Texts in Conversation
Exodus 15 shares Baal's description of his mountain home as an inheritance in the Baal Cycle, presenting God's sanctuary as the place where divine rule and Israel's lasting home come together.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
KTU 1.3 III:30
Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit
Ancient Near East
“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.
Exodus 15:17
Hebrew Bible
15 Then the chiefs of Edom will be terrified, trembling will seize the leaders of Moab, and the inhabitants of Canaan will shake. 16 Fear and dread will fall on them; by the greatness of your arm they will be as still as stone until your people pass by, O Lord, until the people whom you have bought pass by. 17 You will bring them in and plant them in the mountain of your inheritance, in the place you made for your residence, O Lord, the sanctuary, O Lord, that your hands have established. 18 The Lord will reign forever and ever! 19 For the horses of Pharaoh came with his chariots and his footmen into the sea, and the Lord brought back the waters of the sea on them, but the Israelites walked on dry land in the middle of the sea.”
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Notes and References
“... Saphon and Zion share a number of epithets. For
example, KTU 1.3 III 13-31 (cf. IV 7-20), cited in full in the previous section,
applies qdš, “holy place,” n‛m, “pleasant place,” and nḥlt, “inheritance,” to
Baal’s mountain. Similarly, Psalms 46:5 and 48:2 describe Zion as *qōdeš (cf.
Exod. 15:13; Pss. 87:1; 93:5; KAI 17:1, 78:5 [?]), while Psalm 27:4 calls
Yahweh’s mountain nõ‛am (cf. Ps. 16:6).378 As Greenfield has observed,
nō‛am in Psalm 27:4 is followed in the next verse by wordplay or
paronomasia on the root *ṣpn.379 Yahweh’s mountain is called a naḥălāh,
“portion” (Ps. 79:1; Jer. 12:7; cf. Exod. 15:17; Ps. 16:6). The epithets for Zion
and the way they are listed together in Psalm 48:2-3 likewise recall the titles
for Sapan in KTU 1.3 III 29-31.380 ...”
Smith, Mark S.
The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel
(p. PDF 105) 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.
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