Redactors, Rationalists, and (Bloodied) Rivers: Some Comments on the First Biblical Plague...

Literature as Politics, Politics as Literature

Essays on the Ancient Near East in Honor of Peter Machinist

Edited by

DaviD S. vanDerhooft and abraham Winitzer

Winona Lake, Indiana eiSenbraunS

2013

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Literature as politics, politics as literature : essays on the ancient Near East in honor of Peter Machinist / edited by David S. Vanderhooft and Abraham Winitzer. pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-1-57506-272-3 (hardback : alk. paper)1. Middle East—Civilization—To 622. 2. Middle East—

Literatures—History and criticism. 3. Bible—Criticism and interpretation. 4. Bible—History of Biblical events. 5. Bible—History of contempory events. I. Vanderhooft, David Stephen, editor of compilation. II. Winitzer, Abraham, editor of compilation. III. Machinist, Peter, honouree.

DS57.L547 2013939.4—dc23

2013033823

This publication is made possible in part by support from the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts,

College of Arts and Letters, University of Notre Dame,

and from the Office of the Provost and Dean of Faculties,

Boston College.

v

Contents

Peter Machinist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ixDavid S. Vanderhooft and Abraham Winitzer

Bibliography of Peter Machinist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii

Fearful Symmetry: The Poetics, Genre, and Form of Lines 109–118, Tablet I in the Poem of Erra . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Yoram Cohen

Menahem’s Reign Before the Assyrian Invasion (2 Kings 15:14–16) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Peter Dubovský

Ethnicity in the Assyrian Empire: A View from the Nisbe, (I): Foreigners and “Special” Inner Communities . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Frederick Mario Fales

David and the Ark: A Jerusalem Festival Reflected in Royal Narrative. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

Daniel E. Fleming

Creation and the Divine Spirit in Babel and Bible: Reflections on mummu in Enūma eliš I 4 and rûaḥ in Genesis 1:2. . 97

Eckart Frahm

Niṣirti bārûti: une autre approche . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117Jean-Jacques Glassner

NB Administrative Terminology and Its Influence in Biblical Literature: Hebrew 137 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ארחה

Ronnie Goldstein

Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Literatures: A General Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

William W. Hallo

Between Elective Autocracy and Democracy: Formalizing Biblical Constitutional Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

Baruch Halpern

Contentsvi

Prosperity and Kingship in Psalms and Inscriptions . . . . . . . . . 185Mark W. Hamilton

Redactors, Rationalists, and (Bloodied) Rivers: Some Comments on the First Biblical Plague . . . . . . . . . . . . 207

John R. Huddlestun

“An Heir Created by Aššur”: Literary Observations on the Rassam Prism (A) of Ashurbanipal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

Victor Avigdor Hurowitz*

Literary-Political Motifs in the Assyrian Royal Inscriptions: Measuring Continuity versus Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269

Mario Liverani

Of Bears and Men: Thoughts on the End of Šulgi’s Reign and on the Ensuing Succession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285

Piotr Michalowski

A Hidden Anti-David Polemic in 2 Samuel 6:2 . . . . . . . . . . . 321Nadav Naʾaman

The Prophet and the Augur at Tušḫan, 611 b.c. . . . . . . . . . . 329Martti Nissinen

Assyria and Judean Identity: Beyond the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339

Eckart Otto

Psalm 22:16 and Its Sumerian and Akkadian Analogues . . . . . . . 349Shalom M. Paul

Do Ideas Travel Lightly?: Early Greek Concepts of Justice in Their Mediterranean Context. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355

Kurt A. Raaflaub

The Rod that Smote Philistia: Isaiah 14:28–32 . . . . . . . . . . . 381J. J. M. Roberts

Errant Oxen Or: The Goring Ox Redux. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397Martha T. Roth

Jephthah: Chutzpah and Overreach in a Hebrew Judge . . . . . . . 405Jack M. Sasson

The Remembrance of Kings Past: The Persona of King Ibbi-Sin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421

T. M. Sharlach

Contents vii

Hittite Gods in Egyptian Attire: A Case Study in Cultural Transmission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433

Itamar Singer*

How Did Šulgi and Išbi-Erra Ascend to Heaven? . . . . . . . . . . 459Piotr Steinkeller

“War Crimes” in Amos’s Oracles Against the Nations (Amos 1:3–2:3) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479

Nili Wazana

Grammar and Context: Enki & Ninhursag ll. 1–3 and a Rare Sumerian Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503

Christopher Woods

Towards a Biography of Kish: Notes on Urbanism and Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527

Norman Yoffee

Index of Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 545Index of Scripture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557

207

Redactors, Rationalists, and (Bloodied) Rivers

Some Comments on the First Biblical Plague

John r. huDDleStun

In terms of interpretive longevity, few religious narratives can compete with the exodus story, that grandest of miracles in the biblical writers’ conception of their history. The timeless appeal of this story is due in no small part to the portrayed conflict between Moses/Aaron and the nameless, recalcitrant pharaoh, defeated by a series of divinely conceived plagues through which the Israelite deity secures the freedom of his fledg-ling people. Despite the assumed miraculous nature of the events, bibli-cal scholars, Egyptologists, and zealous amateurs have offered a host of natural explanations for the phenomena. My goal here is less ambitious in that I restrict myself to a critical review of scholarship on the first plague only—the Nile river turns to blood—with particular reference to the natu-ralistic interpretation of Greta Hort and those who continue to embrace or expand upon her reading of the biblical text. Having demonstrated the deficiencies in such a reading, I then survey briefly some extrabiblical examples of the water-blood motif and suggest that this plague need not be viewed as a uniquely Egyptian phenomenon (if Egyptian at all). Rather, as a widespread omen of death, defeat, and devastation, particularly in Mesopotamian tradition, the motif possessed a universal significance be-yond its literary Nilotic setting.

