, J. Z. 5, 64
Reimer, H. 170, 172, 175, 177, 182– Smith, M. 143, 145, 252
83, 185–86, 189 Smith, M. S. 12, 141, 143
Rendtorff, R. 15 Smith, S. 98
Reventlow, H. 170, 172 Smith, W. R. 20
Revillout, E. 90 Smith-Christopher, D. L. 318
Richter, W. 8, 118, 120 Snaith, N. H. 127, 310
Riggs, F. W. 2–3, 17–18, 158 Snijders, L. A. 146
Roberts, H. C. 186 Snowden, F. M. 62, 202
Robertson, D. A. 111, 269 Soggin, J. A. 9, 110–12, 116, 123, 195,
Rogers, J. S. 200 223, 247, 286, 313
Rogerson, J. W. 83 Sollors, W. 18
Röllig, W. 44 Sparks, K. L. 117, 244
Rollinger, R. 59–60 Spek, R. J. Van der 28
338 Index of Authors

Spiegelberg, W. 90 Weinfeld, M. 39–40, 128, 225, 237,

Spina, F. A. 248 241, 245
Stager, L. E. 95–97, 117 Weippert, M. 10, 109, 248
Steinmann, A. E. 171, 174–75 Weiser, A. 116, 189, 275, 302
Stohlmann, S. 223 Weiser, D. A. 113
Streck, A. 36 Wells, J. 70
Stuart, D. K. 111, 127, 130, 136–37, Wente, E. F. 96
171 Wessels, W. J. 279
T West, M. L. 54–55, 71, 262
Thiel, W. 278, 302 Westenholz, J. G. 149
Thompson, H. O. 175, 179 Westermann, C. 180, 189, 192–93,
Thompson, J. A. 140, 280 217, 247, 255, 281, 289, 308,
Thompson, R. H. 5, 17, 251 310–12
Thompson, T. L. 11 Wevers, J. W. 286, 299, 301, 303
Tigay, J. H. 144, 183, 224 Whitt, W. D. 130–31, 133, 137–41,
Toorn, K. van der 108–9 143
Torrey, C. C. 293 Whybray, R. N. 308–12
Trigger, B. G. 6 Wifall, W. R. 247
Tuell, S. 297, 299–300 Wiggins, S. A. 12, 141–42
Turner, V. 258 Wildberger, H. 195–97, 199, 205,
V 208–9, 211
Van Groningen, B. A. 71 Williams, R. J. 248
Van Houten, C. 251 Williamson, H. G. M. 1, 189
Van Seters, J. 11, 15, 33, 73, 157, 159, Wilson, J. A. 85, 203
180, 189, 191, 193, 226–27, Wilson, R. R. 44, 71, 187
230, 232, 246–47, 249–50, Wilson, V. 141
262, 270, 273, 281, 289–90, Wiseman, D. J. 38, 40
300, 303, 306–8, 311–12, 316 Wolff, H. W. 127, 130–33, 137, 142–
Vaux, R. de 7–8, 111, 113, 224, 240– 44, 149, 151, 154, 158, 161–62,
41, 266 169–70, 172, 174–75, 178, 183,
Vermes, G. 302 186–89, 207–8
Vernes, M. 110–11 Würthwein, E. 172
Vidal-Naquet, P. 243 Y
Vollmer, J. 131–32, 160–62, 169, 183, Yamauchi, E. M. 314
210 Yoffee, N. 5, 266
W Yurco, F. J. 95, 97, 109
Wäfler, M. 30, 266 Z
Waldbaum, J. C. 56 Zadok, R. 33
Wallerstein, I. 19–21, 43, 49, 219, Zayadine, F. 179
221, 224 Zevit, Z. 141
Waltke, B. K. 112 Zimmerli, W. 286, 292, 296–97, 299,
Ward, W. W. 106 301, 303–4
Watanabe, K. 38, 40–41
 Index of Scripture

Scripture is indexed according to Hebrew chapter and verse divisions.

Genesis Genesis (cont.) Leviticus (cont.)

