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Not Moses, but David: Theology and politics in Psalm 78
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2020
Abstract
Psalm 78 is a lengthy psalm with puzzling phrasing, which presents a peculiar historiography and enigmatic entities. The article begins by highlighting the omission of Moses in the psalm's chronological review, a feature that enables a strong focus on the role of God in the people's history. From concern with the absent Moses, the article moves to examine the role of David in the psalm as a way to access the psalmist's motivations and historical-political context. By examining literary, historical and theological features of the psalm, the article explores the use of collective memory and rewritten narratives for consolidating the people's religious and political ideals.
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References
1 See Campbell, Antony F., ‘Psalm 78: A Contribution to the Theology of Tenth Century Israel’, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 41 (1979), p. 59Google Scholar; Briggs, Charles A. and Briggs, Emilie Grace, The Book of Psalms (ICC, Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986 [1906]), pp. 179Google Scholar, 187.
2 A similar suggestion is raised in the following studies: Greenstein, Edward L., ‘Mixing Memory and Design: Reading Psalm 78’, Prooftexts 10 (1990), p. 209Google Scholar; Clifford, Richard J., ‘In Zion and David a New Beginning: An Interpretation of Psalm 78’, in Halpern, Baruch and Levenson, Jon D. (eds), Traditions in Transformation: Turning Points in Biblical Faith (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1981), pp. 129Google Scholar, 133; Hoffman, Yair, The Doctrine of the Exodus in the Bible [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1983), pp. 98–9Google Scholar; Zakovitch, Yair, ‘Psalm 78: Sources, Structure, Meaning and Tendency’, in Zakovitch, Yair et al. (eds), David, King of Israel, Lives and Endures [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Simmor, 1997), p. 165Google Scholar. See Gärtner's definition of the ‘two rounds through the salvation history of Israel … with a structural and conceptual analogy’ in Gärtner, Judith, ‘The Historical Psalms: A Study of Psalms 78; 105; 106; 135, and 136 as Key Hermeneutical Texts in the Psalter’, Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel 4 (2015), p. 378CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 See Tammuz's suggestion (Oded Tammuz, ‘Psalm 78: A Case Study in Redaction as Propaganda’, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 79 (2017), pp. 210–15) about the secondary nature of the Ephraimites ‘armed with the bow’ (vv. 9–10), based on the reference in verses 56–7 about the ancestors who ‘twisted like a treacherous bow’.
4 Some scholars, however, relate Ezekiel's silence about Moses to the prophet's attempt to portray himself as ‘second Moses’. See: Patton, Corrine, ‘“I myself gave them laws that were not good”: Ezekiel 20 and the Exodus Traditions’, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 69 (1996), pp. 85–9Google Scholar; Levitt-Kohn, Risa, ‘With a Mighty Hand and an Outstretched Arm: The Prophet and the Torah in Ezekiel 20’, in Cook, Stephen L. and Patton, Corrine (eds), Ezekiel's Hierarchical World (Leiden/Boston, MA: Brill, 2004), p. 166Google Scholar. See in contrast my argument that the historical review in Ezekiel 20 is oriented less to the prophet's image and more to the portrayal of God and his actions with the people: Kugler, Gili, ‘The Cruel Theology of Ezekiel 20’, Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 129 (2017), pp. 51–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 On the phenomenon of the silence about Moses in the exodus retellings see: David Or, Moses and his Age in Biblical Literature (Ph.D. diss., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1977 [Hebrew]); Henri Cazelles and Heinz J. Fabry, ‘Moses’, in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament 9 (1998), pp. 28–42; Meindert Dijkstra, ‘The Law of Moses: The Memory of Mosaic Religion in and after the Exile’, in Rainer Albertz and Bob Becking (eds), Yahwism after the Exile: Perspectives on Israelite Religion in the Persian Era (Assen: Van Gorcum, 2003), pp. 70–98.
6 ‘Tzeh Ulmad’ section, the Passover Haggadah.
7 The idea that Moses played the main role in the redemption process is implied in the words of the people at the incident of the Golden Calf, referring to him as ‘the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt’ (Exod 32:1). This language is also used by God, when he states to Moses that ‘Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely’ (v. 7).