In naturalistic readings of the biblical plagues, one of the most influential studies over the past half century has been the series of articles published Author’s note: It gives me great pleasure to contribute this small offering in honor of my intellectual mentor, fellow bibliophile, and dear friend, Peter Machinist. Peter’s careful, methodical, and always meticulous approach to scholarship, especially in com-parative studies, is a model for his students and colleagues alike. Whatever success I have achieved in my own teaching and research, I owe in no small part to his wise guidance and influence. Ad multos annos!

O�print from:Vanderhooft and Winitzer eds., Literature as Politics, Politics as Literature:Essays on the Ancient Near East in Honor of Peter Machinist© Copyright 2013 Eisenbrauns. All rights reserved.

John R. Huddlestun208

in the late 1950s by the Danish literary figure Greta Hort. 1 While there were similar attempts before Hort to explain the biblical phenomena as naturally occurring events, her frequently cited articles in particular pro-vided the impetus for a variety of such readings of the plagues (more re-cently, Humphreys, Trevisanato, and Sivertsen). 2 Rather than summarize the sequence of events as Hort understood them, as done already in many commentaries and articles, I focus on her conclusions regarding the blood plague, which are critical to her ecological thesis as a whole, and without which her elaborate scenario is rendered untenable.

In summarizing her thesis at the outset, Hort stated, “If it can be shown that the salient features of each plague are also the salient features of one specific natural phenomenon, and that the plagues follow upon each other in the Bible in the sequence which such phenomena would have in nature, then it must be said that the historical nucleus in the ‘saga’ of the plagues is so great as to give us an almost complete picture of the events which led up to the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt.” 3 Hort took as her starting point the “Biblical account as it stands,” accepting “the ten plagues in the sequence in which they occur in the Bible.” 4 While aware of the source-critical problems in the plagues account, Hort focused only on what she termed the “historical nucleus” of the narrative, rather than the “narrator’s handling and arrangement of events.” 5 The distinction between these is subjective at best in her reading, a fact illustrated by her later comments on the assumed displacement of Exodus chapter five, which, she argued, immediately preceded the introduction of the plagues in chapter seven. Here Hort did not accept the text “as it stands,” but explained that the “narrators and writers” had altered the “original account” and fashioned a

1. Greta Hort (1903–67), literary scholar and poet, was born in Denmark, where she took an M.A. and lectured in English at the University of Copenhagen, followed by a Ph.D. at Newnham College, Cambridge. After nearly two decades at the University of Melbourne, she returned to Denmark in 1957, accepting the chair in English Literature at the University of Århus (information from U. Hoff, “Hort, Greta (1903–1967),” Australian Dictionary of Biography [vol. 14; Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1996)] 499–500).

2. C. J. Humphreys, The Miracles of Exodus: A Scientist’s Discovery of the Extraor-dinary Natural Causes of the Biblical Stories (New York: HarperCollins, 2003); S. I. Trevisanato, The Plagues of Egypt: Archaeology, History and Science Look at the Bible (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2005); B. J. Sivertsen, The Parting of the Sea: How Volcanoes, Earthquakes, and Plagues Shaped the Story of Exodus (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).

3. G. Hort, “The Plagues of Egypt,” ZAW 69 (1957) 84–103, here 85.4. Ibid., 85 (emphasis added) and 86.5. Ibid., 85 and n. 1.

Some Comments on the First Biblical Plague 209

version to suit their readers, and, moreover, that their skill in doing so is to be admired. 6 Given these statements, the reader cannot help but inquire as to why we should then trust the biblical writer/redactor’s version of the plagues in the chapters that follow. Could these not have been altered as well to suit the language and “thought forms of that age”? 7 In postulat-ing a historical nucleus, Hort wished to preserve the number/order of the plagues in Exodus. At no point in her 32-page analysis did she refer to the different number and order of the plagues in Psalms 78 or 105—differences that later defenders of her thesis are compelled to explain as secondary. 8 Yet Hort’s argument is circular in that the biblical order of the ten plagues is appealed to as evidence of their veracity (events like this can only have happened in this sequence in ancient Egypt), while at the same time her naturalistic interpretation is used to defend the Exodus number/order as the only credible one.

The linchpin of Hort’s causal sequence of naturally occurring events is the first plague, the “blood-red colour” of the Nile, which she assumed could only be the result of an abnormally high inundation. 9 The red-dish waters derived from the intensity and increased volume of the flood waters: “the more abnormally high the rise of the Nile is, the more red will its waters be.” 10 Aside from the intensity of the red waters, Hort cited

6. G. Hort, “The Plagues of Egypt II,” ZAW 70 (1958) 48–59, here 58. Note also her proposed emendation of the Hebrew text (without textual support) in Exod 10:19 (p. 52).

7. Ibid., 57.8. For varying source-critical conclusions regarding the plague traditions and the

Psalms, compare S. E. Loewenstamm, The Evolution of the Exodus Tradition (trans. from Hebrew, 1987; Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1992) 71–102; L. Schmidt, Beobach-tungen zu der Plagenerzählung in Exodus VII 14–XI 10 (Studia Biblica 4; Leiden: Brill, 1990) 86–96; C. Houtman, Exodus, Volume 2, Chapters 7:14–19:25 (HCOT; trans. from Dutch, 1989; Kampen, Netherlands: Kok, 1996) 13–21; W. H. C. Propp, Exodus 19–40 (AB 2A; New York: Doubleday, 2006) 797–803; and M. Z. Brettler, “The Poet as Historian: The Plague Tradition in Psalm 105,” in Bringing the Hidden to Light: The Process of Interpretation. Studies in Honor of Stephen A. Geller (eds. K. F. Kravitz and D. M. Sharon; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007) 19–28.

