Tuesday, September 17, 2024

Charlie Trimm on a possible explanation of the origin of כידון

  

Several weapons were found in sanctuaries in Ugarit, which might have been viewed as divine weapons. A king of Alalakh refers to defeating his enemies with the help of a divine weapon. The Old Testament assigns several divine weapons to YHWH, including a bow and arrows, a mace, and a spear (Hab 3:911) and foreign nations, such as Assyria, are called the “the rod of my anger” (Isa 10:5). In spite of these texts, the Old Testament records YHWH giving his weapon to a human leader in only one case, and that was only in a highly restricted sense. When YHWH addressed Moses at the burning bush, he commanded Moses to perform a series of signs with his shepherd staff (Exod 4:24). A little later, he ordered Moses to take  “this staff” with him when he went to Egypt (Exod 4:17), and the narrator records that he left with “the staff of God” (Exod 4:20). It appears that YHWH consecrated Moses’s staff to become the staff of God, which Moses then employed before several of the plagues. However, Moses only used the staff after YHWH instructed him how to use it each time, and eventually he was censured by YHWH when he used the staff incorrectly (Num 20:113). It is also possible that the “commander of YHWH’s army” in Josh 5:1315 gave his sword to Joshua as part of a royal ritual. If this theory was correct, it would explain the origin of the “javelin” ( כידון ) that Joshua held up in a later battle. However, the text provides little indication that he is handing Joshua a weapon and the words of the general focus attention on the need for Joshua to submit to YHWH’s instructions, not on giving Joshua greater ability to fight. (Charlie Trimm, Fighting for the King and the Gods: A Survey of Warfare in the Ancient Near East [Resources for Biblical Study 88], Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017], 616)

 

 

 

 

 

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