10 207, 316 49 268 17:12 252
10:21–25 316 49:1–28 299 17:13 252
10:22 215 50:24 227 17:14–16 238
12 306, 309, 312 Exodus 17:15 252
12:1–3 312 1–10 247 18:24 316
12:1–9 311 1:2–4 299 18:26 252
12:3 312 1:15–19 247 19:34 252
12:6 157 2:6–13 247 20:2 252
14 247 2:11 246 22:8 238
14:13 247 3 230 22:10–13 252
15 289, 309 3:13–16 230 22:18 252
15:7 306 3:18 247 22:25 301
17 282 5:3 247 24:16 252
19 178–80 7:16 247 25:23 252
23 253 9:1 247 25:39 250
23:4 251, 253 9:13 247 25:44–45 251, 316
27–40 270 10:3 247 25:45 252
28:1–2 133 12:45 253 25:47 251–52
28:6–9 133 12:48 282 26:42–45 170
29:11 133 20:22–23:33 245 35:46 250
34 281 20:25 157 Numbers
35 209 21 245–46 1 299
35:22–26 299 21:1–11 245 14 227
37–50 188, 247 21:6 250 32 300
38 149, 179–80, 193, 22:31 238 32:11 227
270 32 227 34 300
39:14 247 32:13 227 34:2–12 231
39:17 247 33:1 227 35:15 253
40:15 247 Leviticus Deuteronomy
41:12 247 16:29 252 1–3 262
43:32 247 17:7 252 1–4 225–26, 254, 262
48–49 270 17:10 252 1:7 231, 262

339
340 Index of Scripture

Deuteronomy (cont.) Deuteronomy (cont.) Deuteronomy (cont.)

1:27–28 184 12:31 262 23:20–21 237
2 178–79, 233 12:32 232 23:23 232
2:10–23 264 13:6 236 24:8 232
3:9–11 264 13:12–16 232 24:14 237
4:47 184 13:17 228 26 225
5–8 228 14:1 262, 264, 267 26:3–5 228
5–11 225–28, 236, 14:3 260 26:5–9 307–8
257 14:3–21 266 26:15 228
5–26 226 14:3ff. 262 26:16 232
5:1–3 264 14:21 238–40, 242, 27–30 225
5:12–15 266 245 27–34 226
6 225 15 245, 248–49 27:11–14 299
6:3 230 15:1–3 249 27:12 157
6:10 230–31 15:1–18 245, 253 27:15 260
6:10–11 264 15:2 237–238 30:1–6 280
6:20–24 8 15:2ff. 236 30:6 281
7 281 15:3 237 31–34 225
7:1–2 234, 257 15:7 232, 238 31:4 184
7:1–3 235, 257, 263 15:12 246 31:16 153
7:1–5 234, 257 15:12–18 238, 249 31:20 153
7:4–5 234, 257 16:9–11 240 32 270
7:12 230 16:11–14 240 33 167, 215, 237, 267,
7:25 260 16:12 232 272, 284, 297,
8:12–14 163 16:18 265 326–27
8:18 170, 230 17 273 33:1–5 268
8:19–20 232, 261 17:10 232 33:5 268
9:1–2 258 17:14–21 265 33:7 268
9:5 230 17:15 237 33:8–10 269
9:27 227 18:6 240 33:11 269
10:15 230 18:9–14 260, 267 33:13–17 270
10:16 281 19:8 228 33:18–23 271
10:18 255 19:17 265 33:24 270
10:19 255 20:1 259 33:26 268
10:22 230 20:10–18 258 33:26–29 268
11:14 232 20:17–18 259 34 270
11:24 231 21 258 34:4 227
11:29–30 157 21:6–17 265 Joshua
12–18 225 21:10–14 258 3:10 184
12–26 225–27, 231 22:5 260 4:7 170
12:1 228, 232 23 235, 257, 301 7:11 153
12:1–14 266 23:3 256 13–19 300
12:16 242 23:4 255 13–22 262
12:19 232 23:4–5 254, 256 13:1–7 262
12:28 232 23:4–8 253, 257 14–19 300
12:29–31 259 23:17–18 260, 262 15 300
 Index of Scripture 341

Joshua (cont.) 2 Kings (cont.) Isaiah (cont.)

