Historiolae in the Hebrew Bible

2.1.1 Isa 26:7 – 27:1

I begin with four texts that reference Yahweh’s defeat of Leviathan. The historiolae in these texts function much like some from other times and cultures that identify an enemy with a demon or some other monstrous being. Indeed, as Jørgen Sørensen observes, a historiola “stamps trouble or danger as something inimical and strange, alien or even menacing to the cosmic order” (Sørensen 1984, 13). The first of these historiolae appears famously in a prophecy of Isaiah (Isa 27:1). The reference is part of a unit of texts commonly known as the Isaian Apocalypse (Isaiah 24 – 27). However, most understand the relevant passage in 27:1 as the last in a smaller lament that begins with 26:7.^[21] The prophet opens by distinguishing the righteous, with whom he identifies, from the wicked, who continually practice iniquity and ignore Yahweh’s majesty (26:1 – 11). The ritual dimension of the text is clear not only by its appearance in a prophecy, but because it is part of Isaiah’s performative prayer on behalf of Israel:

Indeed, the course of your judgments O Yahweh we await – for you,

  for the name and for your memorial is (our) breath’s desire.

My being desires you at night,

  indeed, my spirit inside me seeks you (26:8 – 9).

Isaiah then employs the illocutionary language of execration.

O Yahweh, they do not see your exalted hand,

  let them see and be ashamed by the zeal of the people.

Indeed, let fire devour your enemies (26:11).^[22]

He then recollects moments in Israel’s history in which Yahweh came to the rescue. He recalls how other foreign overlords controlled Israel previously, but that Yahweh had put an end to their memories. They now dwell among the shades (26:13 – 14). He observes that Yahweh has intervened before on behalf of Israel against its oppressors (26:15 – 16). Their current liminal situation, Isaiah asserts, is no different: “Like a pregnant woman drawing near to give birth, writhing, crying in her pangs, thus are we before you, O Yahweh” (26:17). He then prophesies Yahweh’s impending punishment of evil doers: “For behold! Yahweh goes out from his place to punish whoever dwells on the earth for his iniquity. And the earth will reveal its blood, and its slain will no longer be covered” (26:21). It is at this moment, at the climax of his lament, when Isaiah invokes the mythical moment:

On that day:

Yahweh will punish with his cruel, and mighty, and strong sword,

Leviathan – fleeing serpent,

  and Leviathan – twisting serpent,

    and he will kill the dragon in the sea (Isa 27:1).

Here the primordial past becomes relevant and powerful by being made imminent. Joseph Blenkinsopp remarks:

There can be little doubt that, in the context of 13 – 27 as a whole, a political connotation is present and intended, but the introduction at this point of the ancient motif of the cosmic conflict and victory of the creator-deity suggests that the scribe has in mind the final overcoming of evil as a metahistorical and metaphysical force (Blenkinsopp 2000, 372).

Indeed, scholars typically understand it as a descriptive mythological reference, demythologized détournement, and/or metaphorical in nature. I aver that instancing the myth functions within the prophet’s lament in the same way that the Demotic, Greek, and Akkadian historiolae did for their clients. They make the paradigm of Yahweh’s defeat of Leviathan a precedent. Israel’s current crisis must now conform with cosmology. The implication is that as then, so also now.^[23]

2.1.2 Isa 51:9 – 16

Deutero-Isaiah integrates the same historiola in a later prayer for intervention.^[24] The illocutionary petition opens:

Awake, awake, dress with power, O arm of Yahweh,

  awake like in the days of old, generations of antiquity.

Was it not you who cleaved Rahab,

  who pierced Dragon?!

Was it not you who dried up Sea,

  the water of the great Deep?!

Who made the depths of Sea,

  a path for those redeemed to pass (51:9 – 10)?!

Here the “as then, so also now” formula is explicit: “awake like in the days of old.” The reference to creating a route for the redeemed in the sea identifies the cosmic moment with the tradition of the exodus, another myth to which I shall return.^[25] Now that the prophet has recalled Yahweh’s primordial victory and Israel’s mythical past, he applies their power as a paradigm to his current situation in exile:

And let the ransomed, O Yahweh, return,

  and come to Zion with jubilation and eternal happiness upon their head.

Let joy and happiness overtake them,

  and suffering and sighing flee (51:11).

