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The Ark of the Covenant and Divine Rage in the
Hebrew Bible
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Metzler, Maria J. 2016. The Ark of the Covenant and Divine Rage in the Hebrew Bible. Doctoral
dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.
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http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33840681
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© 2016 Maria J. Metzler
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Dissertation Advisor: Professor Jon D. Levenson Maria J. Metzler

The Ark of the Covenant and Divine Rage in the Hebrew Bible

ABSTRACT

The subject of my study is the Ark of the Covenant as portrayed within the
Deuteronomistic History of the Hebrew Bible, particularly the tales featuring the Ark in
Joshua and 1–2 Samuel. In these narratives, the God of Israel performs astonishing works
through the Ark; from the Israelites’ perspective, these deeds are sometimes miraculous
and other times horrifying. I argue that the behavior of Yhwh’s Ark may best be
compared to that of a partially domesticated wild animal such as a horse. Like the raging
energy of a horse, the violent supernatural power mediated through the Ark is an
invaluable resource for human society; nonetheless, it is also unpredictable and extremely
dangerous.
I take a comparative approach in interpreting the narratives of Joshua and 1–2
Samuel. I first discuss the Ark as Yhwh’s throne in light of the Mesopotamian myth of
Nergal and Ereshkigal, which also features a divine throne. I suggest that the chair of
Nergal in the Neo-Assyrian version of this tale acts as a violent border-crosser that
enables Nergal to pass through the normally impenetrable borders of the Netherworld and
dominate Queen Ereshkigal. Likewise, in the book of Joshua, the Ark (or throne) of
Yhwh permits the Israelites to pass through barriers in a miraculous fashion and conquer
the land of Canaan.
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I go on to analyze the behavior of Yhwh’s Ark as presented in the Ark Narrative
of 1–2 Samuel. I compare the destructive rampage of the Ark to that of the god Erra as
depicted in the Babylonian poem Erra and Ishum and conclude that the narrative of 1–2
Samuel does not attempt to justify the violence perpetrated through Yhwh’s Ark. I
examine David’s heroism in settling the Ark in Jerusalem, which appears to effect a sort
of taming, since afterward the Ark is never again explicitly described as a destructive
force. I propose that, like Erra and Ishum, which was widely used as an amulet, the Ark
Narrative may be understood as a textual means of protecting against the chaotic forces
described therein.
Finally, I turn to consider the characterization of females in the Ark Narrative,
drawing on Greek tragedy to illuminate the nature of divine wrath. I discuss Yhwh’s
angry outbursts through the Ark alongside the portrayal of the raging goddess Artemis in
Aeschylus’s Oresteia trilogy. In particular, I trace the image of the bit in Oresteia—the
small metal object connecting the horse to its human rider. Instead of being placed in the
mouth of a horse in the trilogy, however, the bit is figuratively applied to three
subjugated females: a pregnant rabbit representing Troy, Iphigeneia, and Cassandra. In
juxtaposing this tragic image with three scenes of afflicted females in the Ark
Narrative—the wife of Phinehas, the lowing milch cows, and Michal—I seek to draw out
an interpretation of the biblical narrative that is attentive to the emotional complexity of
divine and human personalities.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 1