8 See David Daube, The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism (London: University of London Athlone Press, 1956), pp. 326–7; Daube, ‘The Earliest Structure of the Gospels’, New Testament Studies 5 (1958), p. 178; Franz E. Meyer, ‘Die Pessach-Haggada und der Kirchenvater Justinus Martyr: Aus der Frühzeit der jüdisch-christlichen Kontroverse’, Veröffentlichungen aus dem Institut Kirche und Judentum 3 (1977), pp. 84–7; Israel J. Yuval, ‘Easter and Passover as Early Jewish-Christian Dialogue’, in Paul F. Bradshaw and Lawrence A. Hoffman (eds), Passover and Easter: Origin and History to Modern Times (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999), pp. 98–124; Israel J. Yuval, Shenei goyim be-vitnekh (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2000), pp. 95–7. See also the suggestion about an opposition to the demigod portrayal of Moses in the Samaritan ethos in Michael Avioz, ‘Moses in the Passover Haggadah’, Horizons in Biblical Theology 31 (2009), p. 47.
9 Amos Frisch, ‘Ephraim and Treachery, Loyalty and (the House of) David: The Meaning of a Structural Parallel in Psalm 78’, Vetus Testamentum 59 (2009), p. 194. This view stands in contrast to Zakovitch's suggestion (‘Psalm 78’, p. 169) that the psalm considers David's election as conditional.
10 For the interchange between Joseph and Israel-Jacob, see Obad 18; Pss 77:16; 80:2.
11 Cf. the employment of the verb וימאס in the meaning of political disaster, either regarding the whole nation (Lev 26:44; Jer 31:36–7; Ps 53:6), or particularly the northern kingdom (2 Kings 17:20; Hos 9:17) and Judah (Jer 7:29–34, 14:19).
12 Cf. Isa 51:9–11 for a similar imagery of God's awakening to save the people after first hurting them.
13 Sophie Ramond, Les leçons et les énigmes du passé: Une exégèse intra-biblique des psaumes historiques (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), p. 61.
14 For similar views about the psalmist's familiarity with the northern exile see Arnold A. Anderson, The Book of Psalms (London: Oliphants, 1972), p. 562; Clifford, ‘In Zion and David’, p. 138; Erik Haglund, Historical Motifs in the Psalms (Stockholm: Cwk Gleerup, 1984), pp. 100–1; Michael D. Goulder, ‘Asaph's History of Israel (Elohist Press, Bethel, 725 BC)’, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 65 (1995), p. 73; Stern, ‘The Eighth Century’, pp. 51–2, 57; David Emanuel, The Psalmists’ Use of the Exodus Motif: A Close Reading and Intertextual Analysis of Selected Exodus Psalms (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2007), p. 96; Thomas Wagner, ‘Recounting חידות מני קדם in Psalm 78: what are the “riddles” about?’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 14 (2014), pp. 5, 21; Gärtner, ‘The Historical Psalms’, p. 379; Tammuz, ‘Psalm 78’, p. 219.
15 See my argument that, while the psalm implies the idea that God protects the people from his threat of annihilation, it does not rely on narratives documented in Exodus and Numbers about God's threats to destroy the Israelites in reaction to the incidents of the Golden Calf and the violation of the spies: Gili Kugler, ‘The Threat of Annihilation of Israel in the Desert: An Independent Tradition within Two Stories’, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 78 (2016), pp. 645–7. As these Pentateuchal stories could be considered to reflect the sins of the northern kingdom and criticism against it, the absence of the stories from the psalm challenges the assumption that the text is an indictment against the northern kingdom.
16 See Stern's endeavour to explain the prominence of the northern tribes in the author's awareness, despite Stern's assumption that these tribes no longer exist: ‘we have the late literature including Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah, Daniel, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, and Habbakuk, and possibly Job, none of which sources evince a shred of interest in the question of Ephraim's fate or of Ephraim's standing with YHWH … After all, in the late period Ephraim was long gone, so that it is hardly surprising that its fate was not at issue. In pre-exilic literature, however, these matters are treated as of great importance … Since Psalm 78 shows great interest in Ephraim, it is logical to take this as another indication that Psalm 78 is early.’ Philip Stern, ‘The Eighth Century Dating of Psalm 78 Reargued’, Hebrew Union College Annual 66 (1995), p. 46; cf. p. 57: ‘The poet wishes to emphasize past rejections of Ephraim, while playing on the election of David … The poet was less interested in the tribe of Ephraim than in the rejection of the northern kingdom, as the prophet Hosea foresaw it.’
