CHAPTER SEVEN

HEAVEN AND EARTH IN THE OLD TESTAMENT AND SECOND TEMPLE LITERATURE

In addition to his frequent use of the plural forms of , Matthew’s idiolectic style is also reected in his emphasis on the word pair, heaven and earth. This chapter surveys the Jewish literary context for the meaning of this important phrase, tracing this central theme in the OT and Second Temple literature as a backdrop to examine how Matthew adapts and employs this word pair.

Heaven and Earth in the Old Testament

Frequency and Classication When examining heaven in the OT, the observant reader will soon notice that the word very frequently stands in close connection with earth. This is true in the rst verse of Genesis and throughout the OT. Cornelis Houtman, in his comprehensive study of heaven in the OT, begins by stating that when attempting to investigate heaven in the OT, one cannot speak of heaven without also giving consideration to earth.1 In fact, heaven and earth cannot be understood in Scripture separately from one another. The structure of Houtman’s wide-ranging volume matches this conviction. The entire middle part of the book (approxi- mately 175 of its 370 pages) is dedicated to various aspects of “Himmel und Erde.” The pairing of heaven and earth in the OT occurs at least 185 times, depending on how broadly one considers the context.2 This pairing

1 Cornelis Houtman, Der Himmel im Alten Testament, 2. 2 As mentioned previously when discussing the LXX pluses, there are several instances where the LXX has a heaven and earth pair where none existed in the Hebrew (at least in the MT tradition), e.g., Ex 10:13; Ps 113:11; Isa 8:21–22. In light of the frequency and importance of this word pair, it is likely that LXX translators occasionally added a reference to earth when heaven alone was found, thus granting the sense of completion provided by the heaven and earth phrase. 164 chapter seven is but one example of many “xed pairs” which occurred in ancient near eastern languages.3 Houtman classies the occurrences into two main categories: those which are bound together with a copulative waw (around 65x), and those which are not (around 120x).4 Within these two categories there exists a wide variety of forms of expression. These include heaven and earth in a simple nominative form, with and without the article, with and without the Hebrew direct object marker tae, and in prepositional phrases such as in heaven and on earth.5 My own examination of the heaven and earth pairs in the OT has led me to classify this conjunction in a different way, into a threefold system of copulative pairs, thematic pairs, and implied pairs. Copulative pairs are examples where “heaven and earth” appears as one unit, not separated by prepositions or other words. For example, “God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1). This type of pair occurs around 31 times in the canonical OT, nearly all of which are in reference to God’s creation of both heaven and earth, that is, the entire cosmos. Thematic pairs use the expression heaven and earth but with some separation of intervening words or phrases (or even sometimes whole sentences). These may be simple conjunctions, such as, “may God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth” (Gen 27:28), or with the use of paired prepositional phrases: “what god is there in heaven or on earth” (Deut 3:24), or a pair which spans across a brief discourse, such as “Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is nothing upon earth that I desire besides thee” (Ps 73:25). Another common example is when “birds of the heavens” is put in conjunction with “beasts of the earth,” thus forming a thematic heaven and earth pair (e.g. Deut 28:26; Ps 79:2; Ezek 29:5; Jer 7:33). Thematic pairs occur repeatedly in poetic language, though not exclusively. Often heaven is used and then its use draws out the mention of earth, as it were, and vice versa.6 Ezra Melamed has shown that OT prophetic

3 Cf. Stanley Gevirtz, Patterns in the Early Poetry of Israel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963); Yitzhak Avishur, Stylistic Studies of Word-Pairs in Biblical and Ancient Semitic Literatures (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Butzon & Bercker Kevelaer, 1984); Joe Krašovec, Antithetic Structure in Biblical Hebrew Poetry (Leiden: Brill, 1984). 4 Houtman, Der Himmel im AT, 26–49. 5 Houtman provides charts of these uses on pages 27 and 33–34. 6 Houtman, Der Himmel im AT, 33. Gervitz speaks of the effect of certain “xed pairs” such as heaven and earth on the process of composition for the poet: “once he had set forth a line or two, three or four words or phrases, the formation of the parallel line was virtually at hand since the parallel terms, which would complete the thought, were already determined.” Quoted in Houtman, Der Himmel im AT, 45.