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“The Canaanites were then in the Land” and Other Shechemite Ironies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 April 2023
Abstract
The Hexateuchal narrative arc begins with Abram’s encounter with Yhwh in Shechem in Gen 12:6–7 and ends with Joshua’s covenant at the same place in Josh 24:25–26. These “bookends” make mention of a particular tree in Shechem, which also features in Gen 35:1–4. The inherited Priestly tradition claimed that none of the ancestors in Genesis knew the name Yhwh, but the Hexateuchal editors of the Persian period insist that both El and Yhwh were known in Shechem and Bethel. In effect, these editors defend northern Yahwism against its southern detractors, and resist any supersessionist proposal that would turn the ancestral memories of the Samarian province into mere history. Israel was born in the house of El, and the ancestors of Israel, who came from beyond the riverine borders of the Euphrates and the Nile, had no clear understanding of Yhwh until they set foot in Canaanite country.
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1 Already in the 12th cent. CE, Ibn Ezra had sensed the chronological distance of the narrator from the events described. Abraham Joshua Heschel, Heavenly Torah: As Refracted through the Generations (trans. Gordon Tucker; New York: Continuum, 2006) 634.
2 A conquest of Bethel is found in Judg 1:22–26, a brief narrative that displays a very similar plot to the conquest of Jericho in Josh 6. According to this plot, an indigenous collaborator is saved, along with their entire clan (see Judg 1:25 and Josh 6:23). Perhaps Judg 1 deliberately plugs a gap concerning Bethel that was left by the book of Joshua, as suggested by Nadav Na’aman, “Rediscovering a Lost North Israelite Conquest Story,” in Rethinking Israel: Studies in the History and Archaeology of Ancient Israel in Honor of Israel Finkelstein (ed. Oded Lipschitz, Yuval Gat, and Matthew J. Adams; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2017) 287–382, at 294.
3 Rainer Albertz, “The Formative Impact of the Hexateuchal Redaction: An Interim Result,” in The Post-Priestly Pentateuch: New Perspectives on Its Redactional Development and Theological Profiles (ed. Federico Giuntoli and Konrad Schmid; FAT 101; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015) 53–74. Albertz builds on, among many other works, Erhard Blum, “The Literary Connection between the Books of Genesis and Exodus and the End of the Book of Joshua,” in A Farewell to the Yahwist? The Composition of the Pentateuch in Recent European Interpretation (ed. Thomas B. Dozeman and Konrad Schmid; SBLSymS 34; Leiden: Brill, 2006) 89–106; and Eckart Otto, “Deuteronomiumstudien III. Die literarische Entstehung und Geschichte des Buches Deuteronomium als Teil der Tora,” ZAR 17 (2011) 79–132.
4 Regarding the empirical model provided by the Temple Scroll, see, for example, Bill T. Arnold, “The Holiness Redaction of the Primeval History,” ZAW 129 (2017) 1–17. For our present purposes, we will not need to distinguish between P and the Holiness redactions in Genesis, but I will assume with Israel Knohl that P and H share the same chronology of divine names. Israel Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995) 168–69.
5 The literary “horizon” of the HexR additions includes not just their immediate literary contexts but extends beyond those contexts to include a “constellation” of available traditions, in some of the ways suggested by Hindy Najman, Losing the Temple and Recovering the Future: An Analysis of 4 Ezra (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014) 20–24. I am grateful to Hindy Najman for her comments on a previous version of this paper.
6 In response to Joel S. Baden’s critique of supplementary models, I should emphasize at the outset that there is no presumption here that previously independent texts—“essentially free of theological import”—have been joined together by Hexateuchal theology. On the contrary, I presume that political theology is at work at every level. See Joel Baden, The Composition of the Pentateuch: Renewing of the Documentary Hypothesis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012) 64–66.
