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Two Critical Notes on Psalm 68 and Deuteronomy 33

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

Patrick D. Miller Jr.
Patrick D. Miller Jr.
Affiliation:
Travelers Rest, S.C.
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Extract

The corpus of early Hebrew poetry, to which these two lengthy poems belong, has been the subject of a great deal of critical discussion, both because of the many problems involved and because of the contribution which these poems make to the history of Hebrew prosody, grammar, lexicography, and religion. It is thus not without value that further efforts at solution of some of the difficulties be made. The following brief notes deal with two passages that have been the subject of extended investigation by various scholars.

Type
Notes and Observations
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 57 , Issue 3 , July 1964 , pp. 240 - 243
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1964

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References

page 240 note 1 JBL 80 (1961), 270–1Google Scholar.

page 240 note 2 IEJ 9 (1959), 260–1Google Scholar.

page 240 note 3 In a verbal communication Prof. Frank Cross has suggested a reading which is textually more complex but virtually identical to the Ugaritic citation:

For the see the enigmatic at the end of the following verse. The whole bracketed phrase could have been lost by haplography. In any event Prof. Cross's suggestion recognizes with the writer the double use of .

page 241 note 4 Cross, F. M. Jr., and Freedman, D. N., “The Blessing of Moses,” JBL 67 (1948), 191–210Google Scholar.

page 241 note 5 Beeston, A. F. L., “Angels in Deuteronomy 33:2,” JTS 2 (1951), 30–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page 241 note 6 In an unpublished article entitled “The Divine Warrior in Israel's Early Cult.” The word has been read here as a collective by others (e.g., Nyberg, Widengren, Milik). The same form appears in Ex. 15:11 as indicated by the parallelism and the LXX. It also appears in the magical text from Arslan Tash. See Albright, W. F., “An Aramaean Magical Text in Hebrew from the Seventh Century B. C,” BASOR 76 (December, 1939), 5–11Google Scholar.

page 241 note 7 Beeston, loc. cit. According to Beeston the primitive meaning is “strong one” or the like. The problem of the sibilants is a difficult one in the study of Old South Arabic and one that has occasioned numerous papers. The difficulties may be seen in going through the glossary of Conti Rossini's chrestomathy. The sibilant under discussion is primarily equated with Arabic 5. Its Hebrew equivalent can be samekh but in most cases is shin. There is nothing, therefore, which hinders the equation proposed by Beeston. For a more detailed discussion of the problem of the sibilants and the various points of view see Höfner, M., Grammatik, Altsiidarabische (“Porta Linguarum Orientalium,” Band XXIV [Leipzig: O Harrassowitz, 1943]), pp. 18–21Google Scholar; Stehle, D., “Sibilants and Emphatics in South Arabia,” JAOS 60 (1940), 507–43Google Scholar; LaSor, W. S., “The Sibilants in Old South Arabic,” JQR 48 (1957), 161–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Beeston, A. F. L., “Arabian Sibilants,” JSS 7 (1962), 222–33Google Scholar. Cf. Rossini, K. Conti, Chrestomathia Arabica Meridionalis Epigraphica (Rome: Istituto per L'Oriente, 1931)Google Scholar, passim.

page 242 note 8 Beeston regards “lion” as a late, specialized meaning in Arabic.

page 242 note 9 Beeston, loc. dt.

page 242 note 10 The word may also be understood as 'ēl-mi (enclitic mem). The phrase would then be translated as “warriors of El” or “divine warriors.”

page 242 note 11 Milik, J. T., “Deux documents inédits du désert de Juda,” Biblica 37 (1958), 245–68, esp. 252–54Google Scholar.

page 243 note 12 See Cross's unpublished article referred to in n. 6.

page 243 note 13 See the writer's unpublished dissertation, “Holy War and Cosmic War in Early Israel,” Harvard University, 1963, esp. pp. 210–21Google Scholar.