9. The majority of scholars and commentators assume the text does not refer to actual blood, although some reject this reading as a denial of the miraculous intent of the text (for example, J. Broekhuis, De tien plagen en Egypte [Kampen, Netherlands: Kok, 1984] 52–53; J. I. Durham, Exodus [WBC 3; Waco, TX: Word, 1987] 91, 97). Stuart adopts a more nuanced interpretation, asserting that the first nine plagues were “divinely produced” magnified imitations of natural phenomena (D. K. Stuart, The New American Commentary, Volume 2: Exodus [Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2006] 193, 227).

10. Hort, “Plagues,” 92.


five “attendant” phenomena, two of which validated her thesis of an ex-cessive flood, namely, the fact that the bloodied waters were “throughout the whole land of Egypt” (Exod 7:19, 21) and that “all the Egyptians had to dig around the Nile for drinkable water” (v. 24). More than anything else in the exodus narrative, this detail, she believed, reflected an intimate “knowledge of the actual conditions in Egypt and of the events in that country.” 11 Yet this conclusion makes no sense in an Egyptian context, where the expansive waters of such an excessively high flood (overtaking levee crests with extensive flooding of basins, villages, temples, etc.) would hardly allow one to “dig” for any water near the river that did not originate with the inundation. 12 If anything the biblical text here betrays an igno-rance of the Nile floodplain in inundation, despite Hort’s creative exegesis of Exod 7:24. In addition, her claim regarding detailed knowledge of the Nilotic setting in the language of the above verses is undercut by the oc-currence of such hyperbolic description elsewhere in Exodus (the repeated use of כל in contexts where the river or topography is not in view), along with the possible dependence on creation language in Genesis. 13

Hort was aware of the fact that the waters of the yearly inundation could at times display a reddish brown color due to the level of sediment

11. Ibid., 93.12. Greenberg interpreted Exod 7:24 to indicate that a high inundation was not

behind the plagues: “Nor, if the truth be told, is there a hint in the narrative of a high Nile (n.b., the Egyptians digging for water around the Nile—which cannot there-fore have flooded its environs)” (M. Greenberg, Understanding Exodus [New York: Behrman House, 1969] 202); compare also J. P. Hyatt, Commentary on Exodus (Lon-don: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1971) 107.

13. For hyperbolic language, see W. H. C. Propp, Exodus 1–18 (AB 2; New York: Doubleday, 1999) 347; and F. V. Greifenhagen, Egypt on the Pentateuch’s Ideological Map (JSOTSup 361; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002) 102–3. On allusions to creation, see Z. Zevit, “The Priestly Redaction and Interpretation of the Plagues Narra-tive in Exodus,” JQR 66 (1975–76) 193–211, here 199–202, 210–11. T. E. Fretheim posits the undoing of creation as a dominant theme throughout (“The Plagues as Eco-logical Signs of Historical Disaster,” JBL 110 [1991] 385–96). Others are more skepti-cal: Propp, Exodus 1–18, 345–46; and B. Lemmelijn, “Genesis Creation Narrative: The Literary Model for the So-Called Plague Tradition?” in Studies in the Book of Genesis (ed. A. Wénin; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2001) 407–19. Hort’s odd comment (“Plagues II,” 53) regarding the three day duration of the plague of darkness in Exod 10:22 is an excellent example of her unwillingness to acknowledge the literary nature of the narrative (especially puzzling given her own work as a literary scholar). Here she confessed confusion as to why the writer should think it necessary to add that the darkness (understood here as a khamsin) lasted for three days, when the ancient reader would know this already as the usual duration for this event. Apparently oblivious to the symbolism of the number, Hort instead concluded that the specific mention of three days only further demonstrated the historical veracity of the narrative.


brought by the Blue Nile and the Atbara. 14 Given this fact, she concluded that such “a frequent occurrence cannot function as a portent, nor can it be regarded as a rare event,” and so “we must conclude that the portent consisted in the intensity of the redness being so great so as to make the Nile water look like blood.” 15 This rare “blood-red Nile,” Hort argued, was due to the presence of flagellates and harmful bacteria carried from the plateau region of the Blue Nile. These in turn caused the “already red water” to become “truly blood-red in colour,” and, according to her, accounted for the remaining three attendant phenomena (dying fish, stench of the river, and its undrinkable waters). 16 Yet, following on the seminal studies of Talling, Rzóska, and others, Hort’s assumption of a very high flood actually works against her explanation for the red waters resulting from elevated phytoplankton levels that survived in flood from the Blue Nile plateau (Lake Tana). Both the high velocity and turbidity of the flood waters, along with the reduced light penetration (because of increased suspended matter), would prevent or drastically reduce the growth of planktonic algae during this time of year (a fact repeatedly em-phasized in studies of the Blue Nile over the past half century). Rather, these levels increased and saw their maxima in the off-flood season, not during the period of highest flood, as Hort maintained (“the flagellates would appear only at a time when the Nile was at its highest”). 17 Hort did not rule out the possibility that this “blood-red Nile” and the plagues that followed, while “far from common, may yet happen in Egypt from time to time.” 18 Similarly, she referred to “the dreaded calamity of too high a rise of the Nile with the plagues which one knew would follow in

14. For the phenomenon, see H. G. Lyons, The Physiography of the River Nile and Its Basin (Cairo: National Printing Department, 1906) 158, 172–74; D. Hammerton in J. Rzóska, ed., The Nile, Biology of an Ancient River (Monographiae Biologicae 29; The Hague, Netherlands: Dr. W. Junk B. V., 1976) 243–44.

