A Polytheistic Psalm? Jeremy Tabick 1 A Polytheistic Psalm?: A Close Reading and Interpretation of Habakkuk 3 By Jeremy Tabick Historical background One of the many controversial aspects of Habakkuk 3 (henceforth, “the psalm”) is its dating. When we place the origin of the psalm dramatically changes on how monotheistically we are willing to read it—assuming that a later date signifies a stronger tendency towards monothe- ism—and how much we should be relying on other biblical traditions to understand it. For example, does the psalm know the combat myth in a form similar to Psalm 74? Does it know the Mount Sinai tradition? The other main impact the dating has on our understanding is regarding the personalities involved. Should we read Reshef and Dever as demons or gods? Should we read Shemesh as “the sun”—as in the celestial body—or as “Sun”—as in the deity? The date of the psalm relies on three factors: its relation to the rest of the book of Habakkuk; the section of chapter 3 that we are willing to call “the original” psalm; and when Reshef—being one notable, named Canaanite god—waned in popularity in the region. Each of these will be explored in this section. The text and book Most scholars assume that chapters 1-2 go together, with a reliable form in the Masoretic Text. 1 These can be pretty unambiguously dated to around 605 BCE, since it has to reflect the very unique historical circumstances when the ancient Assyrian empire was about to be unexpectedly supplanted by the Neo-Babylonian empire. 2 The real wild card is what to do with
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A Polytheistic Psalm? Jeremy Tabick
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A Polytheistic Psalm?: A Close Reading and Interpretation of Habakkuk 3
By Jeremy Tabick
Historical background
One of the many controversial aspects of Habakkuk 3 (henceforth, “the psalm”) is its
dating. When we place the origin of the psalm dramatically changes on how monotheistically we
are willing to read it—assuming that a later date signifies a stronger tendency towards monothe-
ism—and how much we should be relying on other biblical traditions to understand it. For
example, does the psalm know the combat myth in a form similar to Psalm 74? Does it know the
Mount Sinai tradition?
The other main impact the dating has on our understanding is regarding the personalities
involved. Should we read Reshef and Dever as demons or gods? Should we read Shemesh as
“the sun”—as in the celestial body—or as “Sun”—as in the deity?
The date of the psalm relies on three factors: its relation to the rest of the book of
Habakkuk; the section of chapter 3 that we are willing to call “the original” psalm; and when
Reshef—being one notable, named Canaanite god—waned in popularity in the region. Each of
these will be explored in this section.
The text and book
Most scholars assume that chapters 1-2 go together, with a reliable form in the Masoretic
Text.1 These can be pretty unambiguously dated to around 605 BCE, since it has to reflect the
very unique historical circumstances when the ancient Assyrian empire was about to be
unexpectedly supplanted by the Neo-Babylonian empire.2 The real wild card is what to do with
A Polytheistic Psalm? Jeremy Tabick
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chapter 3 and how the psalm fits in with the rest of the book. There is certainly evidence to
suggest that chapter 3 circulated separately from the rest of the book.3
Solutions range from:
1. A post-exilic liturgical text, attached to Habakkuk at some much later date;4
2. A much more ancient composition that Habakkuk himself reworked in 605 BCE to make
his point about Babylon;5 or
3. An integral part of the book, composed by the same person, that actually belongs after
chapter 2:1-3, which mentions an oracle that is never described. Because the psalm also
circulated independently, it was appended to the book.6
These solutions thus, for now, give the psalm a date range from (before?) the Judahite
monarchy to the Second Temple period.
In terms of the unity of the chapter, it seems to me that Good has outlined clear argu-
ments that vv. 3 (or 2)-15 can be analysed independently from the rest of the chapter, and indeed
the rest of the book.7
Reshef in Syria and Israel
Ultimately, given the wide range of dates given above for the Psalm, the best control
seems to be from independent evidence of Reshef in surrounding cultures. Reshef is uniquely
suited to this kind of analysis since he was an extremely popular god throughout the ancient near
east—and beyond—from the third through first millennia BCE. More specifically, it was one of
the most prominent in names and lists of sacrifices found in Ugarit and Emar—both close to the
cultural milieu of Judah and Israel—dating from the 15th through 12th centuries BCE.8 Suddenly,
by the first millennium BCE, his cult had almost vanished, except in areas like Cyprus, where he
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was identified with Apollo.9
From within the biblical sources, Münnich makes a very convincing argument as to the
change in meaning from the early sources (Habakkuk 3:5 among them) where the word is used
as the name of a being, to the post-exilic sources where it is used with the sense of “fire,
lightning”.10
Thus we have our lower limit: the psalm must not come from after the exile, when
“reshef” in Hebrew was no longer used as a proper noun. We should thus discount the post-exilic
option above. The question remains, however: how close to Habakkuk’s time was the psalm
written?
