Imagery and Analogy in Psalm 58:4-9

Abstract

This article treats the images and logic of Ps 58:4-9. Drawing on Stanley Tambiah's work on "performative analogies," it compares the images of serpents and unborn children as well as the ways in which these images are used in Ps 58 with incantations from SyroMesopotamia. It focuses on the similarities between Ps 58 and Syro-Mesopotamian incantatory traditions, emphasizing how the latter serves as a catalyst for understand ing Ps 58 as a YHWHistic religio-magical expression.

Metaphor Research and the Hebrew Bible

“…Miglio (2020) shows, for instance, how the phrase ‘a table in the presence of my enemies’ in Psalm 23 affirms divine kingship by conceiving of Yhwh as royal patron who provides for his dependents on the battlefield. Elsewhere, the similarities between serpentine and unborn child imagery in Psalm 58 are shown to draw analogically on Mesopotamian religio-magical texts to conceptualize the wicked (Miglio 2015). Lancaster and Miglio (2020) examine how the contrasting metaphorical portraits of Yhwh in Hos.…”