From here the prophecy speaks in the voice of Yahweh who asserts that he has put his words into the prophet’s mouth (51:16).^[26] He reprimands the exiles for forgetting their maker “who stretched the heavens and founded the underworld” (51:13). It is for this reason, he adds, that they live in continual fear under foreign oppression. Nevertheless, he promises to free them, because they are his people (51:14 – 16). As he proclaims, “I am Yahweh your God who roils the sea and heaves its waves” (51:15) and “I planted heavens and founded earth” (51:16). The prophecy implies that since Yahweh has demonstrated power over the dragon in primordial times, so too can he deliver his people now. As Hendrik Bosman notes:

The memories of creation and exodus are much more than inert mythological fossils embedded in the religious traditions of Israel; they are dynamic recollections of the Lord’s interventions in the past that can be hoped for in future (Bosman 2009, 80 – 81).

Much like some Egyptian historiolae in which the practitioner identifies himself as the god, either directly or indirectly, the prophecy’s move to Yahweh’s voice collapses the boundary between God and the prophet and between the mythical realm and reality, which in turn folds mythical time into the present.^[27] Klaus Baltzer similarly noticed the illocutionary use of time.

With this text too one can ask about the theory and practice of the performance. Here again the problem of time has a special relevance. If we do not confine ourselves to the formula about the unity of time and place as a theatrical rule, then events on the stage can very well bind together different times and present them as simultaneous. The cultic drama in particular regularly presents past as present (Baltzer 2001, 358).

I submit that this prophecy too incorporates an Israelite historiola.^[28]

2.1.3 Psalm 74

The third text that integrates this historiola occurs in a national lament attributed to Asaph (Psalm 74).^[29] The psalm focuses on the destruction of the temple and asks Yahweh to remember his people whom he created in antiquity and redeemed (74:2). It describes the despoiling and burning of his sanctuary and the enemy dishonoring his dwelling place, indeed all the sanctuaries in the land (74:3 – 8). It thus marks a cosmic event that requires a cosmic response. The psalm bewails the disappearance of prophets and the enemy blaspheming his name (74:9 – 10). It then hails Yahweh as a savior king (74:12). It is at this moment, when the psalmist recalls the primordial defeat of the dragon, employing what Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger label the “incantational ‘thou’ style” (Hossfeld and Zenger 2005, 248).

You shattered Sea with your strength,

  you smashed the heads of the dragons upon the waters.

You crushed the heads of Leviathan,

  you gave him as food for the people of the desert (74:13 – 14).

The psalmist then continues with additional descriptions of his cosmological power: his control over springs and rivers, creation of the moon and sun, and division of the seasons (74:15 – 17). He then laments the enemy’s reviling of Yahweh’s name and the community’s defeated circumstance, and he appeals to Yahweh’s memory of the covenant (74:19 – 20). He concludes by issuing a battle cry for Yahweh to come to the rescue: “arise O God, state your case, remember that your reproach comes from a foolish people all day long” (74:22)! Hossfeld and Zenger’s description of the psalm’s use of myth is apposite:

…one could apply vv. 13 – 15 to the exodus and occupation of the land as the mythic primeval time of Israel. The idea would here be transferred to the exodus, or to the battle of gods between YHWH and Pharaoh at the Sea of Reeds. This “mythic” event, which stood “at the very beginning,” thus acquired both an etiological and a paradigmatic function: because and in the manner that YHWH at that time destroyed a superior, life-threatening enemy and so rescued Israel, just so he should and will now demonstrate his power, effective of life and salvation, against the enemies who mock him and to the benefit of his congregation (Hossfeld and Zenger 2005, 248 – 249).

Much like some Egyptian historiolae, this passage insists “on world order by bringing out the full consequences of offending it” (Sørensen 1984, 16). The references to Yahweh’s creative cosmic acts bolster the power of the primordial myth in the historiola. Here the historiola references “a crisis resolved, using the authoritative components of myth in an efficient, abbreviated way” (Frankfurter 2017, 102).

2.1.4 Psalm 89

The incipit for this lengthy prayer for deliverance ascribes it to Ethan the Ezrahite, perhaps the wise man who appears elsewhere (1 Kgs 5:11; 1 Chron 2:6).^[30] It begins by proclaiming Yahweh’s steadfast love and faithfulness (89:2 – 3), but then briefly slips into Yahweh’s voice to reaffirm the covenant with the line of David (89:4 – 5). Afterwards, the psalmist speaks in his own voice and observes how the heavens and the assembly of divine beings praise the uncomparable Yahweh (89:6 – 9). He then recalls his mythic power of old:

You rule the surging of the sea,

  when it lifts its waves, you still them.

