David: The Meaning of a Structural Parallel in Psalm 78 - Yeshiva ...

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A Frisch I Vetus Testamentum 59 (2009) 190-198 197Do not be like your fathers and your brethren, who were faithless to the LordGod of their fathers, so that He made them a desolation, as you see. Do notnow be stiff-necked as your fathers were, but yield yourselves to the Lord, andcome to His sanctuary, which He has sanctified for ever, and serve the Lordyour God, that His fierceanger may turn away from you. (w. 7-8)Abijah refers to the perpetual reign of the dynasty; Hezekiah, to the perpetualsanctity of the Temple. Note too the verbal echo between Hezekiahs "do notbe like your fathers", and Psalm 78, "they should not be like their fathers, astubborn and rebellious generation, a generation whose heart was not steadfast,whose spirit was not faithful to God" (Ps. lxxviii 8), as well as the wordsthat begin the next verse: "The Ephraimites" (v. 9).The echoes in the two verses from Chronicles, spoken by kings of Judah,do not make a significant contribution to the debate about when our Psalmwas composed (remember, too, the conditional nature of Solomons legacy in1 Chr. xxviii 7 and 9). 12 1 do not believe that they carry any decisive weightfor the thorny problem of the dating of Psalm 78, with the proposed solutionsranging over many centuries, from Davids reign to the post-exilic era. 13In any case, the explanation proposed here for the structural parallel—theview of the Davidic monarchy as a divine boon whose continuation does not12)See S. Japhet, The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and its Place in Biblical Thought (seconded.; trans. A. Barber; Frankfurt am Main, 1997), p. 391.13)Here are some of the many opinions about the dating of the Psalm: the tenth century BCE,around die time of David (Α. E Campbell, "Psalm 78: A Contribution to the Theology ofTenth Century Israel", CBQ41 [1979], pp. 51-79); before the division of the kingdom (Eerdmans,The Hebrew Book of Psalms, p. 381); when Solomon built the Temple (Loewenstamm,The Evolution of the Exodus Tradition, pp. 75-76); between the division of the kingdom and thedestruction of Samaria (M. Dahood, Psalms II [AB 17; Garden City, 1968], p. 238); duringthe reign of Hezekiah (B. Weber, "Zur Datierung der Asaph-Psalmen 74 und 79", Biblica 81[2000], pp. 521-532); during the reign of Josiah (A. A. Anderson, The Book of the Psalms, II[NCB; London, 1972], p. 562; Zakovitch, "He Chose", pp. 181-182); after the destruction ofthe Temple, as a restoration psalm (A. Berlin, "Psalms and the Literature of Exile: Psalms 137,44, 69, and 78", in P. W. Flint and P. D. Miller [eds.], The Book of Psalms: Composition andReception [VTSup 99; Leiden and Boston, 2005] pp. 75-84); in the early days of die return toZion, as an anti-Samaritan polemic (Gunkel, Die Psalmen, p. 342); and, finally, latest of all,during the Ptolemaic age (L. Finkelstein, "Pre-Maccabean Documents in the Passover Haggadah[Part 2]", HTR 36 [1943], pp. 24-27) or during the time of John Hyrcanus (B. Duhm, DiePsalmen [KHC; Tübingen, 1899], p. 206). But widi all these attempts at precise dating, weshould always remember Loewenstamm s observation: "The precarious nature of the attempts atdating each psalm in the Psalter are among the best-known maladies of biblical scholarship"{The Evolution of the Exodus Tradition, p. 71).
198 Α. Frisch I Vetus Testamentum 59 (2009) 190-198depend on the behavior of the individual kings (parallel to the everlastingsanctity of the Temple), and the allusion to loyalty to David, demanded particularlyof rebellious Ephraim—would seem to favor a date between Jeroboamsrebellion (1 Kgs xi 26-27, 40) and the destruction of the NorthernKingdom.In conclusion, let us go back to the three problems we raised at the outsetand see how they can be solved in light of the thesis presented here. (1) Wenoted a linguistic parallel between the first and seventh units and suggestedthat there is also a conceptual equation of the Lord s two gifts to his people.This provides a solid basis for the parallel between these two units, noted byZakovitch on formal grounds only. (2) We did not apply the obligation tobe faithful to the Torah, imposed on the people of Israel in the first unit, toDavid s descendants in the seventh unit, such that the continued election ofJerusalem and David is conditional on the kings' behavior. Instead we emphasizedthe elements that are being compared: David (along with Jerusalem andthe Temple) 14is equated with the Torah as the Lords gifts to the people.(3) The kings of the House of David are not called on to display loyalty tothe Lord as a condition of dynastic continuity. Rather, if any such idea therebe, it is that the people must be loyal to the House of David and Jerusalem 15and not follow in the errant footsteps of the rebellious tribe of Ephraim.14)On the emphasis in Psalm 78 on the election of David (rather than on the election of Judahand of Jerusalem), see Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 2, p. 292.15)Several traditional commentators remarked the political message of Psalm 78, includingAbraham Ibn Ezra on v. 9: "And according to the plain meaning, the thrust of this psalm refersto the Davidic kingdom and the building of Mount Zion"; Menahem Hame'iri on v. 1: "Thepurpose of the psalm is to proclaim the merit of the kingdom of the House of David, and thatits kingship came from the Lord by the ancient prophecy" (see also his comments on w. 12 and70); Malbim on v. 1: "The poets intention was to support the kingdom of the House of Davidand the Temple that he built, against the kingdom of Ephraim and against [the tribe] in whoseterritory the Tabernacle had stood". Among the moderns we should mention Yair Hoffman,who finds two historical surveys in Psalm 78, each widi its own message; the second survey(w. 40-72), he says, conveys "a historical and political lesson: the rejection of the House ofJoseph and the election of the House of David are presented as a direct conclusion both ofthe course of the nations history and of the summary in w. 38-39" (Hoffman, The Doctrineof the Exodus, p. 99). See also R. P. Carroll, "Psalm lxxviii: Vestiges of a Tribal Polemic",VT2Ì (1971), pp. 133-150.
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