Raanan Eichler

The biblical hapax legomenon סַנְסִנָּיו (Song 7:9) seems to denote a part of the date palm, but readers have disagreed widely on which part. Most scholars today follow Immanuel Löw, who concluded from Syriac and Akkadian cognates that the word denotes the spadices, which are the branched stalks that hold the clusters of flowers and fruit. Eran Viezel has recently argued on morphological grounds that it denotes a “fruit-laden cluster of dates.” It is proposed here that the word denotes the projecting leaf bases that line the trunk of the date palm and that it is cognate with the Arabic word sinsin, “edge of a spinal vertebra,” to which these leaf bases bear a close visual resemblance.

The common noun šip‘at occurs six times in the Hebrew Bible (2Kgs 9:17[x2]; Isa 60:6; Ezek 26:10; Job 22:11; 38:24). Its nearly universal interpretation as “abundance” or “flood", obviously induced by the meanings that the root šp‘ carries in Middle Aramaic and Mishnaic Hebrew, is rejected. It is argued instead that the word means “dust-cloud” in all occurrences, is cognate with Akkadian terms that pertain to darkness and obscuration, and has nothing to do with abundance or flooding. The related biblical common noun šepa‘ (Deut 33:19) is explained in like manner.

It is proposed that the priestly story of Aaron’s flowering staff (Num 17:16–26) is an etiology for the asherah in Solomon’s temple (2 Kgs 21:3, 7; 23:4, 6, 7). The staff as described is closely similar both in form and in function to the asherah. This proposition accounts for the absence of hostility towards asherim in the priestly literature, and it generates a solution to the age-old problem of why Moses and Aaron were denied entry into the promised land (Num 20:1–13, 24; 27:14; Deut 32:51).

This paper examines the collocation tōmer miqšâ in Jer 10:5. Previous interpretations of the collocation are surveyed and shown to be unsatisfactory. It is argued that the term refers to a constructed, intricately shaped, solid object that looks like a date palm, Neo-Assyrian depictions of which are known to scholars as the "Assyrian Sacred Tree".

The ark, the primary cult object in the Hebrew Bible, is described in detail in the
Priestly tabernacle pericopes of the Pentateuch. In these texts, a difficult contradiction arises with regard to its בדים , which are universally understood as carrying poles. The commands for the construction of the ark (Exod 25:10–16) specify that the ark’s carrying poles are to stay in its rings and never to part from it
בטבעת הארן ויהיו הבדים לא יסרו ממנו) , v. 15). In the instructions regarding the packing up of the tabernacle (Num 4), however, we read that, in the course of preparing the ark for transport, its carrying poles are to be put in by Aaron and his sons ( ושמו בדיו , v. 6). If the ark’s poles are always “in,” how can they be “put in”? This problem has received a great deal of attention from medieval exegetes and modern scholars. In this article, I review previous proposed solutions and offer a new solution based on material evidence from the ancient Near East.

The cherub is a type of creature mentioned some 90 times in the Hebrew Bible, where it is portrayed as being closely associated with the God of Israel and serving as the predominant motif in Israelite iconography. This paper surveys the rich history of attempts to determine the form of the cherub, in both textual and iconographic sources, from the fourth century to the twenty-first. The cherub has been interpreted as a winged human (child or adult), a bird, a winged bovine, a griffin, a winged sphinx, and a composite creature in general. The last two identifications, which prevail in contemporary scholarship, are rejected, and a path to a correct identification is proposed.

In three instances in the Hebrew Bible, in two separate contexts, we find the word pa‘ămōtāyw denoting parts of an item of furniture. In all three instances, the most attractive interpretation of the word is ‘its feet’, which would mean short projections at the bottom of the object that bear its weight. However, there has been a surprising reluctance among translators and commentators to understand the word in this sense. In this paper, the various alternative interpretations of the word will be surveyed and the reason for this reluctance will be investigated. It will be argued that this reason is invalid and that ‘its feet’ is the correct understanding.

