The Good and Evil Serpent (114 page)

Those who make the Lord and the Most High their dwelling place “shall tread on the cobra” (Ps 91:13).
¹⁴³
This passage in Psalm 91 is significant for a better understanding of ophidian vocabulary. Note the comparison of the Hebrew and Greek:

You shall tread upon the lion [Gk “asp,” aoniSa] and the cobra [
,
],

The young lion and dragon [
] you shall trample underfoot.

[Ps 91:13]

The Greek translators apparently did not know what]
denoted, choosing
in Psalm 58[7]:4,
in Psalm 91:13 as well as Deuteronomy 32:33, and
in Job 20:16.
¹⁴⁴

While
gives us
ptn
, it is unlikely that it explains the Greek “Python” (n-uGcov).
¹⁴⁵
The Greek had a separate history; for example, Apollo defeated the Python at Delphi.

The present comparison discloses not only the broader vocabulary for snakes and serpents in Greek over Hebrew, but also the creativity of the translator and probably not a putative divergent Hebrew manuscript behind the Greek. The parallel to Hebrew
ptn
is the Ugaritic
btn;
it also denotes a certain type of poisonous snake.
¹⁴⁶
Perhaps
ptn
originated and was pronounced
pthn
to approximate the hissing of a snake.

Iconographers focusing on this passage usually depict a cobra or perhaps a basilisk (“little king”).
¹⁴⁷
Not necessarily negative, and perhaps neutral and even positive, is Isaiah’s prophecy of the child who will be safe with, or playing near, the cobra (Isa 11:8). According to Deuteronomy 32:33, perverse children are like cobras’ venom. The term]nQ probably represented the uraeus;
¹⁴⁸
and scarabs with a uraeus have been discovered at Lachish, Beth-El, Beth Shan, Ashdod, Tel el-Ajjul, and elsewhere in ancient Palestine, usually on the coast or in Egyptian garrison outposts.
¹⁴⁹

Only the plural form,
, appears in the Qumran Scrolls. In the
Thanksgiving Hymns
it is chosen to represent the poison spewed out by the men of Belial (1QH
^a
13.27 [Sukenik 5]). In 4Q381 Frg. 26.1, it appears with D’3’3n, “dragons,” but the meaning is lost since the fragment provides no context. The plural noun appears three times in the
Damascus Document
. In CD MS A 8.10, the author quotes Deuteronomy 32:33: “The poison of serpents [is] their wine and the head of asps [is] cruel,” then explains its meaning: “‘The serpents’ are the kings of the peoples and ‘their wine’ is their ways, and ‘the head of the asps’ is the head of the kings of Greece, who will come to do vengeance among them.”
¹⁵⁰
In CD MS B 19.22–23, Deuteronomy 32:33 receives a similar interpretation. In both passages, serpent imagery is used to bring out the negative aspects of the Greek invaders of the Land and in CD 19 the unfaithful in Judea (cf. “the princes of Judah” in CD 19.15).

9.

“pit viper”

Isa 14:29

P for Israel

The noun
appears only in Isaiah 14:29 in which it is one of the serpents or vipers that plague the Philistines on behalf of Israel.
¹⁵¹
The noun may also denote the legendary cockatrice or basilisk.
¹⁵²
No help in discerning the type of snake imagined by Isaiah is provided by the Greek translator who renders
(“pit viper”) as “the young of asps” (EKyova aaniScov). Perhaps
sph’
is also onomatopoeic; it does sound like a hissing snake, especially when the plosive
and laryngeal are accented.