Jeroboam the Ephratite

Journal of Biblical Literature

Volumn 125, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 51-72

  Leuchter, Mark ^a  

^a Hebrew College   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34547969039     PISSN: 00219231     EISSN: 19343876     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/27638346     Document Type: Review

References (57)

1. See Marvin A. Sweeney, King Josiah of Judah: The Lost Messiah of Israel (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 21-169, 170-74
2. Sweeney does note, however, that an anti-Jeroboam tradition may have obtained during the Hezekian period in the pre-Josianic stages of the Dtr tradition (p. 92). See also Frank Moore Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 274-89
3. Gary N. Knoppers, Two Nations under God: The Deuteronomistic History of Solomon and the Dual Monarchies, vol. 1, The Reign of Solomon and the Rise of Jeroboam (HSM 52; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), 50-56
4. Jeffrey C. Geoghegan, "'Until This Day' and the Preexilic Redaction of the Deuteronomistic History," JBL 122 (2003): 201-27
5. Cross, Canaanite Myth, 279-82
6. Sweeney, King Josiah, 77-92
7. E. Theodore Mullen, Jr., "The Sins of Jeroboam: A Redactional Assessment," CBQ 49 (1987): 212-32
8. For Josiah's northern agenda, see Mark Leuchter, Josiah's Reform and Jeremiah's Scroll: Historical Calamity and Prophetic Response (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2006), 50-69
9. Knoppers, Two Nations, 1:214-15, 225-28
10. See John Gray, I & II Kings: A Commentary (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970), 275
11. Knoppers, Two Nations, 1:199-203
12. Robert L. Cohn, "Literary Technique in the Jeroboam Narrative," ZAW 97 (1985): 26-27 (though Cohn focuses on the Dtr form of the Ahijah decree as part of the later redactional shape of the Jeroboam narrative, indicating where the later editor has anticipated the failure of the northern enterprise)
13. The conditional dimension is a Dtr phenomenon (see below), though a pre-Dtr precedent exists with regard to the shift in priestly authority among the Shilonites of the eleventh century; see Mark Leuchter "Something Old, Something Older: Reconsidering 1 Sam. 2:27-36," JHS 4 (2003) Article 6 (www.jhsonline.org)
14. Amihai Mazar, Archaeology of the Lands of the Bible: 10,000-586 BCE (ABRL; New York: Doubleday, 1990), 328-34
15. See Baruch Halpern, "Sectionalism and the Schism," JBL 93 (1974): 528-31
16. As many scholars have noted (e.g., Gray, I & II Kings, 274
17. For a discussion of the rise in religious xenophobia in the eighth-seventh centuries, see Baruch Halpern, "Brisker Pipes Than Poetry: The Development of Israelite Monotheism," in Judaic Perspectives on Ancient Israel (ed. Jacob Neusner et al.; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 77-115
18. Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985),48-51. Benjamin D. Sommer notes an identical occurrence of a secondary clause in Mic 3:8, which facilitates the scribe's exegetical transformation of the earlier passage ("Prophecy as Translation: Ancient Israelite Conceptions of the Human Factor in Prophecy," to appear in a collection of essays, forthcoming from Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and Eisenbrauns in Winona Lake, IN)
19. See Paul S. Ash, "Jeroboam I and the Deuteronomistic Historian's Ideology of the Founder," CBQ 60 (1998): 16-24
20. Knoppers, Two Nations, 1:152-59, 199-206
21. Norbert Lohfink, "Der jungend Jeremia als Propagandist und Poet: Zum Grundstock von Jer 30-31," in Le Livre de Jérémie (ed. Pierre-Maurice Bogaert; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1997 [reprint of 1981 edition]), 351-68
22. Ulrich Shroter, "Jeremias Botschaft für das Nordreich, zu N. Lohfinks Überlegungen zum Grundbestand von Jeremia xxx-xxxi," VT 35 (1985): 312-29
23. For the Shilonite focus of these early oracles, see Leuchter, Josiah's Reform, 70-86
24. see also idem, "Jeremiah's 70 Year Prophecy and the Atbash Codes," Bib 85 (2004): 511-12
25. David's association with the Shiloh tradition is well established: he is selected by Samuel (1 Sam 16:1-13); he finds refuge among the [Shilonite] prophets under Samuel's tutelage at Naioth during Saul's reign (1 Sam 19:18-19); he places Shiloh's central icon (the Ark) in Jerusalem (2 Sam 6:1-19); and he establishes Abiathar, a Shilonite, as a co-priestly regent (2 Sam 8:17; 20:25). The early stratum of Psalm 99 employs Shilonite tropes in legitimizing David's taking of Jerusalem; see Mark Leuchter, "The Literary Strata and Narrative Sources of Psalm xcix," VT 55 (2005): 20-38
26. See also Ben C. Ollenburger, Zion: The City of the Great King (JSOTSup 41; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1987), 36-52
27. For a detailed examination, see Baruch Halpern, David's Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, Traitor, King (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001 ), 391-424, esp. 396
28. So also Levenson, Sinai and Zion, 202-6, regarding the persistence of a royalistic ideology in the north
29. For a discussion of the political considerations involving Saul's relationship to the Shilonites, see Marsha White, "'The History of Saul's Rise': Saulide State Propaganda in 1 Samuel 1-14," in A Wise and Discerning Mind: Essays in Honor of Burke O. Long (ed. Saul M. Olyan and Robert C. Culley; BJS 325; Providence: Brown University Press, 2000), 271-92
30. See Ash, "Ideology of the Founder."
31. For the shift in population growth and settlement patterns toward the end of the Iron I period (especially in relation to a population explosion in Judah that could motivate settlement initiatives in Ephraim), see Carol Meyers, "Kinship and Kingship: The Early Monarchy," in The Oxford History of the Biblical World (ed. Michael Coogan; New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 239-41
