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August 6, 2007
An Echo of Divination in Biblical Hebrew
Many causal readers of the books of the Hebrew Bible can cite examples of divination within those diverse works. Even though Leviticus 19:26 and other passages appear to explicitly forbidden divination, the techniques of the diviner where still known and practiced in Israelite religion. The use of the Urim and Thummim to determine Yahweh's will is a well known example. But in this post, I am not so interested in explicit references to various forms of divination or even to the methods, whatever they may have been, that where used by the prophets to divine Yahweh's will. Rather, I am interested in one example of an echo of divination that I find in Biblical Hebrew itself. If I am correct about this particularly echo of divination, my theses raises a question of just how pervasive the culture of divination was in the lives of those who used that language in their everyday discourse.
What follows is from Oppenheim's publication of the Assyrian Dream Book.
The reverse of tablet K. 6267, after a break, reads in translation:
If his urine ex[pands] in front of (his) penis and [fills ?] the wall (and) the street, he will h[ave] sons.
If his urine expa[nds] in front of (his) penis and f[ills ? all] the streets, his property will be robb[ed] and given to the city.
If his urine expands in front of (his) penis and he does obeisance in front of his urine, he will beget a son and he (the son) will be king.
For those who care about this a little too much, the Akkadian of the second and, for the purposes of this post, most interesting omen reads:
DIŠ KÀŠ-šú ina IGI UŠ i-[tal-ka-ma] GIŠ.ZI SILA [ ] DUMU.MEŠ TUK-[ši]
The translation is mostly that of Oppenheim, 265, with a little help from Bottéro, 115, and me. The transliteration is from Oppenheim, 310. GIŠ.ZI stands for Akkadian igāru, "wall," but not necessarily the city wall. An igāru is more like the wall of a house or garden. SILA stands for sûqu and various synonyms all meaning "street."
What we see in the first two of these omens is a relationship between urinating and (male) progeny or lack of same. Both speak of "filling" a wall and one involves both "filling" a wall and the adjacent street with urine. Another omen, further down in the same series, tells us that dreaming about urinating on a wall and filling the street is as good as doing it.
Keeping all this in mind, I now want to turn to six passages from the Hebrew Bible, I Samuel 25:22, 34; I Kings 14:10; I Kings 16:11; I Kings 21:21 and II Kings 9:8. Each of these uses the Hebrew words מַשְׁתִּין בְּקִיר as part of a curse or in one case, I Kings 16:11, an account of the destruction of "the house of Baasha." Many modern translations "pulpitize" מַשְׁתִּין בְּקִיר to something like "one male." But the old King James Version got is right, "one that pisseth against the wall." See Tyler Williams' post on the subject of translating this and other like phrases.
Two of these instances are of particular interest. First, I Kings 16:11b reads,
לֹא הִשְׁאִיר לוֹ מַשְׁתִּין בְּקִיר וְגֹאֲלָיו וְרֵעֵהוּ,
"He did not leave a pisser against the wall or his kindred or his friends."
Neither the last man nor his family nor his friends are left. And without them, there is no future progeny for the house of Baasha.
Second, I Kings 21:21 reads,
וְהִכְרַתִּי לְאַחְאָב מַשְׁתִּין בְּקִיר וְעָצוּר וְעָזוּב בְּיִשְׂרָאֵל,
"And I will cutoff from Ahab (any) pisser against the wall, bond or free in Israel."
In this curse, we see the promise of the total destruction of Ahab's progeny. But is there more to it than that?
Is מַשְׁתִּין בְּקִיר an allusion to one who hopes, by way of urine divination, to have sons? I am inclined to think it is. מַשְׁתִּין בְּקִיר seems to me to be a rather direct allusion to the same tradition that we saw in the urine omens from the Assyrian Dream Book. Of course, this echo of divination was likely limited in time and location. But at sometime and somewhere in the history Israel it seems very likely that a tradition of divination became part of the Hebrew language itself.
I have not done a complete search to see if this is truly an original idea. It's a little hard to believe that someone else hasn't noticed this. I would very much like to know of anyone who may have had this idea before me. I do plan a more complete literature search but such searches are always incomplete.
Postscripts
Astyages' Dream
Another reference to urine divination can be found in Herodotus I:107-108. It seems that Astyages, king of the Medes, had a dream that his daughter Mandane "had enough water flow from her to fill his city and overflow all Asia." He must have dreamt this after visiting a theme park or enjoying an athletic event or perhaps attending a New Year's Day parade. Anyway, it frighten the p. . . out of Astyages. Christopher Pelling of University College, Oxford, has a nice discussion of this omen and its possible relationship to urine omens like those in the Assyrian Dream Book.
