Texts in Conversation
Isaiah 14 and Job 38 echo ancient Near Eastern traditions where the stars are a divine council serving the high god. Job places this council at creation, while Isaiah uses the image to mock a ruler who imagines himself rising above that divine order.
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Isaiah 14:13
Hebrew Bible
12 “Look how you have fallen from the sky, O shining one, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the ground, O conqueror of the nations! 13 You said to yourself, ‘I will climb up to the sky. Above the stars of El I will set up my throne. I will rule on the mountain of assembly on the remote slopes of Zaphon. 14 I will climb up to the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High!’
Date: 7th-5th Centuries B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Job 38:7
Hebrew Bible
5 Who set its measurements—if you know—or who stretched a measuring line across it? 6 On what were its bases set, or who laid its cornerstone— 7 when the morning stars sang in chorus, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? 8 “Who shut up the sea with doors when it burst forth, coming out of the womb, 9 when I made the storm clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, 10 when I prescribed its limits and set in place its bolts and doors, 11 when I said, ‘To here you may come and no farther, here your proud waves will be confined’?
Date: 5th Century B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The later religion of Israel may have known a cult of El that included a minimum number of these astral deities. Limits on the scope of this paper prevent a full-scale examination of the pertinent material, but some well-known biblical texts may illustrate the situation. El’s astral family may underlie the divine question posed to Job in 38:6–7: Who set its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the divine beings [bénê élohîm] shouted for joy? In the verse, Yahweh the creator-god (like old El?) asks Job if he was present when Yahweh set the cornerstone of the world’s foundations, an ancient event celebrated by the divine beings, here specified as stars. In this passage, the morning stars are clearly parallel to bénê ªélohîm, and on the basis of this verse, Oldenburg (1970) connects the astral bodies with El. The god’s astral association apparently lies behind the polemic in Isaiah 14:13 against the king of Babylon, who attempts to ascend into heaven and exalt his throne “above the stars of El” (mimmaal lékôkébê-el); it should be noted that Shahar is mentioned in the previous verse. The astral dimension of such a polemic against a foreign king perhaps lived on in the polemics directed against Antiochus IV Epiphanes in Daniel 8:9–11: the “little horn” grew “even to the host of heaven” and cast some of them down ..."
Smith, Mark S.
"When the Heavens Darkened: Yahweh, El, and the Divine Astral Family in Iron Age II Judah" in Dever, William G., and Seymour Gitin (eds.) Symbiosis, Symbolism, and the Power of the Past: Canaan, Ancient Israel, and Their Neighbors from the Late Bronze Age through Roman Palaestina
(pp. 265-277) Eisenbrauns, 2003
* 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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