18:3 230 14:9 184 19:2–4 205
24:2–13 8 16:7ff. 151 19:5–10 205
24:8 184 17:13–15 170 19:11–14 205
24:12 184 22 274 19:14 206
24:18 184 25:20–21 286 19:15 205
Judges Isaiah 20 195, 203, 205
1:1–2:5 300 1:1–3 195 22:1–25 195
2:1–5 228 1:10–17 195 23:1–18 170
2:11 153 1:10–2:1 195 23:8–11 135
2:20 153 1:21–26 211 28:21 211
2:22–3:4 300 1:26 211 28–32 195
3:5 236, 273 2:5–4:1 195 29:1 211
4 118 2:12 200 30–31 210
4:2 118 2:13 184 30:1 209
4:23–24 118 5:1–24 195 30:1–5 208, 210
5 109, 121, 284 5:8–24 201 30:3 208
5:7 110 6 201 31:1 209
5:10–11 122 6:1 200 31:1–3 208, 210
5:14 110 6:1–11 195 40–55 305
9:22 130 6:9–13 311 41:8 306, 312
11:21–22 184 6:11–13 290 41:8–10 306, 309
12:6 249 7:17 212 42 310
15–19 299 8:1–18 195 42:4 311
1 Samuel 9:1–10:15 195 42:6 310
4:6–9 247 9:4 208 42:6–7 309, 314
8 273 9:6 211 42:18–25 311
13:3 247 9:14 207 44:1–4 312
13:7 247 9:18–20 196, 198 44:5 309, 312–14,
13:19 247 9:20 188 317
14:11 247 10:1–4 201 49 310
14:21 247 10:5–9 199 49:1–6 309, 314
29:3 247 10:5–15 199, 201–2 49:6 310–11
2 Samuel 10:9 199 49:6–7 311
5:17–25 211 10:10–12 199 49:16 311
7:9 312 10:12 200 50:6 202
8:13 312 10:13 200 51:1 306
22–23 270 10:13–15 199 51:1–2 306, 308
1 Kings 11:14 178–79 51:1–3 306, 309
1:47 312 14:24–32 195 51:2 306
7:45 202 17:1–14 195 51:3 306, 309
11:1–2 236, 273 18 195, 205 51:7 308
11:11 153 18:1–6 202, 204 52:4 307
15:25 197 19:1–4 205 54:1 306
2 Kings 19:1–15 204, 208 54:1–3 306, 309
1:2 143 19:2 206 54:3 306
342 Index of Scripture

Isaiah (cont.) Jeremiah (cont.) Ezekiel (cont.)

56:3–7 317 24:9–10 279 11:22–25 286–87
56:6–8 305 25:9 207 13 291, 295
Jeremiah 25:21 179 13:1–23 291
1:10 278 26:24 274 13:8–9 291, 296
1:11–13 278 27:7 279 13:9 291–92, 295–96
1:15 207 27:16–17 279 14:1 295
2:2 304 28:4 278 16:29 135
2:2–8 303 29:1 295 16:60–61 170
2:4 277 29:3 274 17 278
2:5 275 29:4–7 279 17:2 135
2:23 275 29:22 278 17:11–21 153
2:36 275 31:31–34 302–3, 308 17:20 153
3:16 170 32:37–41 303 17:9 184
5:19 275 33:26 227, 289 19 278
5:20 277 34 249 20 278, 303, 305,
7:1–15 275 34:15 250 307–8, 314
7:1–8:3 275 35:1–11 240 20:5 304
7:4–11 274 36:30–31 278 20:5–9 303
7:12 276 37 279 20:103 295
7:12–20 274, 277 37:21 278 20:12–20 266
7:14–15 276 38:14–28 278–79 20:18–26 303
7:15 276 39:16 278 20:27–29 303
7:16–20 260 40:1 278 20:30–38 303
9:4 237 44 260 20:36–38 287
9:24–25 280, 282 44:15–19 260 20:38 304
9:25 280–81 44:27 278 20:40–44 304
9:26 281 49:1–3 256 25 170
10:16 277 49:3 178 25–28 300
10:25 277 Ezekiel 25–32 286
12:6 237 1–24 286 26–29 170
14:11 278 4:12–15 238 26:21 300
14:21 170 7:26 295 28 281
17:19–27 278 8–11 286 31 281
17:21–27 304 8:1–11:25 286 32 281
21:10 278 8:11 295 33 304
22:19 278 11 289, 291, 295 33–48 286
22:26 278 11:1 287 33:23 295
22:30 292 11:1–13 286–87 33:23–24 286, 288
23:18 292 11:1–25 286, 289 33:24 289–91, 306
23:34–40 278 11:9–11 287 35 170, 291
23:35 237 11:10–11 287 36 303–4
24 278–80 11:14–15 291 36:1–7 291
24:1–5 279 11:14–21 286–87, 36:16–38 302–3
24:6–7 279 315 40–48 296, 301–2
24:8 279 11:16–21 288 40:1–37 296
 Index of Scripture 343

Ezekiel (cont.) Hosea (cont.) Hosea (cont.)

