Texts in Conversation
A Ugaritic text from the 14th century BCE describes El, the head god, living in a temple at the source of the rivers along with the springs of the two deeps. Ezekiel 28 describes the king of Tyre claim to sit in that same seat in the heart of the sea.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
KTU 1.3
Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit
Ancient Near East
She stamped her feet, and the earth shook. Then she set her face towards El at the source of the rivers, amidst the springs of the two deeps. She rolled back the tent of El, and came to the pavilion of the King, the Father of the Bright One. She came to the territory, the tent of the creator. Bull El her father heard her voice.
Date: 2300 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Ezekiel 28:2
Hebrew Bible
1 The Lord’s message came to me: 2 “Son of man, say to the prince of Tyre, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: “‘Your heart is proud and you said, “I am a god; I sit in the seat of gods, in the heart of the seas”—yet you are a man and not a god, though you think you are godlike. 3 Look, you are wiser than Daniel; no secret is hidden from you.
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Notes and References
... The name used for God in Ezekiel 28:2 (twice) and 9 is El (ʼēl). This is found in only one other place in the book of Ezekiel, in Ezekiel 10:5 (El-Shaddai). Compare also Psalm 82:1, Job 36:26 and Psalm 102:25-28 for some other places in the Old Testament where the name ʼel is used for God in association with ideas that actually pertain to El in the Ugaritic texts (divine assembly, aged deity, and creation). In saying, “I am El (God),” the king of Tyre declares, “I sit in the seat of God [or gods] (môšab ʼelōhîm) in the heart of the seas” (Ezekiel 28:2). This is suggestive of El, whose dwelling is said in the Ugaritic texts to be “at the source of rivers, in the midst of the double deep.” Although the location of Tyre itself was “in the heart of the seas” (compare Ezekiel 27:4, 32), the association of this with the “seat of God” clearly reflects El. ...
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