1. The Form and History of the Biblical Ark 12

2. Nergal’s Chair and Yhwh’s Throne
as Agents of Violent Border Crossing 74

3. The Relationship between Yhwh and the Ark in 1–2 Samuel 132

4. The Taming of the Ark 174

5. Horses, Wombs, and Raging Gods:
Inscrutable Divine Anger in Oresteia and the Ark Narrative 222

Conclusion 252

Bibliography 260

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Above all, I would like to thank my advisor, Jon D. Levenson, who has been a constant
support, both academically and personally, throughout my years as a doctoral student.
My work benefitted immensely from his attention and critical wisdom, which he
delivered with characteristic humor. I owe a great deal to the other members of my
dissertation committee, Andrew Teeter and Jeffrey Stackert. As an external reader from
the University of Chicago, Professor Stackert has been tremendously generous with his
time and resources in support of my academic endeavors. It is difficult to imagine
completing this project without his encouragement.
I am indebted as well to Peter Machinist, who provided invaluable feedback on
several chapters and who consistently supported my efforts to engage in comparative
studies on the Bible and other ancient Near Eastern texts. I would also like to thank
Francis Landy of the University of Alberta, who championed my final chapter and made
it possible for me to present this piece in the compelling Deconstructive Poetics session
he organized at the European Association for Biblical Studies meeting in Leuven.
I am extremely fortunate to have studied with a friendly and supportive group of
doctoral students in the Hebrew Bible program at Harvard. I also enjoyed the opportunity
to engage with talented young colleagues from other universities. In particular, I would
like to thank Idan Dershowitz of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who helped keep
me on track with my research this year and offered useful feedback on several sections of
my dissertation. Finally, I must thank my family and the many friends who encouraged
me and contributed to my happiness during the writing process.
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Sacred discourse lives in the closed flowers of its ambiguous or equivocal words,
which unfurl in the mind of the reader only when his reading is as ambiguous as
the sacred words themselves.

–Patricia Cox Miller1

Let us, then, open the starting-gates of speech, let us loosen the reins a little, and
spur this discourse on as if we were riding a race-horse. And you, O Word of
God—ride with me as my helper; give words to my stammering mind, make the
track smooth for my speech, and lead my course straight towards your good
pleasure, the goal of a wise person’s every word and thought.

–Saint John of Damascus2

Writing, in its noblest function, is the attempt to unerase, to unearth, to find the
primitive picture again, ours, the one that frightens us.

–Hélène Cixous3

1 Patricia Cox Miller, The Poetry of Thought in Late Antiquity: Essays in Imagination and Religion
(Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2001), 41.

2 Saint John of Damascus, Homily II (Brian E. Daley, S. J., On the Dormition of Mary: Early Patristic
Homilies [Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998], 204).

3 Hélène Cixous, Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing, trans. Sarah Cornell and Susan Sellers, Wellek
Library Lectures at the University of California, Irvine (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 9.

vii
INTRODUCTION

THE INSCRUTABLE ACTS OF GODS AND HUMANS

Strange Human Behavior

It is a question that has almost certainly confounded all of us, whether the evidence
comes from the grand theater of world events, the everyday maneuvering of traffic on our
local roadways, or from our most intimate associations with others: Why is it that people
sometimes act in ways that appear to be entirely senseless?
In his classic work, The Greeks and the Irrational (1951), E. R. Dodds draws our
attention to one way of answering this question from ancient Greece. Particularly within
Homeric literature, inscrutable human behavior is explained as stemming from divine
intervention: “We may sum up the result by saying that all departures from normal
human behaviour whose causes are not immediately perceived, whether by the subjects’
own consciousness or by the observation of others, are ascribed to a supernatural agency,
just as is any departure from the normal behaviour of the weather or the normal
behaviour of a bowstring.”1
A similar view may be found in the Hebrew Bible, where baffling human
behavior is frequently attributed to the deliberate intervention of the deity. An evil spirit
from Yhwh torments Saul, throwing the king into bouts of depression and murderous
rage (1 Sam 16:14–23; 18:10–11); Yhwh hardens the heart of Pharaoh so that he refuses
to release the Israelites from Egypt, which leads to a thorough ravaging of his land (Exod
7:3–5); throngs of prophets convulse in a state of ecstatic divine possession (1 Sam 10:5–

1 E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), 13.

1
13). Paul Volz gives an evocative synopsis of the divine origins of abnormal human
activity as presented in the Hebrew Bible:
If among the inhabitants of a city a bitter dispute broke out and would not let up,
or if a powerful person relentlessly persecuted a weak one like a storm against the
feeble leaf, if a noble man became melancholy, if a person paced back and forth
in violent unrest, or if someone was pigheaded in a decision and everyone saw
that it would tear him to pieces, if someone was so entirely obstinate that no piece
of advice had any effect on him, or if one encountered an ecstatic in a state of
uncontrollably wild excitement, who incited war in a furious rage, or who charged
about like a bull with its horns—then everyone would say: here Yahweh is at
play; this person is possessed by Yahweh.2

