A structural comparison of Psalm 89 and The Great Hymn to Marduk

Psalm 89 has long been an occasional object of conference with Enuma Elish¹, the Babylonian account of the creation of the world, on account of the way in which “Rahab” (perhaps an evil sea monster — a nebulous term we will discuss below) is referred. The psalm then proceeds to a praise of Yahweh not dissimilar from that praise heaped upon Marduk upon his slaying of Tiamat, a similarly nebulously defined goddess of wickedness associated with some sort of sea monster.

I will not be spending much time on comparisons of this Psalm with Enuma Elish, for there is an arguably a far more convincing parallel, also a product of Babylonian monolatry of Marduk, which I believe deserves far more comparison in this discussion. This is known in Foster as “The Great Hymn to Marduk”, elsewhere simply as “Marduk 2”.

This is a more promising comparison on account of the obvious fact that the two works, Psalm 89 and Marduk 2, are cut from vaguely the same literary and poetic cloth. While evaluating and taxonomizing varieties of Near-Eastern poetry is never easy, and always subject to controversy, we may safely place Enuma Elish into the category of “Narrative Poetry” whereas both the Psalm and Marduk 2 may be placed approximately in the category of “Literary Supplicatory Prayer” or “Supplicatory Hymns” if we’d like to be especially ambitious. I use supplicatory because both the psalm and the “hymn” mix a great deal of praise with calls for justice, deliverance, and forgiveness, such that “praise”, in my own opinion, does not adequately sustain the type of Psalm 89 and ‘The Great Hymn’. I caveat all of this with the suggestion to refer to Lenzi’s typology more generally. I may nevertheless refer to it as ‘the hymn’ or ‘the prayer’ for the sake of convention and convenience.

What I believe is proven in the hereafter-provided evidence is not necessarily that the Psalmist had this particular Hymn in mind when composing his psalm (though, as we will see, there is ample historical evidence to suggest this possibility), but that the two prayers operate in a distinctly similar manner, dissimilar in many respects to many of their companions, which hints at some connection — whether by proxy or direct.

One last note is required before we properly begin: this was at first intended to be a brief comparison, but intentions do not always equate with results. As such, this has become a rather lengthy exposition on these two works. Typically, such an analysis would begin to beg its own translations — but I am eager to share this comparison and do not wish to rush any translation whereby my confidence is still waxing. All of this said, I do intend to publish a translation of Marduk 2 up until the first major lacuna sometime in the next months. As far as the translations provided go, I have typically used Oshima unless otherwise noted. Where I have modified translations for any reason of Marduk 2, I have also noted. With respect to translations from the Old Testament, I have been quite a bit more loose, typically using the ESV or KJV but also often supplying my own translation, though never departing far from any canonical reading, unless such a departure is discussed at some length.

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Marduk 2 was once dated to the Cassite period (16th to 12th c. BC) by Lambert in 1960, and there would seem to be no good reason to controvert that; this was one of the most productive times for Babylonian literature. While we might expect such a hymn, with its elevation of Marduk and syncretism, to necessarily postdate the monolatry of Marduk at Babylon and Enuma Elish, other syncretistic prayers to Marduk, as well as the first Marduk prayer, have been dated to the Old Babylonian period.

Jimenez has, in my view, convincingly placed the bounds of our dating of Enuma Elish between the reigns of the Cassite Meli-Shipak (1186-1172 BCE) to Marduk-nadin-ahhe (1099-1082 BCE). The exact dating of this prayer in relation to Enuma Elish is outside the scope of this study, but it seems relatively safe to assume Marduk 2 was produced no later than the 2nd Isin dynasty (late 11th c. BC) on the very same stylistic, linguistic, and historical grounds which led Lambert to conclude it Cassite.

As for the Psalm, even if we take the superscription thereof at face value, that it was written by Ethan the Ezrahite, a courtier of David, and therefore date it to the 9th c., it would be unproblematic for the purposes of this analysis. However, it is quite a bit easier on linguistic, textual, historical, and archaeological grounds to date this to sometime during, the Babylonian Captivity. The Psalm is a lament, seeming to accuse God of breaking his covenant with David and the Davidic Kingdom, a dramatic gesture very much suggestive of the shock which must have been felt at the time of the fall of the Kingdom of Judah and the woe of exile.

