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Judges names the deliverer Shamgar ‘son of Anath,’ the title of the Canaanite war goddess. The Ugaritic Baal cycle shows that same Anath wading through the blood of slain soldiers, an Israelite hero bearing a foreign deity’s name.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
KTU I.3
Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit
Ancient Near East
and she met acolytes at the foot of the mountain. Watch! Anat is fighting in the valley; she brawls between the villages. She fought the western nations of the seacoast; she struck the eastern people of the rising dawn. Under her, like scattered balls, were heads; over her, like grasshoppers, were hands — soldiers’ hands, piled up like locust swarms. She fastened heads onto her back; she girdled her waist with hands. Knee-deep, she plunged through warriors’ blood — neck-deep through the soldiers’ entrails. With a staff, she herded hostages, rabble-rousers with a bowstring.
Date: 2300 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Judges 3:31
Hebrew Bible
28 He said to them, “Follow me, for the Lord is about to defeat your enemies, the Moabites!” They followed him, captured the fords of the Jordan River opposite Moab, and did not let anyone cross. 29 That day they killed about 10,000 Moabites—all strong, capable warriors; not one escaped. 30 Israel humiliated Moab that day, and the land had rest for 80 years. 31 After Ehud came Shamgar son of Anath. He killed 600 Philistines with an oxgoad. So he also delivered Israel.
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Notes and References
... The title 'son of Anath' may identify Shamgar as a member of a special warrior class and/or as a disciple of the goddess Anath (compare 5:6). The phrase is also attested on inscribed bronze arrowheads from the Iron I period (including one from southern Palestine, El Khadr near Bethlehem). Anath is the adolescent sister of Baal who is closely associated with warfare and hunting in Ugaritic texts. While it is a little disturbing that the only divine name mentioned in the Shamgar account is Anath, Shamgar is nonetheless noted by the narrator as an agent of (YHWH's) deliverance for Israel. ...
Way, Kenneth C.
The Meaning of the Minor Judges: Understanding the Bible's Shortest Stories
(p. 278) Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 2018
* 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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