The Good and Evil Serpent (107 page)

The most help in comprehending
as having a second meaning, “dragon-snake,” comes from cognate languages.
³⁶
The Ugaritic triliteral root
b th
n
³⁷
(btn)
and the Akkadian
basmu
are cognate to the Hebrew triliteral
b sh n
and the Aramai
n
. These terms are equal to the Arabic
batan.
³⁸
All these nouns denote some type of “dragon” or “snake.” Koehler and Baumgartner (et al.) indicate that the Hebrew
denotes a type of serpent similar to
, “cobra.”
³⁹
As already intimated, the key to the Hebrew may now be found in the Ugaritic
btn
, which is a type of serpent akin to
, “dragon.”
⁴⁰

This research leads us to a well-known vexing problem in Psalm 68:23[22]. Here is the usual translation:

The Lord said, “I will bring back from Bashan,

I will bring [them] back from the depths of the sea.”
⁴¹

The translation is far from lucid and transparent.

Long ago, W. F. Albright contended that Psalm 68:23[22] is a passage with at least one word missing.
⁴²
He restored the second colon as follows:

The bicolon thus means:

YHWH said,

From

    I return from destroying the Sea!

This meaning depends on the presupposition or perception:

• that Psalm 68 is a catalogue of the beginnings of poems
  
• that verse 23(22) is the
  incipit
  of a poem
  
• that one cannot appeal to a general context for this verse
  
• that a word has been lost
  
• that this word is
  
• that the Psalm is to be interpreted in light of south Canaanite, especially Uga-ritic poems
  ⁴³
  
• and that the verb
  is a Qal, “I will return,” and not a Hiphil, “I will bring back” (this seems to demand an emendation from 2’V)K to
  ⁴⁴
  

Most drastic, as Albright admitted, is the emendation of
. The change of the
lamed
to a
mem
is extreme. It is an emendation “for which no similarity of form or mechanical error of a copyist can be adduced.”
⁴⁵
This admission reveals that perhaps there may be a less drastic solution to this verse.
⁴⁶
Moreover, Albright claimed that one should not appeal to context, in rendering this verse, since Psalm 68 is basically a catalogue containing
incipits
from early Canaanite or Hebrew poems.

What seems persuasive now, so many years after Albright’s ingenious hypothesis? It appears obvious that the Ugaritic language and Canaanite myths are essential in understanding the Psalms, that the meter demands restoring a word in colon one, and that this restoration must be in line with the synonymous
parallelismus membrorum
of the bicolon so that this restoration is harmonious with
“from the depths of
the sea,” or some similar understanding, as in Albright’s restoration and rendering.

Albright argued that we “must almost certainly insert
here in order to complete both sense and metric form.” These three consonants were presumably lost “by a combination of vertical haplography and
homoioarkton.”
⁴⁷
Most important, Albright rightly perceived that]? denoted a serpent in verse 23(22). He was the first scholar to argue that this noun must mean a serpent, and he derived this meaning from an intimate understanding of Akkadian, Syrian Arabic, and especially Ugaritic.
⁴⁸

Does “Bashan” mean a type of serpent or snake? It is now certain that “Bashan” means “serpent” in Northwest Semitics (including Akkadian, Ugaritic, Hebrew, Aramaic, and related dialects)
⁴⁹
because of a reading in the Ugaritic text RS 15.134. This mythological text presents a discussion between Baal and Anat after their victory over the dragon Tannin. In line six we find
hr bsnm
,
⁵⁰
which means “the hole (or den) of snakes.”
⁵¹
C. Virolleaud took
hr bsnm
to mean “trou de vipères” (“cave of vipers”) and drew attention to the famous
in Isaiah 11:8, which denotes “the den of a cobra.”