The Good and Evil Serpent (171 page)

53
. The poetic structure of verse 23[22] is a bicolon, 2 + 2, preceded by an introduction: (The Lord said) + 2 (I will bring back from the dragon-snake) +3 (I will bring back from the depths of the sea). For a seminal study of Canaanite rhythm, see F. M. Cross, “Note on a Canaanite Psalm in the Old Testament,”
BASOR
117 (1950) 19–21.

54
. Psalm 68 seems to presuppose a worship of some god, perhaps originally Baal (now edited to YHWH) on Mount Bashan. Mowinckel correctly perceived that Ps 68, in its present form, reflects the Jerusalem cult, but opined that it reflected “an old originally North Israelite psalm.” See Mowinckel,
The Psalms in Israel’s Worship
, 2 vols., trans. D. R. Ap-Thomas (Oxford, 1962) vol. 2, pp. 152–53.

55
. Terrien,
Psalms
, p. 486.

56
. Perhaps the editor of Ps 68 omitted an earlier “in it” or “on Bashan” in the last colon of verse 17.

57
. M. Noth,
Überlieferungsgeschichtliche Studien
(Saale, 1943).

58
. E. W. Nicholson,
Deuteronomy and Tradition
(Philadelphia, 1967); M. Weinfeld,
Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School
(Oxford, 1972); see especially “The Centralization of Worship—The Chosen Place and the ‘Name’ Theology,” pp. 324–26.

59
. See esp. F. M. Cross,
Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic
(Cambridge, Mass., 1973) pp. 274–89. Cross dates “the fundamental composition of the Deuteronomistic history in the eighteenth year of [King] Josiah,” that is, “to the late Kingdom.” He makes room for “only minor modification by a member of the Deuteronomistic school in the Exile” (p. 289).

60
. J. J. M. Roberts,
The Bible and the Ancient Near East: Collected Essays
(Winona Lake, Ind., 2002) p. 343.

61
. A. A. Anderson,
Psalms
(London, 1972) vol. 1, p. 482.

62
. Roberts,
The Bible and the Ancient Near East
, p. 345.

63
. Roberts argues that verse 30 must date “after Solomon’s construction of that edifice” (i.e., the Temple). Roberts,
The Bible and the Ancient Near East
, p. 344.

64
. H. Gunkel,
Die Psalmen
(Göttingen, 1929 [4th ed.], 1968 [5th ed.]) ad loc.

65
. M. Dahood,
Psalms II: 51–100
(Anchor Yale Bible; Garden City, N.Y., 1968; rpt. New Haven) p. 131.

66
. Dahood,
Psalms II
, p. 145.

67
. The noun
is the feminine plural of
, “abyss,” “deep,” or “depths.” See Isa 44:27.

68
. Mowinckel,
The Psalms in Israel’s Worship
, vol. 1, p. 5.

69
. See esp. H.-J. Kraus,
Psalms 60–150
, p. 48.

70
. S. Mowinckel claimed that Ps 68 is essentially a unity. See Mowinckel’s disagreement with Albright in
Der achtundsechzigste Psalm
(Oslo, 1953); esp. see pp. 1–78. In the early sixties, F. M. Cross followed his teacher, Albright: “Apparently each couplet is the
incipit
of a longer liturgical piece.” See Cross, “The Divine Warrior in Israel’s Early Cult,” in
Biblical Motifs
, ed. A. Altmann (Cambridge, Mass., 1966) pp. 11–30; the quotation is from p. 25. Anderson finds Albright’s atomistic approach “rather unlikely.” He finds that Ps 68 does not fit the major psalm-types, although it is close to the
Gattung
of Hymns. He labels Ps 68 “A Song of Procession.” Anderson,
Psalms
, vol. 1, p. 481.

71
. See P. D. Miller: “The possibility of an older unified poem underlying this one cannot be completely denied, but the present state of the text points much more clearly to a piecing together of isolated bits of poetry or
incipits.”
Miller leans toward Albright (“various parts of this psalm were not originally connected”), but judges that Albright has atomized this psalm too severely. See P. D. Miller,
The Divine Warrior in Early Israel
(Cambridge, Mass., 1973) p. 103.

72
. Terrien,
Psalms
, p. 489. For the form and structure of Ps 68, according to Terrien, see the diagram on p. 490.

73
. Roberts,
The Bible and the Ancient Near East
, p. 345.

74
. Ibid.

75
. Mowinckel,
The Psalms in Israel’s Worship
, vol. 1, pp. 5, 11, 125, 170; vol. 2, pp. 152–53.

76
. R. H. Charles misled scholars by emending, without manuscript support, the conclusion of
The Parables of Enoch
, as I have frequently pointed out. See
OTP
1, ad loc.

77
. S. A. Geller takes
“hr Thm,”
to mean “O mighty mountains.” See Geller,
Parallelism in Early Biblical Poetry
(Missoula, Mont., 1979) p. 213. Also see D. Winton Thomas, “A Consideration of Some Unusual Ways of Expressing the Superlative in Hebrew,”
VT
3 (1953) 209–24.

