Song of the Hoe
Praise of the Pickaxe
Ancient Near East
Not only did the lord make the world appear in its correct form — the lord who never changes the destinies which he determines: Enlil, who will make the human seed of the Land come forth from the earth — and not only did he hasten to separate heaven from earth, and hasten to separate earth from heaven, but, in order to make it possible for humans to grow in ‘Where Flesh Came Forth,’ he first suspended the axis of the world at Dur-an-ki. He did this with the help of the hoe — and so daylight broke forth. By distributing the shares of duty he established daily tasks, and for the hoe and the carrying-basket wages were even established. Then Enlil praised his hoe, his hoe wrought in gold, its top inlaid with lapis lazuli, his hoe whose blade was tied on with a cord, which was adorned with silver and gold, his hoe, the edge of whose point was a plow of lapis lazuli, whose blade was like a battering ram standing up to a great wall. The lord evaluated the hoe, determined its future destiny and placed a holy crown on its head ...
Date: 2000 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Source
Genesis 1:4
Hebrew Bible
6 God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters and let it separate water from water.” 7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. It was so. 8 God called the expanse “sky.” There was evening, and there was morning, a second day. 9 God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place and let dry ground appear.” It was so. 10 God called the dry ground “land” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” God saw that it was good.
Date: 5th Century B.C.E. (Final composition) (based on scholarly estimates)
Source
Texts in Conversation
Genesis 1:4 describes creation as more of a non-violent act of separation, removing much of the overt violent imagery common in other contemporary creation accounts. This restraint is itself part of a broader ancient Near Eastern literary pattern, seen also in the Mesopotamian “Song of the Hoe,” where the god Enlil divides heaven and earth not by force but through ordered labor.
Notes and References
"... On the surface, there is a stark distinction between the Genesis 1–2 creation stories, which are abstract, and the violence of Psalm 74 and the Babylonian myth. However, it has sometimes been suggested that YHWH’s acts of separating (light from darkness, sky from sea, day from night) are comparable to Marduk’s splitting of Tiamat’s corpse. But whereas Enuma Elish uses very physical verbs for Marduk (IV.102–31: tore open, slit, bound, threw down, smashed, severed), the Hebrew term for dividing in Genesis 1 is abstract; it is never used of physical cutting. Notably, nonviolent references to divine dividing at creation are also present in the Mesopotamian tradition, such as when Enlil hastens to separate heaven from earth in lines 4–5 of a text called “Praise of the Pickaxe” ..."
Hays, Christopher B.
Hidden Riches: A Sourcebook for the Comparative Study of the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East
(pp. 68-69) Westminster John Knox Press, 2014
* 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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