You crushed Rahab, like a corpse,

  with your strong arm you scattered your enemies.

He recalls Yahweh’s creation of the mountains Zaphon, Amanus, Tabor, and Hermon (89:10 – 14),^[31] and he extols his love, righteousness, strength, and protection (89:15 – 19). He then cites an earlier oracle (2 Sam 7:8 – 16), here called a vision spoken to his pious ones, in which Yahweh selected David to rule and promised to crush all his adversaries and support his dynasty forever (89:20 – 38). This section “equips the king with positively mythic power” (Hossfeld and Zenger 2005, 405). However, rather than return to the psalmist’s voice, the prayer moves seamlessly from the previous oracle to a lamentation in the present: “but you have rejected and you have refused, and you became furious with your anointed. You have abhorred the covenant of your servant! You have polluted his consecration to the earth” (89:39 – 40)!^[32] The voice continues to accuse Yahweh of shaming the throne and the people (89:41 – 46). The harangue closes with the exclamatory selah!

Since the previous oracle also ended with selah (89:38), and now a change in speaker is noted, it remains unclear at first whether Yahweh’s voice continues and now focuses on reprimanding Israel. Even the reference to “your servant” (89:40) could refer to David as Israel’s servant (89:21). The psalmist’s voice does not re-emerge clearly until the end of the lament when he addresses Yahweh directly and asks him how long his anger will burn (89:47). Thus the lament ambiguously and simultaneously blames Israel and accuses God for the current situation. Hossfeld and Zenger remark: “the comparison between past and present now gains meaning because the crisis in the ‘now’ causes a quest for the previous history” (Hossfeld and Zenger 2005, 412). Then, after briefly contemplating the inevitability of death, we once again hear selah (89:48 – 49). The ritualist closes by asking where Yahweh’s steadfast love has gone, and petitions him to remember the reproaches that his enemies now hurl at his anointed. He ends his prayer with the doxology: “blessed is Yahweh forever, Amen and Amen” (89:50 – 53).

As in Isa 51:9 – 16, the speaker’s move in and out of Yahweh’s voice without warning (89:4; 89:39) blurs the boundary between the mythical past and reality and brings the divine presence to the present day.^[33] The psalmist also oscillates between “I” and the collective “we”.^[34] Hossfeld and Zenger’s summarize the prayer aptly:

Psalm 89 is the psalm of a scribal theologian who makes his chief concern the fate of the Davidic dynasty and, beginning with the situation of dynastic discontinuity in which he finds himself, reminds God of the obligations God has undertaken – indeed, by his accusations puts God under pressure to act (Hossfeld and Zenger 2005, 405).

The psalmist creates this pressure to act by way of the prayer’s use of the historiola. The invocation of the mythic past to alter the present is implicit.

2.1.1 Psalm 77

Six texts also reference Yahweh’s mythic acts of miraculous power during the exodus. These illustrate well the veracity of William Propp’s comment that “the Exodus itself becomes a template for future reenactments of God’s great, creative act in illo tempore…” (Propp 2006, 795). I begin with Psalm 77, another lament ascribed to Asaph. The psalmist begins by describing his urgent distress and calling to God with a failed spirit (77:1 – 7). He connects his pain to divine abandonment (77:8 – 11), and then pauses to consider Yahweh’s wonders of old and acts of power (77:12 – 15), before concluding by evoking the miracles at the Reed Sea.

You redeemed your people with your strength,

  the sons of Jacob and Joseph. Selah.

Waters saw you, O God,

  waters saw you and they writhed,

  indeed the deeps quaked.

Waters poured forth,

  the skies gave forth clouds of thunder,

  your arrows went forward.

The sound of your thunder like wheels,

  lightning lit up the world,

  the earth quaked and shook.

Through the sea was your way,

  and your path through the mighty waters,

  your tracks were unknown.

You led your people like the flock,

  by the hand of Moses and Aaron (77:16 – 21).

Hossfeld and Zenger understand the water here as additionally allusive:

It is true that the emphasis on the element of water has an obvious association with the passage through the sea, but here it is a matter of the mythical–cosmic confrontation between the superior God-king and the waters of chaos… (Hossfeld and Zenger 2005, 279).

In this psalm, the historiola serves as a climax, thus making its paradigmatic employment a crescendo. Here the “as then, so also now” formula is implicit.

2.2.2 Psalm 80

Yet another psalm of Asaph contains a historiola. This individual lament begs Yahweh to save him and asks him how long he will continue to unleash his fury upon his people (80:1 – 7). He asks for relief from Israel’s enemies and for deliverance (80:8). He then turns to Yahweh’s previous act of salvation during the exodus, using a vine as a metaphor for Israel.

