Texts in Conversation
Deuteronomy 9 and Psalm 9 use “blot out” to describe erasing a name, a form of shame of losing all your reputation after death. This is threatened for those who break the covenant, and in the psalm it describes the defeat of foreign nations.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Deuteronomy 9:14
Hebrew Bible
13 Moreover, he said to me, “I have taken note of these people; they are a stubborn lot! 14 Stand aside and I will destroy them, obliterating their very name from memory, and I will make you into a stronger and more numerous nation than they are.” 15 So I turned and went down the mountain while it was blazing with fire; the two tablets of the covenant were in my hands.
Psalm 9:6
Hebrew Bible
5 You terrified the nations with your battle cry. You destroyed the wicked; you permanently wiped out all memory of them. 6 The enemy’s cities have been reduced to permanent ruins. You destroyed their cities; all memory of the enemies has perished. 7 But the Lord rules forever; he reigns in a just manner.
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Notes and References
"... Noteworthy are the iconic and textual associations in the golden calf narrative when Moses beseeches YHWH to forgive Israel for making “gods of gold” and, if not, to “blot me out from the document that you wrote.” The root mḥh, here translated as “blot out,” appears elsewhere in the West semitic corpus in reference to inscription effacement, as, for example, in the reciprocal curse against text effacement in the ʾAḥirom sarcophagus (“may his inscription be effaced”). These observations recall a wider range of biblical traditions concerning the “blotting out” of names and memories of people and places (Exodus 17:14; Deuteronomy 25:19; 2 Kings 14:27; 2 Kings 21:13; Psalm 9:6; Deuteronomy 29:19; Deuteronomy 9:14; Deuteronomy 25:6; Judges 21:17; Psalm 109:13; Psalm 69:29). This same root mḥh also appears in Numbers 5:23 in the context of the ritual ordeal for the accused adulteress, in which written curses are “blotted off” into water and then given to the suspected adulteress to drink ..."
May, Natalie Naomi
Iconoclasm and Text Destruction in the Ancient Near East and Beyond
(pp. 333-334) The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2012
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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