Texts in Conversation
Ezekiel shares the Ugaritic picture of battle as a bloody feast, turning the defeat of an invading army into a public humiliation as animals consume its dead.
Share:
2500 BCE
1000+ CE
KTU 1.3 II:27
Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit
Ancient Near East
but she was not sated with her fighting in the vale, her battling between the two cities. She arranged chairs for the warriors, she did arrange tables for the soldiers, stools for the heroes. Anat fought hard and looked, she battled and surveyed the scene; her liver swelled with laughter, her heart was filled with joy, the liver of Anat with triumph, as she plunged her knees in the blood of the guards, her skirts in the gore of the warriors, until she was sated with fighting in the house, with battling between the tables. The blood of the guards was wiped from the house
Ezekiel 39:19
Hebrew Bible
17 “As for you, son of man, this is what the Sovereign Lord says: Tell every kind of bird and every wild beast: ‘Assemble and come! Gather from all around to my slaughter that I am going to make for you, a great slaughter on the mountains of Israel! You will eat flesh and drink blood. 18 You will eat the flesh of warriors and drink the blood of the princes of the earth—the rams, lambs, goats, and bulls, all of them fattened animals of Bashan. 19 You will eat fat until you are full and drink blood until you are drunk at my slaughter that I have made for you. 20 You will fill up at my table with horses and charioteers, with warriors and all the soldiers,’ declares the Sovereign Lord.
Search:
Notes and References
“... Third, the battle produces heaps of corpses (Isa. 34:2) or skulls (Deut.
32:43; Ps. 110:6). The image of harvest appears in Anat’s “gleaning” and in
some biblical scenes of divine war (Joel 3:13; Rev. 14:14-20; cf. secular
examples in Judg. 8:1-2; 20:44-46; Jer. 6:9; cf. Jer. 49:9; Obadiah 5). Fourth,
like the second part of the Ugaritic passage given above, the aftermath of war
is described as a feast, a feature attested in Isaiah 34:6-7, 49:26 and perhaps
presupposed in the sacrificial language of Deuteronomy 32:43. This feast
includes feeding on the flesh of captives (Deut. 32:42), drinking the blood of
the victims (Isa. 49:26; LXX Zech. 9:15; cf. Num. 23:24), called “captives” in
Deuteronomy 32:42 (as in KTU 1.3 II), and wading in the blood of the
vanquished (Pss. 58:11; 68:24). Isaiah 49:26 alters the motif of feeding on the
captives. In this verse, the enemies will cannibalize themselves: “I will make
your oppressors eat their own flesh, and they shall be drunk with their own
blood as with wine.” The image of wading in the blood may be related to the
theme of the battle as bloody harvest. Because of its blood red color, the
image of the wine harvest appears in biblical descriptions of divine war (Deut.
32:42-43; Isa. 49:26; 63:3; Ezek. 39:19; Joel 4:13; Lam. 1:15; Rev. 19:15). ...”
Smith, Mark S.
The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel
(p. PDF 116) William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002
* 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.
Your Feedback:
Leave a Comment
Anonymous comments are welcome. All comments are subject to moderation.
1 && show(index - 1)"
@keydown.right.window="open && comments.length > 1 && show(index + 1)">
User Comments
,