Structurally, the Psalm and Marduk 2² are composed as will follow here. I have bolded areas of particular interest and comparability, and provided numbering for those sections which clearly align in sequencing between the two works. It is this sequence which I believe makes the strongest case for a relation in addition to all the other evidence. Additionally, for comparable areas which may be however somewhat “displaced” from one another, I have provided a lettering scheme for comparison and interest.

Marduk 2

1-4 Introduction (1)
5-10 Summary of creation and domain over weather
11-31 Benevolences & blessings of Marduk
32-36 Marduk's primacy at the council (2)
36-41 Syncretic catalog of gods donating power to Marduk (a)
41-42 The fearfulness of Marduk (3)
43 Domain over sea (4)
43-48 Destruction of evildoers, monsters of Tiamat (5)
49-65 Marduk’s Justice “you cause the upright to prosper…”  (b)
65-68 Marduk the redeemer
69-75 Petition for absolution (c)
76-83 The Caprice of Marduk (d)
84-99 Marduk and the River Ordeal
100-109 That prayer to Marduk may bring the dead back to life (6)

The Hymn is divided into couplets on our best witnesses, but the transitions between sections are often neatly linked with a single couplet linking the two chains of thought, and thusly have I divided it.³

This is probably not the whole of the so-called Prayer to Marduk no. 2. There is a lacuna after line 109, but another set of tablets was found which, while not being able to be ‘joined’ with the first section, probably are part of the same work and indeed same tablet or set of tablets. I have left these out of this analysis as there is less comparable material after this disjunction. The focus here is really on the first 50 or so lines, with some linguistic interest further afield. It seems unproblematic to imagine the psalmist would abridge things significantly if influenced by this quite long prayer. As we will see, this prayer may have been recited publicly. Perhaps a listener’s attention would have wained anyway. It may nevertheless be fruitful in the future to examine this material more closely with this psalm and others.

Psalm 89

1-2 Introduction (1)
3-4 God’s covenant with David
5 That the wonders of the Lord are praised even among "the saints" (qadoshim) (a)
6-8 Primacy of God in the council (2)
    7 The fearfulness of God (3)
9 God's domain over the sea (4)
10 The crushing of Rahab (perhaps analogous to Tiamat) and other ‘enemies’ (5)
11-12 Recollection of creation
13 God’s might
14-18 God’s justice and protection over Israel “blessed is the people that know the joyful sound…” (b)
19-37 God’s covenant with David (in detail) 
38-45 God's seeming abandonment of his covenant (d)
45-51 Appeal for absolution (c)
    47 Who is the man that lives and does not see death? Can he deliver his life from the hand of the grave? (6)

While the traditional line divisions here do not betray couplets, the actual content of the lines rather do (and very often this is how this Psalm is translated).

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Starting with the very first line, in Psalm 89 we have: “I will sing of the lovingkindness of YHWH for ever, with my mouth I will proclaim your faithfulness to all generations”, while in the first two lines of the Great Marduk Hymn we have “Lord, sage of the Igigi, I shall praise your utterance / Remembrance of you is pleasant …”.

Both begin with the wonderful and enduring beginning to all great songs, that is, some variation of “I shall praise” or “I shall sing”. This alone is nothing particularly unique, and we find such a formula famously as far and as wide as even Homer, so its appearance in a Psalm cannot be extraordinarily shocking. However, it does not appear as the first line in any of the other ‘great’ (ie. longer, literary) ‘hymns’ as presented by Foster. The verb ‘sing’ does appear in some shorter hymns, for example Ammiditana’s Royal Hymn to Ishtar. Of the Psalms, I counted only 5 which begin with some variation of “I will sing” or “I will praise” (or indeed “I will sing praises”, as in Psalm 101 and 138 with z-m-r, the very same root as used in Ammiditana’s Hymn).

Additionally, the psalmist is not singing of Yahweh himself, he is singing “of the lovingkindness of YHWH” and “your faithfulness” (emunateka). The Akkadian supplicant sings not of Marduk himself but “your utterance” (seqarka), probably more or less synonymous with the subject in the subsequent line, which begins (literally) “pleasant is your mention” (ṭabat hissatka). By contrast, the aforementioned “Royal Hymn to Ishtar” begins instead “Sing ye praises of the Goddess, the most awesome of the goddesses”; Psalm 9 and Psalm 111 begin “I will praise YHWH with my whole heart”, and Psalm 138 “Before the gods (!) I will sing praises to (or of) you”, indeed, Psalm 101 is the only psalm besides eighty-nine in which the object of the praise is not God himself but “lovingkindness and justice”, and there neither term is in a possessed state, unlike Psalm 89. It is thus significant that the object of the praise & song is not the god himself but some aspect of his in both Psalm 89 and Marduk 2.