Genesis 3:24, the final verse in the Eden Narrative, states that God stationed “the cherubim and the spinning-sword-flame” east of the garden of Eden, from which he had recently expelled Man. Or so it does in its masoretic version. Four Targumim, however, reflect an ancient, divergent vocalization of the verse’s fourth word. In this vocalization, the verse must be read as stating that God himself settled east of the garden. This divergence profoundly affects the meaning of the entire Eden Narrative. The targumic reading is grammatically and stylistically sound, and, conceptually, it fits well in the verse’s textual setting. Moreover, a deliberate alteration from it to the masoretic reading would fall squarely into an independently identified pattern of theologically-driven changes in vocalization. The targumic reading may therefore be closest to the original authorial intent.

The phrase ישב הכרבים (yōšēb hakkĕrūbîm) is attested seven times in the Hebrew Bible as an epithet of Yhwh. Its precise meaning is unclear. Six existing interpretations are identified, each of which is influenced by a different biblical passage or group of passages mentioning cherubim: of these, "who is seated upon the cherubim" prevails in modern scholarship. The prevailing interpretation, along with four of the others, is rejected on grammatical grounds. The remaining interpretation, "the occupant of the cherubim", is correct in principle but not in execution. The phrase is properly rendered as "who dwells among the cherubim"; it refers primarily to the cherubim of the Edenic realm; and it serves to extol Yhwh’s transcendence, much like יושב בשמים and other biblical expressions.

The word זֵר (zēr) occurs ten times in the Hebrew Bible, where it designates a feature of several major cult objects in the tabernacle. What, specifically, does it mean? The tortuous history of exegesis related to this question is surveyed. Close attention is paid to the Septuagint and Letter of Aristeas, whose authors seem to have understood the word as referring to a guilloche molding, based on an etymological association with the word משזר. A novel solution is then proposed, according to which the זר should be identified with the cavetto cornice (German: Hohlkehlsims), a common element in ancient Near Eastern architecture and crafts. The cavetto cornice is a concave molding, quarter-circular in profile, which surrounds the top of a structure or object.

The two temples described in detail in the Hebrew Bible, the Temple of Solomon and the wilderness Tabernacle, contained in their innermost chamber, the focal point of Israelite worship, the Ark of the Covenant and two sculptures of fantastic winged creatures, the cherubim. Understanding the symbolic function of these cherubim may be central to understanding the ancient Israelite cult.

The prevailing view regarding this question is that the cherubim formed or supported the throne of YHWH, while the Ark underneath them served as His footstool. The Temple cherubim and Ark are thus considered an instance of the sphinx-throne, a known motif in Phoenician and Canaanite visual art from the Biblical period.

In this paper, the prevailing view is challenged on several grounds. First, Biblical sources explicitly define the cherubim as bearing the role of guardians and not throne-bearers; it is shown that these sources cannot be down-dated and ignored, since they are backed up by multiple sources consistently showing that the cherubim were not the primary objects in the Temple and Tabernacle, as would be expected if they served as the throne of YHWH. Second, no actual throne is mentioned in the Bible in relation to the cherubim. Third, the cherubim as described by the Bible stood upright, while all throne bearing creatures in Ancient Near Eastern visual art are quadrupeds. Fourth, the large dimensions attributed to the cherubim of the Temple would have left insufficient space for a proportional throne.

It is shown that the cherubim as described in the Bible correspond to a separate known motif in Egyptian-Canaanite iconography, that of the winged protectors. In this motif, two or more winged humanoids flank a deity, a person or an object and spread their wings toward it in a gesture of protection. A common form of this motif, in which the wings meet in a diamond pattern, appears in several Iron Age items from the Land of Israel, and corresponds specifically to the cherubim of the Tabernacle as depicted in the Bible. A less common form, in which the protecting beings appear en face with their wings spread to the sides, appears on the 14th-Century sarcophagus of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun, and corresponds to the cherubim of the Temple.

The Torah tells two different stories of the creation of the human race. The first
(Genesis 1:1–2:3) emphasizes the parity of men and women and their equal
share in the image of God, which is their essential attribute (1:27; 5:1b–2).
The conventional view is that the second creation story (Genesis 2:4–3:24),
the “Eden Narrative,” presents the sexes as unequal. In the standard reading,
here the man is the important figure, while the woman is only his subordinate
“helper” (2:18–20). She is fashioned from his rib (2:21–23), meaning that he
is the whole and she only a part. And at the end of the story, God himself
stipulates that woman’s destiny to be controlled by the man (3:16). The present
article shows that this perception of the story is mistaken and that a careful and
closer reading uncovers a view of the sexes that—in the account’s own nuanced
and psychologically sensitive way—is fundamentally egalitarian.

