tabick habakkuk 3

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


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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

Siebeck.

NJPS (2003). JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh (2nd edition). Philadelphia: Jewish Publication

Society.

Pardee, D. (1999). Eloah. In Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (pp. 285-288). (See

above).

Pardee, D. & Xella, P. (1999). Mountains-and-Valleys. In Dictionary of Deities and Demons in

the Bible (p. 604-605). (See above).

Roberts, J. J. M. (1991). Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/

John Knox Press.

Van der Toorn, K. (1999). Yahweh. In Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (pp.

910-919). (See above).


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Wyatt, N. (1999). Qeteb. In Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (pp. 673-674). (See

above).

Xella, P. (1999). Haby. In Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (p. 377). (See above).


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Footnotes

1 See discussion of Haak, pp. 5-8.

2 See Haak, chapter 3, pp. 107-149 for a very detailed discussion of Habakkuk’s setting.

3 Good, pp. 348-353.

4 See Good, p. 345. Also see material cited in Münnich, p. 219, n. 20.

5 Roberts, p. 84.

6 See material cited in Good, p. 345, n. 2. Also Roberts, p. 81, and p. 148 where he claims 3:2 “fits very

well after 2:20”, and Münnich, p. 219.

7 Good, pp. 5-8, his full reconstruction pp. 54-55, and his detailed discussion of vv. 17-19 in pp. 354-355.

8 Münnich, p. 145.

9 Münnich, p. 266.

10 Münnich, pp. 215-237.

11 Van der Toorn, DDD, pp. 917-918. Though naturally, the psalm could have been tampered with and

mentions of YHVH introduced at a later date. However, there would be no way to prove this hypothesis either way,

and therefore it will not be considered here.

12 Pardee, DDD, p. 287, suggests this reading but has his reservations, asserting “In the context of Hab 3

one would not wish to doubt that the reference is monotheistic and to Yahweh”—a claim I take issue with in the next

section.

13 Pardee, DDD, p. 287.

14 See discussion in Xella, DDD, p. 377.

15 See Good’s observation on pp. 37-38 that nogah is never used for light during the day.

16 He refers to two(!) mentions in Ebla. Münnich, p. 217.

17 Roberts, p. 85. For discussion of this interpretation, see below.

18 See Roberts’ commentaries on vv. 8 and 12, pp. 155-156.

19 E.g. Isaiah 51.

20 DDD, p. 605.

21 Roberts, pp. 129, 144 (n. 72), 157.


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22 See Haak, p.99, n. 471.

23 See Rashi, s.v. Eloah mi-Teiman yavo and ff. This is also related to why it is read on Shavuot.

24 See his off-hand comment in DDD, p. 232.

25 Münnich, pp. 216-219.

26 Münnich, p. 187.

27 Münnich, p. 155.

28 Münnich, pp. 148-150.

29 See Hutter, DDD, pp. 272-3.

30 Del Olmo Lete, DDD, p. 232.

31 Roberts, p. 156.


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Appendix: Translation and additional notes

Here is an extreme polytheistic reading of vv. 2-16. The point is not necessarily to be the

most probable translation, but to illustrate the ambiguities in the text and the possible variation

on the monotheist-polytheist scale.

When I interpret a word to be the name of a god or demon, I leave it in transliterated

Hebrew, pointed according to the Masoretic Text. While the clearer identifications were made

above, below I include some of the more speculative interpretative notes.

[2] YHVH, I have heard your report,

YHVH, I fear your deed;

With the approach of Shanim—let him live!—

With the approach of Shanim, proclaim!

In the shaking of the womb, remember!1

[3] A god will come from Teiman,

A holy one from Mount Paran (Selah).

His majesty covers Shamayim,

His glory fills Eretz,

[4] Nogah will be like light—

He has horns from his hand—

There is Hevyon, his strength.2

[5] As his vanguard walks Dever,

As his footman goes Reshef.


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[6] He stands—Eretz shakes!

He looks—Goyim tremble!

Ancient mountains are shattered,

Eternal hills sink low,

Eternal pathways are surely [7] crushed.

I see the tents of Cushan—

They shake!—

The pavilions of the land of Midian.3

[8] Is it with Neharim that YHVH burns?

Is your anger with Neharim?

Is your fury with Yam?

Because you ride on your horse,

Your chariot of victory.4

[9] You awake your bow,

The shafts of speaking are sworn.5 (Selah)

[With]6 rivers you split Eretz.

[10] Harim sees you and writhes!

Pouring Mayim floods,

T’hom raises his voice.

(11) Shemesh (10) lifts up his hands,7

[11] Yareiah stands on high.

To Or your arrows go!


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To Nogah your spear flashes!

[12] In rage, you tread Eretz,

In anger, you trample Goyim.

[13] You go forth to save your people,

To save your anointed.

You strike the head of the wicked house,

Make bear from foundation to neck. (Selah)

[14] You pierce by his shafts the head of his warriors.

They storm in order to scatter me.

He causes exaltation. You bring them low

Because of the devouring of the poor in secret.8

[15] You tread Yam with your horses,

Mayim Rabim foams.9

v. 2: Shanim

Haak has an innovative suggestion,10 to read Shanim in v. 2 not as “years” but as an

influence from Ugaritic, “sh-n-m”, which is often translated as “Exalted One”, such as in the

divine name El Av Shanim.11 This does not sound too convincing—and indeed, Haak expresses

his doubts—until you take seriously Good’s problem that be-kerev is only ever used elsewhere in

the Bible to refer to the approach of something spatially, and never to the approach of something

temporally.12

You can draw further support from the opening verses of the psalm clearly showing

divine solar imagery, which suggests an association with El. Thus the name Shanim would fit the


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context.