Lines 3 and 4 of the Marduk 2 repeat lines 1 and 2. Thereafter, Lambert translates “who directs the rivers inside the hills / who opens the bowls of the springs inside mountains / who lets loose a bounteous flood for absolutely all the inhabitants…”⁴. Lines 5-30 are a summary of the blessings and bounties of Marduk.

Lines 3 and 4 in the psalm recapitulate God’s covenant with his chosen David, a theme which will become much more salient later in this psalm. The next comparandum then is the psalm’s fifth line.

It may be argued that 89:5 may stand-in for the whole of lines 5-30 of Marduk 2: “And the heavens will praise your wonders, YHWH, your faithfulness too, in the assembly of the saints”. ‘Saints’ here is the polysemous qadosh, sometimes an epithet for the God of Israel, sometimes an epithet for prophets and the like. However, the exact expression “the assembly of the saints” (qahal qadoshim) occurs nowhere else in the Old Testament. On line 7 we have a near synonym “the assembly of the saints” (sod qadoshim), also occurring nowhere else. Typically in the Psalms, qahal refers to a governmental body, often as the qahal rav “great assembly”.

Lines 17-18 of Marduk 2 may help us contextualize this: “The one who sends […] goodness to the Annunaki, the whole creation of Enanki⁵ / Until what sunrise will your help not come”

What immediately comes to mind when I consider the “assembly of the saints” is the ‘Divine Council’ we find all about the religious literature of the Near East. What exactly this meant and the words used to describe it in Akkadian differ: usually either “the assembly” (puhru) or “the great gods” (ilu rabutu) or both or indeed something else. While these were not fixed terms, and could refer to different gods at different times to different people, the Igigi and Annunaki were more often than not representative of this very council.

Some psalms are known for being particularly willing to shed the pretension of strict monotheism in preference of some manner of monolatry.⁶ Indeed, the ‘Divine Council’ seemingly makes an appearance in several psalms, famously in Psalm 82, where the RSV so translates 82:1 “God has taken his place in the divine council (‘adat el), in the midst of the gods (elohim) he holds judgement” and 82:6 “You are gods (elohim) sons of the Most High (‘elyon), all of you”.

As for ‘qadoshim’, the biblical Aramaic Book of Daniel may give us a (late) clue. When Belshazzar’s wife suggests that Belshazzar consult Daniel regarding the omen of the ‘writing on the wall’, Daniel 5:11 reads “There is a man in your kingdom in whom is the spirit of the holy gods (elahin qaddishin)”. This certainly seems to me to be a sort of gloss of the extraordinarily common Babylonian term ‘the great gods’ ilu rabutu, that is, the gods of the divine council.

On the other hand, 89:18 has “For our shield is YHWH’s and that of the holy one (ie. qadosh) of Israel, our king”,⁷ so one should not be led to believe that any reception of this Psalm with the expressions qahal or sod qadoshim would be immediately understood as the divine council.

It is therefore more likely that this psalmist has for some reason purposely avoided the direct notion of the divine council as understood in another psalm, whereas a redactor’s hand seems an unlikely interloper (here) on account of so many other psalms not shying from this idea. In my view, this rather reinforces the idea that the author had perhaps some polytheistic or monolatrous prayer in mind; there would be no reason, otherwise, to avoid with such uncommon language an idea inalien to some of the psalms which must have been in circulation. Alternatively, the Sitz im Leben of this particular psalmist could have resisted the addition of any newly problematic work into a corpus which may have already made some uneasy. We will see other places where this sort of ‘encryption’ of polytheism may have left a similar trace.

In the psalm, we then have a couplet affirming God’s primacy, but its sequence and place within the text is quite relevant for us.

6 For who in the heavens may compare unto YHWH
Or is like unto him among the sons of gods (or: God)?

And once our Akkadian continues after the praises of lines 5-31 at about line 32, we have:

32 There is [none] in the totality of the Igigi who boasts before you
33 You have [no] rival above or below.

The locative expression in 89:6b and line 32 of the Marduk prayer are worth briefly remarking upon: both involve a preposition preceding a genitival phrase, ina gimir igigi and bibne elim, where the construct package apparently refers to the divine council.

