Mark Leuchter, «'Why Tarry The Wheels of his Chariot?' (Judg 5,28): Canaanite Chariots and Echoes of Egypt in the Song of Deborah.», Vol. 91 (2010) 256-268
The closing verses of the Song of Deborah include a curious reference to chariotry (Judg 5,28) at a rhetorically potent moment in the poem. The present study examines the implications of the use of this image against the mythopoeic impulses in the poem, the larger historical background of early Israel's confrontations with Canaanite aggression in the 12th century BCE and the memory of Egyptian strategies of hegemony from the late Bronze Age. The effects of these memories and experiences leave profound impressions in the social and mythic matrices embedded in a broad spectrum of Biblical traditions.
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“ WHY TARRY THE WHEELS CHARIOT ? †(JUDG 5,28)
OF HIS
importantly, however, these events are invoked in a symbolic
manner ; the landscape upon which they transpired and the
individuals cast as their facilitators are subjected to a process of
mythopoesis 9. The mention of the Kishon river as a factor in the
defeat of the Canaanite forces serves as a potent example:
The torrent Kishon swept them away,
The onrushing torrent, the torrent Kishon (Judg 5,21)
The poet’s depiction of the force of the river has led to
speculation that natural elements impeded the success of the
Canaanite forces in battle. However, as S.A. Ackerman has
correctly noted, the Kishon river does not flood, and its depiction
in the poem is not an account of the river’s actual physical traits
creating an obstacle for Sisera’s chariot brigade 10. The depiction of
the river deploys the language of metaphor and myth, likening its
waters to the waters of chaos, creation and destruction evident in
other examples of ancient Hebrew mythic poetry (Pss 29,3;
77,16-19, etc.) 11. The mythological character of the reference to
Kishon is reinforced by its formalistic parallel to the depiction of
Yael’s killing of Sisera later in the poem:
At her feet he sunk, he fell, he lay;
at her feet he sunk, he fell;
where he sunk, there he fell down dead. (Judg 5,26-27)
As is often noted, Judg 5,27 recalls the characterization of
Anat from the Ugaritic Baal cycle; Yael’s act against Sisera is
remembered in the poem as ringing of the same ancient myth as
that of the Ugaritic text 12. Israel’s victory over the enemy is
Early Israelite writers in general conceive of the land in mythic terms as
9
the meeting place between the nation and its deity (e.g., Deut 33,2). This
conceptual standard is found within the epic material of the Pentateuch. See
T. HIEBERT, The Yahwist’s Landscape. Nature and Religion in Early Israel
(New York – Oxford 1996) 30-116. Regardless of one’s view regarding the
source-critical model through which Hiebert enters into his study of the
material, the features of the literature he examines reveals a highly mythic
concept of topography and agrarian existence.
ACKERMAN, Warrior, Dancer, 46.
10
ACKERMAN, Warrior, Dancer, 46; NIDITCH, Judges, 77.
11
For a full consideration of this parallel, see ACKERMAN, Warrior, Dancer,
12
51-64.
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