17 Leonard attributes the psalm to King Hezekiah's attempt to gather the northern kingdom's survivors under his rule, as indicated in 2 Chron 30:5–9 (Jeffery M. Leonard, Historical Traditions in Psalm 78 (Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 2006), pp. 336–7). Anderson relates such concerns to King Josiah, considering that: ‘(i) the Solomonic Temple is still standing; (ii) the Davidic dynasty is still in power, which points to a pre-Exilic date; (iii) there is no indication of the Exile and its lessons; (iv) … the general outlook suggests that the northern kingdom is no longer in existence’ (Anderson, Psalms, p. 562). See also H. Junker, ‘Die Entstehungszeit des Ps 78 und des Deuteronomium’, Biblica 34 (1953), pp. 487–8; Clifford, ‘In Zion and David’, pp. 138–41; Zakovitch, ‘Psalm 78’, p. 182; Emanuel, The Psalmists’ Use, p. 97.
18 See Herman Gunkel, Die Psalmen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1926), p. 342; Robert P. Carroll, ‘Psalm LXXVIII: Vestiges of a Tribal Polemic’, Vetus Testamentum 21 (1971), p. 150; Marco Treves, The Dates of the Psalms: History and Poetry in Ancient Israel (Pisa: Giardini, 1988), pp. 67–8; Hans J. Kraus, Psalms 60–150 (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1989), pp. 123–4; Erhard Gerstenberger, Psalms and Lamentation (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2001), p. 97; Adele Berlin, ‘Psalms and the Literature of Exile: Psalms 137, 44, 69, and 78’, in Peter W. Flint and Patrick D. Miller (eds), The Book of Psalms: Composition and Reception (Leiden: Brill, 2005), p. 78; Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Psalms 51–100 (Hermeneia; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2005), pp. 290–3; Markus Witte, ‘From Exodus to David – Historiography in Psalm 78’, in Nuria Calduch-Benages and Jan Liesen (eds), History and Identity: How Israel's Later Authors Viewed Its Earlier History (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2006), p. 39. See also Wagner's argument that ‘the composition of Ps 77–80 originated in the late exilic or early post-exilic period when the temple was still in ruins’ (Wagner, ‘Riddles’, p. 22).
19 Gärtner, ‘The Historical Psalms’, p. 373.
20 See Greenstein's definition of psalm 78 as a text of memory rather than historiography: Greenstein, ‘Mixing Memory’, p. 209. See also Ramond's definition of the Psalm as a rhetorical construction of the past and at the same time a partisan work reflecting the concerns of a community which tries to elaborate its identity, and by that to generate the past (Ramond, Les leçons, p. 83).
21 Loewenstamm, Samuel E., The Evolution of the Exodus Tradition (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1992), p. 75Google Scholar.
22 This possibility was argued by Campbell: ‘Obviously, the Psalm as a whole cannot be older than the Davidic monarchy with which it concludes. The fact that it does end with David's kingship does not preclude the possibility of its being later, but it may be said to shift the burden of proof on to those advocating a later date’ (Campbell, ‘Psalm 78’, p. 75). See also Tate, Marvin E., Psalms 51–100 (Dallas, TX: Word Books, 1990), pp. 284–6Google Scholar.
23 On the role of narratives and historiography in strengthening the foundations of the Davidic monarchy see Brettler, Marc Z., ‘Biblical Literature as Politics: The Case of Samuel’, in Berlin, Adele (ed.), Religion and Politics in the Ancient Near East (Bethesda, MD: University Press of Maryland, 1996), pp. 71–92Google Scholar.
24 Ibid., p. 71.
25 Cf. the suggestion that the ‘riddles’ are about the unbalanced relationship between God and the people: Weiser, Artur, The Psalms (London: SCM Press, 1962), p. 541Google Scholar; Clifford, ‘In Zion and David’, p. 125; Witte, ‘From Exodus to David’, p. 33. See Wagner's interpretation of the ‘riddle’ as implying ‘the question of why Judah and Jerusalem could fall even though God had elected its people, city and kingdom’ (Wagner, ‘Riddles’, p. 21). But as the psalm does not allude to occurrences of exile and destruction this suggestion is more difficult to accept.
26 Tammuz, ‘Psalm 78’, pp. 208–9, 219–21.
27 My translation. Cf. 2 Sam 19:12, 23:1; Isa 44:6; 1 Chron 23:27; Neh 8:18. While the Hebrew term אחרון דור (vv. 4, 6) is non-defined, the use of a superlative adjective in the translation makes it defined (cf. KJV, NRSV, ESV, JPS).
28 See Ramond's description of the generation to come as becoming faithful to God by experiencing his ‘divine education’ through discourse and speech. Ramond, Les leçons, p. 84.
29 Jung, Carl G., Answer to Job (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1954), p. xiiGoogle Scholar.
30 I am grateful to scholars and friends who have contributed to the paper in its various stages: Ian Young, Ithamar Gruenwald, Lucy Davey, Rachelle Gilmour, Richard I. Cohen.