The Great Shift

by James L. Kugel

  One thing that has fascinated scholars since this inscription was discovered in 1903 is its apparent reference to prophet-like intermediaries, “seers and messengers,” who announce Ba‘al Shameyn’s support. Although the inscription breaks off at this point, it appears that this deity did indeed do as he promised and drove the enemy away. Apart from that aspect, however, we have here another king who—in a way that must have been, on some level, sincere—attributes the defense of his reign to direct divine intervention. Note that this and the other inscriptions are not the writings of starry-eyed visionaries, but of down-to-earth, hardheaded kings proud to record for eternity their own achievements. Yet most of them are eager to split the credit—that seems to be the whole point. As the biblical scholar Maxwell Miller observed:

  In short, Zakir “killed two birds with one stone.” He dedicated the stela to the gods because of the support which they had given him in the past and used it to convey his request for further blessings. But he also intended the statue to serve as a memorial to himself, inscribed on it a record of his mighty deeds, and attempted to insure that this record would not be removed in the years to come. These two motifs—dedication to the gods, memorial to the king—are often combined in the Assyrian inscriptions.7

  I believe Miller’s comment is important, since the combination it highlights well illustrates the overlapping mentalities described earlier: on the one hand, man is supreme—“Look at all the great things I’ve done!” On the other hand, I did almost nothing: everything came from the gods.

  The Moabite Stone

  That other reality, in which the gods loom large and even kings cower at their feet, was not just a matter of divine lip-service, of saying thank-you with words alone. Consider the case of King Mesha of Moab who, seeing that he was about to be defeated in battle, took his oldest son and killed him, offering his body as a gift to the Moabite god Chemosh. This is, at least, the biblical account of the reason for Mesha’s surprising victory over his Israelite adversary:

  Now King Mesha of Moab was a sheep breeder, who used to deliver to the king of Israel [as tribute] one hundred thousand lambs, and the wool of one hundred thousand rams. But when Ahab died, the king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel. So King Jehoram marched out of Samaria at that time and mustered all Israel . . .

  When the king of Moab saw that the battle was going against him, he took with him seven hundred swordsmen to break through, opposite the king of Edom; but they could not. Then he took his firstborn son who was to succeed him, and offered him as a burnt-offering on the wall. And great wrath came upon Israel, so they withdrew from him and returned to their own land. (2 Kgs 3:4–5, 26–27)

  While we have no external confirmation of this incident of human sacrifice, there is no doubt that King Mesha did exist. He lived in the ninth century BCE and left behind one more of those pious-but-boasting inscriptions of the sort already seen:

  I am Mesha, son of Chemosh[-yatti], the king of Moab, the Dibonite.

  My father (had) reigned over Moab for thirty years, and I reigned

  after my father. And I made this high-place for [the god] Chemosh in Qarḥo . . .

  because he has delivered me from all kings, and because he has made me triumph over all my enemies. As for Omri, king of Israel, he humbled Moab for many days, for Chemosh was angry with his land.

  And his son reigned in his place; and he also said, “I will oppress Moab!” In my days he said so.

  But I triumphed over him and over his house, and Israel has perished; it has perished forever!

  Forgetting God

  What can be concluded from all this? In biblical times, God/the gods were held to intervene in daily life—this is evidenced not just in biblical stories, but in the Mesha stone and the Phoenician inscriptions examined above as well. Yet somehow, numerous biblical texts also say that people sometimes forgot these interventions. Such forgetting was not without consequences; in fact, it almost always is said to have led to disaster. This is the lesson imparted by the great hymn sung by Moses at the end of his life, in which he recounts in nuce the whole history of Israel (Deuteronomy 32). Things start off well enough: God chooses Israel to be His own portion and carries them “on eagles’ wings” to the land that He had promised them. But soon the people go astray:

  Jeshurun [a poetic name for Israel] grew fat and rebelled: You grew fat and bloated and dull.

  And he abandoned the God who made him, and scoffed at the Rock of his salvation . . .

  You were unmindful of the Rock who bore you, and you forgot the God who gave birth to you. (Deut 32:15, 18)

  Other summaries of biblical history likewise stress the role of forgetting God in bringing down disaster:

  He made it a decree in Jacob, and established a statute in Israel . . .

  That they should not forget God’s deeds, but hold fast to His commandments,

  And not be like their fathers, a rebellious generation . . .

  But the Ephraimites . . . did not keep God’s covenant; they refused to follow His instruction,

  And they forgot His deeds, the miracles He had shown them . . .

  If He killed [some among] them, then they would seek His favor and again beseech Him:

  They would remember that God is their Rock, and the Most High God their redeemer . . .

  [Yet] time and again they rebelled in the wilderness, in the wasteland they aroused His wrath.

  Once again they tested God and vexed the Holy One of Israel.