The ancient Hebrew and Greek literature that describes such divine possession
often includes a sensible account of the god’s motivation for tampering with humans.
Yhwh is said to harden Pharaoh’s heart in the book of Exodus for a specific purpose: to
give the deity an opportunity to perform wondrous acts that prove his power (Exod 7:3–
5). In Euripides’s Hippolytus, we learn that the goddess Aphrodite afflicts lady Phaedra
with an overwhelming erotic attraction for her stepson Hippolytus in order to punish the
young man for neglecting Aphrodite and worshiping only Artemis, virgin goddess of the
hunt. In both of these cases, we see a deity actively plotting against particular humans,
bringing them to ruin in order to advance the god’s own cause. Whether the gods are

2 Paul Volz, Das Dämonische in Jahwe (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1924), 8. Translation from the original
German is my own. Volz includes a footnote here indicating which biblical passages he is referring to:

Discord in Shechem via an evil spirit of God (Judges 9:23); cf. the conflict between Saul and
David (1 Sam 26:19: “Yahweh has stirred you up against me”) and the hatred of Shimei against
David (2 Sam 16:10: “Yahweh called Shimei to curse David”). Saul’s melancholy is caused by the
spirit of Yahweh (1 Sam 16:14 ff., 18:10, 19:9), as is Samson’s agitation (Judges 13:25).
Rehoboam’s disastrous stubbornness was brought about by Yahweh (1 Kgs 12:15), as was the
hardening of Pharaoh and the Elides, among others (Exod 4:21, 1 Sam 2:25, Deut 2:30, etc.). The
ecstasy of the navis and the war heroes, and militant furor come from the divine ruach (1 Sam
10:6, 19:20 ff., Judges 11:29, 14:19, 15:14, 1 Sam 11:6), as does the ecstatic navi Zachariah raging
like a bull (1 Kgs 22:11).

2
justified in their interference is another question altogether; suffice it to say that a
comprehensible divine motive is articulated in these texts.

When Gods Act Incomprehensibly

In other instances, a god’s reason for manipulating humans is left unspecified. For
example, in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, Artemis is said to have been angry with
Agamemnon and Menelaus for undertaking a military expedition against Troy, but we are
not told why this angers her so.3 Moreover, Artemis demands the sacrifice of
Agamemnon’s virgin daughter Iphigeneia in order to send winds that make the mission to
Troy possible; yet the goddess subsequently punishes Agamemnon for fulfilling her own
gruesome request. Similarly, towards the end of David’s kingship, Yhwh becomes
enraged at Israel for unspecified reasons; we are simply told that תורחל הוהי־ףא ףסיו
לארשׂיב, “The wrath of Yhwh again burned against Israel” (2 Sam 24:1).4 In his wrath,
Yhwh incites David to count the people of Israel and Judah, but then punishes the people
severely when the king counts them in compliance with the divine command, sending a
pestilence that kills seventy thousand Israelites (2 Sam 24:15).
If a person (or an animal5, or the weather6) acts unnaturally, in a way that is not
readily comprehensible, it is possible to make sense of what is otherwise apparently

3 We will discuss Agamemnon and the other works of Aeschylus’s Oresteia trilogy at greater length in
chapter 5.

4 Translations from the Hebrew Bible are mine unless otherwise noted.

5 The lion that stands next to the donkey and the torn corpse of the prophet in 1 Kgs 13:24–25 without
eating the available meat emphasizes that the attack was orchestrated by the deity.

6 E.g., the wadi that fills with water at Yhwh’s command in 2 Kgs 3:17–20, even though there was no rain
or dew.
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