15. Hort, “Plagues,” 87.16. Ibid., 94.17. Hort, “Plagues,” 94. See J. F. Talling and J. Rzóska, “The Development of

Plankton in Relation to Hydrological Regime in the Blue Nile,” Journal of Ecology 55 (1967) 637–62, here 644–49, 658–60; Talling in Rzóska, The Nile, 390–96; and Talling et al. in J. H. Dumont, ed., The Nile: Origins, Environments, Limnology and Human Use (Monographiae Biologicae 89; New York: Springer, 2009) 439, 445. The specific flagellates cited by Hort are not present in any of these studies, while the most common species found in the river (blue-green algae) are not toxic. Moreover, Nile phytoplankton levels in ancient Egypt would have been considerably lower given the absence of modern dams and reservoirs (Talling and Rzóska, “Development,” 658, and Hammerton in Rzóska, The Nile, 252–54).

18. Hort, “Plagues II,” 58.


its train.” 19 Thus the biblical plagues were not unique for Hort, yet she conceded that “we have no records from ancient Egypt which give us any parallel to the situation with which we are dealing here.” 20 This problem-atic lack of evidence for such phenomena in ancient Egypt is addressed by others after her.

Despite the source-critical and other problems with her scenario, Hort’s analysis continues to gain adherents. In his 1997 publication Israel in Egypt, James Hoffmeier devotes four pages to her articles, concluding that her “scenario for explaining the phenomena of the plagues, I believe, is compelling indeed.” 21 While he does not accept every detail of her analy-sis, Kenneth Kitchen isolates Hort’s articles as the “most straightforward,” and by implication, the most credible, of “all the modern treatments of the phenomena.” 22 Like Hort and others, he assumes that an “extremely high” or “extrahigh” flood is behind the “clearly reddened Nile,” which sets in motion the series of events. 23 As for high inundations in ancient Egypt, Kitchen alludes to a handful of texts that narrate the aftermath of these, namely the flooding of temples and general destruction under Sobekḥotep VIII (ca. 1650 b.c.) and Osorkon III (ca. 780 b.c.), and the exceptionally high flood in Taharqa’s sixth year (684 b.c.). 24 If the series of biblical plagues stems from an extremely high flood, then one would expect to find at least some evidence in these accounts of phenomena similar to those described in Exodus; yet one searches in vain. Instead, Egyptian narratives focus to varying degrees on structural damage, espe-cially to temples, the extent of the flood waters (penetrating towns and overtaking high ground), and the role of the king in surveying and ad-dressing the situation, and they frequently invoke mythological language to link the waters to those of creation. The texts do not refer to the color

19. Ibid., 57 (emphasis added).20. Ibid., 55.21. J. K. Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus

Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) 146–49.22. K. A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerd-

mans, 2003) 250.23. Ibid., 249–50.24. “It is worth remarking that Egypt knew other high Niles . . . [under Sobekḥotep

and Osorkon] that flooded the Theban temples, and one under Taharqa (690–664) that passed safely” (ibid., 250). For the texts, see W. Helck, Historisch-biographische Texte der 2. Zwischenzeit und neue Texte der 18. Dynastie (rev. ed.; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1983) 46–47 no. 63, with translation and discussion in J. Baines, “The Sebekḥotpe VIII Inundation Stela: An Additional Fragment,” AcOr 37 (1976) 11–20; R. K. Ritner, The Libyan Anarchy: Inscriptions from Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period (SBLWAW 21; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009) 415–21, 539–45, 560.


or quality of the Nile water, dead fish or frogs, or disease among animals or humans. 25 The inscription of Taharqa’s sixth year, the highest flood recorded in Egyptian records, 26 states that rats(?) and snakes perished in the high waters, which then helped protect the crops for a good culti-vation. 27 The text also relates that the high waters kept away devouring locusts and prevented wind damage to the crops, precisely the opposite of what we find in the biblical plagues. 28 Kitchen, in an apparent attempt to address the differences, comments only that these high floods “were less destructive than that of Exodus.” 29 This explanation is inadequate. Are we to conclude that had the flood levels under Sobekḥotep, Osorkon, or Taharqa only been a little higher, then we would indeed find some men-tion of the plagues in Egyptian accounts (in the biblical order, of course)? Again, Kitchen and others fail to address one of the central problems for those who posit an excessively high inundation as the ecological key to understanding the sequence of plagues, namely, that the biblical narrative bears no relationship to any Egyptian description of the phenomenon and its aftermath. In fact, a close reading of the biblical account provides no reason to conclude that an inundation, high or otherwise, played any role in the writers’ conception, whether literary or historical, of the first two plagues. 30 Nor does the text offer or any causal link between the plagues,

25. For Sobekḥotep VIII, see Baines, Sebekḥotpe, 11–13 for the text and comments throughout on the role of the king. For Osorkon and Taharqa, see Ritner, Libyan Anarchary, 417–19 text no. 110 lines 3–6; 418–19, lines 31–34; and 543–44 text no. 162 lines 3–8, 10–13.

26. J. von Beckerath, “The Nile Level Records at Karnak and their Importance for the History of the Libyan Period (Dynasties XXII and XXIII),” JARCE 5 (1966) 43–55, here 44 nos. 34–35, with the Osorkon III flood being the second highest (no. 5).

27. Kawa Stela V line 12 (M. F. L. Macadam, The Temples of Kawa I: The Inscrip-tions [London: Oxford University Press, 1949]) 26–27. For “rats” (Egyptian ḥdqq.w), see 30 n. 34.

28. The narrative intentionally avoids mention of the water’s widespread destruc-tion (contra Kitchen’s “passed safely” judgment) because of literary and ideological constraints with respect to the depiction of the king and instead focuses on beneficial aspects of the record-high inundation (discussion in J. R. Huddlestun, “‘Who Is This That Rises Like the Nile?’: Some Egyptian Texts on the Inundation and a Prophetic Trope,” in Fortunate the Eyes That See: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman in Celebration of His Seventieth Birthday (eds. A. B. Beck et al.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995) 338–63, here 359–60).