7 Matthias Köckert finds a Hexateuchal addition in Gen 12:7, but this verse clearly lays claim to the geographical context of Shechem mentioned in v. 6; otherwise, the reader would not know the location of Abram’s altar. Matthias Köckert, “Wie wurden Abraham- und Jakobüberlieferung zu einer ‘Vätergeschichte’ verbunden?” HeBAI 3 (2014) 43–66, at 51–55.
8 The most relevant and recent articulations of this theory for our purposes would be Ronald Hendel, “God and Gods in the Tetrateuch,” in The Origins of Yahwism (ed. Jürgen van Oorschot and Markus Witte; BZAW 484; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017) 237–64; Baden, Composition of the Pentateuch, 230–45.
9 See Konrad Schmid, “The Neo-Documentarian Manifesto: A Critical Reading,” JBL 140 (2021) 461–79.
10 Mark G. Brett, Locations of God: Political Theology in the Hebrew Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019) 54–74.
11 Similarly, Judg 9:46 identifies the deity of Shechem as “El of the covenant.” Theodore Lewis suggests the possibility that this “El of the covenant” in Judg 9 is the name of the divinity associated with a treaty between Israelites and Shechemites. On his account, an earlier covenant with El, the patron deity of a polytheistic Canaanite city, has given way to a monolatrous worship of El who eventually took on the name Yhwh as well. See Theodore J. Lewis, “The Identity and Function of El/Baal Berith,” JBL 115 (1996) 401–23, at 404; Aren M. Wilson-Wright, “Bethel and the Persistence of El: Evidence for the Survival of El as an Independent Deity in the Jacob Cycle and 1 Kings 12:25–30,” JBL 138 (2019) 705–20.
12 Zev Farber, “Jerubaal, Jacob and the Battle for Shechem: A Tradition History,” JHS 13 (2013) Article 12, 1–26.
13 For a recent overview of the narrative tapestry that has been unpicked in scholarly theories, see especially Sara Milstein, Tracking the Master Scribe: Revision through Introduction in Biblical and Mesopotamian Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016) 147–73.
14 Gaal is identified as “son of a slave,” but he and his family were apparently grafted into Shechem’s kinship systems. See Jack Sasson, Judges 1–12: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 6D; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013) 392–93. Sasson proposes that ויעברו in Judg 9:26 is “likely technical usage for incorporation into a political unit. What may have occurred, therefore, is that Gaal was accepted as a Shechemite, whatever his past. This joining of groups is implied in the story of Dinah and Shechem son of Hamor (Gen 34) but an actual case is documented in the Mari archives.”
15 Responding to Farber’s argument, Nadav Na’aman resists any connection between Judg 9 and Gen 34 and instead speculates that Judg 1:4–7 preserves references to conflict with a Shechemite king, indirectly named Adoni-bezek. In the interests of Judean self-promotion, this Shechem tradition has been conflated with a conquest of Jerusalem in Judg 1:7–8. Na’aman, “Rediscovering a Lost North Israelite Conquest Story,” 291–93. There is no conquest of Jerusalem in the book of Joshua, but if the editors of Judg 1 sought to plug this conspicuous gap left in Joshua, as Na’aman suggests, then their narrative remedy in 1:7–8 seems to yield the effect of undermining the honor of conquest accorded to David in 2 Sam 5.
16 According to Judg 9, this tree is not only sacred; it seems to be associated in some way with the legitimating of royal power (9:6 and 37; cf. 1 Kgs 12:1). The peculiar wording of the parable in Judg 9:8 is therefore thematically on point: “the trees went out to anoint a king.” See Michaela Bauks, “Sacred Trees in the Garden of Eden and Their Ancient Near Eastern Precursors,” JAJ 3 (2012) 267–301, at 275–81; Sasson, Judges 1–12, 381–84.
17 Otherwise, this phrase is used in Judg 10:16, 1 Sam 7:3, and 2 Chron 33:15, and it is not necessarily to be seen as Deuteronomistic discourse.