A vine from Egypt you uprooted,

  you drove out nations and planted it.

You cleared before it,

  and its root took root and it filled the land (80:9 – 10).

All of the positive consequences of Yahweh’s deliverance, the psalmist adds, have now given way to disaster. Its walls have been breached and the vine’s fruit is now plucked by passersby and gnawed by wild pigs (80:13 – 14). He then issues the “as then, so also now” formula.

God of hosts, please return,

  look from the heavens and see,

  and visit this vine.

And the stock that your right hand planted,

  and the son you strengthened for yourself.

It is burned with fire, cut away,

  from the blast of your face may they perish.

Let your hand be upon the man of your right hand,

  upon the son of man you have strengthened for yourself (80:15 – 18).^[35]

The depiction of Yahweh as a gardener recalls traditions of Eden, thus drawing to the present the primeval origins of Yahweh’s salvation (Hossfeld and Zenger 2005, 315). The reference to God’s “blast” (g-ʿ-r) similarly recalls traditions concerning his battle against the primordial sea (e. g., Isa 17:13; Nah 1:4; Ps 106:9).^[36] The psalmist asserts that in the same way that Yahweh saw fit to claim Israel for himself and free it from Egypt, so also now should the present crisis find resolve so that Israel can invoke his name (80:18 – 20). The metaphor of the vine is especially striking as it functions literarily much like the lump of sulfur in the Greek historiola. It embodies the object that the prayer seeks to transform.

2.2.3 Psalm 106

This lengthy post-exilic national petition begins with the words “praise Yah” and notes God’s steadfast love (106:1). Nevertheless, the context is one of national calamity, as the psalmist then calls upon Yahweh to deliver his people.

Remember me, O Yahweh, when you favor your people,

  visit me when you deliver,

  to see the goodness of your elect ones,

  to take joy in the joy of your nation,

  to glory in the people of your inheritance (106:4 – 5).

After confessing the people’s current and past sins, he reminds the listener that in the past Yahweh did not reject them, but came to their rescue. Thereafter a historiola enumerates a long list of Yahweh’s wonders that alternate with descriptions of Israelite rebellion and unfaithfulness. We hear of the parting of the Reed Sea, the people’s safe passage, and annihilation of the enemy.

He blasted against the Reed Sea and it became dry,

  he led them through the deeps as though desert.

He delivered them from the hand of a hater,

  and he redeemed them from the hand of an enemy.

Waters covered their adversaries,

  not one of them was left (106:9 – 12).

God’s “blasting” (g-ʿ-r) again summons traditions concerning his battle against the primordial sea. The psalmist also references Israel’s past wickedness: the earth’s swallowing of Dathan and Abiram, the making of the golden calf, the apostacy at Baal Peor, the plague that Phinehas averted, and the people’s worship of idols that brought the oppression of foreign nations. Yet, despite their frequent backsliding, the psalmist maintains that Yahweh’s love was unrelenting (106:6 – 46). The prayer then departs from the long list of miracles and demonstrations of Yahweh’s power in Israel’s mythical past for the present day.

Deliver us, O Yahweh our God,

  gather us from the nations to thank your holy name,

  to take pride in your praise.

Blessed is Yahweh, God of Israel,

  from eternity to eternity.

And let all the people say “Amen, praise Yah” (106:47 – 48).

The summoning of the mythical past into the present circumstance is again an implicit demonstration of the “as then, so also now” formula. It becomes efficacious by perlocutionary means.

2.2.4 Psalm 114

Each verse in this brief salvation psalm recalls Yahweh’s powerful deeds in the mythical past. As Erhard Gerstenberger notes, the psalmist enacts “that moment when Yahweh defeated chaos and had his reign proclaimed over all the earth, coinciding with the liberation of Israel from Egypt” (Gerstenberger 2001, 283). According to Stephen Geller, he applies the language of creation to cast Israel’s exodus as the creation of a new nation (Geller 1990).

When Israel went out from Egypt,

  the house of Jacob from a people of strange speech,

Judah became his sanctuary,

  Israel his dominion.

The sea saw and fled,

  the Jordan turned back around.

The mountains skipped like rams,

  hills like offspring of a flock.

What is it to you, O Sea, that you fled,

  O Jordan that you turned back around?

The mountains you skipped like rams,

  hills like offspring of a flock.

