God is King

Understanding an Israelite Metaphor

Marc Zvi Brettler

Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

Supplement Series 76

For Monica

אשה טובה אשרי בעלה

a fine wife—happy is her husband

Ecclesiasticus 26:1

Copyright © 1989 Sheffield Academic Press

Published by JSOT Press

JSOT Press is an imprint of

Sheffield Academic Press Ltd

The University of Sheffield

343 Fulwood Road

Sheffield S10 3BP

England

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available

ISSN 0309-0787

ISBN 1-85075-224-9

Contents

Preface

Abbreviations

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1

THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS ON METAPHOR

Chapter 2

ROYAL APPELLATIONS

Chapter 3

ROYAL QUALITIES

Chapter 4

ROYAL TRAPPINGS

Chapter 5

THE KING AND DOMESTIC AFFAIRS

Chapter 6

BECOMING KING

CONCLUSIONS

Bibliography

Index of Biblical References

Index of Authors

Preface

This book has had a long gestation period. My initial interest in God’s kingship derives from my study of the book of Judges in 1982, when I struggled to understand Gideon’s rather strange claim that divine kingship precludes human kingship. This interest grew into a doctoral dissertation supervised by Professor Nahum Sarna of Brandeis University, which was submitted in August 1986. My doctoral work was partially supported from grants from the Lady Davis Foundation and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. My gratitude to Professor Sarna, who first introduced me to the critical study of the Bible when I was an undergraduate in 1975, is very deeply felt. I would also like to thank my other dissertation advisors, Professors Tzvi Abusch and Michael Fishbane, who always encouraged me to find an independent approach to the Bible. I am also indebted to my teachers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and to my former colleagues at Yale University, who freely shared their knowledge with me and emphasized the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to biblical study.

The current book is a very substantial revision of my dissertation, following the excellent comments of David Clines, one of the editors of the JSOT Supplement Series. Many of the more technical and polemical aspects of the original have been omitted, and all Hebrew has been translated, in the hope that this work will be accessible to scholars of religion. I would like to thank the Jewish Publication Society for permission to use their Bible translation, Tanakh. In revising this work, I was ably assisted by Mr William Schniedewind of Brandeis University, who suggested many ways in which the original manuscript could be improved. Mr Michael Rosenbaum assisted me in many technical matters. Professors Janet Soskice of Cambridge University and Mark Smith of Yale University were kind enough to share unpublished material with me. Drs Naomi Schmidt and Alex Pringle helped me master the world of computing. The Brandeis libraries, especially the Judaica department and the Interlibrary Loan Office helped me find many obscure works. Without all of this help, the current work could not have been ...