Texts in Conversation
Job compares himself with Sea and the dragon known as divine enemies at Ugarit, protesting that God's watch over him treats a suffering person like a dangerous threat.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
KTU 1.3 III:39
Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit
Ancient Near East
Come, and I will show it: deep inside my mountain, holy Sapan, in the sacred space on my native peak, in the paradise upon the hill of victory.” Watch! Anat sees the gods. Below, her feet start shaking. All around, her limbs are shivering. Up above, her face sweats. Shudders wrack the bones of every limb; the bones within her spine turn weak. She spoke up and cried out, “Why have Gupan and Ugar come here? What enemy rises up against Baal? What rival faces the Cloud-Rider? Didn’t I crush El’s beloved, Yamm (Ocean)? Didn’t I annihilate Nahar (River), the great god? Didn’t I leash Dragon and bind him in a saddle? I crushed the Sinuous Serpent, Encircler, the seven-headed monster. I crushed the gods’ beloved, Arsha. I ravaged El’s young bull, Ataka. I crushed the gods’ she-wolf, Fire.
Job 7:12
Hebrew Bible
8 The eye of him who sees me now will see me no more; your eyes will look for me, but I will be gone. 9 As a cloud is dispersed and then disappears, so the one who goes down to the grave does not come up again. 10 He returns no more to his house, nor does his place of residence know him anymore. 11 “Therefore, I will not refrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. 12 Am I the sea, or the creature of the deep, that you must put me under guard? 13 If I say, ‘My bed will comfort me, my couch will ease my complaint,’ 14 then you scare me with dreams and terrify me with visions, 15 so that I would prefer strangling and death more than life.
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Notes and References
“... Third, biblical texts attest to the cosmic forces as the chief-god’s domesticated
beasts. The book of Job knows these cosmic enemies both as human foes and
divine playthings. So Job himself expresses the understanding of these figures as
hostile powers, when he complains against God: “Am I Sea or Tannin that You
set a watch over me?” (Job 7:12; see the reference to Leviathan in Job 3:8 and
the mention of the Sea and the serpent in 26:13). Yet the book of Job later declaws
these enemies by rendering them not as Yahweh’s enemies but as objects of divine
domestication. So God responds to Job that he treated Sea at creation not as an
enemy but as a new-born babe (Job 38:8–11). ...”
Smith, Mark S.
The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts
(p. 36) Oxford University Press, 2001
* 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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