A casual reading of the Hebrew Bible creates the impression that the most important cultic objects in ancient Israel, those which constituted the focal point of all Israelite worship deemed proper by the biblical authors, were a certain wooden container whose basic name was הָאָרוֹן, conventionally styled in English “the ark” or “the ark of the covenant”, along with two sculptures of winged creatures, called הַכְּרוּבִים, “the cherubim”, which were situated close to it. My dissertation is an attempt to comprehensively explain these objects through analysis of the relevant biblical passages and of their ancient Near Eastern context as reflected in the material, iconographic, and epigraphic data. A particularly rich source of data used in the study is the fourteenth-century BCE tomb of Tutankhamun, which contains dozens of well-preserved wooden boxes that constitute close parallels to the ark.

This study overturns the prevailing scholarly view of the cherubim and the ark, according to which they constituted respectively an “empty throne” and footstool for the God of Israel. It is shown that, on the contrary, nowhere in the Bible are these cherubim said to have constituted a throne, and nowhere is the ark described as a footstool. Rather, these objects are consistently and exclusively portrayed in the Bible as having formed an “empty space” for the deity, the ark serving as the marker of a modally undefined divine presence, and the cherubim framing the location of the presence with their outstretched wings. It follows that the cultic focus endorsed by the Hebrew Bible was not merely unusual for its time, like the empty throne, but unique: it surpassed all known systems in the ancient Near East in abstraction and in the extent of the efforts it represented to prevent an anthropomorphic conception of the deity in a cultic context.

Additionally, the study generates answers to a host of long-debated questions. Chief among these is perhaps the question of what cherubim looked like. According to the dominant view today, they were winged sphinxes (i.e., winged, human-headed lions). However, it is shown in this study that cherubim were upright creatures and therefore could not have been winged sphinxes; rather, they were probably winged humans. The various technical terms and details in the descriptions of the ark are also clarified. For example, the ark’s golden זֵר should be identified as a cavetto cornice; its four פְּעָמוֹת should be interpreted as feet; and its two צְלָעוֹת are probably its lateral sides. Its rings should be seen as being set on its underside, probably aligned with its long sides, and as holding four – not two – carrying poles. A contradiction between two priestly verses, one saying that the ark’s poles are never to part from it (לֹא יָסֻרוּ מִמֶּנּוּ), the other stating that its poles are to be “put in” (וְשָׂמוּ) at regular times, can be resolved by assuming that the poles, like those of some ancient Egyptian chests, are retractable.

During the course of this process, it is shown that there is a complete absence of disagreement among the biblical texts regarding the form of the ark and the cherubim, despite vastly different operative premises among their authors, suggesting that these were real historical objects whose concrete form was well-known and could not be denied. It is also shown that there exist ancient Near Eastern parallels to virtually every one of the formal details of the ark and the cherubim, demonstrating that the traditions embodied by the biblical texts that describe these objects are native and natural to this region and era.

Four Aramaic targumim (ancient translations) have God, and not just cherubim, taking up residence east of the garden. This is based on a slightly different vocalization of the Hebrew text, which is likely a more original reading than our current biblical text (MT).

The description of what is to be done with the ark’s carrying poles (בַּדִּים) seems to differ between Exodus ch. 25 and Numbers 4. Medieval Jewish commentators offered many different solutions to this contradiction, but the best answer lies in what we learn from the construction of ancient Egyptian portable chests

The only species of poplar native to Erets Israel is the Euphrates poplar (Populus euphratica), where archaeological evidence suggests that its wood was used in the biblical era. The tree grows on stream banks, especially in the southern coastal plain, the central Negev, and the Jordan valley (Liphschitz/Biger: 120–2). Several biblical terms have been identified with the poplar, none by consensus. The libneh (Gen 30:37; Hos 4:13; conjectured elsewhere in place of lĕbānôn) is portrayed as a tree that grows in Syria and the hills of Erets Israel, has white sapwood, and provides pleasant shade.