40:47–49 296 2:16–25 156 8:7 168
41:1–15a 296 2:17 162 8:12 148
41:15b–21 297 2:21 155 8:15 154
42:15–20 296 2:22 147 9:1–2 138
43:1–11 296 2:24 138 9:1–3 128, 158–59
43:13–27 297 3:3 137–38 9:3 159, 190–91
44:4–5 297 3:13 168 9:4 153–54
44:6–9 300–301 4:1 147, 154 9:8 168
44:6–16 301 4:1ff. 159 9:10 143, 160, 162,
44:31 238 4:1–3 146–48 232, 304
46:1 266 4:1–14 146, 150 10:1 163
47–48 300, 319 4:1–19 128, 196 10:2 155
47:13–48:29 299 4:3 147–48 10:3 148
47:22–23 300–301 4:4–10 147–48 10:4 152, 154
48:1–29 297–98 4:4–14 146 10:7 148
48:6–31 297 4:5 148 10:15 148
48:30–35 297–99 4:6 147–48 11:3 147
Hosea 4:7 155, 163 11:6 155
1:4 148, 155 4:10 147 11:9 131
1:5 155 4:11–14 147, 149 12:1 130–31
1:10–17 196 4:14 150 12:1–14 128–29, 136
2 139–40, 143, 147, 5:1 148 12:2 151–52, 154
149, 158 5:4 147 12:2–3 134
2:1 131 5:7 144 12:3 130
2:1ff. 154 5:9 166 12:3ff. 130
2:4 137, 143, 150, 154 5:16 166 12:4–7 130, 132
2:4ff. 159 6:3 147 12:4 130–31
2:4–7 137–39 6:6 147 12:5 130–31
2:4–11 139 6:7 152–53 12:5–7 131
2:4–14 150 6:8 153, 168 12:6 131
2:4–17 136, 142, 146 6:9 153 12:6–7 131
2:4–25 128 7:2 154, 168 12:7 131
2:5 137 7:3–7 148 12:8 135
2:7 137, 139 7:5 168 12:8–9 136
2:8–9 137–39, 155 7:8–9 220 12:9 135
2:10–11 137–39 7:8–13 128, 144, 150, 12:10 164
2:10 137, 139 158, 209 12:11–12 132
2:11 137–38, 148 7:9 151, 168 12:12 192
2:12–14 137–39 7:13 151, 153, 155 12:13 132–33
2:12 139 7:13–15 155 12:13–14 132–33
2:13–15 137 7:14 138 12:14 132–33
2:15 137, 139, 143 7:16 155, 168 13:10–11 148, 265
2:16 137 8:1 152–54 13:5 304
2:16–17 139, 166 8:2 147 13:5–6 162
2:16–22 140 8:4 148 13:6 162
344 Index of Scripture

Hosea (cont.) Amos (cont.) Lamentations (cont.)

14:9 150 6:6 188, 191 5:1–14 291
Joel 7 169 Daniel
4:4ff. 170 7:1–9:4 189 11:41 179
Amos 7:7–8 189 Ezra
1–2 169 7:9–17 189 2 292
1:1–2 169 7:10–17 189, 192 2:1 293
1:3–2:16 169, 186–87 7:16 191 2:1–2 293
1:5 172, 177 8:4–14 189 2:59–62 294
1:6 181 9 169 2:61–63 293
1:9 170 9:5–6 169 6:19–21 295, 318
1:9–11 169, 237 9:7 172, 176, 180, 7:1 293
1:11 170 187, 263 8:28 230
1:13 185 9:11–15 169 8:33 293
1:13–15 182 Obadiah 9:1–2 294, 318
1:15 178 10–14 170 9:3 202
2:1–3 182 Jonah 9:11–12 294
2:4–5 169 1:9 247 10:11 230
2:6 181 Zephaniah Nehemiah
2:6–8 181 1:11 135 3:4 293
2:6–16 181–82, 187 Zechariah 3:21 293
2:7 181 14:17 207 5 250
2:8 181 Psalms 7 292
2:9 183–84, 234 21:4 312 7:5 293
2:9–10 183–85 39:13 253 7:5–6 293
2:9–12 184 44 290 7:63–65 293
2:10 183–84 44:17–19 290 13 254
2:10–12 183–84 72 312 13:1–3 254
2:11–12 183 80 189 13:4–9 301
2:14–16 181 80:8 184 13:25 202
3:1–2 169 81 146, 189 13:29 170
3:7 169 81:10 146 1 Chronicles
4:10 172 83 178 2:1–2 299
4:13 169 83:6–8 178 16:15 170
5:4–5 188 Job 24:10 293
5:5 188 18:16 184 25:15 253
5:8–9 169 Lamentations 2 Chronicles
5:18–27 187 1 255–56 13:12 230
5:25–27 169 1:3–4 291 23:1 170
6 169 1:9–10 255 28:9 230
6:1 186–87 1:10 254–56, 291 29:5 230
6:1–7 186–87, 189 1:17 291
6:2 172, 186–87 2:20 291
6:4–6 187 4:10 291 Romans
6:5 193 4:21–22 170 3:6–7 331