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| Deborah Under The Palm Tree by Adriene Cruz |
דברה
The Tanach has two Deborahs - both correctly "Devorah".
Genesis 35:8 says that she was Rivkah's (Rebecca's) nurse, and that she died at Beit-El (Bethel) and was buried under the weeping-oak tree Alon Bachot.
The text is more complex however. In the previous chapter we have been told the story of the rape of Dinah by Shechem ben Chamor, and of the slaughter of the Shechemites by Shim'on and Levi. Now in this chapter Ya'akov (Jacob) is told by Elohim to move to Beit-El, and to erect an altar there; however Elohim instructs him to build the altar (verse 1), not to himself nor even to YHVH, but to "Ha El ha nirey eleycha be varchacha miphney Esav achicha (לאל הנראה אליך בברחך מפני עשו אחיך) - the god who appeared to you when you fled from Esav your brother". Ya'akov then gathers all the "foreign gods" (כל אלהי הנכר) and all the "ear-rings" and other jewelery of his people (including presumably the teraphim that Rachel took from her father Lavan in Genesis 31), and hides them (ויטמן) under an "oak that is near Shechem" (verse 4). Only then do they travel to Luz, which is also called Beit-El, and he builds the altar as required, naming it "El Beit-El" (though we know from his own previous visit, and from the Av-Raham stories, that an altar already existed there).
And precisely then, as if in parenthesis, and in mid-story, we are given the single verse about Devorah's death: "and she was buried (ותקבר) beneath Beit-El under an oak; and the name of it was called Alon Bachot." After which the Ya'akov story resumes, with an account of the covenant with Elohim.
The difference between "hiding" (ויטמן) and "burying" (ותקבר) is highlighted in italics above. The shrine at Shechem was to the ass-god Chamor (given in the text as Shechem's father; Chamor - חמור- means "ass" or "donkey"; in Egypt he was known as Set, and as Shet (Seth) he reappears in the Tanach as the third son of Adam and Chavah (Eve), born after the death of Havel (Abel) and the exile of Kayin (Cain). Hiding the gods and goods under the tree at Shechem is not an act of sacrificial propitiation, as it is when Devorah is "buried". It is a casting away. The specific gods of the Shechemites were hidden, as the final act in the destruction of their shrine and cult (it was in fact far from final; the young Sha'ul was a worshipper of the ass-god). The line in verse 2: "be clean, and change your garments", is clearly intended to complete the purgation process which is necessary after spilling so much blood at Shechem. The role of the priestly clan of Levi in the slaughter also makes clear that this was a religious not a political affair.
Devorah was not buried under the terebinth-oak at Shechem however, but rather taken with the Beney Ya'akov and buried under the weeping-oak (such is the meaning of Alon Bachot) at Beit-El. The shrine at Beit-El is dedicated to El, the Kena'anite father-god, equivalent to Greek Chronos and a much older deity than his son Ba'al. Devorah can thus be identified with El - but in what capacity?
In the notes to ALON BACHOT it has been pointed out that she was a bee-goddess. The burial grounds of the megalithic period were barrows or tumuli in the form of a bee-hive, and have long been known as "bee-hive tombs" (tholos in the Greek, but only when they are fully temples and not just cemeteries) for that reason - though recent archaeology has suggested that they are also thoroughly pudendal in shape.
The difference between "hiding" (ויטמן) and "burying" (ותקבר) is highlighted in italics above. The shrine at Shechem was to the ass-god Chamor (given in the text as Shechem's father; Chamor - חמור- means "ass" or "donkey"; in Egypt he was known as Set, and as Shet (Seth) he reappears in the Tanach as the third son of Adam and Chavah (Eve), born after the death of Havel (Abel) and the exile of Kayin (Cain). Hiding the gods and goods under the tree at Shechem is not an act of sacrificial propitiation, as it is when Devorah is "buried". It is a casting away. The specific gods of the Shechemites were hidden, as the final act in the destruction of their shrine and cult (it was in fact far from final; the young Sha'ul was a worshipper of the ass-god). The line in verse 2: "be clean, and change your garments", is clearly intended to complete the purgation process which is necessary after spilling so much blood at Shechem. The role of the priestly clan of Levi in the slaughter also makes clear that this was a religious not a political affair.
Devorah was not buried under the terebinth-oak at Shechem however, but rather taken with the Beney Ya'akov and buried under the weeping-oak (such is the meaning of Alon Bachot) at Beit-El. The shrine at Beit-El is dedicated to El, the Kena'anite father-god, equivalent to Greek Chronos and a much older deity than his son Ba'al. Devorah can thus be identified with El - but in what capacity?
In the notes to ALON BACHOT it has been pointed out that she was a bee-goddess. The burial grounds of the megalithic period were barrows or tumuli in the form of a bee-hive, and have long been known as "bee-hive tombs" (tholos in the Greek, but only when they are fully temples and not just cemeteries) for that reason - though recent archaeology has suggested that they are also thoroughly pudendal in shape.