18 Albertz (“Formative Impact,” 57) also identified the reference to the Euphrates in Gen 31:21aβ as HexR.
19 Wolfgang Oswald, Staatstheorie im Alten Israel. Der politische Diskurs im Pentateuch und in den Geschichtsbüchern des Alten Testaments (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2009) 209; Albertz, “Formative Impact,” 57. Cf. Christophe Nihan, “The Torah between Samaria and Judah: Shechem and Gerizim in Deuteronomy and Joshua,” in The Pentateuch as Torah (ed. Gary N. Knoppers and Bernard M. Levinson; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007) 199; and Hendel, “God and Gods in the Tetrateuch,” 244–48, 261–62, providing a similar interpretation of Gen 35:1–7 through the lens of his “E” theory.
20 If HexR has retrieved an old tradition rather than composed a new element at this point (see Na’aman, “Rediscovering a Lost North Israelite Conquest Story,” 297–98), then it is interesting to note that Josh 24:12 might be pushing back with a counterclaim: “not by your sword and by your bow.”
21 Farber, “Jerubaal, Jacob and the Battle for Shechem,” 19–21. John Skinner, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Genesis (ICC 1; New York: Scribner, 1910) 422 and 507. See also the influential work of Konrad Schmid, Genesis and the Moses Story: Israel’s Dual Origins in the Hebrew Bible (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2010).
22 Yairah Amit, Hidden Polemics in Biblical Narrative (Leiden: Brill, 2000) 189–211; idem., In Praise of Editing in the Hebrew Bible: Collected Essays in Retrospect (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2012) 45–69.
23 Hilary B. Lipka, Sexual Transgression in the Hebrew Bible (Hebrew Bible Monographs 7; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2006) 184–99.
24 Thomas Römer, The So-called Deuteronomistic History: A Sociological, Historical, and Literary Introduction (London: T&T Clark, 2007) 170.
25 For a late dating of the phrase “Canaanites and Perizzites,” see Walter Gross, Richter, übersetzt und ausgelegt (HThKAT; Freiburg: Herder, 2009) 122. Regarding an exilic date for Deut 20:15–18 see, among others, Cynthia Edenburg, “Paradigm, Illustrative Narrative or Midrash: The Case of Josh 7‒8 and Deuteronomic/istic Law,” in The Reception of Biblical War Legislation in Narrative Contexts (ed. Christoph Berner and Harald Samuel; BZAW 460; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015) 123–38, at 125, with earlier literature.
26 Mark G. Brett, “The Priestly Dissemination of Abraham,” HeBAI 3 (2014) 87–107, at 103–6. The Holiness Code, it should be noted, does not prohibit exogamous marriages among the laity.
27 Sarah Shectman, “Rachel, Leah, and the Composition of Genesis,” in The Pentateuch: International Perspectives on Current Research (ed. Thomas B. Dozeman, Konrad Schmid, and Baruch J. Schwartz; FAT 78; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011) 207–22, at 210.
28 The attempts to extrapolate a Priestly marriage policy from Gen 27:46–28:1 rest on insubstantial claims about characters’ discourse regarding Canaanites rather than on divine commands. Genesis 24, the wooing of Rebekah, is similarly more complex than often supposed. Abraham’s instructions to the servant in 24:4 breach the divine command in Gen 12:1. See Mark G. Brett, “The Politics of Marriage in Genesis,” in Making a Difference: Essays on the Bible and Judaism in Honor of Tamara Cohn Eskenazi (ed. David J. A. Clines, Kent Richards, and Jacob N. Wright; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2012) 49–59; idem., “Yhwh among the Nations: The Politics of Divine Names in Genesis 15 and 24,” in The Politics of the Ancestors: Exegetical and Historical Perspectives on Genesis 12–36 (ed. Mark G. Brett and Jakob Wöhrle; FAT 124; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018) 113–30. Cf. David Frankel, The Land of Canaan and the Destiny of Israel: Theologies of Territory in the Hebrew Bible (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrans, 2011) 240–47; Megan Warner, “ ‘Therefore a Man leaves his Father and his Mother and clings to his Wife’: Marriage and Intermarriage in Gen 2:24,” JBL 136 (2017) 269–88.