From the presence of the Lord, whirl O earth,

  from the presence of the god of Jacob.

Who turns the rock into a pool of water,

  flint into springs of water (Ps 114:1 – 8).

Geller also sees the reference to Judah and Israel in the second verse as

…a mythically framed way of referring to the second great act of Heilsgeschichte, the Conquest of Canaan. And the fact that the poet refers to the Exodus in simple historical terms but to the Conquest in an image which evokes mythically expressed creation-kingship must be taken as evidence of a poetic intention to establish two dimensions, or levels, of meaning in the poem: history and myth (Geller 1990, 183).

Gert Prinsloo postulates that the psalm

…originated in the postexilic community as an exhortation to believe that Yahweh can and indeed will turn the misery of his poor, defenseless and exploited people into a new era of salvation… As such salvation becomes a present reality and an eschatological certainty for the postexilic community who perceive themselves as poor and needy (Prinsloo 1998, 321).

Susan Gillingham similarly understands it as a post-exilic salvation psalm that speaks to the hope of a future Zion (Gillingham 1999, 39). Adele Berlin observes the way the verses move from the past to the present and activate their mythic references:

The “present” on which the mythic past is brought to bear is the situation of the exilic or postexilic Judean community – individuals already in Judah or those hoping for a return to Judah. Psalm 114 is not simply celebrating an event in the distant past. For the psalmist, the distant past is happening now and always (Berlin 2008, 361).

Berlin also espies the paradigmatic power of the myth: “Irrespective of their historicity, the narratives of the creation and the exodus had taken on a mythic dimension, serving as archetypes, symbols of God’s power that transcend actual historicity” (Berlin 2008, 360 – 361). Willem Prinsloo calls the psalm a “persuasive text” (Prinsloo 1992, 174). Such views argue in favor of seeing the mythical components as functioning as a historiola. Here the “as then, so also now” formula is again implicit.

2.2.5 Nehemiah 9

This chapter opens with the narrator’s report of exilic returnees assembling on the twenty-fourth day of the seventh month to fast in sackcloth and throw earth upon themselves (9:1). The communal ritual also involves segregation from foreigners, prostration, confession of sins, and reading from the scroll of the teaching of Yahweh for long portions of the day (9:2 – 3).^[37] Since a narrator introduces the ritual and prayer containing the historiola, we have here a literary representation of a historiola’s performance. It thus gives us a window into how the invoking of mythological traditions of performative power accompanied post-exilic ritual recitation of the law. The account gives us insight into how a historiola’s “power arises from a series of performative conditions, from the authority of the teller to the timing of the event to the responsiveness of the audience” (Frankfurter 2017, 96). The narrator next informs us that Levites stood on a raised platform and cried out to Yahweh and instructed all those assembled to rise and bless Yahweh with them (9:4 – 5). Seven Levites, who speak in unison, then recount Yahweh’s magisterial mythical works including the creation of the heavens, the highest of the heavens, and their host, and all the earth, and the seas with all the life they contain (9:6). They recall how Yahweh brought Abram from Ur to Canaan and changed his name to Abraham (9:7). Afterwards, they extol Yahweh’s signs and wonders performed in Egypt (9:11 – 12).

The sea you cleaved before them,

  and they passed in the midst of the sea on the dry land,

  and their pursuers you cast into the depths like a stone in fierce waters.

 And with a pillar of cloud you led them daily,

  and with a pillar of fire at night to light for them the path on which they went.

The Levites then recount how Yahweh spoke to the Israelites from the heavens, gave the law on Mt. Sinai, bestowed manna upon them, and drew water from a rock (9:13 – 15). They praise Yahweh’s graciousness despite Israel’s disobedience, recalling especially the golden calf incident (9:16 – 18). The Levites then repeat the marvels of the divine pillars, manna, and water, and add the miracle of the Israelites’ undamaged clothes and unharmed feet during the forty-year wandering (9:19 – 21). They describe the possession of Canaan including the mythological wars against Sihon of Heshbon and the giant Og of Bashan, and the Israelites’ eventual success in the land (9:22 – 25).^[38] The Levites then return to Israel’s defiance of the covenant and prophets, which led to oppression and exile (9:26 – 35). The diversity of mythic traditions enumerated here confirms the observation of Frankfurter that historiolae are often “compilations and syntheses of diverse lore” (Frankfurter 1995, 472). The Levites activate the historiola when they bring the prayer to the present day and call upon Yahweh to deliver them: “And now, our God, the great God, the warrior, the awesome, who guards the covenant and lovingkindness, let not the suffering that has overtaken us be small before you” (9:32). Citing the sins of their ancestors as the cause for their hardship they then turn to the topic of their Persian rulers.