We can also infer an earliest date simply from the fact that the psalm’s main protagonist
appears to be YHVH, who is considered by many scholars to originate with the rise of the
monarchy in Judah.11 Thus, we can comfortably date it somewhere between c. 1000 and 605
BCE.
I would argue for the psalm’s antiquity for several reasons:
1. The words of the psalm are so difficult and obscure that it must imply a text of great
antiquity—if it were not so, why would the rest of Habakkuk be so understandable by
comparison?
2. Even the earliest interpreters of this passage were often at a loss to what the psalm meant,
as analysed in detail in Good’s study.
3. Given the maximalist polytheistic reading of the psalm that is possible (to be presented
below), the likelihood that anyone as late as post-Deuteronomy wrote it seems vanishing-
ly small.
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Divine names or mundane objects?
After the dating, the major problem with the psalm is simply knowing what the words
mean. Setting up a sliding scale from polytheism to monotheism, the variant translations can
result in very different positions on this scale—from “YHVH is one among a pantheon, perhaps
the most powerful”, to “YHVH is the only god but has demonic servants”.
In an Appendix, I present an extreme polytheistic reading of vv. 2-16. Here, I will only
highlight some nouns in the psalm that are most suggestive of divine names.
v. 3: Eloah, Kadosh
The use of Eloah (“g/God”) in the Bible is not totally clear. Is it a proper noun—the name
of a specific god—or is it a generic term for “god”?
However, I feel safe in the rendering of it as a generic term here. If there is any relation-
ship between the first chapters of Habakkuk and the third, then the fact that Eloah is used in 1:11
unambiguously to mean “a god”, I would argue that here too this understanding should be
primary.12
The parallel for Eloah is Kadosh, a “Holy One”, for which a generic translation is
unproblematic.13
v. 4: Hevyon
NJPS translates Hevyon as from the root h-v-h, meaning “to hide”. This is the common
understanding.
However, Gordon makes the innovative suggestion to read it as Havy, a known Ugaritic
god who is “lord/possessor of horns and tail”,14 whom Haak translates as “Crawler”. This also
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makes sense of the karnayim (“horns”) in the previous verse.
In order to maintain the parallelism of Eloah / Kadosh, and Dever / Reshef, this reading
would thus also imply reading Nogah (“twilight”)15 in the previous verse as a divine name (see
discussion on Or, Nogah below).
v. 5: Dever, Reshef
Understanding Dever as a divine name is generally well-established by scholars in this
context, but its derivation is not without trouble. As Münnich notes, there are a thousand years
between a known text to have a god called Dever and the psalm.16 On the other hand, there is not
much else “Dever” could be referring to, and since there are other biblical texts that are easiest
understood with his personification (e.g. Psalm 91), it seems safe to do so here also.
Reshef, however, is a clear-cut case, as outlined above. The only question remaining, to
be dealt with below, is whether Reshef here is a fully-fledged god, or merely a demon of YHVH.
v. 8: Neharim, Yam
In light of what is known about the combat myth in the Bible, it seems necessary to
understand Neharim (“rivers”) and Yam (“sea”) in this context as names of gods (e.g. Psalm 74,
Isaiah 27). That these gods are mentioned is what allows Roberts to read the entire psalm in light
of only the combat myth, and to reconstruct vv. 14-15 entirely on the basis of Psalm 74.17
The fact that their names appear only in rhetorical questions is worth noting. Presumably,
the answer to those questions is “No”. However, if it were nothing like YHVH being angry with
Yam or Neharim, then the questions are nonsensical. Thus it must be that the answer is “No—but
something close.” In the context of Habakkuk, clearly the “something close” is Babylon, and the
point of this section is to make an equivalence between the primordial chaos gods and Babylon,18
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as is done elsewhere in the Bible.19 Given the evidence for seeing the chapter in light of a
liturgical context, however, it could be that there is no specific enemy in mind, or that the enemy
was left vague enough to be assigned differently with changing circumstances.
v. 10: Harim, T'hom
Given that T’hom (“Deep”) is a well-known parallel to Tiamat, it seems uncontroversial
to read this as a divine name here (especially with Yam and Neharim earlier).