  They did not remember His power, how He had saved them from their foe. (Ps 78:5, 7–11, 34–35, 40–42)

  Similarly:

  He rebuked the Red Sea, and it dried up; He led them through the depths as through a desert.

  He saved them from the hand of the foe; from the hand of the enemy He redeemed them.

  The waters covered their adversaries; not one of them survived.

  Then they believed His promises and sang His praise.

  But they soon forgot what He had done and did not wait for His plan to unfold . . .

  They forgot the God who saved them. (Ps 106:9–13, 21)

  It is hardly surprising, therefore, that among the admonitions in Deuteronomy is the commandment not to forget God:

  Beware . . . lest your heart grow haughty and you forget the LORD your God, who took you out of the land of Egypt, the place of your enslavement, and who led you through the great and terrible wilderness . . . [Lest] you say to yourself, “My own strength and the force of my own hands are what got me all that I have acquired.” (Deut 8:14–17)

  A Biblical Trope

  It would be tedious to survey every biblical passage that suggests that Israel at times “forgot” God,8 but it may be worth pausing here to consider this whole idea of forgetting. It certainly does not refer to an actual lapse of memory.9 Rather, it is a kind of trope or metaphor, one that was uniquely suited to the particular situation of Israel (and many other peoples) throughout much of the biblical period. They were no longer like those early humans, utterly buffeted by the great Outside all around them; nor were they yet like humans in more recent times, for whom God’s very existence depends on an imaginative act of faith, if it is not altogether denied. Instead, they were (to judge by biblical and inscriptional texts themselves) somewhere between these two poles, convinced of God’s active presence in the world while at the same time seeking to control in their own lives everything that humans can control. These two tendencies pull in opposite directions, and forgetting—the most passive sort of action, lacking any malice aforethought—was really the perfect expression of this in-between state. It was what happened when someone moved too far from the divine dependence pole.

  So, at least after a certain point, it was necessary for people to remind themselves that, even when their presence was not obvious, the gods were watching. Indeed, some scholars have compared the language of the Zakir inscription to that of biblical psalms,10 suggesting that the psalms of thanksgiving were in fact a kind of verbal monum
ent-making, a public announcement of a person’s indebtedness to God—often using expressions similar to those engraved on the stone steles erected by pious Near Eastern kings.11 What the psalmist said was, in effect: “I hereby acknowledge that You have all the power. Alone, I am helpless.” That is why the speakers of the biblical psalms of request so often describe themselves as “poor,” “needy,” “destitute,” “wretched,” and the like—sometimes two or three of these near synonyms lumped together:

  May it please the LORD to rescue me; O LORD, rush to my aid.

  Let those who are out to kill me be put to shame and contempt . . .

  For I am poor and needy; may my lord take me into account.

  You are my aid and my refuge; O my God, do not delay! (Ps. 40:14–15, 18)

  Let all kings bow down to Him, all the nations worship Him;

  For He rescues the needy when they cry out; and the poor, and the one who is helpless.

  He spares the indigent and needy; He saves the needy one’s life. (Ps 72:10–13)

  Turn to me and have mercy on me, for I am alone and poor.

  My heart’s distress only worsens—save me from my sufferings! (Ps 35:16–17)

  Passages such as these once gave rise to a theory among scholars that the book of Psalms was originally intended for the lower classes: people who could not afford to offer an animal sacrifice could always go the temple and request that a psalm be said on their behalf. But subsequent investigation has found scant support for this theory. Rather, any supplicant presented himself/herself as poor and downtrodden; the idea was that “if you don’t desperately need My help, don’t bother Me.” Asking for divine help was thus ipso facto an act of submission and humbling yourself.12 This was something that even great kings did:

  Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah the Tishbite: “Have you seen how Ahab has humbled himself before Me? Because he has humbled himself before Me, I will not bring disaster in his lifetime.” (1 Kgs 21:29)

  [God tells King Josiah:] “Because you have been fearful and have humbled yourself before the LORD when you heard what I have decreed against this place and its inhabitants—that it will become a desolation and a curse—and because you have torn your clothes [a sign of mourning] and wept before Me, I for My part have listened, says the LORD.” (2 Kgs 22:19)

  “Please God”

  Muslims are famous for inserting the phrase insh’allah (if God wishes) in their everyday speech: “After I graduate, insh’allah . . .” “When I arrive in New York, insh’allah” and so forth. Although this deference to the divine becomes automatic after a while and may not tell us too much about the inner mental state (or piety) of the speaker, its continued existence does, I think, give evidence of the old theme of not forgetting, but in a somewhat new form.