Traditionally, ‘gods’ as here printed has been translated as ‘mighty’. The Hebrew (as we’ve now seen) is elim. Such a translation here is, given the context, a superstitious circumlocution.⁸ Indeed, ‘mighty’ as a gloss for el only occurs as an epithet for God, who very often is simply called el anyway. The word is cognate with Akkadian ilu, ‘god’. Indeed, the Septuagint and Vulgate have “the sons of God” here — either this (after all, even elohim is plural) or ‘gods’ is the correct sense: but we cannot in good conscience accept ‘mighty’. “The sons of God” is certainly vague on its own, but given the preceding and succeeding lines (see below, with the aforediscussed sod qadoshim), once again the divine council may be safely inferred.

The lines which follow in this Marduk prayer are syncretic in nature. A list of gods are given from the Mesopotamian pantheon with the traits they have donated to Marduk.⁹ If the psalmist did, in fact, have the hymn in mind, it is not unsurprising that he would have seen fit to abridge here.

However how this list of gods closes is of great interest. We have

42 Your dread, Lord, is feared (palhat) by the gods (eli ili) [So Lambert, whereas Oshima : “brings fear over”]

Then line 7 of Psalm 89

God (’el) is trembled at (na‘araṣ) in the assembly of the saints (sod qadoshim) greatly,
and is feared (nowra) by all (‘al-kal) those around him

The construction “palahu … eli” is, as far as I can tell, quite rare. A search of the (admittedly somewhat limited) electronic Babylonian Library database results in no single line with both any form of palahu with eli. A cursory search through the Old Testament yields the Niphal of the verb y-r-’ with ’al, the cognate of Akkadian eli, only a limited number of times: Zephaniah 2:11, Psalm 96:4 (in the context of gods), and 1 Chronicles 16:25. The verses of Psalm 96:4 and 1 Chronicles 16:25 are virtually identical with the exception of an added conjunction, the phrase being traditionally translated as “He [YHWH] is … to be feared above all the gods” ([wə]nowra hu ‘al-kal elohim). That is to say, feared more than all the other gods. I suspect that this how we should understand Psalm 89, indeed as well as this incredibly rare construction in the Marduk prayer, which would be far more congruous with our understanding of both the Hebrew and Akkadian preposition.

The usage in Zephaniah 2:11 somewhat confounds this, although also occurs in the immediate proximity of God’s relationship with other gods, traditionally translated something like the following:

“The LORD shall be terrifying unto them (traditionally understood as the Moabites and the Ammonites); for he will famish all the gods of the earth, and they [KJV: the people¹⁰] shall bow down to him, each one from this place, all the shores¹¹ of the nations¹²”.

What we appear to have here is an understanding of nowra ‘al very similar to that in Psalm 89 (ie. “feared by” and “terrifying to” are virtually identical in meaning¹³) in this specific case.¹⁴ It is tempting to wish to reinterpret this line such that some sort of cataphora is used with “unto them”, then referring to the gods. But such an understanding would not simplify our grammatical understanding but confound it further. It is not impossible, nevertheless, to conceive the purpose of this passage to warn that YHWH is to be feared more than the Moabites or Ammonites, for their gods are powerless.¹⁵ It is, in any case, very curious that the only other place where this construction occurs is in a verse which refers to other gods, especially when this is true of all other instances of the same construction.

It would, then, seem to me that they all must be connected (to say nothing of the obvious case of the several identical lines between Psalm 96 and 1 Chr 16), and they must all involve some awareness of the other, either directly or by proxy. I would extend this logic to Marduk 2. Indeed, however these lines are to be understood, these ideas of god being ‘feared by’ or ‘fearful over’ or ‘to be feared more than’ either other gods or other nations and the gods thereof should, in my view, be understood as cognate.

The very next line in Marduk 2 deals with the sea:

43 Like the high wave of the battle of the sea, you make a roar in the swells

Line 8 in the Psalm more or less summarizes lines 5-7 and God’s total superiority.

8 YHWH, God of the hosts, who is as mighty as you, YH? Your faithfulness surrounds you.

But then comes the very next line, requiring no comment on my behalf in light of line 43 of Marduk 2.