Once the reading of T’hom as a god is accepted, again from the use of parallelisms
throughout the psalm, it makes sense to also read Harim (“Mountains”) as a divine name, as
posited by Pardee and Xella.20 This understanding is a little awkward with the plural verb
ra’ukha (“they saw you”), but that is not prohibitive for this reading. Certainly, if it weren’t for
all the other divine pairings in the psalm, I would probably dismiss Harim as a mundane noun,
but the pairing with the clearer case T’hom is too suggestive to miss this reference.
v. 11: Shemesh, Yareiah
Again, if it weren’t for the sheer number of divine names here, I would be tempted to
dismiss Shemesh (“sun”) and Yareiah (“moon”) as simply celestial phenomena and not gods. But
I believe the evidence is mounting up through the psalm, and at this point you have almost no
choice but to translate them as gods.
v. 11: Or, Nogah
If you are convinced by Nogah above in v. 4 as a divine name, then you certainly would
understand it here similarly. The problem with this interpretation is that in both verses Nogah and
Or (“light”) are paired together, but in v. 4 there may be a third god—Hevyon—which led Xella
to posit Nogah there in the first place! It would seem strange to have Or in v. 11 the name of a
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god, and a generic noun in v. 4. Thus, I think at this point you have to choose either Hevyon or
Or in your interpretation of the psalm, since you can’t have both and maintain the parallelisms
that form the main structure of the poem.
v. 13-15
Verses 13-15 are by far the most difficult in the chapter. Given there are no mentions of
divine beings of any kind here, I think it is best to abandon specific interpretation of this section.
However, there are some general observations and assessments of others’ work that is worth
attempting.
Roberts reads this section entirely as a reference to the combat myth (noting the motif of
splitting open the monster from bottom to top). Hence, his translation of this section is based
entirely on Psalm 74—despite the fact that such an interpretation involves totally rearranging the
words and inserting his own!21 Leaving aside the radicalness of this change and the lack of
evidence that Habakkuk is so dependent on Psalm 74, this also fails to take into account
Hiebert’s observation that v. 13 is full of architectural terms.22
Thus it seems better to understand it as the god destroying an enemy temple or palace and
killing the leader (rosh mi-beit rasha), rather than an explicit reference to the combat myth.
Interpretation of the chapter
So now that we have explored the ambiguities of the names of gods in the text, what is
the Psalm about? At least three different interpretations have been proposed:
1. As a description of the theophany at Mount Sinai (Rashi and other traditional Jewish
commentators);23
2. As referring only to the combat myth, and associating this with smiting the Babylonians
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in the present day (Roberts); and
3. As a vision of the end-times (Del Olmo Lete).24
Rashi’s interpretation is so improbable that it can be easily dismissed. After all, there is
no mention of Sinai or the giving of law in the psalm. This is certainly a Rabbinic Jewish
understanding of the Bible and should not be confused with its plain meaning.
Roberts’ option is interesting, but I think can’t be correct. Assuming that the answer to the
rhetorical questions in vv. 8-9 is “No”, then clearly we are not dealing with the combat myth, we
are dealing with a case that looks like it from an observer’s perspective, but in fact is not it.
Could it be, then, explicitly making the association between the chaos gods and Babylon?
Possibly, but I don’t think this is a necessary interpretation. It could just be that YHVH is going
to war just as he went to war against Yam and Neharim in the past. It may have originally had no
bearing on the identity or nature of the enemy being spoken about.
Del Olmo Lete’s suggestion also seems improbable to me. There is no sense of the “Day
of the Lord” in the psalm that would prepare you for eschatological themes. Added to that its pre-
exilic date and this becomes even more unlikely.
