Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: Israel and Revelation

Titel: Israel and Revelation

Stichwort: Lied der Debora (Deboralied); Zeugnis des früheren Jahweglaubens; Iasrael politische geeint unter Jahwe

Kurzinhalt: It is the only document extant which conveys a coherent picture of Yahwist Israel in its pristine form; Unterschied Jahwes zu Enlil und maat

Textausschnitt: 39/7 The Deborah Song is unencumbered by interpretations and redactions of the later historical schools; and it is so early that it has not yet suffered from Israelite-Canaanite syncretism. It is the only document extant which conveys a coherent picture of Yahwist Israel in its pristine form. Hence, in its every detail it is of immeasurable value for the historian who wants to distinguish between early Israelite ideas and later developments, between original Israelite ideas and Canaanite accretions. The main characteristics of this early order as they become visible in the song are the following: (204; Fs)
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... For if there was no permanent organization, and if the improvisation in case of an emergency functioned as haphazardly as the Deborah Song reveals, "Israel" never can have "conquered" Canaan; the component tribes can only have slowly infiltrated, in a process made possible by the disintegration of Egyptian power in the area. While the infiltration was not entirely peaceable, it can have involved only minor clashes of clans and tribes with local enemies, not any major conflict with the Canaanites that could have been met only by the organized forces of the whole Confederacy. There was no political organization because no military effort on a national scale had been necessary. As a consequence, the Yahweh of the Confederacy can hardly have been a war god.
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... The Deborah Song can hardly be considered an accidental piece of poetry accidentally preserved. It must be understood as celebrating the great event in which Israel for the first time experienced itself as a people united in political action under Yahwh. ...
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... And what revealed itself as Yahweh in the real storm was not a cosmic storm but the zidekoth Yahweh (Judg. 5:11), literally: the righteousnesses of Yahweh. The meaning of the term can only be conjectured as the righteous acts of the god by which he established just order among men. Yahweh was a god who revealed himself in historical action as the creator of true order. This conception, now, seems to be not too far from the Egyptian maat of both the god and the mediating Pharaoh. But again, the righteousness of Yahweh had a different complexion because there was no human mediator who would transform the cosmic into social order. One of the oddities not only of the Deborah Song but of the Book of Judges in general is the absence of a term for the human functionaries of political order in time of crisis. The designation of Deborah as a shophet, a judge, is probably anachronistic, for the term shophet belongs to the Deuteronomist redactions. But Deborah at least owes her public influence to her recognizable spiritual authority as a prophetess, a nebijah (4:4). For Barak, however, the war leader, there is no term at all to designate his function. The charismatic leadership, on which the action of the Confederacy in war depended, obviously was not conceived as an analogue of cosmic order in society that would require appropriate expression through symbols. Hence, in spite of its brevity, the Deborah Song unmistakably reveals Israel's break with the cosmological civilizations.