Biblica_1:Layout 1 21-11-2011 12:59 Pagina 345 345 EISODUS AS EXODUS: THE SONG OF THE SEA land holdings in the central highlands. It is this dimension of the Ex- odus myth to which prophets like Hosea refer when reminding their audiences of the basis for the relationship between Israel and YHWH (e.g., Hos 2,15-17). Rather than re-interpreting the wilderness wan- dering traditions currently found in the Pentateuch, it reflects a con- cept of the highlands as an unsown rbdm to which YHWH led his people at the dawn of their relationship 100. It is for this reason that when Hosea castigates Ephraim as rejected by YHWH for their be- havior (Hos 1,9), the threats he pronounces are eventually expressed in agrarian terms (Hos 9,16) 101. Mythically speaking, the Exodus that forged the relationship between YHWH and Israel is inextricable from the eisodus into the highlands. Emerging from this mythic understanding were stark categories both social and geographic. Israelite communities and the bound- aries of their land holdings represented the created order emerging from YHWH’s act of salvation. By contrast, the foreign nations and the lands surrounding Israel’s territorial boundaries represented mythic chaos, swimming in the primordial waters and kept at bay only by Israel’s fidelity to YHWH and the sanctity of their own so- cial institutions 102. So long as YHWH’s domination of the primor- dial enemy (represented by Egypt in the poem) was recognized and ritually rehearsed, Israel would remain planted in the land and 100 Compare to the Ugaritic cognate mdbr in CAT 1.23.65-69, depicted as an unsown region beyond the divine homestead; see M.S. SMITH, The Ori- gins of Biblical Monotheism (New York – Oxford 2001) 27-29. On Hosea’s reference to Israel’s wilderness meeting with YHWH, see H.D. NEEF, Die Heilstraditionen Israels in der Verkündigung des Propheten Hosea (BZAW 169; Berlin – New York 1987) 114-119. As NEEF notes, Hosea contrasts the “wilderness” tradition with the degeneration of religious standards en- trenched in the land. In contrast to NEEF’s view, however, Hosea does not ap- pear to be reinterpreting a desert-wilderness tradition but is, rather, drawing from an enduring concept of the transformation of the highlands from an un- sown rbdm to a cultivated homeland akin to the dichotomy already attested in the Ugaritic material. 101 So also the agrarian/horticultural imagery in the texts from Deut 32 and Jeremiah noted above. 102 See J.D. LEVENSON, Creation and the Persistence of Evil (San Francisco, CA 1988) 123. See also M.S. SMITH, “The Structure of Divinity at Ugarit and Israel”, Text, Artifact and Image: Revealing Ancient Israelite Religion (ed. G. BECKMAN – T.J. LEWIS) (BJS 346; Providence, RI 2006) 46-47, for Canaanite antecedents.