29 Even if Gen 12:6 were to have originated in an early “J” document, as Hendel presumes, its relevance would fit very well with the late Hexateuchal theology that I am proposing. See Hendel, “God and Gods in the Tetrateuch,” 245–46, where he links both Gen 12:6–7 (J) and Gen 35:2 (E) to Josh 24:23. The Hexateuchal editors could have either absorbed any earlier Yahwistic material or, conversely, added new references to Yhwh to serve their overall narrative purposes.
30 See, especially, Shectman, “Rachel, Leah,” 211–22.
31 Konrad Schmid, “Judean Identity and Ecumenicity: The Political Theology of the Priestly Document,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Achaemenid Period: Negotiating Identity in an International Context (ed. Oded Lipschits, Gary N. Knoppers, and Manfred Oeming; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbraus, 2011) 3–26, at 7–8; cf. Jan C. Gertz, Tradition und Redaktion in der Exoduserzählung (FRLANT 189; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000) 79–97.
32 Nili Wazana, All the Boundaries of the Land: The Promised Land in Biblical Thought in Light of the Ancient Near East (trans. L. Qeren; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013) 22–104, 301. For an argument that the Euphrates map belongs specifically to a Hexateuchal imagination, see Brett, “Yhwh among the Nations.”
33 Similarly, Ruth’s pledge to Naomi that “your people shall be my people, and your Elohim my Elohim” (Ruth 1:16) is analogous with the speech of Rachel and Leah in Gen 31:14–16 and the division of the gods in the boundary marker of Gen 31:51–54. There is even an implied parallel between Abram and Ruth in the wording of Gen 12:1 and Ruth 2:11. Irmtraud Fischer, Rut (2nd ed.; HThKAT; Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2005) 86–91. Cf. Mark S. Smith, “ ‘Your People shall be my People’: Family and Covenant in Ruth 1:16–17,” CBQ 69 (2007) 242–58, esp. 243.
34 Albertz (“Formative Impact,” 59–60) understands Exod 3:4b, 6a, 12aβ–15, 16aβ to be HexR additions. Cf. Gertz, Tradition und Redaktion, 292–98; Rainer Albertz, Exodus: Band I: Ex 1–18 (ZBK AT 2.1; Zürich: TVZ, 2012) 67–90.
35 Thomas Römer, “Abraham and ‘The Law’ and ‘The Prophets,’ ” in The Reception and Remembrance of Abraham (ed. Pernille Carstens and Niels P. Lemche; PHSC 13; Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2011) 87–101, esp. 100–101. The non-Israelite origins of Caleb are, of course, overwritten with Judean credentials in many texts other than Josh 14:6 and 14.
36 Burnett compares Gen 29:1 with Num 22:5 and argues that Balaam is depicted as a prophet of both El and Yhwh, a liminal character associated especially with the “border” of the Euphrates. Significantly, Balaam is also recalled in the narrative of Josh 24:9–10. Joel S. Burnett, “Prophecy in Transjordan: Balaam Son of Beor,” in Enemies and Friends of the State: Ancient Prophecy in Context (ed. Christopher A. Rollston; University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, 2018) 135–204, at 168–76.
37 See, among many other studies, the overviews provided by Mark S. Smith, God in Translation: Deities in Cross-Cultural Discourse in the Biblical World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), and Thomas Römer, The Invention of God (trans. Raymond Geuss; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015).
38 See Wilson-Wright, “Bethel and the Persistence of El.” Cf. Israel Finkelstein and Thomas Römer, “Comments on the Historical Background of the Jacob Narrative in Genesis,” ZAW (2014) 317–38; Karel van der Toorn, Family Religion in Babylonia, Syria and Israel: Continuity and Change in the Forms of Religious Life (Leiden: Brill, 1996) 300.