9 You rule the raging of the sea: when its waves arise, you still them.

Then in 89:10 we have:

10 You have broken in pieces Rahab as a corpse with your mighty arm. You have scattered your enemies.

In the very next lines of Marduk 2 (44-47) (so Oshima, though I have printed zairi consistently here as ‘hatred’)

44 Like the furious fire god, you burn up hatred
45 The Ushumgallu-dragon is your rage, you overcome the malevolent
46 You capture the rebellious one, the one who plots and carries out a revolt
47 You burn the evil one, the one who passes through the midst of the uncleanness of hatred

We will return to line 44 in a moment, but first line 10 of the psalm and 45-47 deserve some comment. The meaning of the term Rahab (especially here in the context of the sea) is best explained through the following occurrences:

First, Isaiah 51:9-10. The ESV translates:

9 Awake, awake, put on strength,
O arm of the Lord;
awake, as in days of old,
the generations of long ago.
Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces,
who pierced the dragon (tannin)?
10 Was it not you who dried up the sea,
the waters of the great deep (tehom),
who made the depths of the sea a way
for the redeemed to pass over?

Rahab in apposition to Tehom is extremely relevant for us, for tehom is a term cognate with Tiamat, the Babylonian primordial goddess immortalized in Enuma Elish, whom was slain by Marduk, who made her corpse and various viscera thereof into the world. It is also the term used in Genesis 1:2 “…and darkness was upon the face of [the] deep…”, indeed ‘the’ is bracketed here for there is no definite article in the Hebrew here. Her name is further cognate with Akkadian t(i)amtu(m) “the sea”, a word which is written with the Sumerograms A.ABBA, which happens to be exactly how “the sea” is written on line 43. Whether Tiamat herself was a dragon or serpent is unclear, but certainly many of her offspring were, including Ushumgallu (ušum.gal meaning “great serpent” in Sumerian)

Also relevant is Job 26:12

By his power he brought to rest the sea, and by his understanding he broke up Rahab

Rahab is then, some character, probably similar to tehom in polysemy (that is, possibly translated inanimate, perhaps in this case as ‘storm’, but found usually without an article), who certainly is associated with a dragon or serpent of some kind, associated with the sea.

Genesis’ connection with Enuma Elish is a vast topic hardly worth much discussion here, but it clear that either we are talking about some incredibly old Semitic folklore which has arrived to us via Genesis, Enuma Elish, and the Baal Cycle, or there has been some sort of horizontal transference. Enuma Elish was read in public as a matter of tradition during the Akitu new years festival in Babylon each year. It has been proposed that this would have then inevitably come to the attention of at least the elite of the Israelites in captivity in Babylon. Importantly, Oshima has the following remarks about Marduk 2:

According to this ritual instruction, [a Šuila-prayer with the same incipit at Marduk 2] was recited after the recitation of Enūma Eliš on the fourth day of the month Kislīmu. Although there is no conclusive evidence, it is very probable that this Šuila-prayer of the Akītu-festival of the month Kislīmu is indeed our prayer to Marduk. In fact, as discussed above, The Prayer to Marduk no. 2 alludes several times to a festival (e.g., lines 22; 40; 28''; and 32'') and, in line 72, it requests absolution of the sins of a certain ‘Adapa’. It is very likely that ‘Adapa’ here is not a reference to the legendary sage of that name from Eridu but is probably used as an epithet for a wise man or a sage such as mār rēšti ummân, ‘the chief scholar’, who is instructed to recite this prayer in the ritual instruction of the Akītu-festival of Kislīmu discussed above

If some Hebrews may have heard Enuma Elish in Babylon at Akitu, then it’s entirely conceivable they also would have heard this very prayer, assuming there was not some other Shuila prayer with the exact same incipit in circulation at the time.

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Thus far, I have proceeded sequentially through each prayer, and compared some lines. We have seen so far that a great deal of the chain of thought is identical in sequence and sometimes language, with the Marduk prayer occasionally retaining something which the psalm has apparently dropped. I have generally strived not to pick and choose from all about each prayer as it is my belief that it is their very structure and sequencing which gives away their relation most conclusively, rather than the overall themes. The strongest evidences for this may be found above.

As I proceed from here, more focus will be placed on comparable phrasing, as we are fast approaching the recapitulation of God’s covenant with David’s people, which will have little direct sequential significance to Marduk 2. However, as we will see, there are many turns of phrase which may be related, and, as we will also see, there remain yet items of sequential significance worth note.

