Volume 131, Issue 4

Why were the brothers of king Ahaziah at Beth-Eked in Israel, following the deaths of king Ahaziah and his northern ally, king Joram? This paper takes a closer look at the events of Beth-Eked in 2Kgs 10:13–14 and proposes that the brothers of Ahaziah represent a Judahite delegation seeking to maintain שׁלום with the Omrides in response to Jehu’s coup. If so, then Olyan’s observation of the ironic use of שׁלום in 2Kgs 9 should be extended to 2Kgs 10. In addition, it suggests that Jehu’s slaughter of the Judahites at Beth-Eked was the major turning point in the breaking of the Omride-Judahite alliance, rather than the initial deaths of the two kings.

The present article builds upon previously identified catchwords linking Joel to Hosea and Amos by arguing that Joel opens with literary connections to the beginning (Joel 1:1//Hos 1:1) and end (Joel 1:5–7//Hos 14:2–9) of Hosea in the same way Joel ends with literary links to the beginning (Joel 4:16aα [3:16aα]//Amos 1:2a) and end (Joel 4:18aα [3:18aα]//Amos 9:13b) of Amos. This article concludes by examining the compositional and literary implications of opening and closing Joel with framing language from Hosea and Amos respectively.

Zusammenfassung Im Beitrag wird die These vertreten, dass Koh eschatologische und apokalyptische Vorstellungen kritisiert. Der Frage, wie das genau geschieht, wird dann in diesem Beitrag nachgegangen. Wichtige Aspekte sind der Kreislauf der Natur, die sich wiederholende Geschichte, die ungewisse Zukunft, die Warnung vor Träumen, der unabänderliche Tod und die Entmythologisierung des Gerichts Jhwhs.

This paper examines the message of Qohelet’s Catalogue of Times and its interpretive appendix. Scholars disagree on the extent to which this unit deviates from the traditional free-will theology of the Bible. The paper presents a fresh reading of the passage, which sheds new light on the problem of determinism in Qohelet. Beginning by a novel delineation for the unit, it then suggests fresh solutions for the main exegetical cruxes of the passage (3:14, 15, 17), and finally presents an innovative, somewhat radical, understanding of Qohelet’s approach towards the problem of free will.

If, as theorists of reception studies have argued, readers respond to the meanings that a text has accumulated in the past, this begs the question what the translators of the »first« translation of the Torah, the LXX, responded to. This paper presents a case study of the LXX of Deuteronomy 25:5–6, and argues that the translation is best understood if we assume that the translators were not just transferring a text form one language into another, but were also interacting with a tradition of interpretation and the extensive inheritance rights of women in Egypt.

Zusammenfassung Der Artikel untersucht und vergleicht die Bedeutung von אמן (Hifil) und בטח. Die Methodik basiert auf der Frame-Semantik, einer Theorie der kognitiven Linguistik. Diese rechnet mit prototypischen Situationen, die bei Sprachbenutzern durch die Verwendung von Wörtern evoziert werden. Aus den biblischen Texten werden ein Frame für האמין und ein Frame für בטח rekonstruiert. האמין setzt einen Inhalt voraus, den ein personales Gegenüber äußert und den die »glaubende« Person für wahr hält. בטח dagegen setzt eine (potenzielle) Gefahr voraus, deren Abwendung die »vertrauende« Person erwartet.

I comment on George Hollenback’s response in ZAW 131/3 (2019) to my article »Revealing Nakedness and Concealing Homosexual Intercourse: Legal and Lexical Evolution in Leviticus 18,« Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel (HeBAI) 6/4 (2017): 510–526.

A hitherto unidentified Qumran Cave 4 fragment should be assigned to 4Q96 (4QPs o ), and attests to a textual variant which probably reflects a different word order in Ps 115:3.

The image that appears to Nebuchadnezzar in a dream, in which a colossal statue made from different metals is struck to the ground by a stone (Dan 2), creates an affinity between this story and that of David and Goliath (1 Sam 17). These two stories convey an identical message through the same symbols. While the stone signifies the divine, the man-made metal symbolizes human might. Though this is a broad analogy, which includes both thematic and linguistic parallels, it has not yet received sufficient scholarly attention. This paper unravels the analogy, shedding new light on Daniel 2, its meaning and its purpose.