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Jeremiah 14's drought reverses the fertile land promised by Baal's rain in the Baal Cycle, placing the loss of crops and animal life within Israel's appeal to its own God for help.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
KTU 1.4 V:6
Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit
Ancient Near East
A court, like Athirat's sons. And Lady Athirat of the Sea responds: You are great, El, so very wise; The gray hair of your beard instructs you Your soft beard down to your chest. So now may Baal enrich with his rain May he enrich with abundant water in a downpour. And may he give his voice in the clouds May he flash lightning to the earth. Is it a cedar house that he would complete Or a brick house that he would construct Let it be told to Mightiest Baal: Invite a caravan into your house, commodities amid your palace. The mountains will bring you ample silver, the hills, the finest gold; the top-tier ore will be brought to you. So build a house of silver and gold, a house of pure stones, of lapis lazuli.
Jeremiah 14:4
Hebrew Bible
2 “The people of Judah are in mourning. The people in her cities are pining away. They lie on the ground expressing their sorrow. Cries of distress come up to me from Jerusalem. 3 The leading men of the cities send their servants for water. They go to the cisterns, but they do not find any water there. They return with their containers empty. Disappointed and dismayed, they bury their faces in their hands. 4 They are dismayed because the ground is cracked because there has been no rain in the land. The farmers, too, are dismayed and bury their faces in their hands. 5 Even the doe abandons her newborn fawn in the field because there is no grass. 6 Wild donkeys stand on the hilltops and pant for breath like jackals. Their eyes are strained looking for food, because there is none to be found.”
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Notes and References
“... The mountainous temple home from which Baal utters his voice and rains
lavishly upon the earth (KTU 1.4 V-VII) appears not only in descriptions of
Yahweh roaring from Zion (Joel 3:16; Amos 1:2) or giving forth rains (Isa.
30:19; Jer. 3:3; 5:24; 10:13; 14:4; 51:16; Amos 4:7) but also in postexilic
discussions of the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem. The tradition of the
temple home that guarantees the life-giving rains underlies the relationship
between tithe and temple in Malachi 3:10. This passage reflects the notion
that payment of the tithe to the temple would induce Yahweh to open the
windows of heaven and pour down crop-producing rains. Similarly, Haggai
1:7-11 attributes drought and scarcity to the failure to rebuild the temple.381
Yahweh’s role as the divine source of rain appears elsewhere in postexilic
prophecy (Zech. 10:1). Joel 4 (E 3) presents various aspects of the mountain
tradition. It is the divine home (4:17 [E 3:17]), the location of Yahweh’s roar
(4:16 [E 3:16]), the site of divine battle (4:9-15 [E 3:9-15]) with heavenly
hosts (4:11-13 [E 3:11-13]; cf. 2:1-11), and the origin of the divine rains
issuing in terrestrial fertility (4:18 [E 3:18]). ...”
Smith, Mark S.
The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel
(p. PDF 105–106) 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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