Wednesday, March 8, 2023

Fredrik Lindström on the "Destroyer" in Exodus 12:23


 

. . . even if some scholars should refuse to share my scepticism and persist in understanding mašḥît as a “destroyer”, that is, as some form of personal being, there is naturally nothing to compel us to believe this “being” to be a demon. Taking our point of departure in the text itself, it is important to note that there is a striking collaboration between YHWH and his mašḥît:

 

YHWH will pass through to slay /ngp/ the Egyptians . . .
YHWH will now all the mašḥît to enter your horses to slay /ngp/ you

 

The “personal” aspect of the mašḥît which can be held to be present here results from the fact that its activity – rather like YHWH’s – is to “enter your hoses to slay”. This may well be explained as the result of a frequently observable Old Testament stylistic phenomenon. . . . It is also conceivable that the activity of the mašḥît, being mentioned as it is in parallelism with that of YHWH, expresses a process of hypostatization and differentiation that is well attested in the Old Testament. (Fredrik Lindström, God and the Origin of Evil: A Contextual Analysis of Alleged Monistic Evidence in the Old Testament [Coniectanea Biblica Old Testament Series 21; Lund, Sweden: CWK Gleerup, 1983], 63, 64)