of the territory of the northern tribes of Israel resulting in the wholesale destruction of Samaria in 722–21 BCE.
Our interpretative challenge in understanding so many of the psalms is a multi-layered one. The psalmists’ close bonds with יהוה are spelled out in striking images; the affirmation that each of the psalmists live in the grace of יהוה; that the cup of salvation comes only from יהוה (Ps 116:13); that each psalmist perceives their own individual identity and destiny; that all that makes up life in God is in the hands of יהוה to give and to shape. The gift is the presence of יהוה who will never abandon to death and nothingness [his] covenant-partner. Bonded in a love of extraordinary fidelity, the emphasis is on total devotion to יהוה and trust in [his] abiding presence.
The Hebrew “gospel” can be summed up as follows: You will show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are unimagined glories forevermore (Ps 16:11, LW). The path of life (ארח חיים) is none other than יהוה who is the journey and the journey’s end. Life is a gift to be held in trust—like the land that was held in trust to God’s people. All statements about life are to be seen and understood in the liturgical context of Israel’s psalms without losing sight of the fact that Israel shared widely in the expressions and concepts of the ancient religious world and the neighboring peoples surrounding her.
The relative antiquity of psalms can be traced to their origins in Late Bronze Age II. We assess these relative dates by assigning to Israel’s origins some pertinent archaeological data. Important non-biblical sources for establishing Israelite origins in Palestine are the Merneptah Stele (ca. thirteenth-century BCE), which mentions an Egyptian defeat of “Israel” in Canaan, dated to ca. 1207 BCE, and the Amarna Letters, which disclose extensive political and social upheaval in the Canaanite city-states during the approximate period 1390–1362 BCE. The stele’s reference to Israel gives us a valuable chronological horizon for establishing the presence of Israel in Palestine by at least 1230 BCE, the beginning of Early Iron Age I. It is altogether probable that Israel—by the late thirteenth century BCE—was first a loosely confederated group of clans, and then, of tribes.
Merneptah’s inscription is hardly sober fact, but royal propaganda. There are many points of dispute in its interpretation. Nevertheless, it establishes that a group called Israel had a recognized presence in Palestine around 1200 and was important enough for an Egyptian monarch to brag about defeating them. It is significant that Israel is not simply given the standard label Shasu or sand dwellers, stock terms for despised Asiatic folk in Egyptian materials. Instead, Israel is referred to by name as a foe worthy of mention. Israel must have been prominent enough to serve the inscription’s propaganda purpose of honoring the king and to be recognized by its intended readership.54
Although the stele does not locate the geographical site of the battle or tell us anything about the strained and often duplicitous relations between the Egyptian court and its Canaanite vassals, it enlightens us about the internecine struggles that occurred among the vassal states. They attest to social unrest and rebellion within some of the city-states that seem to display early stages in the decline of the power centers in Canaan. In the absence of regional powers, this political vacuum would have allowed Israel to emerge in the same region more than a century later. We presume, based on this data then, that Israel emerged as an amphictionic tribal formation somewhere toward the end of Late Bronze Age II extending into Early Iron Age I. This then positions Israel’s origins and beginnings in Late Bronze Age II and her subsequent emergence as a national state with the inception of the monarchy which may be dated from Iron Age I, ca. 1030 BCE. 55
A delicate balance must be struck, then, when engaging the task of interpreting the psalmic texts. For a long time, that is, a very long time, perhaps nearly a thousand years before the Psalter was received into its final canonical form, and before the principal parts of its contents were written, there existed a tradition of psalmody in ancient Israel. The evidence for this tradition is found in the poetic texts themselves, which are part of a few prose narratives concerning Israel’s earliest era. The body of this ancient poetic material—in the form of ancient books—is actually quite small. It is important to recognize and appreciate that the Psalter is situated within the larger literary context of the Hebrew Bible. Israel’s worship of יהוה only reached its climax in the praises of the Psalter. It is undeniable that some of these poems were broadly influenced by Canaanite literary style and mythical imagery.
By way of example, two ancient books, The Book of Jashar (the Book of the Upright) and The Book of the Wars of Yahweh, had survived from the dawn of Israel’s collective memory. The Hebrew bible offers us little information about these two ancient anthologies.
It is likely that many if not most of the poems . . .appeared in one or the other of two early anthologies which are mentioned in the Bible: The Book of the Wars of Yahweh (Num 21:14), and the Book of Jashar (Josh. 10:13; II Sam. 1:18). The earliest editions of these collections may well go back to the time of the Judges, but the final published form must be dated to the monarchic period. In fact, there is a reference to the Book of Jashar in the LXX of I Kings 8:13, as the source for a poetic utterance attributed to Solomon at the dedication of the temple.56
The applicable historical-political context for these extra-biblical books is the time of the Judges–around the time of the amphictyony where the various clans of Israel coalesced together and remained loosely knit for nearly two centuries in Canaan. The term amphictyony refers to regional worshiping communities that dwelt in close physical proximity around individual shrines and who conducted cultic rituals and celebrations in the worship of ancient Israel’s God. Such observances were conducted in a number of local sanctuaries: Hebron, Shechem, Dan, Bethel, Gilgal, Shiloh, Kadesh, Gibeah, and Sinai. In the major central amphictyonic shrines of Hebron and Shechem—and probably Shiloh—the historical traditions of Israel had been gathered and collected. Whether the northern traditions which had collected around the ark, were brought to Jerusalem during the united monarchy is uncertain, but it is also unlikely.
Whatever the content of these two ancient books may have been—apart from the few scant passages explicitly identified as having been drawn from them—both may indicate the earliest collection and preservation of some of the oral poetry of Israel. They may also have been a part of the earliest collections and served as examples of the rudimentary beginnings of the first psalms of ancient Israel (e.g. Ps 18, 29, 68) which were later incorporated into some final collections of the book of Psalms. Whether there existed any other “books” of Israel’s earliest poetic compositions is unknown and is currently unknowable.
What can be asserted with some degree of confidence is that there existed an early tradition of collecting songs and poetry. It follows then that in all probability there were various traditions and customs—unknown to us–which contributed to and culminated in the formation that resulted in the eventual book of Psalms. These types of poetry were the natural medium through which Israel gave expression to its most profound human feelings, aspirations and insights so obviously apparent in the compositions which comprise the book of Praises. Expressions of joy and celebration were intrinsic to their response to God’s mighty acts on their behalf. Some scholars find in the Song of Deborah and Barak (Judg 5) the original life-setting of theophany in the Hebrew bible.
A theophany is the human experience of a divine self-disclosure initiated solely by the deity. There is no human initiative undertaken nor are any special qualifications or preparation required. In the Bible the human response is always one of fear and awe. There is never a sense of entitlement or privilege in the person’s retrospect. Theophanies are manifested as temporal events; they are not permanent reality. Rather these momentary encounters with the divine occur in a particular place and at a particular time. A theophany is a transient happening. It impacts the totality of the human person who encounters it at a profoundly life-altering level. Nothing thereafter remains the same. This poem of Deborah and Barak, then, is one of a number of representative psalms that lie outside the Psalter; it is a victory song over an oppressive enemy and is regarded as the oldest poetry of