  Muslims sometimes point to a certain passage in the Qur’an as the source for saying insh’allah:

  And never say of anything, “I will indeed do this tomorrow,” except [when adding], “If God so wishes.” And remember your Lord (should you forget) and say, “Perhaps my Lord will lead me to something that is closer than this to proper conduct.” (Al Kahf 18:23–24)

  In fact, however, such conversational evocation of the deity was hardly a Muslim innovation (nor does the above passage claim that it was). Long before Islam, pious Jews and Christians had done the same. An epistle in the New Testament gives precisely the same instruction:

  Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you . . . Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and get gain,” whereas you do not know about tomorrow. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and we shall do this or that.” (James 4:10, 13–15)

  Later Christians likewise took this advice to heart, at least for a time:

  After speaking many spiritual words, she said to them, “I have spoken to the emperor and he was a little displeased. But do not lose heart. For, God willing, I will not rest until you have fulfilled your mission.”13

  This raises an interesting point. If today’s Muslims continue to insert this deferential phrase, “If God so wills,” into their daily speech, what happened to the modern West? The phrase certainly did go on for some time. Sometimes people preferred the Latin Deo volente or volente Deo14 (both meaning, “with God willing,” “so long as God wills”), as did Cervantes, for example, in Don Quixote:

  With this answer I sent him away; and now I take my leave of your Excellency, first offering to your notice another work of mine, called “The Labors of Persiles and Sigismunda,” which, Deo volente, will be finished in the course of four months . . . (Part 2, “Dedication to Count de Lemos”)

  But with time, the practice died out in the West. Remarkably, the expression was already becoming scarce in Shakespeare’s time, though not altogether absent:

  . . . So, gentlemen,

  With all my love I do commend me to you:

  And what so poor a man as Hamlet is

  May do, to express his love and friending to you,

  God willing, shall not lack. (Hamlet, act 1, scene 5, lines 182–86)

  Eventually, “God willing” or its Latin incarnations (sometimes now abbreviated as D.V. or V.D.) disappeared entirely from the speech of most ordinary people in English, though it went on for a time to punctuate the speech and letters of clergymen, no doubt as a sign (sincere or otherwise) of their piety. A few other late users appear; the fierce abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879) still employed the expression in his correspondence:

  Though it will be very inconvenient for me to attend the annual meeting of your State society, yet I cannot find it in my heart again to disappoint you and some of my other New-Hampshire brethren. Therefore, I mean to be with you, Deo volente, on that interesting occasion.15

  I should mention the existence of another, parallel expression in English, “please God.” In an earlier day one might have said, “I shall take my belongings and, please God, leave this house forever.” But like “God willing” and Deo volente, this one is no longer with us. It should be noted that the words “please God” are not a parenthetical aside, “Please, O God, make this happen,” but are actually an old English subjunctive: “May it please God . . .” or “If it please God . . .” This usage seems to have been influenced by the parallel expression in French, plaise à Dieu.16 Indeed, a small landmark in the fading of this expression appears in the work of François Rabelais, the bawdy French parodist, who mocked its use way back in the sixteenth century:

  “By no means,” answered [Father] Hippothedee, “will you be cuckolded, if it please God.”

  “O the Lord help us now,” quoth Panurge; “whither are we driven to, good folks? To the conditionals, which, according to the rules and precepts of the dialectic faculty, admit of all contradictions and impossibilities. If my Transalpine mule had wings, my Transalpine mule would fly, if it please God.”17

  An Afterthought

  The reflexive insertion of “If it please God” into daily speech has something of a parallel within the Bible itself: the insertion of words of thanksgiving into biblical narratives where previously there had been none.18 That is, God performs all sorts of miraculous interventions in the Bible, but scholars have shown that, for a time, these gifts went without formal thanksgiving. It would seem that the narrative itself was deemed acknowledgment enough, rather like the psalmist’s “I hereby acknowledge that You have all the power. Alone, I am helpless.” Later editors, however, apparently saw the omission of words of praise and thanksgiving after the incident as a flaw; they therefore inserted passages (usually from existing songs) that might do as an expression of thanks on the part of the humans involved.19 These passages might be interpreted as bearing witness to a growing piety within the biblical period, but I believe that this does not quite tell the whole story. Giving thanks for divine favors was becoming ritualized and routinized,
rather like insh’allah or Deo volente; it had become a duty. Only after such a stage did the flagrant violation of this new requirement demand retroactive correction, as if, without it, God’s role might indeed seem to have been forgotten.

  The passages themselves give some evidence of having existed earlier as independent songs. Take, for example, Hannah, Elkana’s barren wife in 1 Samuel 1. At length her barrenness is overcome; she prays to God for help and is rewarded with the birth of a son, Samuel. Thereupon, the Bible reports, Hannah sang the following hymn* to God:

  My heart exults in the LORD; my strength is exalted in my God.

  My mouth derides my enemies, because I rejoice in my victory.

  There is no Holy One like the LORD, no one besides You; there is no Rock like our God.

  Talk no more so very proudly; let no arrogance come from your mouth;

  for the LORD is a God of knowledge, and by Him are actions weighed.