Memories of Amalek (4Q252 4:1–3): the Imprecatory Function of the Edomite Genealogy in the Dead Sea Scrolls

Memories of Amalek (4Q252 4:1–3): The Imprecatory Function of the Edomite Genealogy in the Dead Sea Scrolls Kipp Davis Introduction1 The so-called Commentary on Genesis A from Qumran Cave 4 was edited by George J. Brooke and published in volume 22 of the Discoveries of the Judaean Desert series in 1996.2 The whole manuscript reads partly as a commentary on a series of pericopae and texts known from the biblical book of Genesis, partly as a “reworking” of several of these texts, and partly as an eschatological prediction of the last days. Near the end of Brooke’s reconstructed work (col. 4) there is a recounting of at least part of the Edomite genealogy from Gen 36 which includes an intriguing comment about the ominous future: 1. Timnah was a concubine of Eliphaz, Esau’s son; she bore Amalek to him, he whom 2. Saul def[eated.] Just as he said to Moses, “In the last days, you will blot out the remembrance of Amalek 3. from under heaven.” This pesher is then followed by a citation of Gen 49:3–4—Jacob’s testimony for Reuben—in lines 3–5, and then 49:10—Jacob’s testimony for Judah—in the following column, Brooke’s reconstructed col. 5. Jacob’s prognostications about the last days (49:1) in the form of blessings to his sons allude to an apoca- lyptic setting. The dependence on the family history of Esau in this manuscript is used to introduce the fate of Amalek as a representative of the enemies of Israel, and by extension, the opponents of the covenant community that owned this text: 1 I am grateful for the opportunity to offer this article in dedication to my Doktorvater, George Brooke, who remains one of the finest scholars, mentors, and men who I have had the privi- lege to know and from whom I continue learn so much. 2 George J. Brooke et al., eds., in consultation with James C. VanderKam, Qumran Cave 4.XVII: Parabiblical Texts, Part 3, DJD 22 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 185–207. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��7 | doi ��.��63/978900434453�_0�� Memories of Amalek (4Q252 4:1–3) 165 the Qumran Essenes.3 But why Amalek? And how did his persona contribute to the formation and function of the identity for the group that wrote or mini- mally collected and copied this text among the hundreds that were discovered in the eleven Qumran caves? Moreover, how does the interpretative handling of the family history of Esau in 4QCommGen A factor into the covenant expec- tations of the Qumran Essenes? In this paper I shall seek to offer further insight into the meaning and function of the pericope from Gen 36 as it appears in 4QCommGen A, with the inclusion of some additional textual evidence from a recent manuscript discovery, and in accordance with an appraisal of Amalek’s persona from a “reputational” perspective. I will begin with a short descrip- tion of the Edomite genealogy in 4QCommGen A 4 and its function within the whole manuscript, and especially relative to the exegetical treatment of 3 Defining and describing the community who wrote and collected the Dead Sea Scrolls is an enterprise that is being met with increasing difficulty. The early notions of an aescetic group of temple dissidents who formed their own counter religious community in the desert in anticipation of the end of the world are ideas that are no longer accepted as entirely suit- able to reconcile the archaeological remains at Khirbet Qumran with the many hundreds of scrolls discovered in the vicinity of the site. Cf. i.e. the classic works by Devorah Dimant, “Qumran Sectarian Literature,” in Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period: Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, Qumran Sectarian Writings, Philo, Josephus, ed. Michael E. Stone, CRINT 2/ii (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1984), 483–550; Dimant, “The Qumran Manuscripts: Content and Significance,” in Time to Prepare the Way of the Wilderness: Papers on the Qumran Scrolls by Fellows of the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1989–1990, ed. Devorah Dimant and Lawrence H. Schiffman, STDJ 16 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 23–58. More recent and nuanced discussions of the “Qumran Essenes” appear in, e.g., Alison Schofield, From Qumran to the Yaḥad: A New Paradigm of Textual Development for The Community Rule, STDJ 77 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), esp. 21–47; John J. Collins, Beyond the Qumran Community: The Sectarian Movement of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010); Collins, “Sectarian Communities in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Timothy H. Lim and John J. Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 151– 72; Jutta Jokiranta, “Sociological Approaches to Qumran Sectarianism,” in Lim and Collins, Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 200–31; Jokiranta, “Social Scientific Approaches to the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Rediscovering the Dead Sea Scrolls: An Assessment of Old and New Approaches and Methods, ed. Maxine L. Grossman (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 246–63. For the purposes of this essay, it must suffice for the sake of simplification to use the terms “Qumran,” with reference to the Khirbet Qumran site, and its residents from between the second century BCE and the first century CE; “sectarian” with reference to peculiar ideas and religious distinctions represented in the Dead Sea Scrolls that differentiate the writers and collectors of their scrolls and the Qumran residents as a Jewish faction; “Yaḥad” to refer to the wider community or communities beyond the Qumran site that shared various ideas, and exhibited characteristics as an elite sub-group from the more extensive “Essene” movement of the later Second Temple period..

Load more