Religion 131 Review of Unit 2 From Egypt to Israel Dr. Fred Kellogg Emory & Henry College

    This review of Hebrew history during the settlement in Israel and the time of the great kings is related especially to Michael D. Coogan, A Brief Introduction to the Old Testament (New York:  Oxford University Press, 2009).

 THE PROMISED LAND  

    Under the leadership of Joshua, the Hebrews crossed the Jordan River into Canaan.  They were able to defeat the inhabitants of some areas and establish their control over large blocks of land.  In other areas they were forced to live in the barren hills which were regarded as less desirable land, and to work out compromises with the Canaanites.

    One reason that the Hebrews were not so successful in the lowlands was that the inhabitants of the coastal plain had mastered the use of one particular metal for both tools and weapons.  What was that metal?  Not bronze -- the Hebrews had tools and weapons of bronze, as most Middle Easterners had used for a couple of thousand years, since the end of the Stone Age.  But they had not yet mastered the use of iron, a much more durable metal.  The Canaanites had already moved out of the Bronze Age into the Iron Age, so they were technologically superior to the Hebrews.

    Even though the Israelites couldn't control all the land, they divided it up into geographical territories under at least partial control of the twelve Hebrew tribes.  They formed a confederacy, with its capital at Shechem, and they allowed others to become part of the covenant alliance.  As they consolidated the unity which Moses had developed over the years in the Sinai wilderness, they needed a story which they could affirm as "their story."  What term could we use for the Israelite foundation story, identifying its form as a dramatic narrative about a whole people?

    Biblical scholars identify the foundation story as an epic of the Israelites, similar to the way that the Iliad is an epic of the Greeks, and the Aeneid is an epic of the Romans.  As we saw in unit 1, the Yahwist epic opens with primeval history, dealing with universal themes in a setting of long ago.  For example, the story of Cain & Abel reflects a characteristic conflict in any agricultural society:  the conflict between farmers and shepherds.  Cain represents the farmers, and Abel represents the shepherds.  On a more general level, the story reflects the conflict between landowners and nomads.

    The epic continues, with the stories of the patriarchs and matriarchs and the Exodus.  The Deuteronomic History takes the Hebrews from the Sinai wilderness into the Promised Land.  But they discovered that Canaan wasn't all flowing with milk and honey!  The Israelites found themselves in an ideological struggle which was a crucial for their history as their physical struggles.  The issue was how much they would adopt the farming ways of their neighbors, especially since the Canaanites' agricultural techniques were thoroughly religious.  Do you remember the four main Canaanite gods?

• Baal was one of the greatest deities in Canaan.  His name is usually pronounced in English like a "bale" of hay, although the Canaanites made it sound more like a "bah-all."  Baal represented storm and rain; he was such a powerful force in nature that he was often portrayed as a bull.
• El was the father of all the gods, the head of the pantheon, like Zeus for the Greeks or Jupiter for the Romans.  But El was not usually involved in farming and fertility, the way Baal and his sister-wife were. 
• El's wife was a mother goddess known as Asherah.  She was often represented by a totem pole.
• Astarte, the goddess of love and motherhood, was identified with the Sumerian goddess Ishtar who played a role in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

    Hebrew leaders known as judges appeared at this point in history, to draw the line between the Israelite faith and Canaanite religious practices which were used in farming.  At times the religious crisis called for military leadership as well.  One of the outstanding judges not only ruled on legal cases; she also planned military strategy for the Israelite army.  The poem commemorating her greatest victory is, like the Song of Miriam, one of our most ancient Old Testament poems.  No, she wasn't Judge Judy.  Here's a hint:  her favorite food is manufactured near Chattanooga:  Little Debbies!  Deborah was a great judge.  With her brilliant military tactics, she freed the Hebrews from an oppressive Canaanite tribe.  If you want to read the Song of Deborah, which tells her story, you'll find it in chapter 5 of the book of Judges. 

    Another famous military judge was Gideon.  On God's orders, he narrowed his fighting force from 32,000 down to 300 soldiers and defeated an overwhelmingly superior Midianite army.  His military tactic is reminiscent of Joshua's plan for the defeat of Jericho. 

    A third famous judge was Samson.  He had been dedicated as a Nazirite by his mother, with a vow that his hair would never be cut.  That gave him tremendous strength, which he could have used for the benefit of his people.  But like a certain former American President, he squandered his tremendous leadership ability by having an affair with a woman.  Delilah not only cut off his hair; she gave the Philistines an advantage over the Hebrews by taking away the strength of this potentially great leader.  So Samson has gone down in history as a self-centered failure.    

   The book of Ruth is one of the most beautiful and powerful short stories in the whole Bible.  It tells how a woman named Naomi, who grew up in Bethlehem, moved with her husband out of Jewish territory to the land of Moab, on the eastern side of the Salt Sea.  There she had two sons, who grew up and married Moabite women named Ruth and Orpah.  Everybody assumed that Naomi's family would live happily ever after.  But her husband and both sons died.  She encouraged her two daughters-in-law to remarry, so that they would have a place in their patriarchal society.  Orpah agreed, but Ruth vowed to go to Bethlehem with her mother-in-law and to stand by her through thick and thin. 

