An archaic epithet for Yahweh, god of the Israelites, provides an interesting case study: ‘ăbîr ya’ăqōb. The translation for this phrase in the RSV, the NRSV, and others is “the Mighty One of Jacob.” This translation is itself countermetonymic, a theologically motivated attempt to invoke only one aspect of the phrase’s meaning. More basically and literally the ‘ābîr in Northwest Semitic languages means “bull,” as P.D. Miller has shown in a classic study and as poetic texts such as Isa. 10:13; Ps. 22:13 (v. 12 in English) and Ps. 50:13 strongly confirm. In the latter two passages in particular, “bull” is in synchronic parallelism with “steer” (Ps. 22:13) and “he-goat” (Ps. 50:13).
The horned bull includes implications of strength (hence the translation “Mighty One”), youth, warrior skills, and fertility with a particular sort of machismo. Americans of a particular generation might speak similarly of a “young buck” or a “stud.” Ancient Canaanite religion if rich in tales of the god Baal imaged as a bull. In fact, horned crowns were important symbols of god-power throughout the ancient Near East. As metonymic symbols of various deities, such crowns were set upon thrones in temples representing and ensuring divine indwelling presence.
In part because of the association of the bull with Canaanite and other ancient Near Eastern deities, not all Israelites were comfortable with bull iconography or the related mythology—hence the condemnations in Exodus 32 and 1 Kings 13—and yet for many, perhaps most Yahweh worshippers the bull symbol invoked a range of positive aspects of the deity as powerful, youthful bringer of plenty, rescuer from enemies. When in Ex. 32:4 the Israelites shout toward bull icons, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” it is the power symbolically and metonymically represented by the bull that captures their imagination. This bull is not Baal or El or Marduk, but the God of Jacob Israel. (Susan Niditch, Oral World and Written Word: Ancient Israelite Literature [Louiseville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996], 15)