Returning to line 44, a note on the diction is warranted.
In line 46 of the Psalm, we have:

46 How long, YHWH, will you hide yourself? forever? [How long] will your wrath burn like fire?

I will print again line 44 of Marduk 2 for convenience…

44 Like the furious fire god, you burn up hatred

The Hebrew is tib‘ar kəmow ’eš ḥamateka.¹⁶ The Akkadian text for Marduk 2:44 is, normalizing the edition of Oshima: ki giri ({d}GIŠ.BAR) ezzi zairi tašarrap. The semantics of these two lines are strikingly similar, the only differences being that the ‘fire-god’ of Marduk 2 is ‘rageful’, whereas it is YHWH’s wrath that burns, and that we have an object ‘enemies’ in Marduk 2. The assonance between Hebrew ’eš and Akkadian ezzu (“furious, angry” — modifying giru) is also curious, though the terms are not cognate or semantically similar.

In any case, returning to the above-cut section, what appears to be being referenced in the hymn’s lines 43-47 is Marduk’s triumph over Tiamat and thus his act of creation. In line of 11 of Psalm 89 we have (my translation):

11 The heavens are yours, and yours too is the earth; the dry land¹⁷ and all its abundance, you have established.

Again jumping around, line 7 of Marduk 2:

7 You pour out a flood of abundance to the entirety of the world.

Line 12 of the Psalm may be compared with line 37 of Marduk 2

12 The north (ṣapown) and the south (yamin) you have created, Tabor and Hermon rejoice in your name

37 Nunamnir (ie. Enlil), father of the gods, calls upon your name

Enlil’s name was traditionally understood as “lord wind”.¹⁸ The verse in the psalm prima facie has nothing to do with wind, but see Canticles 4:16 “Awake, north [wind] and come, south [wind]” the north wind being ṣapown and the south teman, which is cognate with the yamin of Psalm 89. Tabor and Hermon are each mountains associated with the north and south respectively.

Then there is the wonderfully curious wordplay of Proverbs 27:16 ṣopeneha ṣapown ruaḥ wəšemen yəminow yiqra (of a contentious woman) “Whoever restrains her restrains the (north?) wind and grasps oil with his right hand”. The Septuagint has an entirely different reading, “The north wind (boreas) is harsh by name, but fittingly is called iron”, seemingly a matter of whether the nun of šemen should be read instead as a waw, and requiring this verse to run over into the first word of the next. In any case, it does seem with all the play with ṣ-p-n, the north wind is to be understood in this verse of Proverbs.

Should we understand 89:12 as dealing in winds or merely cardinal directions? It is unclear, but certainly the cardinal directions and the words thereof would have come to the mind of any scribe who may have had Enlil, ‘the lord of the wind’, in mind.

The lines which follow 43 in Marduk 2 must be compared with a few from the psalm. To recapitulate for the sake of convenience once more… (I have supplied my own translation of 49 to capture a bit of playful poetic nuance uncaptured in Oshima)

45 The Ushumgallu-dragon is your rage, you overcome the malevolent
46 You capture the rebellious one, the one who plots and carries out a revolt
47 You burn the evil one, the one who passes through the midst of the uncleanness of hatred
48 You choose the fine ones, you make the one who is not loved propitious
49 You straighten out the righteous man, you flatten out the wicked one

Lines 22-24 in the psalm, during the detailed summary of God’s covenant with David

22 The enemy shall not outwit him; nor shall ‘the son of wickedness’ (ie. the wicked) humble him.
23 I will shatter before him his foes; hating him are those whom I shall smite
24 My faithfulness and my mercy shall be with him; and in my name his horn shall be exalted

These lines, while themselves displaced from one another in the structure of their respective prayer, show the following sequence:

1. That the god will crush the king’s enemies (either at home or abroad)

2. Apposition of hate, evil and enemies

3. Return to the god’s good and his partnership with the petitioner

Another interesting place of comparison are verses 89:25-26 and Marduk 2 96-97. Here the prayer deals with Marduk’s assistance to a petitioner during the ‘river ordeal’ wherein the truth of a Babylonians testimony might be tested by their being thrown in the river and seeing if they survive. The Psalm has:

25 And I will set his [left] hand over the sea, and his right over the rivers
26 He shall cry to me “you are my father, my God, and the rock of my salvation”

Oshima translated lines 96-97 of the hymn as

96 … Lord, in the high wave of a scream
97 You take the hand of the one who cannot (rise to the surface) during a river-ordeal¹⁹

The meaning of the word ‘scream’ above, malitû is a bit uncertain, but it appears in the Neo-Assyrian Anzu with apparently a similar meaning (so Jimenez). It in any case appears to be a shout or lament or some such.