29. Kitchen, Reliability, 250.30. Compare G. Fohrer, Überlieferung und Geschichte des Exodus: Ein Analyse von

Ex 1–15 (BZAW 91; Berlin: Töpelmann, 1964) 77; Greenberg, Understanding Exodus, 202; Broekhuis, De tien plagen, 52; and N. M. Sarna, Exploring Exodus: The Heritage of Biblical Israel (New York: Schocken, 1986) 77. In later retellings of the exodus story (Artapanus, ca. third–second century b.c.), Moses strikes the river and brings forth


beyond the initial statements in 7:17–18 and 21, where the blood in the water (miraculously and instantaneously produced) kills the fish, which in turn pollute the waters and make them undrinkable. Yet no correlation ex-ists with the frogs that follow, which emerge from a non-polluted Nile and remain in the same at the end of the plague (Exod 8:5[9]).

Finally, like many before him, Kitchen calls attention to the brief de-scription of the chaotic conditions in the land reflected in the Middle Kingdom poem, Admonitions of Ipuwer. 31 The relevant line, quoted by virtually every biblical commentator, reads: “O, but the river is blood, and they still drink from it; they push people aside and still thirst for water.” 32 Many assume or imply that the passage refers to an inundation, or the reddish waters associated with it, but this reading of the text ignores both genre and context. The reference to blood at this point must be read in light of other passages in Ipuwer that describe the widespread plunder-ing and violence that result in numerous dead bodies left in the open or thrown into the river without proper burial, leaving the desperate popu-lace forced to drink from a polluted river (strophes 2.6–7, 4.3–4, 6.14). Moreover, the upside-down social world of the text (for example, the rich are poor, the poor now rich, etc.), a literary topos echoing the antithetical “then-now” motif in funerary laments, argues against a naïve historical reading of the poem. 33 For example, the text refers at one point to the rising waters of the inundation (2.3), yet a few lines later one reads that

the inundation while the Egyptian magicians respond by changing the water color (no mention of blood); see OTP, 1.902.

31. Hort does not mention Ipuwer by name, but notes Jeremias’s brief comments on it (A. Jeremias, Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients [3rd ed.; Leipzig: Hinrich, 1916] 360, 362), where the author directs the reader to quoted passages in his Handbuch der altorientalischen Geisteskultur (Leipzig: Hinrich, 1913) 220–21.

32. R. B. Parkinson, The Tale of Sinuhe and Other Ancient Egyptian Poems 1940–1640 bc (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) 172. The term used here (jtrw) re-fers to the river, not the inundation. For orientation to the text as literature, see ibid., 166–69; and idem, Poetry and Culture in Middle Kingdom Egypt: A Dark Side to Per-fection (London: Continuum, 2002) 204–16; and for a full treatment of all aspects of the text, see R. Enmarch, A World Upturned: Commentary on and Analysis of the Dia-logue of Ipuwer and the Lord of All (Oxford: Oxford University Press [for The British Academy], 2008), especially the Introduction there (1–64). For a different reading of the text, see F. A. Hassan, “Droughts, Famine and the Collapse of the Old Kingdom: Re-reading Ipuwer,” in The Archaeology and Art of Ancient Egypt: Essays in Honor of David B. O’Connor (eds. Z. A. Hawass and J. Richards; Cairo: Conseil Suprême des Antiquités de l’Égypte, 2007) 1:257–377.

33. On lament formulations and Ipuwer, see Parkinson, Tale of Sinuhe, 167; with fuller analysis of other possible literary sources in idem, Poetry and Culture, 58–59; and Enmarch, World Upturned, 38–39.


desert is throughout the land (3.1). Despite the image of dead bodies (and their blood) in the river, this schematic literary composition provides no information, historical or otherwise, about the inundation or its waters. 34

While Hoffmeier and Kitchen adopt and defend Hort’s interpretation with little alteration or expansion, others—many outside the field of bibli-cal studies—have sought to update her scenario in view of more recent biological/epidemiological data and purported parallel events in other riv-ers. The late H. M. Duncan Hoyte (then a parasitologist at the University of Queensland, Australia) rejected Hort’s explanation of the first plague as a result of the presence of sediment and specific flagellates brought by the waters of the Blue Nile. 35 Instead, the author cited a case of toxic di-noflagellates in the fresh waters of Lake Austin (Texas), which resulted in the death of thousands of plankton-feeding fishes, an event that he argued paralleled that in the Nile. 36 Marr and Mallory likewise cite recent studies on diseases associated with toxic phytoplankton in freshwater venues, and conclude that the change in water color and death of fish were produced by “a freshwater dinoflagellate biomass bloom.” 37 Still others put forth even more elaborate schemes of cause-and-effect phenomena inspired by events outside Egypt. The most sensational of these involve the volcanic eruption on the Aegean island of Thera (Santorini) and the effects of trav-eling volcanic ash from this event. 38 In one of the most elaborate historical

34. Compare in this regard the comments of Enmarch on these lines: “The hyper-bolic nature of the strophe quoted above (2.10) exemplifies the schematic, ahistorical nature of the laments in Ipuwer: it dwells on the most appalling thing that a water source can run with, and not on a real event” (World Upturned, 39).

35. H. M. D. Hoyte, “The Plagues of Egypt: What Killed the Animals and First-born?” The Medical Journal of Australia 158 (1993) 706–8, here 706.

36. Ibid., 707.37. See J. S. Marr and C. D. Mallory, “An Epidemiologic Analysis of the Ten

Plagues of Egypt,” Caduceus 12.1 (1996) 7–24, here 10 and references on 23 n. 10. Colin Humphreys, a Cambridge University physicist, joins the naturalist obsession with (among other explanations) a burning bush produced by natural gas seeping from a volcanic vent, and the crossing of the Jordan made possible by an earthquake mudslide (Miracles of Exodus, 21–22, 77). Like others, he attributes the first two plagues to a red toxic algal bloom, not in the river proper, but in the Delta estuaries (19–22, 77, 114–18).

