Legal Imagery - Dr. Holtz

Aryeh Sklar

Legal Imagery in Prayers

Several scholars have noted that legal imagery has been used in the ancient Near East even outside of the courtroom, in religious prayers, prophecy, and of course, in legal writings. Dr. Holtz has argued that looking at Akkadian and Neo Babylonian writings can inform our perception of these uses in ancient Israelite sources as well. He demonstrates that there are very specific elements of legal metaphors that are commonly used in the ancient Near East, and we will find this in a variety of Biblical contexts. What Holtz found in Neo-Babylonian writings is that, “The opening sentence in Neo-Babylonian pleas to court introduces the plaintiff’s statement by naming the plaintiff and the authorities. The speech itself is then quoted; it concludes with a formulaic address to the judges, in which the plaintiff demands judgment.” Often in Akkadian writings, we find as well the element of proposing what the god should do next, i.e. how he should decide the case. Let us look at two specific areas - Psalms and II Chronicles, and we will disagree that there are elements of these legalistic structures in accordance with Holtz’s thesis. The most important aspect, we will find, is the demand for judgement.

In II Chronicles 20, we find these elements exactly in a prose context, but as a prayer to God. Jehoshaphat has gathered all the people and declared a fast because of the information he has received of the potential attack. In verse 6, he identifies God, and describes God’s mighty. “And he said, "O Lord, God of our fathers, is it not so that You are God in heaven, and that You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations, and in Your hand is strength and might, and no one can stand with You?” He names the plaintiff as well, here and in the next verse. Here, it is “the God of our fathers,” and the next verse refers to Israel, “Have you, our God, not driven out the inhabitants of this land from before Your people Israel and given it to the seed of Abraham, who loved You, forever?” The substance of the speech is described as well in verse 10, with “And now, behold the children of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir, against whom You did not permit Israel to come when they came out of the land of Egypt, for they turned away from them and did not destroy them.” Finally, we have the most important element, the demand for judgement and justice, in verse 12, “Our God, will You not execute judgment upon them?”

A weak element in this alignment with ancient Near East courtroom metaphor is the fact that the judgement is not separated from the speech itself, and in fact continues to ask for God to take action against their enemies, without mentioning judgement again. However, Holtz admits to this, writing “ In some of the Hebrew prayers, they occupy the same climactic rhetorical position as they might have in a plaintiff ’s demand.” This isn’t necessarily apart from the genre of ancient Near East legal imagery, but a dramatic twist to the formula instead. As Holtz writes, “Admittedly, Hebrew prayers, like their Mesopotamian counterparts, do not always conform to the structure of a decision record.”

Similarly, we can look at the prayer of Psalm 35, where Holtz finds “echoes” of Akkadian legal progression. Though much of the Psalm does not center on legalistic imagery, we begin to find a plaintiff complain in verse 19 with, “Let not them that are wrongfully mine enemies rejoice over me; neither let them wink with the eye that hate me without a cause.” This begins to describe an unjustified hate of his enemies - he is an innocent man. He continues to describe the evil actions of his enemies until verse 22. The elements to focus on are the following verses, which contain the demand for God to judge him in verse 24, “Judge me, O God my God, according to Your righteousness.” Immediately following this is the legal trope of the expectation and proposition of what God will decide to do, which is, for example, to let them be ashamed and confounded (verse 26).

If Chronicles deviated from the legal expectation only slightly, for dramatic flourish, Psalms dramatically deviates from what we would expect the formula to be. Most of the Psalm does not have the ancient Near East formula. Certainly it is true that the element of “judge me” is most obviously present and important, but the question we must ask, is how much do we really place on the other elements if they only conform in very few ways? Holtz seems to respond that the very presence of that one element of “judge me” informs the rest. He writes, “The very presence of a demand for judgment in prayers and the legal tone it lends them are not simply a consequence of the meaning of the demand’s component parts. Instead, the speakers in the Hebrew prayers address the divine court as they might have addressed human judges.”

In my opinion, however, the use of “judge me” isn’t as significant lending a “legal tone,” but a demand for justice in general. There is no reason to believe that the divine court rules were necessarily the same as human court rules - only that the speaker considered the tactics powerful enough that they could be used for both. As Holtz points out earlier, the term “judge me” occurs even not in a court setting, toward someone else, as in Sarai to Abram that, “Let God judge between you and me.” In my mind, the only image being conjured here is not a court, but that justice should be done because of her pain and tribulation that she has had to endure.