So what interpretation of the psalm is left? We turn now to the nature of Reshef and the
other gods that could potentially be mentioned in this psalm in order to understand whether they
are gods or demons. This will then provide the interpretative key to understanding the text.
Gods or demons?
The way Reshef and Dever are portrayed—as vanguard and rearguard of YHVH’s chariot
—lends itself easily to an understanding of those figures as demons rather than gods. However, I
want to evaluate this claim carefully in the context of the rest of the psalm, not just state it
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without proof as Münnich does, thereby dating the psalm to a time when other gods had already
lost their fully divine status in favour of the true God YHVH.25 And in fact, I believe that this is
likely to not be the case once we take seriously all the other well-attested gods that appear in this
psalm.
Even discounting the more questionable claims above and in the appended translation, we
have the following solid evidence:
1. An introduction that seems to be referring to El (probably identified with YHVH—since
it is YHVH that approaches in the next verse—but potentially El himself);
2. Unambiguous reference to Reshef, along with three motifs known to be associated with
Reshef in Syria: horns,26 horses,27 and arrows;28
3. Reference to Yam and Neharim, and therefore YHVH-Baal association, and a known
identification between the psalm and Canaanite myth;
4. T’hom, Shemesh, and Yarieah—all known Canaanite gods—taking personified action
(“lifting up his hands”, “raising his voice”, etc.).
I believe that you have little choice—given these clear cases and the mounting evidence
from more dubious cases—other than to say that, even if Reshef may be “demonised” (in the
literal sense), you simply can’t say the same for Yam, Neharim, T’hom, Shemesh, or Yareiah
(and El?)—all of whom act as true gods, not as servants of YHVH, in this psalm.
It seems to me, then, that the best interpretation of Habakkuk 3 is that it’s a hymn
commemorating YHVH’s ascension to the chief god of Judah. I would interpret the psalm in this
way:
First, YHVH comes from the south in full war-aspect. Some gods are trampled or
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terrified (e.g. Harim, Eretz?),29 while others share in his victory (e.g. Shemesh, Yareiah). And in
the end, YHVH comes to his land to save his people and his king (“your anointed”) from their
enemies. His rulership is proclaimed and proven, just as it was when he killed Yam in ancient
times.
The psalm then gets adapted to Habakkuk’s time by understanding that the enemies
YHVH defeats are the Babylonians. This seems natural given the similarities between the
features of YHVH in the psalm and Marduk in Enuma Elish, as noted by Roberts (though he
made too much of them)—they both have gods of plague as their entourage,30 they both kill
Yam/Tiamat, and they both split the earth with the waters left over from their battle.31 This made
the parallel to Babylon particularly striking and useful, but it was not a necessary part of the
psalm’s original meaning.
Thus we appear to have a text the origin of which is in the earliest period of the Judahite
monarchy, advocating the ascension of YHVH. It seems that this psalm could even predate
prophets’ calls to worship only YHVH, since there are a lot of gods in the psalm who seem to
have their own independence and support YHVH’s ascension. If this interpretation were correct,
it would be a very exciting discovery, of an extremely ancient text, predating Judahite monolatry,
that survived until the end of the 7th century BCE and was incorporated into the Bible post-exile
with very few changes, only a few garbled verses. To illustrate this dramatically, if you were to
swap every reference in the psalm to YHVH with Baal you would have a straightforwardly
polytheistic, Canaanite hymn to the greatest god of the pantheon.
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References
Del Olmo Lete, G. (1999). Deber. In K. van der Toorn, B. Becking & P. W. van der Horst, (Eds.),
Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (2nd edition, p. 231-232). Grand Rapids,
Michigan / Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Good, E. M. (1958). The Text and Versions of Habakkuk 3: A Study in Textual History (Doctoral
dissertation). Columbia University, New York.
Gordon, C. H., (1986). HBY, Possessor of Horns and Tail. Ugarit-Forschungen, 18, 129-132.
Haak, R. D. (1992). Habakkuk. Leidin, the Netherlands: E. J. Brill.
Hutter, M. (1999). Earth. In Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (pp. 272-273). (See
above).
Münnich, M. M. (2013). The God Resheph in the Ancient Near East. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr