"Significant resonances" with mephibosheth in 2 Kings 25:27-30: A response to Donald F. Murray

Journal of Biblical Literature

Volumn 124, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 521-529

  Schipper, Jeremy ^a  

^a SIENA COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60950311113     PISSN: 00219231     EISSN: 19343876     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/30041038     Document Type: Note

References (56)

1. Donald F. Murray, "Of All the Years the Hopes - or Fears? Jehoiachin in Babylon (2 Kings 25:27-30)," JBL 120 (2001): 245-65
2. Murray provides a concise review of the scholarship on these verses. See also Frank Moore Cross, Cannanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 274-78
3. Jon D. Levenson, "The Last Four Verses in Kings," JBL 103 (1984): 353-54
4. Martin Noth, Überlieferungsgeschichtliche Studien: Die Sammelnden und Bearbeiteten Geschichtswerke im Alten Testament (1943; Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1957), 107-8
5. idem, The Deuteronomistic History (JSOTSup 15; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1981), 97-99
6. Gerhard von Rad, Deuteronomium-Studien (FRLANT n.s. 40; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1947), 52-64
7. idem, Studies in Deuteronomy (SBT 9; London: SCM, 1953), 74-91
8. Hans Walter Wolff, "Das Kerygma des deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerkes," ZAW 73 (1961): 171-86
9. idem, "The Kerygma of the Deuteronomic Historical Work," in The Vitality of the Old Testament Traditions (ed. Hans Walter Wolff and Walter Brueggemann; Atlanta: John Knox, 1975), 81-100
10. As Murray notes ("Jehoiachin in Babylon," 247 n. 7), his reading strategy of attending to the internal rhetoric of vv. 27-30 and the relation of these verses to the rest of 2 Kings 25 has similarities to Erich Zenger's work, "Die deuteronomistische Interpretation der Rehabilitierung Jojachins," BZ n.s. 12 (1968): 16-30
11. Along similar lines, see also Gottfried Vanoni, "Beobachtungen zur deuteronomistische Terminologie in 2 Kön 23, 25-25,30," in Das Deuteronomium: Entstehung, Gestalt, und Botschaft (ed. Norbert Lohfink; BETL 68; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1985), 357-62
12. For more on this connection, see also Levenson, "Last Four Verses in Kings," 360
13. Murray, "Jehoiachin in Babylon," 247 n. 8, 264
14. See Christopher T. Begg, "The Significance of Johoiachin's Release: A New Proposal," JSOT 36 (1986): 51
15. Murray, "Jehoiachin in Babylon," 264-65
16. Richard Nelson, First and Second Kings (Interpretation; Louisville: John Knox, 1987), 268
17. The motif of the elevation of a Judean to a position of influence at a foreign court was a popular one in exilic literature, e.g., the story of Daniel at the court of Nebuchadnezzar, and that of Mordecai at the court of Ahasuerus" (II Kings: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AB 11; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1988], 330, 330 n. 5)
18. see Meik Gerhards, "Die Begnadigung Jojachins - Überlegungen zu 2 Kön 25,27-30 (mit einem Anhang zu den Nennungen Jojachins auf Zuteilungslisten aus Babylon)," BN 94 (1998): 52-67
19. Walter Dietrich, "Niedergang und Neuanfang: Die Haltung der Schlussredaktion der deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerkes zu den wichtigsten Fragen ihrer Zeit," in The Crisis of Israelite Religion: Transformation of Religious Tradition in Exilic and Post-Exilic Times (ed. Bob Becking and Marjo C. A. Korpel; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 45-70
20. Murray, "Jehoiachin in Babylon," 257 n. 33, 259 n. 40
21. See, e.g., Bruce Birch, "1 and 2 Samuel," NIB 2:1273
22. Anthony R. Ceresko, "The Identity of 'the Bund and the Lame' ('iwwēr ûpissēah) in 2 Samuel 5:8b," CBQ 63 (2001): 29-30
23. Jan Jaynes Granowski, "Jehoiachin at the King's Table: A Reading of the Ending of the Second Book of Kings," in Reading between Texts: Intertextuality and the Bible (ed. Danna Nolan Fewell; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1992), 183-84
24. Hans Wilhelm Hertzberg, I and II Samuel (OTL; trans. John S. Bowden; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1964), 300
25. P. Kyle McCarter, II Samuel: A New Translation with Introduction, Notes, and Commentary (AB 9; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984), 261
26. Robert Polzin, David and the Deuteronomist: 2 Samuel (Indiana Studies in Biblical Literature; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 103-4
27. For example, Cheryl Exum writes, "Jehoiachin's rueful fate echoes hauntingly the fate of Mephibosheth, the last of the house of Saul, which David displaced. He, too, was to end his days in virtual house arrest, a prisoner at the royal court. David's house has come to this; its dynastic hopes rest precariously on a Mephibosheth redivivus " (Tragedy and the Biblical Narrative: Arrows of the Almighty [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992], 149)
28. See Anson F. Rainey, "The Samaria Ostraca in Light of Fresh Evidence" PEQ 99 (1967): 39
29. idem, "The Sitz im Leben of the Samaria Ostraca," TA 6 (1979): 91
30. One should follow the LXX, since the MT seems to imply a distinction between Mephibosheth and the consumers of the food Ziba provides by ending the verse with a disjunctive clause with the subject, Mephibosheth, placed before the verb for emphasis. See McCarter, II Samuel, 259, 262
31. For a more detailed treatment of the complex use of disability imagery in relation to Saul and David's houses, see my "Reconsidering the Imagery of Disability in 2 Samuel 5:8b," CBQ 67 (2005): 422-34
32. Ceresko, "Identity of 'the Blind and the Lame,'" 29
33. See Bruce Birch et al., A Theological Introduction to the Old Testament (Nashville: Abingdon, 1999), 246
34. P. Kyle McCarter, I Samuel: A New Translation, with Introduction, Notes, and Commentary (AB 8; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980), 268
35. Nelson, First and Second Kings, 70
36. Ronald Youngblood, "1, 2 Samuel," in The Expositor's Bible Commentary with the New International Version of the Holy Bible (ed. Frank Gaebelein; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992), 3:678
37. Scholars debate the date of 1 Sam 15:28, with views ranging from pre-Deuteronomistic to postexilic dates; see Bruce Birch, The Rise of the Israelite Monarchy: The Growth and Development of 1 Samuel 7-15 (SBLDS 27; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1976), 94-108
38. Timo Veijola, Die ewige Dynastie: David und die Entstechung seiner Dynastie nach der deuteronomistischen Darstellung (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1975), 102
39. John van Seters, In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origin of Biblical History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 258-64
40. Polzin sees the drawn-out and slow demise of both royal houses throughout the books of Samuel and Kings as mirroring each other and making an important Deuteronomistic comment on kingship. He writes, "For Saul's reign is simply a preview of David's, and every king of Israel and Judah after him. In fact, Saul's reign appears to be the Deuteronomist's prefiguring image of kingship itself as described throughout the History" (Samuel and the Deuteronomist: A Literary Study of the Deuteronomic History, part 2, 1 Samuel [San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989], 213)
41. Instead, YHWH provides conditions for Saul's kingship (1 Sam 12:14-15, 25)
42. See Terence E. Fretheim, "Divine Foreknowledge, Divine Consistency, and the Rejection of Saul's Kingship," CBQ 47 (1985): 596-99
43. See Begg, "Significance of Jehoiachin's Release," 55
44. cf. von Rad, Studies in Deuteronomy, 78-81
45. For a detailed treatment of such prophetic judgments and their fulfillment, see Walter Dietrich, Prophetie und Geschichte: Eine redaktionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zum deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerk (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972)
46. Polzin, David and the Deuteronomist, 105
47. I am not suggesting that the nature of these two covenants is the same, only that one can see a thematic resonance between the two passages due to the motif of a covenant with a father. On the nature of the Davidic covenant, see Jon D. Levenson, Sinai and Zion: An Entry into the Jewish Bible (San Francisco: HarperSan Francisco, 1985), 97-101
48. Moshe Weinfeld, "The Covenant of Grant in the Old Testament and Ancient Near East," JOAS 90 (1970): 184-203
49. See David Gunn, The Story of King David: Genre and Interpretation (JSOTSup 6; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1978), 96-97
50. Baruch Halpern, David's Secret Demons: Messiah, Murder, Traitor, King (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 343
51. Hertzberg, I and II Samuel, 300-301
52. McCarter, II Samuel, 265
53. cf. Begg, "Significance of Jehoiachin's Release," 52-53
54. cf. Richard Elliot Friedman, "From Egypt to Egypt: Dtr1 and Dtr2," in Traditions in Transformation: Turning Points in Biblical Faith [ed. Baruch Halpern and Jon D. Levenson; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1981], 167-92)
55. For more on these rabbinic interpretations of v. 4, see Shmuel Yerushalmi, The Book of Samuel II (trans. Moshe Mykoff; New York: Moznaim, 1993), 89-90
56. Jehoiachin's surprising survival in the midst of the destruction of royal Davidic family may also parallel Joash's survival amidst the destruction of the royal Davidic family in 2 Kings 11. As Iain Provan writes, "[Jehoiachin] reappears in the narrative, in fact, in a manner strikingly reminiscent of the appearance of Joash after the earlier destruction of the 'whole royal family'. He survives like Joash, unexpectedly, in the midst of carnage; and he represents, like Joash during the Athaliah's reign, the potential for the continuation of the Davidic line at a later time, when foreign rule has been removed" ("The Messiah in the Book of Kings," in The Lord's Anointed: Interpretation of Old Testament Messianic Texts [ed. Philip E. Satterthwaite, Richard Hess, and Gordon Wenham; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995], 75)