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The Ark of the Covenant and Divine Rage in the Hebrew Bible

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The Ark of the Covenant and Divine Rage in the Hebrew Bible The Ark of the Covenant and Divine Rage in the Hebrew Bible The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Metzler, Maria J. 2016. The Ark of the Covenant and Divine Rage in the Hebrew Bible. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33840681 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA © 2016 Maria J. Metzler All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Professor Jon D. Levenson Maria J. Metzler The Ark of the Covenant and Divine Rage in the Hebrew Bible ABSTRACT The subject of my study is the Ark of the Covenant as portrayed within the Deuteronomistic History of the Hebrew Bible, particularly the tales featuring the Ark in Joshua and 1–2 Samuel. In these narratives, the God of Israel performs astonishing works through the Ark; from the Israelites’ perspective, these deeds are sometimes miraculous and other times horrifying. I argue that the behavior of Yhwh’s Ark may best be compared to that of a partially domesticated wild animal such as a horse. Like the raging energy of a horse, the violent supernatural power mediated through the Ark is an invaluable resource for human society; nonetheless, it is also unpredictable and extremely dangerous. I take a comparative approach in interpreting the narratives of Joshua and 1–2 Samuel. I first discuss the Ark as Yhwh’s throne in light of the Mesopotamian myth of Nergal and Ereshkigal, which also features a divine throne. I suggest that the chair of Nergal in the Neo-Assyrian version of this tale acts as a violent border-crosser that enables Nergal to pass through the normally impenetrable borders of the Netherworld and dominate Queen Ereshkigal. Likewise, in the book of Joshua, the Ark (or throne) of Yhwh permits the Israelites to pass through barriers in a miraculous fashion and conquer the land of Canaan. iii I go on to analyze the behavior of Yhwh’s Ark as presented in the Ark Narrative of 1–2 Samuel. I compare the destructive rampage of the Ark to that of the god Erra as depicted in the Babylonian poem Erra and Ishum and conclude that the narrative of 1–2 Samuel does not attempt to justify the violence perpetrated through Yhwh’s Ark. I examine David’s heroism in settling the Ark in Jerusalem, which appears to effect a sort of taming, since afterward the Ark is never again explicitly described as a destructive force. I propose that, like Erra and Ishum, which was widely used as an amulet, the Ark Narrative may be understood as a textual means of protecting against the chaotic forces described therein. Finally, I turn to consider the characterization of females in the Ark Narrative, drawing on Greek tragedy to illuminate the nature of divine wrath. I discuss Yhwh’s angry outbursts through the Ark alongside the portrayal of the raging goddess Artemis in Aeschylus’s Oresteia trilogy. In particular, I trace the image of the bit in Oresteia—the small metal object connecting the horse to its human rider. Instead of being placed in the mouth of a horse in the trilogy, however, the bit is figuratively applied to three subjugated females: a pregnant rabbit representing Troy, Iphigeneia, and Cassandra. In juxtaposing this tragic image with three scenes of afflicted females in the Ark Narrative—the wife of Phinehas, the lowing milch cows, and Michal—I seek to draw out an interpretation of the biblical narrative that is attentive to the emotional complexity of divine and human personalities. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 1. The Form and History of the Biblical Ark 12 2. Nergal’s Chair and Yhwh’s Throne as Agents of Violent Border Crossing 74 3. The Relationship between Yhwh and the Ark in 1–2 Samuel 132 4. The Taming of the Ark 174 5. Horses, Wombs, and Raging Gods: Inscrutable Divine Anger in Oresteia and the Ark Narrative 222 Conclusion 252 Bibliography 260 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Above all, I would like to thank my advisor, Jon D. Levenson, who has been a constant support, both academically and personally, throughout my years as a doctoral student. My work benefitted immensely from his attention and critical wisdom, which he delivered with characteristic humor. I owe a great deal to the other members of my dissertation committee, Andrew Teeter and Jeffrey Stackert. As an external reader from the University of Chicago, Professor Stackert has been tremendously generous with his time and resources in support of my academic endeavors. It is difficult to imagine completing this project without his encouragement. I am indebted as well to Peter Machinist, who provided invaluable feedback on several chapters and who consistently supported my efforts to engage in comparative studies on