|
Judg 5:4-5 |
Ps 68:8-9 |
|
(4) Yahweh, |
(8) Elohim, |
|
(5) The mountains gushed |
|
. . . .
The most important difference between the two texts is the feature
most central to evaluation of the Midianite Hypothesis. Psalm 68:8 lacks Seir
and Edom, and instead, it develops Yahweh’s movement without reference to the
south. In other contexts, the “wasteland” (yĕšîmôn) can be the harsh
country in Moab visible from Mount Pisgah and Peor (Num 21:20; 23:28), as well
as the imagined terrain between Babylon and Judah when Yahweh returns his
people from exile (Isa 43:19, 20). According to Deut 32:10, Yahweh “found” his
people in the wilderness (midbār) and the wasteland (yĕšîmôn)—only
the back country, not specifying the south. However we resolve the problem of
this difference between Judg 5:4 and Ps 68:8, it is likely that Seir and Edom
were invoked specifically for the Song of Deborah introduction, and the psalm
does not demonstrate the higher antiquity of a shred hymnic fragment. If there
was such a fragment, it included “he of Sinai” but not the march from Seir and
Edom. It may be easier to explain the textual interdependence by the priority
of Judges 5:4-5, with Psalm 68 drawn from that text and molding it to suit a Jerusalem
setting and an exodus story that had God accompany Israel in the wasteland of
its way to the Promised Land. If the new hymnic introduction to the Song of
Deborah drew on an older bit of known praise, the case is best made from Judges
5 alone.
However old the poetic tradition of Yahweh’s arrival from the
southern wilderness, it does not describe the god’s historical origin. Seir and
Edom are not presented as peoples who worship Yahweh, and they are not related
to the Midianite tradition of Moses’ marriage in the exodus narrative. In the
shared material of Judg 5:4-5 and Ps 68:8-9, Yahweh is “god of Israel” and “he
of Sinai,” the latter a location in the southern desert that no associated
population, evidently a divine dwelling, a category to which we will return
after discussion of the biblical texts. It appears that Seir and Edom are
elaborations on the wilderness association of Yahweh with Sinai, though they
could also display a less targeted and equally ancient Israelite conception of
the god’s southern home (identification of Sinai in the Moses narrative with
the “mountain of God” is likely to be a secondary combination, but it is a
reading of both the Sinai and mountain traditions in tune with their older
intent). (Daniel E. Fleming, The Legacy of Israel in Judah’s Bible: History,
Politics, and the Reinscribing of Tradition [Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2012], 132, 133-34)
