Texts in conversation

Compare Amarah West Inscription and Judges 5:4

Ancient Near East, Egyptian · Hebrew Bible

Summary

An Egyptian text from the thirteenth century BCE describes a nomad group called Yhw and another called Seir in the same southern region. In Judges, God is described marching from Seir to fight for Israel, locating the divine name in the same area.

Passages

Amarah West Inscription

Ancient Near East, Egyptian · ʻAmarah West Topographical List

From the wall inscription in the hypostyle hall of the temple of Amun-Re at ʻAmarah West, built under Ramses II. Lines 93-98 list subdivisions of the “Shasu-land” (ta shasu) in reversed order from the older Soleb list, with Seir added at the head. ta shasu sʻrr (Shasu-land: Seir) ta shasu rbn (Shasu-land: L(?)-b-n?) ta shasu pyspʒys (Shasu-land: Pyspys) ta shasu smt (Shasu-land: Smt) ta shasu yhwʒ (Shasu-land: Yhwʒ) ta shasu (t)rbr (Shasu-land: (T)rbr)

1279–1213 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in the Amarah West Inscription

Judges 5:4

Hebrew Bible

3 Hear, O kings! Pay attention, O rulers! I will sing to the Lord! I will sing to the Lord God of Israel! 4 “O Lord, when you departed from Seir, when you marched from Edom’s plains, the earth shook, the heavens poured down, the clouds poured down rain. 5 The mountains trembled before the Lord, the God of Sinai; before the Lord God of Israel. 6 “In the days of Shamgar son of Anath, in the days of Jael caravans disappeared; travelers had to go on winding side roads.

600–501 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Judges

References

... The first discovery of the Egyptian evidence appears in a short 1947 note by Bernhard Grdseloff, followed by Raphael Giveon with publication in 1964 of new evidence from Soleb. Because the later of these lists, from the reign of Ramses II (around 1279-1213), includes a name that many have read as Seir, matching the first site for Yahweh's advance in Judges 5:4, the Egyptian evidence has been understood to confirm further the southern origin of Israel's Yahweh, however the Shasu name may relate to the later god. ... It is immediately evident that the lists from Soleb and ʻAmarah West are somehow copies, though the first is more than a century older than the second. The three Shasu-land names in Soleb's column N4 appear in reverse order as the last three lines (lines 96-98) at ʻAmarah West. ...

Daniel E. Fleming, Yahweh Before Israel: Glimpses of History in a Divine Name (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 12, 40–43.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

Compare Amarah West Inscription and Judges 5:4

Summary

Passages

Amarah West Inscription

Judges 5:4

References

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