78
. Kraus,
Psalms 60–150
, p. 55.

79
. Although A. A. Anderson prefers the rendering “I will bring them back from Bashan,” he understands that God’s enemies are to be brought to punishment from any place in which they may have fled. See Anderson,
Psalms
, vol. 1, p. 494. One should note that Anderson was constrained to provide commentary on an established text, the RSV. In
Psalms 51–100
, Tate draws attention to a dissertation that contains the argument that God shall bring his enemies back from anywhere they may be; see J. P. LePeau, “Psalm 68: An Exegetical and Theological Study” (PhD diss., University of Iowa, 1981).

80
. These lines represent a broken construct chain so that the meaning may be the following: “I muzzled the Serpent of the Deep Sea.” This rendering explicates the meaning I consider intended by the author.

81
. After completing my study of Psalm 68, I found Miller’s arguments in his well-known monograph,
The Divine Warrior in Early Israel;
cf. p. 110 (italics mine).

82
. For the text, see A. Herder, ed.,
Corpus des Tablettes en cuneiform alphabétiques
(Paris, 1963) p. 17.

83
. See Miller, “Two Critical Note on Psalm 68 and Deuteronomy 33,”
HTR
57 (1964) 240; and Miller,
The Divine Warrior in Early Israel
, p. 111. Contrast Roberts’ rendering (he attaches the
mem
in colon one to the end of ‘37N, as an enclitic, and takes the verb to be a hiphil): “The Lord said, “I will repulse the Serpent, / I will muzzle the depths of the Sea” (Roberts,
The Bible and the Ancient Near East
, p. 344).

84
. Dahood, “Mismär ‘Muzzle’ in Job 7:12,”
JBL
80 (1961) 270–71.

85
. The probability that
smr
meant “muzzle”—esp. in Job 8:12—should not lead to the far more speculative suggestion that
sbm
meant “muzzle” also, let alone in biblical Hebrew. In Job 8, the clause “set a guard over me” is distinct from the idea “place a muzzle on me.” The verb
sbr
appears in a negative sense in Job 10:14.

86
. See, e.g., Miller,
The Divine Warrior in Early Israel
, pp. 102–13; and Roberts,
The Bible and the Ancient Near East
, p. 344 (in which Roberts argues convincingly for archaic linguistic features and mythological elements that point to many contacts with the Baal myth).

87
. Miller,
The Divine Warrior in Early Israel
, p. 111.

88
. After I had completed this work, I discovered Albright’s study. He opined, “It is likely that the place-name ‘Bashan’ had something to do with vipers originally.” He did not offer further speculation. See Albright,
HUCA
23 (1950–1951) part 1, p. 27.

89
. KBL, 1. 165.

90
.
. See A. Sperber,
The Bible in Aramaic: The Pentateuch
(Leiden, New York, 1992) 1.351.

91
. The Samaritan Pentateuch is similar to the BHS, except the word for “cub” (73) is written without the medial vowel letter
(wäw)
, and the conjunction
(wäw)
is placed before the following verb (“and he shall leap”). When we come to the
maqqeph
after the |ö, this is a Masoretic nuance that does not appear in pre-Masoretic manuscripts or Samaritan manuscripts. See A. Freiherrn von Gall, ed.,
Der Hebräische Pentateuch der Samaritaner
(Giessen, 1918) vol. 5, p. 436.

92
. It is unlikely that the translators of the LXX would preserve the name of the serpent, since they tend to omit the name of Leviathan or Rahab (see Job 9:13, Isa 51:9, Ps 74[73]:15 Codex Vaticanus). See Stallman in
Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis
3.87.

93
. Albright,
HUCA
23 (1950–1951) part 1, p. 27.

94
. I would have been spared months of research if I had seen this article before the present work had been completed.

95
. F. M. Cross and D. N. Freedman, “The Blessing of Moses,”
JBL
67 (September 1948) 191–210; the quotation is from p. 195.

96
. Ibid., p. 208.

97
. Recall the introductory comment that “P” denote a positive symbolic meaning.

98
. I know of no text in which
(see the plural in Ex 16:20) means “serpent,” although it can also mean “scarlet stuff” (Isa 1:18; cf. Lam 4:5). See KBL, 4.170102; E. Klein,
A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language
(New York, 1987) p. 694; and Sokoloff,
A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic
, p. 577. The Syriac noun
means “worm,” “murex,” “firefly,” and “larva.” In the Qumran Scrolls,
often means “scarlet” (4Q179 Frag. 1 2.12; 1Q19 10.10), but in 1QH 19.12 we find “the worms of the dead” (
) and in 11Q10,
Targum of Job
, we may have “wo[rm]” (
). For a discussion of the symbolic relation of “serpent” and “worm,” see Küster,
Die Schlange
, pp. 30–31, 63.