39 Reinhard Achenbach provides a case for thinking that the later Yahwistic editing in Gen 28:13–15, 16b, 21b, 22b* can be distinguished from an earlier Elohim story, in Achenbach, “The Post-Priestly Elohîm-Theology in the Book of Genesis,” in Ein Freund des Wortes. Festschrift Udo Rüterswörden (ed. Sebastian Gräz, Axel Graupner, and Jörg Lanckau; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2019) 1–21; cf. Erhard Blum, Die Komposition der Vätergeschichte (WMANT 57; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1984) 9–34.
40 Jakob Wöhrle, “Abraham amidst the Nations: The Priestly Concept of Covenant and the Persian Imperial Ideology,” in Covenant in the Persian Period (ed. Richard J. Bautch and Gary N. Knoppers; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2015) 23–39.
41 See Jakob Wöhrle, “The Un-Empty Land: The Concept of Exile and Land in P,” in The Concept of Exile in Ancient Israel and Its Historical Contexts (ed. Ehud Ben Zvi and Christoph Levin; BZAW 404; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010) 189–206.
42 See, especially, Tamara Cohn Eskenazi, “The Missions of Ezra and Nehemiah,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period (ed. Oded Lipschits and Manfred Oeming; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006) 509–29; Katherine E. Southwood, Ethnicity and the Mixed Marriage Crisis in Ezra 9–10: An Anthropological Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Lisbeth S. Fried, “No King in Judah? Mass Divorce in Judah and in Athens,” in Political Memory in and after the Persian Empire (ed. Jason M. Silverman and Caroline Waerzeggers; ANEM 13; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2015) 381–401.
43 Blum claims that the Priestly version of Jacob’s Bethel encounter has reinterpreted an older non-P story by transforming the cultic pillar into a mere memorial of divine speech, in effect undermining any enduring authority of Bethel. Erhard Blum, “The Jacob Tradition,” in The Book of Genesis: Composition, Reception and Interpretation (ed. Craig A. Evans, Joel N. Lohr, and David L. Petersen; Leiden: Brill, 2012) 181–211. If this were P’s intention, to devalue Bethel, then the Hexatechal editors have apparently rejected any such implication. For a critique of Blum’s account of the Bethel traditions, see Brett, Locations of God, 57–58, 105–7.
44 Even the oldest version of centralization law would have been unknown in the time of both Jeroboam I and Jeroboam II. The oldest layer is found most likely in Deut 12:13–19. Eckart Otto, Deuteronomium 12,1–23,15 (HThKAT; Freiburg: Herder, 2016) 1146–67 and 1182–88; Thomas Römer, “Cult Centralization and the Publication of the Torah between Jerusalem and Samaria,” in The Bible, Qumran and the Samaritans (ed. Magnar Kartveit, Gary N. Knoppers, and Stefan Schorch; SJ 104; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2018) 79–92; cf. Gary N. Knoppers, “The Northern Context of the Law-Code in Deuteronomy,” HeBAI 4 (2015) 162–83.
45 On the Golden Calf traditions in Exod 32:25–29, Deut 9:8–21, and 1 Kgs 12:28–32, see the comments in Brett, Locations of God, 42–43, 56, 60; Gili Kugler, When God Wanted to Destroy the Chosen People: Biblical Traditions and Theology on the Move (BZAW 515; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2019) 13–26.
46 See, especially, Joachim J. Krause, “Hexateuchal Redaction in Joshua,” HeBAI 6 (2017) 181–202; Edenburg, “Paradigm, Illustrative Narrative or Midrash.”
47 Lewis, “The Identity and Function of El/Baal Berith,” 413–14.
48 Smith, God in Translation, 193–215. On the complexities of Gen 14, see Gard Granerød, Abraham and Melchizedek: Scribal Activity of Second Temple Times in Genesis 14 and Psalm 110 (BZAW 406; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010); Robert Cargill, Melchizedek, King of Sodom: How Scribes Invented the Biblical Priest King (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).