Behold, we are today slaves,

  the land that you gave to our fathers to eat of its fruit and its goodness,

  behold we are slaves upon it.

And it gives its abundant yield to kings you set over us, because of our sins,

  and they rule over our bodies and our livestock as they please,

  and we are in great distress (9:36 – 37).

As Jacob Myers observes:

The author of our prayer psalm drew upon a wide knowledge of the theology and traditions of his people, skillfully weaving into it elements of instruction, exhortation, and confession. As such it is prophetic rather than priestly. …Through it all runs the implied hope that Yahweh has taken note and will grant them relief (Myers 1965, 169 – 170).

Thus, the historiola’s formula “as then, so also now” is implicit. The Levites cite Yahweh’s wonders in the mythic past in the expectation that their current plight will find similar resolve.

2.2.6 Daniel 9

We also find a historiola in Daniel’s prayer. Since Daniel narrates this account in his own voice, we again must view it as a literary representation of a historiola’s performance. However, unlike Nehemiah, the book of Daniel contains a highly fictionalized set of stories. Nevertheless, we can assume that the account of his prayer represents an accurate depiction of the sort of prayer one might recite in such a circumstance. The ritual setting of his supplication is evident in that it is accompanied with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes (9:3). He either is mourning the loss of Jerusalem or attempting to induce a theophany.^[39] Elsewhere, the narrator tells us that he prayed three times a day on his knees (6:11).

Daniel’s lengthy penitential confession cites Israel’s sins as the reason for their exile. Afterwards, he brings the myth of the exodus to the present day: “Now, O Yahweh, our God, you brought your people from the land of Egypt with a mighty hand, and you made for yourself a name to this day” (9:15). He then calls upon Yahweh to restore Israel and Jerusalem because his name is attached to the city and his people (9:19). Just then Gabriel visits him and informs him of the future restoration (9:20 – 27). Gabriel’s immediate arrival is the story’s way of illustrating that the prayer and its historiola were successful.

2.3.1 Psalm 83

The historiola contained in this pre-exilic national lament lists Yahweh’s amazing victories over Israel’s enemies during the period of the Judges. Again it is a psalm of Asaph. This one too calls upon Yahweh not to remain silent, but to rescue Israel who is besieged by enemies seeking to annihilate them (83:1 – 5). Not only do they assail Israel, they are forging a covenant against God (83:6). The psalm then identifies them as Edomites, Ishmaelites, Moabites, Hagrites, Byblians, Ammonites, Amalekites, Philistines, and Tyrians, all supported by the Assyrians (83:7 – 8). While the historical record knows of no such coalition,^[40] much like some performative ritual texts found elsewhere, the list merely attempts to cover potential contingencies. The psalm then moves to its historiola:

Do to them as with Midian,

  as with Sisera, as with Jabin in the wadi Qishon.

They were destroyed at Endor,

  they became dung for the land.

Make them, their nobles, like Oreb and Zeeb,

  all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna,

  who said “Let us possess for ourselves the oases of God” (83:10 – 13).

The events recounted are recorded in Judges 4 – 7 and involve the victories of Gideon and of the prophet Deborah and her general Barak. Both campaigns – the former taking place in the Jezreel Valley and the latter between Mt. Tabor and Tanaach – were ordained by God through various oracular means and received divine assistance (Judg 4:6 – 7; 6:12 – 26; 34; 7:9 – 11). According to the Song of Deborah, even the “stars of heaven” fought for them (Judg 5:20). The psalmist’s reference to the two Midianite generals, Oreb and Zeeb, calls for nothing less than the beheading of Israel’s enemies (Judg 7:25). The psalm’s language then becomes highly illocutionary, again resembling an execration ritual.

My God, make them like the weed,

  like chaff before wind.

Like a fire burns a forest,

  and like a flame engulfing mountains.

Thus, you will pursue them with your tempest,

  with your storm you will terrify them.

Fill their faces with ignominy,

  and they will seek your name, O Yahweh.

They will be ashamed and terrified forever,

  and they will be abashed and perish.

And they will know that you, your name is Yahweh, you alone,

  are Most High over the whole earth (83:14 – 19).

About the similes used in the imprecation, Delbert Hillers writes: “similes are frequently found in contexts where the writer expects or desires some objective effect on his world” (Hillers 1983, 184).