38. Goedicke (in I. Wilson, Exodus: The True Story Behind the Biblical Account [San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985] 121, 123). Compare Trevisanato, who isolates the ash fallout from a specific series of Santorini eruptions (dated by him to 1602–1600 b.c.) as the cause of the plagues (Plagues of Egypt, 146–47 and 188–89). Attempts to relate the storm stela of Ahmose I to the Thera eruption are without merit (see M. H. Wiener and J. P. Allen, “Separate Lives: The Ahmose Tempest Stela and the Theran Eruption,” JNES 57 [1998] 1–28).


reconstructions to date, involving two separate seismic events behind the biblical exodus story (in 1628 and ca. 1450 b.c.), Sivertsen attributes the discoloration of the waters primarily to “iron from windborne, iron-oxide-bearing dust” carried from Thera to the waters off the Delta. 39 As for the death of the fish, according to Sivertsen, the Thera/Santorini tsunamis that reached the waters off the shores of Egypt would have produced ex-tensive flooding and contamination of freshwater lakes and ponds, making the water undrinkable and killing many freshwater fish. 40

The above sensationalist reconstructions (and others not discussed here) collapse under the massive weight of their highly speculative scenar-ios, held together by a series of even more dubious interlocking phenom-ena—which too frequently derive from and depend upon an ill-informed and naïve reading of the biblical text. 41 The overwhelming obsession to find natural explanations tied to an Egyptian setting has overshadowed the few scholars who point to the non-Egyptian character or the purely literary nature of the plagues. Noth long ago noted that some plagues were more suitable to a Palestinian or even wider ancient Near Eastern setting 42 and that there is no reason to conclude that the first plague is uniquely Egyptian, or that it necessarily has any connection with the inun-dation. 43 More recently Redmount, among others, has noted the vague-ness of the exodus narratives in terms of specific Egyptian background, while Houtman repeatedly downplays the need for an Egyptian milieu in favor of a Palestinian or wider ancient Near Eastern one. 44 Others have demonstrated the more probable Mesopotamian inspiration for some of

39. Sivertsen, Parting of the Sea, 38–39.40. Ibid., 38.41. In his prescient critique of Hort, Fohrer commented, somewhat wittily, that

her elaborate scenario “overflowed with incredulities” (“strotzt von Unglaubwürdig-keiten”; Überlieferung, 77). Note as well the following assessment in a letter to the edi-tor (by Simon Wein) in response to Hoyte’s reading of the plagues: “I suggest that the improbability factor of these events [natural disasters occurring in this sequence over a 12-month period] reaches miraculous proportions” (The Medical Journal of Australia 159 [1993] 285–86, with a reply by Hoyte).

42. M. Noth, The History of Pentateuchal Traditions (trans. from German, 1948; Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1972) 69.

43. M. Noth, Das zweite Buch Mose: Exodus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1959) 56.

44. “There is, moreover, no characteristically Egyptian phraseology, no allusion, brief or otherwise, to distinctively Egyptian literary or historical material . . . the pur-portedly Egyptian setting is so generic that the action could have taken place almost anywhere” (C. A. Redmount, “Bitter Lives: Israel in and out of Egypt,” in The Oxford History of the Biblical World [ed. M. D. Coogan; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998] 79–121, here 87–88). See also D. B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in


the plagues. 45 Over two decades ago, Van Seters suggested that much of the content and form of the plagues derived in part from biblical and ancient Near Eastern treaty curse tradition, although the first two plagues he thought were more distinctive to Egypt. 46 More recently Propp, fol-lowing a scathing denunciation of the rationalistic approach of Hort and others, has allowed the possibility of an etiological explanation for the red waters (although it is unclear why the biblical writers would be interested in this). But this possible etiology, he continues, intersects with the more “universal literary motif ” of bloodied water as curse or omen, attested in both Egypt and Mesopotamia. 47 In addition to the handful of texts cited by Propp and others, a more systematic, but by no means comprehensive, search of Mesopotamian and Egyptian texts reveals a considerable number of examples of this water-blood motif across a variety of genres. Here I examine a selection of these, especially where rivers are concerned, and suggest a more suitable context for understanding the first plague. 48

The water-blood motif (or more precisely, blood in or flowing like wa-ter) occurs most frequently as a sign of widespread death and defeat in Mesopotamian literature (especially in the Sumerian and Neo-Assyrian periods). Aside from the often noted case of the violated Inana filling the wells of the land with blood as a curse in the Sumerian text “Inana and Shu-kale-tuda,” other texts portray the blood of the slain enemy as flood-ing or flowing like/in a river, through a valley or mountain ravine. 49 The latter image appears often in battlefield rhetoric of Assyrian royal inscrip-tions, which delight in vivid description of the masses of enemy corpses, the blood of which stains the landscape like red wool, or which are cast

Ancient Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992) 410–11). For Houtman, see Exodus, 21, 43–44, 55, 61, 70, 76–77, 84, 101–2.

45. For example, A. M. Kitz, “The Curse behind the Plague of Boils,” Maarav 11 (2004) 219–32.

46. J. Van Seters, “The Plagues of Egypt: Ancient Tradition or Literary Invention?” ZAW 98 (1986) 31–39, here 36; idem, The Life of Moses: The Yahwist as Historian in Exodus–Numbers (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994) 81–82.

47. Propp, Exodus 1–18, 348–49.48. A full list of examples and discussion of the motif is in preparation for publication.49. For “Inana and Shu-kale-tuda,” see ETCSL, no. 1.3.3, 129–38 and 168–76.