We see here (albeit reversed), a petitioner’s shout and God giving that petitioner’s hand mastery of water in apposition. Another question is raised here: traditionally the ubiquitous phrase ‘rock of salvation’ is associated with the idea of a fortress, and internally this is rather sound, but might it also have something to do with the river ordeal? Brought to mind are those children’s cartoons where someone has fallen in a rapid and must grab a rock or branch to be saved.

The next line in the prayer is also curious.

98 The one who is cast into the bed of Namtar, you raise up

ie. the one who has died, Marduk makes live.

Compare with 48 of the psalm

48 Who is the man that lives and does not see death? Can he deliver his life from the hand of the grave?

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We have now seen an abundance of evidence, both historical and textual, which seems to correlate Marduk 2 with Psalm 89. We have examined the psalm and the hymns shared unique diction, at times lockstep with one another in the flow of ideas, and other times merely seeming to share a love for the same poetics. If Marduk 2 was truly recited at Akitu, then we can account for it’s presence in the very same place and time which likely lead to some of the influences of Enuma Elish on the Old Testament. Indeed, there is every indication based on the content of the psalm to place it precisely in the Babylonian captivity.

One thing has stood out to me, as far as their differences go: they share an absolute minimum of actually cognate words. Akkadian and Biblical Hebrew do have quite a different lexicon, despite both being Semitic languages, and the roots which they do share are often semantically distinct — but I have to say that I ordinarily would have expected more. I lack any statistics to back this up at this stage, but perhaps this relates to the curious language about the “council of saints”. Could it be that the psalmist had this very prayer in mind, but sought to differentiate as much as possible? And what would be the cause for the psalmist to model his psalm after the prayer? Surely it was not a lack of creativity, we find plenty of that in the Old Testament regardless of the Sitz im Leben.

The main idea of Psalm 89 is actually quite in contrast to Marduk 2. In fact, this is what makes the shared sequencing so striking: Psalm 89 is a lament over God’s covenant seemingly being shattered with the Israelites, whereas Marduk 2 is very much a hopeful prayer of redemption and justice. Perhaps this was the idea: the psalmist in Jobian fashion sought to compose a prayer which semantically would play off the orgiastic hopefulness of Marduk 2, but praising YHWH despite his people’s accursedness, indeed with an entirely different sort of hope. Marduk 2 hopes for the continuation of Marduk’s blessings over Babylon, while Psalm 89 hopes against all hope for the deliverance of the Israelites from an impossible situation. The psalmist, perhaps, sought to show the Babylonians as only ‘fair-weather friends’ of Marduk, in apposing his psalm with Marduk 2.

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Bibliography

Cumming, C. G. (1966). The Assyrian and Hebrew Hymns of Praise. AMS Press.

Fadhil, A. A., & Jiménez, E. (2019). Literary Texts from the Sippar Library I: Two Babylonian Classics. Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie, 109(2), 155-176. https://doi.org/10.1515/za-2019-0012

Foster, B. R. (2005). Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature (3rd ed.). CDL Press.

Haubold, J., Helle, S., Jiménez, E., & Wisnom, S. (Eds.). (2024). Enuma Elish: The Babylonian Epic of Creation. The Library of Babylonian Literature. Bloomsbury Academic. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350297425

Heinrich, A. C. (2022). Anzû Chapter Neo-Assyrian. With contributions by E. Jiménez and T. D. N. Mitto. Translated by Enrique Jiménez. electronic Babylonian Library. https://doi.org/10.5282/ebl/l/1/10

Knife, D. W. (1973). Psalm 89 and the Ancient Near East [ThD dissertation, Grace Theological Seminary]. Digitized by Ted Hildebrandt, Gordon College.

Lambert, W. G. (1959). Three Literary Prayers of the Babylonians. Archiv Für Orientforschung, 19, 47-66. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41637089

Lenzi, A. (Ed.). (2011). Reading Akkadian Prayers and Hymns: An Introduction. Ancient Near East Monographs 3. Society of Biblical Literature.

Oshima, T. (2011). Babylonian Prayers to Marduk. Orientalische Religionen in der Antike. Mohr Siebeck.

Seux, M.-J. (1976). Hymnes et prières aux dieux de Babylonie et d'Assyrie. Les Éditions du Cerf.

Worthington, M. (2012). Principles of Akkadian Textual Criticism. De Gruyter.