    We've seen how Naomi and Ruth went through some very hard times, and how God guided them and Boaz toward the fulfillment of his plan for their lives.  The story is very realistic about all the emotions and complex social situations which these two women faced.  At times, the story sounds like a TV soap opera!  Both Ruth and Naomi were persons who had times of real anxiety, but their courage and strength of character led to their final happiness.  And what's especially important for this unit is that they were ancestors of King David -- so Ruth and Naomi were at least partly responsible for the Golden Age!

THE GOLDEN AGE

    The judges were charismatic individuals who helped to fight off compromise between Canaanite polytheism and Israelite worship of Yahweh.  But a stronger national structure than a confederacy was needed, as Samuel, the last of the judges, regretfully acknowledged.  It was time for the Israelites to become a monarchy, whether or not he liked it.  So it was up to him, following God's guidance, to choose the first king.  He chose a man named Saul and anointed him as king.  Another judge, Gideon, provided a Bible for Saul to put his hand on, while he took the oath of office.  This inaugurated a new era for the Israelites.

    As the Israelites' first king, Saul had the difficult task of developing his own job description.  What should a king do?  He was quite modest.  Saul didn't institute a military draft but instead depended on an all-volunteer army.  Even conservative politicians would be shocked by his decision not to require any taxes to support the federal government.  In fact, Saul didn't change the confederacy into a centralized government.  Instead, he sought to be leader of a tribal democracy.  He didn't appoint a lot of his patrons and supporters to a cabinet; his "court" was minimal.  The king didn't even have a harem!

    To a large degree, Saul was more of a "judge" than a king.  Like Deborah and Gideon, he was a person filled with God's Spirit, which gave him the quality of leadership.  In some ways he was a successful military leader, establishing the foundations for Israel's nationhood.  But Saul also had problems. A great tragedy occurred after a battle which Saul won:  he refused to destroy the enemy completely by placing them under the sacrificial ban or taboo; instead, he saved the best of the plunder for himself.  Samuel, who had anointed Saul as king, recognized that this act of disobedience was contrary to the basic rules of holy war, and he declared that God had now rejected Saul as king.  Saul began having periods of deep melancholy, when he felt that God's Spirit had left him.  

    One of the few persons who was able to help Saul come out of his dark moods by playing lyre music for him was also a source of jealousy for Saul.  The musician's name was David, and he was the kind of person who was just naturally popular.  David had become a folk hero among the Israelites by defending them against their enemies.  He had developed his military strategies not in the regular army, but as leader of a group of mercenaries.  We might even compare the stories about David to the stories about another popular leader of a group of outlaws, who robbed from the rich to help the poor:  Robin Hood.

    After Saul's death in battle against a group of Canaanites known as Philistines, David took over and greatly expanded the responsibilities and privileges of an Israelite king.  He pushed the Philistines into the southwestern coastal area, leaving the rest of Canaan under Israelite control.  A thousand years after David's time, when the Roman Empire conquered the area, the Romans named the whole province Palestine, because of the ancient Philistines!  Today we know the southwestern coastal area as Gaza, and it is part of the newly emerging nation of Palestine.

    David captured the old fortress town of Jerusalem and had the brilliant insight that it would make an excellent capital city, since it was in neutral territory between the northern and southern tribes.  David brought the powerful symbol of God's Presence, the Ark of the Covenant, to Jerusalem, and he himself danced at the front of the parade to install it.  In his spiritual life, David was deeply religious.  He prayed to God in a sincere way -- the way most of us would like to pray, if only we had David's ability with words.  He was able to express his hopes, fears, doubts, and praise of God in beautiful poems that were set to music and included in worship services.  Later composers contributed other poems for use in worship, meditation, and royal celebrations.  Eventually these poems were put together in a book named Psalms.  The word is pronounced "salms," as if the P were not there; the Hebrew name means "hymns."

    Even though King David was a great leader and close to God at many times in his life, he was far from perfect.  To satisfy his personal desires, he committed adultery with a married woman named Bathsheba.  When people found out about the affair, he tried making excuses like Bill Clinton's "I...did...not...have sexual relations...with...that...woman!"  But the cause of her pregnancy was obvious, because Bathsheba's husband was out in the field, fighting a war for his king!  So David had her husband killed in battle, and then he married the widow.  Yet when he was confronted by a prophet named Nathan, he confessed his sin and asked for God's forgiveness.  David accepted the prophetic insight that he would have to face the consequences of his actions, even after he confessed and was forgiven for his sins.

    Later generations saw David as the ideal king, the one from whose lineage the Messiah, God's anointed ruler, would come.  David's reign was portrayed as the Golden Age in the history of Israel.  David's son Solomon continued many of his father's policies:  expansion of territorial boundaries, establishment of diplomatic and trade relations with other countries, and centralization of the government.  He carried out massive construction projects all over Israel, including one building in Jerusalem which David dreamed of but was unable to construct.  That was the magnificent Temple, which came to be seen by many Israelites as the most holy place in the whole world.  In Jerusalem today, the site of Solomon's Temple is revered by Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

     This is the end of this review of Unit 2.  Any suggestions, comments, or questions are welcome! 

    To look at one of my other review programs or syllabi, go to my Home Page, or go directly to one of the following:

    Unit 1, Hebrew beginnings
    Unit 3. Kings and Prophets
    Unit 4, Writings after the Exile
   

    If you prefer, you may return to the Emory & Henry College Home Page.  

Last updated:  October 15, 2009