A hymn to the same goddess describes her raging against foreign lands: “Blood is poured into their rivers because of you, and their people must drink it [or “could not drink”]; ETCSL text 4.07.2, 42–45, “The Exaltation of Inana” (Inana B). Compare other examples in D. Frayne, Sargonic and Gutian Periods (2334–2113 bc) (RIME 2; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993) 107 iv 25′–35′ (bodies in the Euphrates; Naram-Sin); and J. G. Westenholz, Legends of the Kings of Akkade (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997) 255 Text 17 ii′ 23′–24′ (Sargon).


into a river, making its waters undrinkable. 50 For example, texts of Tiglath-pileser I repeatedly describe how that king “piled up the corpses of their warriors on the battlefield (and) made their blood flow into the hollows and plains of the mountains,” and, in one case, “allowed the River Nāme to carry the bodies out to the Tigris.” In an oracle of Ashur intended for Esarhaddon, that deity recounts how he defeated the king’s enemies “and filled the river with their blood. Let them see (it) and praise me, (know-ing) that I am Ashur, lord of the gods.” Here the river of blood signals not only a devastating defeat, but also the superiority of Ashur, not unlike the biblical plagues. 51

Egyptian military inscriptions also routinely describe heaps of enemy corpses (often “in their valleys”) prostrate in their own blood, but this stock image is not linked to a river, although one could infer that their blood in valleys implies that it flows like one. 52 The closest example to those of Assyria above occurs in the Tumbus stela of Thutmose I, which

50. For discussion of the wider phenomenon of corpse abuse in Mesopotamian texts, see S. Richardson, “Death and Dismemberment in Mesopotamia: Discorporation between the Body and Body Politic,” in Performing Death: Social Analyses of Funer-ary Traditions in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean (ed. N. Laneri; Oriental Institute Seminars 3; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007) 189–208, especially 200–202 (relative to rivers). The scattering of enemy corpses over the battlefield is explained by the author as “a rhetorical means of naturalizing dead enemies as the em-blem of an extensive imperial landscape” (200).

51. For Tiglath-pileser I, see A. K. Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Mil-lennium bc (1114–859 bc) (RIMA 2; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991) text no. 87.1 i 79–80, ii 15–16, iii 25–27, iii 55–56, iv 20–21, v 95–96; and (for Ashur-nasirpal), text no. 101.1 i 53, ii 17–18, 114; text no. 101.17 i 76 and passim. For Esarhaddon, see S. Parpola, Assyrian Prophecies (SAA 9; Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1997) 24, 3.3 ii 22–25. For additional examples, see Grayson, RIMA 1, text no. 78.5 43–45; G. Frame, Rulers of Babylonia: From the Second Dynasty of Isin to the End of Assyrian Domination (1157–612 bc) (RIMB 2; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995) text no. 1002.2 ii 13–14; text no. 1002.3 ii 18′–19′; text no. 1002.6 ii 19′; A. K. Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium bc II (858–745 BC) (RIMA 3; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996) text no. 102.2 ii 99; text no. 102.40 i 14–24 (Shalmaneser III—corpses thrown into Orontes); and H. Tadmor and S. Yamada, The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III (744–727 bc) and Shalmaneser V (726–722 bc), Kings of Assyria (RINAP 1; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011) Tiglath-pileser III text no. 47 line 48 (the Sinzi River runs with blood of the slain enemy).

52. See, for example, Amenhotep III (Urkunden IV 1666 lines 17–18—“. . . tram-pled down in their valleys, laid low in their blood, one atop the other”); Ramesses II (KRI 2 153 line 9—“laid low in their (own) blood, like wa[ter]”); Ramesses III (KRI 5 70 lines 7–8—“Their blood where they were was like water. Their corpses were crushed in the place of their treading”); translation from William F. Edgerton and John A. Wilson, Historical Records of Ramesses III: The Texts in Medinat Habu Volumes I and II (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1936) 92.


relates the slaughter of Nubians “laid low throughout their lands, their gore inundated their valleys.” 53 A handful of other Egyptian texts contain the additional element of a ruler or god wading in blood of the slain, with possible links to the inundation. The most widely cited example of this occurs in the opening section of the mythological Book of the Heavenly Cow (New Kingdom), where the reddened beer mash, in which the drunk goddess Hathor wades, mimics the blood of her victims. 54 A Late Period victory stela of the Egyptian king Psamtik II (595–589 b.c.) describes the slaughter of the enemy as so intense that “one waded through their blood like water.” 55

In similar fashion to Egyptian Hathor, the motif occurs in graphic de-pictions of Anat in the Ugaritic Baʿal Cycle, where that goddess wades knee-deep in the blood of the slain. 56 In the biblical text itself, a number of passages outside Exodus exhibit the motif to varying degrees: Ezek 32:6 (watercourses drenched with blood of slain enemy; compare Isa 34:3); 57 Pss 58:11[10] and 68:24[23] (the righteous wade in the blood of the wicked); Isa 15:9[10] (waters of Moab full of blood of slain); and 2 Kgs 3:22–23 (blood-red waters signify blood of slain). 58

Lastly, the motif is attested in non-military contexts as a sign of plague or misfortune. An omen from the Babylonian collection šumma ālu has as its protasis the blood-red color of the river, which then portends (as

53. Urkunden IV 84 lines 8–9.54. For the text, see E. Hornung, Der Ägyptische Mythos von der Himmelskuh (OBO

46; Freiburg: Universitätsverlag/Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982) 6, 113 line 59; W. K. Simpson, ed., The Literature of Ancient Egypt (3rd ed.; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003) 291–92; and comments of M.-C. Poo, Wine and Wine Offering in the Religion of Ancient Egypt (London: Kegan Paul International, 1995) 153–57.

