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Home > Magazines > Bible Review > June 2002

When Gods Go Hungry

Mesopotamian rite clarifies puzzling prophecy

By Dominic Rudman

The prophet Zephaniah predicts that the Israelite God Yahweh will overcome the gods of foreign nations. These foreign deities will be deserted by their worshipers, who will turn instead to the God of Israel. But just how God plans to defeat these false gods is not easily understood. Indeed, the question has perplexed Bible translators and commentators for hundreds of years. According to the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) of the Bible, God will “shrivel” these other deities: The Lord will be terrible against them; he will shrivel (rzh) all the gods of the earth, and to [the Lord] […]

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Endnotes

1.

Liudger Sabottka, Zephanja: Versuch einer Neuübersetzung mit philologischen Kommentar, Biblica et Orientalia 25 (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1972), pp. 90–91.

2.

Adele Berlin, Zephaniah, Anchor Bible series 25A (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1994), p. 110.

3.

Siegfried Morenz, Egyptian Religion (London: Methuen, 1973), p. 155. For more detailed information, see Sidney Smith, “The Babylonian Ritual for the Consecration and Induction of a Divine Statue,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (January, 1925), pp. 37–60.

4.

See Christopher Walker and Michael B. Dick, “The Induction of the Cult Image in Ancient Mesopotamia,” in Born in Heaven, Made on Earth, ed. Dick (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1999).

5.

A. Leo Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago, 1964), pp. 191–193.

6.

Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia, p. 195.

7.

Leonard William King, Babylonian Boundary Stones and Memorial Tablets in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1912), no. 36, col. iv.1.47–v.1.7, v.39–vi.13.

8.

Thorkild Jacobsen, “The Graven Image,” in Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross, ed. Patrick D. Miller et al. (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), pp. 26–27. Text from Henry C. Rawlinson, The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia (London: British Museum, 1861–1909), vol. 4, pl. 25, col. iii.42–66. Another version of the hymn may be found in Erich Ebeling, Tod und Leben nach der Vorstellungen der Babylonier (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1931), pp. 120–121.

9.

François Thureau-Dangin, Rituels accadiens (Paris: Cerf, 1921).

10.

Edward M. Curtis, “Idol, Idolatry,” Anchor Bible Dictionary (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1992), vol. 3, p. 378.

11.

J. Faur, “The Biblical Idea of Idolatry,” Jewish Quarterly of Religion 69 (1978), p. 7.

12.

John Merlin Powis Smith, Micah, Zephaniah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Obadiah, Joel, International Critical Commentary series (New York: Scribner’s, 1911), pp. 228–229.

13.

Rex Mason, Zephaniah, Habakkuk, Joel (Sheffield: JSOT, 1994) p. 45.

14.

Gillis Gerleman, Zephanija: Textkritisch und literarische untersucht (Lund: Gleerup, 1942), p. 40; Arvid Schou Kapelrud, The Message of the Prophet Zephaniah (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1975), p. 34; Carl-A. Keller, Michée, Nahoum, Habakuk, Sophonie, Commentaire de l’Ancien Testament (CAT) XIb (Geneva: Delachaux et Niestlé, 1990), pp. 199–200. Sabottka, Zephanja, pp. 83–84, 91.