Background and credits
While working on a higher-level interpretation of the Ugaritic veterinary text I ran across several references to urinating and a wall in the Assyrian Dream Book. I was led to these references by way of Bottéro's great book Mesopotamia, Writing, Reasoning and the Gods. Jim Getz had reminded me of Bottéro's book in a comment to one of my "horse" posts.
References:
Oppenheim, A. Leo, "The interpretation of dreams in the ancient Near East, with a translation of an Assyrian dream-book", Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series, Volume 46, Part 3, Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1956, 179-373
Posted by Duane Smith at August 6, 2007 8:35 PM | Read more on Hebrew Bible |
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Comments
I hadn't ever really thought of this as an omen rite. Very interesting!
Have you ever looked at Peter J. Leithart's article "Nabal and his Wine" in JBL 120 (2001): 525-527? He's got an interesting take on the passage from a literary level.
Posted by: Jim Getz at August 7, 2007 9:28 AM
Jim,
I did have a vague memory of Leithart's article. I have just given it a quick read and I'm not sure that my view and Leithart's are totally mutually exclusive. It does seem on causal reading that he would need to make a few modifications in his presentation and argument if he where to adopt the point of my post but I still think he can have his major position. I will need to read his paper a little more carefully. His final words, "YHWH himself can de depended on to 'cut off all who piss against the wall,' and give the crown to David," could well be integrated with the idea that Abigail correctly interprets a urine omen. Remember, the goal of divination is to read the mind of god. Of course, if I were to write this post up as a formal article (and I'm thinking about it), I would need to address Leithart's points and make appropriate changes to my own thought where necessary.
Posted by: Duane at August 7, 2007 7:03 PM
Duane,
Sorry if I implied that Leihart's article caused your theory problems. I think that his and your ideas work on two different levels of the text (though I confess to having not reread the article in depth as well).
One lingering problem I had had with Leihart's playful interpretation was that I felt that something more 'serious' was under his literary analysis. At least for me, your urine omen idea would answer these issues.
Posted by: Jim Getz at August 8, 2007 5:39 AM
As to the biblical curse, if you have ever lived in a small village with crooked streets, a variety of walls, and pathways betwixt and between, you could easily prefer to interpret the passages as injunctions against pissing on your neighbours' walls, causing both destruction of the overlaying mud or plaster as well as creating a stench and obstacle. Such functions are generally relegated to one's own small garden plot behind the house. Thus, he who pisses a wall is a vagrant, anti-social, and liable to be cut off from among the fellowship...
On the other hand, the divination seems more related to reading the mystical nature of quantity and position rather than seeing any social faux pas. Cultural views in juxtaposition, perhaps?
Nice post.
Posted by: David Maltsberger at August 11, 2007 4:43 PM
It's an interesting thought although I haven't had an opportunity to examine each passage, I don't see any likelihood that these refer to a practice of divination. The expression rather appears to simply refer to males and to refer to the elimination of all males rather than simply those who practice such divination. There is therefore no reason to suppose divination in the passages I have had time to examine and would much better be explained in the traditional manner since a limitation to those who practiced this practice of divination would eliminate the universal application to the mentioned group.
Posted by: George F. Somsel at August 30, 2007 10:15 AM
George,
Thanks for the comment. I am not claiming that any of the passages reflect divination. However, I do wonder about I Samuel 25. I may have more to say about this in a future post or in a more formal paper on the whole subject. Further I didn't mean to imply that only those who practiced divination where intended. It was the total elimination of any progeny that I was trying to point out. I suppose I should have said, "even by way of urine divination" rather than only "by way of urine divination." My claim is that the expression מַשְׁתִּין בְּקִיר itself reflects the same cultural/linguistic environment that is seen in the Assyrian Dream Book. To be sure, even under my suggestion the implication, at one level, is that מַשְׁתִּין בְּקִיר refers to "a man." I have gathered additional evidence and have developed a somewhat stronger argument that I may or may not post depending on my decision to turn this idea into a formal paper. If one did a simple survey of scholarly opinion on these two words, I think you would find that the most common understanding is that they refer to a dog and are then applied pejoratively to (a) man. This notion goes back to the Talmud. More modern explanations that follow this line point to 1 Samuel 25:3 where Nabal is called a Calabite and to a possible play on words in 1 Kings 14:12. I did a quick and dirty overview of the various possibilities that are current in the literature or where at least once popular among scholars. I will say that every explanation suffers in one way or another, my suggestion no less than others do.
Posted by: Duane at August 30, 2007 7:56 PM
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