1. cf. Knife 1973

2. A translation of the first tablet of Marduk 2 will be forthcoming on this blog. However, should one desire to read it immediately, Lambert’s quite outdated translation and edition may be found here, and can be accessed with a free JSTOR account. A more complete edition and translation will be found in Oshima, per the bibliography here.

3. At first when I was preparing this structural analysis, I tried to respect these couplets, just as we would do in classical elegiac poetry, for example. I found this impossible, as the author has often used a transitional couplet to cleverly connect two sections. It is also possible that the Hymn was not written with couplets in mind but a later scribe compulsively added the divisions, as we know sometimes happened. I am doubtful hereof as the hymn generally reads (and organizes itself) quite pleasantly in couplets.

4. There is some controversy about line 7, but it is irrelevant for this comparison. See Lambert’s note & translation and compare with that of Foster.

5. ‘Enanki is a name of Ea’ so Lambert (and cf. CT 24, pl. 12-17, K 04332 o ii 14), who also records the variant ‘Enki’ in witness B as a mistake (Lambert 1959-1960 pg 62), presumably on the grounds that it would be easier to err by losing track of the second “an” sign (the first preceding “en” as the divine determinative) seeing the more common ᵈEn-ki in the mind’s eye rather than the much rarer ᵈEn-an-ki (that is, by haplography), but he does not elaborate. When I was first gestating this comparison, only aware of Lambert’s 1960 edition, it seemed to me just as possible the ‘an’ was mistakenly reinserted as a dittography of the divine determinative, as Lambert, at the time, had access to only two witnesses of Marduk II. He was correct, for with the benefit of two new witnesses (J and K in Oshima 2011), we now see Enanki as the majority (and almost certainly correct) reading. Perhaps someone more enlightened than I can explain how he saw this with such a confidence as I could not understand.

6. eg. Psalm 86:8, 95:3, 97:7,9, 138:1 etc.

7. Whether this refers to Yahweh and an earthly king, or simply Yahweh — is unclear. The Hebrew rather leaves one with the impression that this refers to a king. However, Psalm 95:3 (and elsewhere) clearly refers to Yahweh as being the king among the other gods, using similar language (ie. melech gadol ‘al kol-elohim).

8. cf. Exodus 15:11, 34:14, Psalm 81:9; also in the context of the divine council, Psalm 82:1

9. cf. Enuma Elish V 75-85

10. This understanding is more or less necessitates the understanding of the subject of “they will bow down to him” referring the Moabites and Ammonites of ‘alihem “unto them” rather than the more proximate ‘gods’.

11. ie. along the Jordan and its two seas.

12. ie. haggoyim — translated here as ‘heathens’ in the KJV

13. Oshima trifles with Lambert on just such a difference in translation, Lambert has ‘by’ and Oshima has ‘brings fear over’, which is ostensibly better, but in his commentary seems to suggest a sort of “eli of respect” with the following literal translation supplied “your terror is terrifying for the gods”, suggesting we compare Ludlul II:35 (which doesn’t involve the action of fearing).

14. Though, probably the passive sense should be disfavored as ‘al would be a very unusual marker of agent in a passive construction (something which is already reasonably uncommon in Biblical Hebrew).

15. Neither the Vulgate nor the Septuagint stake a strong claim in this matter, although the Septuagint bizarrely has ἐπιφανήσεται ‘will be shown’ for nowra. Both translations use the equivalent preposition in Greek and Latin, ἐπὶ and super, the Latin having terribilis for nowra (which is glossed by the oft-so-used ‘awesome’ or ‘terrible’ in English).

16. The Hebrew is rather remarkable. The root from which ḥemah is derived means “to burn” or “be hot”, though its sense is commonly transferred to that of rage or fury. However, in this context, the original semantics are salient and we may literally translate this as “Your burning (rage) incinerates like fire”.

17. cf. Tawil, An Akkadian Lexical Companion to Biblical Hebrew p. 428. This word (tebel) is traditionally translated as “the world” but it is better translated “dry land”, and this is relevant in God’s opposition to the chaos of the sea. Esp. see Psalm 98:7, but the skeptic must see Tawil’s note for a more complete treatment.

18. While this is clearly how the Sumerians and Babylonians understood it, this is unlikely to be the actual etymology.

19. The exact literal meaning of this line is something like “You take the hand of the one is not strong (enough) for the river ordeal”