However, this suggestion remains conjectural at best.

v. 3: Shamayim, Eretz

While in many cultures, Shamayim (“heaven”) and Eretz (“earth”) are gods, the evidence

in the Bible for such identifications is paltry to say the least.13 Nonetheless, this is the maximalist

and not the most likely read, and so the names of both are included.

v. 4: Karnayim

There is a lot of disagreement as to what the word karnayim means here. Literally it

means “horns”, but that may have limited sense in this context. Haak takes it in its literal sense

and explains that “horns were commonly associated with gods and kings in art and literature”,

and that they became “the symbol of power itself”.14

NJPS (following Rashi)15 reads it in light of Exodus 34:29, where keren is used to refer to

the rays of light emanating from Moses’ head. However, this understanding fails to deal with the

problem that in the sense of “ray” the root is only used in the singular, and yet here we have the

plural.16

Roberts takes the dual form more seriously and understands karnayim as referring to two-

pronged lightning bolts.17 This is, however, influenced by his less-than-clear translation of or in

the previous verse as “lightning”.

Far more interesting for our purposes is Good’s suggestion that the dual form be taken

seriously and thus should refer metaphorically to YHVH’s two servants: Reshef and Dever.18

Reshef in particular is often associated with horns.19

Lastly, the horns could be associated with Hevyon (see above).


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v. 6: Goyim

I know of nowhere that Goyim (“nations”) is used as a name of a god. I make this

interpretative move only on the basis of the psalm’s structure. If we are willing to assign Eretz a

divine role, then by biblical parallelism—both here and in v. 12—one would expect a divine

name here too. I freely admit that this reading is unlikely, but who knows?—maybe the word

Goyim was not original but was changed from a true divine name.

v. 9: Neharot

The main complication of this picture of YHVH in opposition to the chaos water deities

(as described in the discussion of Neharim and Yam above) is the fact that he is said to make the

“rivers (neharot) cleave the land” in v. 9. Does this imply the opposite, that YHVH has command

of the rivers?

It seems like the correct interpretation is along the lines of Roberts,20 that this is a

common motif in combat myths. For example, when Marduk slays Tiamat, he then directs the

rivers to flow to the right places.21

An additional distinction between Neharim in v. 8 and neharot in v. 9 is the fact that

neharot is in fact the usual plural of the word nahar (river). As Good notes, Neharim is only ever

used to refer to the rivers of Ethopia22 (presumably Cush[an], mentioned earlier in v. 7?).

I would like to posit a difference in meaning here: perhaps Neharim is a divine name,

while neharot is simply the mundane objects “rivers”. This is the way it has been translated

above.

v. 10: Mayim

Though understanding Mayim (“water”) here as a divine name breaks the parallelism in


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this verse, it does fit the doubling in v. 15 as Mayim Rabim (“many waters”). So given there a

divine name is possible, I have translated Mayim as a name here too. It is unlikely that Mayim

refers to a specific god, given the lack of parallels in other cultures, but it certainly has strong

mythological overtones.23

1 Haak, p. 79.

2 Haak, p. 90, n. 403. Gordon, pp. 129-132. Good, pp. 28-29, translates: “Twilight will be like daylight. / He

has [two] horns from his hand, / And there he gave them his strength.”

3 Haak, p. 83, following Albright’s suggestion of combining tahat aven to taht’un. See material cited in n.

411 there.

4 Roberts, pp. 129, 138-139.

5 No one exactly knows what omer means here (see Haak, p. 95, for an innovative translation based on

O’Conner, cited in n. 534). I am not convinced by any of the alternative derivations than from the root ‘-m-r and the

meaning of this phrase may be irrevocable.

6 Roberts, p. 129.

7 In approaching vv. 10-11, I have followed the NJPS alternate reading, as well as both Good (p. 17) and

Haak (p. 92), by putting Shemesh at the end of v. 10 instead of the beginning of v. 11. I find Roberts’ suggestion to

fill in the verse based on a later Greek version unconvincing (p. 141).

8 Here I have followed Haak’s translation, though it should be emphasised that this verse is more or less

intelligible.

9 Following Good’s interpretation, pp. 50-51. Haak, pp. 93, 102, “With your ass…”.

10 Haak, pp. 79-78.

11 See a different understanding of the title in Van der Toorn, DDD, p. 917.

12 Good, pp. 35-36, where he supports Abright’s repointing to yield bikrov. See also Haak, p. 79, n. 315,

who sites BDB in disagreement of Good’s assertion.

13 See n. 29 above.

14 Haak, pp. 86-89, where he also discusses a variety of other interpretations. Passage cited is on p. 86.


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15 S.v. karnayim.

16 See Good, pp. 38-40.

17 Roberts, pp. 128, 134.

18 Good, p. 39.

19 Especially in Egypt and Emar. See Münnich, pp. 186-187.

20 Roberts, p. 156.

21 Enuma Elish V, 54-55.

22 Good, pp. 30-31.

23 As Wyatt says in passing, DDD, p. 674.

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