the Bible and other ancient Near Eastern texts. I would also like to thank Francis Landy of the University of Alberta, who championed my final chapter and made it possible for me to present this piece in the compelling Deconstructive Poetics session he organized at the European Association for Biblical Studies meeting in Leuven. I am extremely fortunate to have studied with a friendly and supportive group of doctoral students in the Hebrew Bible program at Harvard. I also enjoyed the opportunity to engage with talented young colleagues from other universities. In particular, I would like to thank Idan Dershowitz of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who helped keep me on track with my research this year and offered useful feedback on several sections of my dissertation. Finally, I must thank my family and the many friends who encouraged me and contributed to my happiness during the writing process. vi Sacred discourse lives in the closed flowers of its ambiguous or equivocal words, which unfurl in the mind of the reader only when his reading is as ambiguous as the sacred words themselves. –Patricia Cox Miller1 Let us, then, open the starting-gates of speech, let us loosen the reins a little, and spur this discourse on as if we were riding a race-horse. And you, O Word of God—ride with me as my helper; give words to my stammering mind, make the track smooth for my speech, and lead my course straight towards your good pleasure, the goal of a wise person’s every word and thought. –Saint John of Damascus2 Writing, in its noblest function, is the attempt to unerase, to unearth, to find the primitive picture again, ours, the one that frightens us. –Hélène Cixous3 1 Patricia Cox Miller, The Poetry of Thought in Late Antiquity: Essays in Imagination and Religion (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2001), 41. 2 Saint John of Damascus, Homily II (Brian E. Daley, S. J., On the Dormition of Mary: Early Patristic Homilies [Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998], 204). 3 Hélène Cixous, Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing, trans. Sarah Cornell and Susan Sellers, Wellek Library Lectures at the University of California, Irvine (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 9. vii INTRODUCTION THE INSCRUTABLE ACTS OF GODS AND HUMANS Strange Human Behavior It is a question that has almost certainly confounded all of us, whether the evidence comes from the grand theater of world events, the everyday maneuvering of traffic on our local roadways, or from our most intimate associations with others: Why is it that people sometimes act in ways that appear to be entirely senseless? In his classic work, The Greeks and the Irrational (1951), E. R. Dodds draws our attention to one way of answering this question from ancient Greece. Particularly within Homeric literature, inscrutable human behavior is explained as stemming from divine intervention: “We may sum up the result by saying that all departures from normal human behaviour whose causes are not immediately perceived, whether by the subjects’ own consciousness or by the observation of others, are ascribed to a supernatural agency, just as is any departure from the normal behaviour of the weather or the normal behaviour of a bowstring.”1 A similar view may be found in the Hebrew Bible, where baffling human behavior is frequently attributed to the deliberate intervention of the deity. An evil spirit from Yhwh torments Saul, throwing the king into bouts of depression and murderous rage (1 Sam 16:14–23; 18:10–11); Yhwh hardens the heart of Pharaoh so that he refuses to release the Israelites from Egypt, which leads to a thorough ravaging of his land (Exod 7:3–5); throngs of prophets convulse in a state of ecstatic divine possession (1 Sam 10:5– !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), 13. ! "! 13). Paul Volz gives an evocative synopsis of the divine origins of abnormal human activity as presented in the Hebrew Bible: If among the inhabitants of a city a bitter dispute broke out and would not let up, or if a powerful person relentlessly persecuted a weak one like a storm against the feeble leaf, if a noble man became melancholy, if a person paced back and forth in violent unrest, or if someone was pigheaded in a decision and everyone saw that it would tear him to pieces, if someone was so entirely obstinate that no piece of advice had any effect on him, or if one encountered an ecstatic in a state of uncontrollably wild excitement, who incited war in a furious rage, or who charged about like a bull with its horns—then everyone would say: here Yahweh is at play; this person is possessed by Yahweh.2 The ancient Hebrew and Greek literature that describes such divine possession often includes a sensible account of the god’s motivation for tampering with humans.
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