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KTU

Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit

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Baal Cycle

KTU 1.3 III

She decorated herself with purple cloth, which takes a thousand fields
to harvest from the sea.
[…]
[You will see her] holding her lyre in her hands,
placing her lute to her breast: a song of the love of Exalted Baal,
of the passion of Pidray, daughter of Lightning,
of the affection of Tallay, daughter of Rain, of the love of Arsay, daughter of Netherworld.
Next, enter like a pair of acolytes,
and bow to the ground before Anat’s feet.
Prostrate yourselves; show her respect.
Then say to Maiden Anat —
repeat to the Kinswoman of the People:
“A message from Exalted Baal; words from the Exalted Warrior.
Come find battle in the land;
leave love in the dust.
Pour peace into the chasms of the land,
harmony into the chasms of the fields.
Hasten, hustle, hurry up!
“Let your feet run to me, let your legs race to me,
for I have thoughts to tell you,
and I have words to share:
a thought of trees and a murmur of stone,
a whisper between heaven and earth,
between the deep and the stars.
“I understand the lightning beyond the heavens’ ken,
the thoughts beyond human knowledge, that which the throngs below cannot understand.
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.
I annihilated El’s daughter, Zabiba. I’ve reaped silver from my fighting;
I’ve taken possession of gold of those who drove Baal from the heights of Sapan”

Texts in conversation

Compare KTU 1.3 III:38 and Psalm 104:3

Ancient Near East, Ugaritic · Hebrew Bible

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Summary

Psalm 104 describes God making the clouds into a chariot and riding them on the wind, language that is taken from ancient Near Eastern traditions such as the Ugaritic Baal Cycle, where Baal is first called the Cloud-Rider.

Passages

KTU 1.3 III:38

Ancient Near East, Ugaritic · Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit
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.
1350–1185 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in KTU

Psalm 104:3

Hebrew Bible
1 Praise the Lord, O my soul! O Lord my God, you are magnificent. You are robed in splendor and majesty. 2 He covers himself with light as if it were a garment. He stretches out the skies like a tent curtain 3 and lays the beams on water in his upper rooms3. He makes the clouds his chariot and travels on the wings of the wind. 4 He makes the winds his messengers and the flaming fire his attendant.
600–201 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Psalms

References

“... In some cases, however, the portrayal of Yahweh includes some far more pointed references. Baal’s epithet rkb.‘rpt “rider of the clouds,” attested (so far) sixteen times at Ugarit, is found word-for-word [...] in Ps. 68.5 (Eng. 4), in similar forms in Psalm 104.3 [...] and in Isa. 19.1 [...]. Commentators have long seen this as a taking over of the standard description of the Canaan storm-god. [...] The polemic is less obvious in Psalm 104, but the transference of Baal’s cloudy vehicle to Yahweh is marked by a change from the direct speech of the initial verse, which addresses Yahweh in the second person singular, to a narrator’s voice, which uses a string of masculine singular participles to present Yahweh in the third person. This poetic device is lost in the NRSV, but it maintains a safe distance between Yahweh himself and the ensuing collection of attributes taken from other gods, which makes this psalm unique. I take it as a clue to the writer’s awareness that the transference in Psalm 104 remained somewhat artificial. Either this Psalmist found it uneasy to praise Yahweh by attributing Baalic elements to him, or he sought to underline the transference in this way. In either way, the tone is not polemic, but it is clear that, to this writer at least, depicting Yahweh as a storm-god riding the clouds was something new. His traditional conception of Yahweh did not correspond to a storm-god, neither Baal nor any of the Near-Eastern storm-gods, since riding on the clouds was also common to the portrayal of storm-gods in Mesopotamia. ...”
James S. Anderson, Monotheism and Yahweh’s Appropriation of Baal, Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 617 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015), 86–87.

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

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KTU 1.3 III:38 and Psalm 104:3

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