Devorah is thus identified with the goddess of the Underworld, which is to say the earth-goddess rather than the Earth Goddess (all of Nature plants its roots in the underworld). Burying her image (or her body) under the tree establishes an oracular shrine; in fact a human or animal victim would have been sacrificed in her name, its heart and blood perhaps removed, and its jaw-bone or whole skull placed among the roots of the tree. The ceremony links her absolutely with the rite that follows, and we can therefore read this passage as being a covenant, not with YHVH Elohim, but quite specifically with the local sky-god - El - and his earthly wife, named here as Devorah though she goes by many names - including, most importantly, Tamar. Through this we can conclude finally that Ya'akov was not of the same family as either Av-Raham or Yitschak, nor his gods the same as their gods. Perhaps not surprisingly, given that it is his name and not theirs that is given to the land, the gods of Yisra-El turn out to be the most natively Kena'ani of all the patriarchal gods.
The importance of the shrine of Devorah is long-standing. Av-Raham and Ya'akov both worshipped there; which is to say, they both visited it to ask for an oracle. Judges 20:26 notes that the Ark of the Covenant itself was kept there at one time.
All of which now requires a correction to the opening statement, that the Tanach has two Devorahs.
Judges 4:4 ff tells the story of Devorah, the wife of Lapidot (לפידות), a prophetess who "judged" Yisra-El from under a palm-tree between Ramah (not to be confused with Ra'amah) and Beit-El in Ephrayim - which is a lovely way for the Redactor to reduce a goddess to human size. (The palm tree again links her with Tamar). Threatened with war by Siys-Ra (Sisera - סִיסְרָא), the army commander of King Yavin of Chatsor, Devorah first sends, then accompanies, Barak - the son of Avi-No'am of Kedesh in Naphtali - to Mount Tavor, where ten thousand men of Naphtali and Zevulun are gathering.
The importance of the shrine of Devorah is long-standing. Av-Raham and Ya'akov both worshipped there; which is to say, they both visited it to ask for an oracle. Judges 20:26 notes that the Ark of the Covenant itself was kept there at one time.
All of which now requires a correction to the opening statement, that the Tanach has two Devorahs.
Judges 4:4 ff tells the story of Devorah, the wife of Lapidot (לפידות), a prophetess who "judged" Yisra-El from under a palm-tree between Ramah (not to be confused with Ra'amah) and Beit-El in Ephrayim - which is a lovely way for the Redactor to reduce a goddess to human size. (The palm tree again links her with Tamar). Threatened with war by Siys-Ra (Sisera - סִיסְרָא), the army commander of King Yavin of Chatsor, Devorah first sends, then accompanies, Barak - the son of Avi-No'am of Kedesh in Naphtali - to Mount Tavor, where ten thousand men of Naphtali and Zevulun are gathering.
Lapidot means "flames" or "torches", and you would need to be husbanded by one if you were going down, like Macbeth in Act 4 of Shakespeare's play, or Sha'ul at Ein Dor (1 Samuel 28), to seek an oracle from the goddess of the Underworld.
Barak means "lightning"; the coincidence of which should now need little, but still some, further elucidation. Barak was himself a "Judge", Mount Tavor being a mountain shrine in much the same manner as that of Mount Ephrayim where Devorah ruled, and Kedesh Naphtali meaning "the holy place of Naphtali". One priestess-queen calls on another priest-king to raise a combined army; such is the story. But Judges 5 is entirely dedicated to that most ancient hymn, the Song of Devorah; a treatment such as no other Judge receives, and which pays tribute to the importance of her shrine. It is actually the Song of Devorah and Barak, but somehow Barak always seems to get forgotten.
What is clear is that Devorah is linked to the shrine at Beit-El in both her existences - wet-nurse (high priestess of the fertility goddess) and Judge (oracle-giver) - and that as such the idea of her being Rivkah's "nurse" needs some examination. What we are seeing is the later destruction of a priestess shrine where oracles and judgments were pronounced, but which the Redactor tried to "convert" into something acceptable among the Yehudim of his day (5th century BCE), when it could not be extirpated. The wet-nurse role is simply the return of the child born in the fertility festival to its actual mother, so that her vestal virginity may be unimpugned. Precisely the same happened with the infant Mosheh (Exodus 2:7) and the child Shemu-El (1 Samuel 1).
What is clear is that Devorah is linked to the shrine at Beit-El in both her existences - wet-nurse (high priestess of the fertility goddess) and Judge (oracle-giver) - and that as such the idea of her being Rivkah's "nurse" needs some examination. What we are seeing is the later destruction of a priestess shrine where oracles and judgments were pronounced, but which the Redactor tried to "convert" into something acceptable among the Yehudim of his day (5th century BCE), when it could not be extirpated. The wet-nurse role is simply the return of the child born in the fertility festival to its actual mother, so that her vestal virginity may be unimpugned. Precisely the same happened with the infant Mosheh (Exodus 2:7) and the child Shemu-El (1 Samuel 1).
Copyright © 2019 David Prashker
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The Argaman Press
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