Texts in Conversation
Isaiah 14 presents dead kings brought to attention, following ancient Near Eastern traditions where deified royal ancestors gather, feast, and journey together. As in Ugaritic portraits of the honored dead, they form an active assembly.
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KTU 1.20
Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit
Ancient Near East
The heroic dead will feast, seven times the divinities, eight times the dead. As the assembly draws near on a summer’s day, the divinities will eat, they will drink. The gods of the nut-groves, which is over the slaughter of sacrificial lambs. Seven in my house, eight within my palace. The heroic dead hurried to his sanctuary, to his sanctuary hurried the divinities. They harnessed the chariots, they hitched the horses. They mounted their chariots, they came on their mounts. They journeyed a day and a second.
Date: 2300 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Isaiah 14:9
Hebrew Bible
8 The evergreens also rejoice over your demise, as do the cedars of Lebanon, singing, ‘Since you fell asleep, no woodsman comes up to chop us down!’ 9 Sheol below is stirred up about you, ready to meet you when you arrive. It rouses the spirits of the dead for you, all the former leaders of the earth; it makes all the former kings of the nations rise from their thrones. 10 All of them respond to you, saying: ‘You too have become weak like us! You have become just like us!
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Notes and References
"... Elsewhere ĕlōhîm can refer to the dead, most famously in 1 Samuel 28:3–25, where the ghost of Samuel appears to Saul. This is probably also the case in Isaiah 8:19, where the people consult the dead on behalf of the living. Van der Toorn has suggested that Micah 3:7 and 2 Samuel 14:16 may also refer to the dead. In many biblical texts, the term rĕphāîm also refers to the dead. In Isaiah 14:9 the term is used in parallel with the kings of the nations. The association with kings seems natural in light of the Ugaritic term rpum, which refers to deified royal ancestors. In particular, in Isaiah 14:9 it is said that the rĕphāîm will be roused from their graves. On the other hand, Isaiah 26:14–19 emphasizes that the rĕphāîm do not live and can never rise (rĕphāîm bal-yāqûmû), and Psalm 88:11 asks ironically whether the rĕphāîm can rise to praise God in the land of oblivion. In contrast to these, Isaiah 14:9 begins to look like Night of the Living Dead ..."
Hamori, Esther J.
When Gods Were Men: The Embodied God in Biblical and Near Eastern Literature
(pp. 123-124) De Gruyter, 2008
* 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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