32. See Leuchter, Josiah 's Reform, 22-30, for a discussion of the sacral nature of the compound term in the genealogy of Elkanah in 1 Sam 1:1
33. Folker Willesen argues for an additional case of as a reference to Ephratah in a narrative dealing with Ephraimite events ("The of the Shibboleth Incident," VT 8 [1958]: 97-98)
34. See Halpern, David's Secret Demons, 401-4
35. see also Timo Veijola, "Solomon: Bathsheba's Firstborn," in Reconsidering Israel and Judah: Recent Studies on the Deuteronomistic History (ed. G. N. Knoppers and J. G. McConville; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000), 340-57
36. The second LXX account ascribing the building of Zeredah ("Sereirah") to Jeroboam may reflect a degree of historicity if Zeredah was designated by Solomon to be a center of royal administration. Ascribing this initiative to Jeroboam directly is consistent with similar ascriptions made in the second LXX text (Gordon, "History," 380-82)
37. Steven L. McKenzie, The Trouble with Kings: The Composition of the Book of Kings in the Deuteronomistic History (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 32-33
38. So Halpern, "Sectionalism," 525-27
39. For David's Perezite ancestry, see Ruth 4:18-21; 1 Chr 2:5-15. Ephratah would therefore have been a Perezite city, given the nature of the Israelite clan system, whereby clans remained fixed in concentrated regions; see Baruch Halpern, "Jerusalem and the Lineages in the 7th Century: Kinship and the Rise of Individual Moral Liability," in Law and Ideology in Monarchic Israel (ed. B. Halpern and D. W. Hobson; JSOTSup 124; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991), 49-59
40. Halpern,"Sectionalism," 525-27
41. Willesen, "Shibboleth," 98
42. Such a conciliatory measure is consonant with Solomon's broader political strategies, influenced as the Solomonic court was by norms of other major ancient Near Eastern royal courts. For a contemporaneous analogue, see John A. Brinkman, A Political History of Post-Kassite Babylonia, 1158-722 BC (AnOr 43; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1968), 169
43. For a seventh-century parallel, see Barbara N. Porter, Images, Power Politics: Figurative Aspects of Esarhaddon's Babylonian Policy (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1993), 64-65
44. That the term Hebrew letter VAV sign' appears to take on both meanings in the Ahijah episode (11:31, 34-35) suggests a similar multiplicity of meaning here and creates further parallels with Jeroboam and the Perezites in contradistinction to the Solomonic circles in Jerusalem (Robinson, "Meaning of Hebrew letter VAV sign'," 282-83)
45. Halpern points to the threat of Egyptian incursions into Judean territory, which would have no doubt affected Rehoboam's ability to concentrate on reclaiming the northern territory ("Sectionalism," 526-28, 532). On the king's adherence to Shemaiah's prophetic word as a Dtr rhetorical device, see above on 1 Kgs 12:22-24 and 1 Kgs 14:30
46. A similar observation is made by Baruch Halpern, The First Historians: The Hebrew Bible and History (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), 229, in terms of the creation of Jeroboam's shrines as a response to public sentiment
47. see Halpern, "Levitic Participation," 33-38)
48. See Julian Morgenstern, "The Festival of Jerobeam I," JBL 83 (1964): 109-18, esp. 117
49. Nigel Allan argues that Jeroboam's move from Shechem to Penuel is the result of tensions between the northern monarch and the Levites in that city who retained a degree of loyalty to the Jerusalem administration ("Jeroboam and Shechem," VT 24 [1974]: 353-57). This is unlikely, however, given the traditional significance of Shechem as an Ephraimite cultic/covenantal site and that the earlier assembly in Shechem facilitated a violent demonstration against Rehoboam and his ministers, including the stoning of Adoram (1 Kgs 12:18). It is more probable that Jeroboam established support for his realm among the Levites at Shechem as part of his archaizing of the state cult, and continued this activity of Penuel
50. Knoppers discusses the Deuteronomist's editorial flourishes in this passage as a way of isolating Jeroboam's cultic imperatives from legitimate Israelite tradition (Two Nations, 2:28-29)
51. An overt statement ascribing the festival at Bethel to YHWH would certainly have been excised from this text, given the Deuteronomist's purpose in making Jeroboam's cult one of idol worship, taking the polemic of Exodus 32 to a more dramatic degree; see Gary N. Knoppers, "Aaron's Calf and Jeroboam's Calves," in Fortunate the Eyes That See: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman in Celebration of His Seventieth Birthday (ed. Astrid B. Beck et al.; Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1995), 92-104
52. The Deuteronomist may have even geared his rhetoric to appeal to the sacral concerns of figures who were at one point associated with these non-Bethel northern cult sites; see Geoghegan, "Until This Day," 217-20, 226-27. No such sympathetic concerns are expressed for the Bethel tradents
53. See Simon J. De Vries, "The Time Word mahar as a Key to Tradition Development," ZAW 87 (1975): 65-79
54. Deuteronomy 16:18-18:22 provides Mosaic dispensation for non-Jerusalemite Levites once again to take part in both the cult and the sacral judiciary. For this pericope as part of the Josianic stratum of Deuteronomy, see Levinson, Deuteronomy, 98-143
55. Though Sweeney views the Deuteronomic law code as debilitating to independent Levitical authority, the corpus - and 16:18-18:22 in particular - provides a vehicle for the reinstitution of Levitical juridical authority beyond Jerusalem as agents of the central court. See Leuchter, "Jeremiah's 70 Year Prophecy," 512 n. 31
56. Knoppers, Two Nations, 2:236-38
57. See Halpern, "Brisker Pipes Than Poetry," 97-98, 101-2