55. See P. Der Manuelian, Living in the Past: Studies in Archaism of the Egyptian Twenty-sixth Dynasty (London: Kegan Paul International, 1994) 341 fig. 65 line 9.

56. See the Baʿal Cycle, Cat. 1.3 II 13–15, 27–28 (M. S. Smith and Wayne T. Pitard, The Ugaritic Baal Cycle, Volume II [VTSup 114; Leiden: Brill, 2009] 134–36). Despite more recent readings of the Ugaritic verb trgll as “gleans,” the fact that Anat is described as knee-deep or more in blood implies her wading through it. For discus-sion of the scene in light of Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and biblical parallels, see ibid., 150–57, 161–62, 175–78.

57. The similarities with the Neo-Assyrian idiom discussed above are obvious (see L. Boadt, Ezekiel’s Oracles Against Egypt: A Literary and Philological Study of Ezekiel 29–32 [Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1980] 141; and the commentaries); note that darkness follows in v. 7, as well as the combination of pestilence, blood, and hail in Ezek 38:22.

58. Cogan and Tadmor (II Kings [AB 11; New York: Doubleday, 1998] 46) cite the motif in Assyrian texts, along with references to those who advocate a naturalistic interpretation for the event, much like the plagues.


apodosis) coming pestilence. 59 In a Late Period Demotic tale, the pro-tagonist portrays the change of water into blood as an omen of possible future misfortune. 60

While not exhaustive, these examples—Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Ca-naanite, and biblical—provide a larger literary context for understanding the bloodied river in Exodus, a context that in turn makes it unnecessary to adopt the elaborate ecological interpretations of Hort and others to understand the first plague. Nor must one assume an Egyptian setting as the only possible interpretive lens for the event, given the frequency of the motif as a negative omen and/or symbol of death and defeat across a spectrum of literary genres outside of Egypt. 61 The fact that the Nile was a recognized symbol of Egypt made the choice of a blood omen a natural, and perhaps inevitable, one for the biblical writer/redactor, just as it would have been for the Tigris or Euphrates in Mesopotamia. Moreover, given the widespread use of this motif in military inscriptions (especially Neo-Assyrian) to accentuate the irresistible might and destructive force of the ruler or deity, could not its presence in Exodus be viewed as an ominous

59. See F. Nötscher, Die Omen-Serie šumma âlu ina mêlê šakin (CT 38–40) (Orien-talia 51–54; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1930) 121 Tafel 61A no. 1; compare omen nos. 2–3, 79, 127, 132, and 151 of the same tablet.

60. R. K. Ritner, “The Adventures of Setna and Si-Osire,” in Simpson, Literature of Ancient Egypt, 485. The passage has long been cited in connection with the first plague (for example, P. Montet, Egypt and the Bible [trans. from French, 1959; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1968] 96).

61. Some discern a specifically Egyptian context for the plagues in Exod 12:12, where the Israelite deity states: “on all the gods of Egypt I will execute punishments.” With this passage in mind—the sole mention of the gods of Egypt in the entire book of Exodus—some have attempted to correlate particular plagues with the role or function of specific deities. Yet, as others have noted, this passage refers only to the upcoming fi-nal plague, namely, the death of the firstborn, rather than to any of the previous plagues (compare also Num 33:4, where the reference to “their gods” occurs in the same con-text; see Propp, Exodus 1–18, 400, and Kitchen, Reliability, 253, who is largely critical of this “theological critique”). As noted earlier (see n. 44 above), the narrative is simply too vague and general when it comes to Egyptian religious ideas to support such cor-relations (note in this regard the earlier, similar comments of the British Egyptologist and archaeologist T. Eric Peet in his Egypt and the Old Testament [Liverpool: University Press of Liverpool, 1922] 93; see also Greifenhagen, Egypt, 101 n. 205). Moreover, such attempts to discern specific Egyptian ideas in the narrative are frequently outdated or misinformed when it comes to modern critical scholarship on the topic. The defeat of the Egyptians, by whatever means, would imply the superiority of Israel’s god over others responsible for the protection and welfare of Egypt, but this assumption (com-mon in the ancient Near East) stops well short of allowing one to identify specific deities targeted by a given plague, none of which are hinted at in this strongly didactic narrative (see also Greenberg, Understanding Exodus, 200–201, who argues against such linkage for different reasons).


portent of the approaching defeat of the Egyptians at the hand of Israel’s superior god? 62 Given the biblical and ancient Near Eastern evidence, this reading is as much, if not more, plausible than the naturalistic theories outlined above. Finally, that the bloodied Nile of Exodus may owe more to Mesopotamian, rather than Egyptian, literary tradition need not sur-prise us, given that a number of biblical passages relating to the Nile weave together geographically disparate literary themes and images in their de-scription and use of the river. 63 Nor is such blending in the biblical corpus unique to an Egyptian literary setting, as Peter Machinist has so ably dem-onstrated in his seminal work on Neo-Assyrian literature and the Hebrew Bible.

62. I do not discount here the possible relevance of contaminated or undrinkable water as a recognized curse (ANET 539b; D. R. Hillers, Treaty-Curses and the Old Testament Prophets [BibOr 16; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1964) 63–64). Com-pare also the similar comments of Fretheim (“Plagues as Ecological Signs,” 388) on the blood plague and creation, although he arrives at this conclusion for different reasons.

63. I have elsewhere argued for possible Mesopotamian influence in the description of pharaoh and the Nile in Jer 46:7–8 and that of Thebes (No-Amon) in Nah 3:8–9 (Huddlestun, “Who Is This”; and idem, “Nahum, Nineveh, and the Nile: The Descrip-tion of Thebes in Nahum 3:8–9,” JNES 62 [2003] 97–110).

Redactors, Rationalists, and (Bloodied) Rivers: Some Comments on the First Biblical Plague...

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