267 “ WHY TARRY THE WHEELS CHARIOT ? ” (JUDG 5,28) OF HIS property of the Egyptian Pharaohs — as a major locus of the conflict 30. It is perhaps for this reason that the poet invokes the lowland cities of Taanach and Megiddo, implying the domination of the highland population — championed by their divine patron YHWH — over the royal pretenders of those urban centers. It may also be for this reason that the very opening line of the poem implies that the underlying forces that led to religious zeal and sacral devotion in Israel were motivated with the shadow of the Pharaohs still looming in the background (larçyb tw[rp h[rpb) 31. However, the rhetorical weight of the experiences encapsulated in the poem must have left a deep impression on the mythopoeic imagination in early Israel as well. When the poet behind the Song at the Sea speaks of YHWH casting the chariots of Egypt into the Sea (Exod 15,1b-5), it may well be the memory of early conflicts against Canaanite emulators of Egyptian tactics that moved him to transmute historical experience into a liturgical verse that, in the end, both transcended and shaped historical conceptions 32. Department of Religion Mark LEUCHTER Temple University Philadelphia, PA 19122, USA N. NA’AMAN, “Pharaonic Lands in the Jezreel Valley in the late Bronze 30 Age ”, Society and Economy in the Eastern Mediterranean (c. 1500-1000 B.C.) (eds. M. HELTZER – E. LIPINSKI) (Leuven 1988) 177-185. Most commentators translate this phrase as a variant on “when locks 31 were grown long in Israel”, implying a connection to Nazirite behavior and holy warfare (see among others SCHLOEN, “Caravans”, 21-22; ACKERMAN, Warrior, Dancer, 32-33). R.D. MILLER, “When Pharaohs Ruled: On the Translation of Judges 5:2”, JTS 59 (2008) 650-654, however, makes a strong case for the term as a wordplay on “Pharaoh”, h[rp. The phrase may thus be a deliberate double-entendre. A common view is that the Song of the Sea in Exod 15,1b-18 either 32 predates (however slightly) the Song of Deborah in Judg 5 (see, e.g., CROSS, Canaanite Myth, 123, 140) or was contemporaneous with it (ROBERTSON, Linguistic Evidence, 154-155). However, as the foregoing discussion suggests, the myth of the divine warrior defeating Egypt appears to be a transformation of the concepts embedded in the Song of Deborah. This does not necessarily require the linear dependence of one text upon another, but it suggests that the ideas underlying the Song of Deborah were subsequently developed into the liturgical myth now found in the Song of the Sea. The two works may well have developed