The Divine Election of Israel (review)

Abstract

Hebrew Studies 34 (1993) 206 Reviews Lambdin, Thomas O. 1971 "The Junctural Origin of the West Semitic Definite Anicle." Near Eastern Studies in Honor ofWilliam Foxwell Albright. H. Goedicke, ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University. pp. 315-333. Moran, W. L. 1950 A Syntactical Study of the Dialect ofByblos as Reflected in the Amarna Tablets. Ph.D. dissenation, Johns Hopkins University. Polotzky, H. J. 1965 Egyptian Tenses. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Rabin, Chaim 1951 Ancient West-Arabian. London: Taylor's. Rendsburg, Gary A. 1990 Diglossia in Ancient Hebrew. New Haven: American Oriental Society. Steiner, R. C., and C. F. Nims 1985 "Ashurbanipal and Shamash-shum-ukin: A Tale of Two Brothers from the Aramaic Text in Demotic Script." RB 92: 60-81. Young, G. Douglas 1953 "The Origin of the Waw Conversive." JNES 12: 248-252. THE DIVINE ELECTION OF ISRAEL. By Seock-Tae Sohn. Pp. xvi + 296. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991. Paper, $19.95. Seock-Tae Sohn contends that the concept of the election of Yahweh's people Israel in the OT is not limited to passages in which the root bahar appears, but encompasses all the words, phrases, metaphors, and relationships which the OT uses to describe Israel's election. An examination of these texts reveals that the main concern of OT writers who refer to Israel's election is not a past event in which Yahweh chose Israel to be his people, but the ongoing relationship between Yahweh and Israel. When Israel became aware that Yahweh had chosen her to be his special people, she used common, everyday metaphors to describe this. In order to perceive the OT concept of Yahweh's election of Israel, it is necessary to Hebrew Studies 34 (1993) 207 Reviews undertake three procedures: (1) find the tenns, phrases, parables, and metaphors in the OT which describe Yahweh's relationship to Israel; (2) detennine how and in what kind of life setting these tenns were used; and (3) deduce the particular aspects of the OT teaching on election contained in these words and descriptions. Although Seock-Tae Sohn's ostensible concern is the election of Israel, in reality he deals with five stages in the history of Yahweh's interaction with Israel: (a) Yahweh "takes" or "chooses" Israel to be his special people when he brings them out of Egyptian bondage and gives them his instructions at Mount Sinai; (b) Yahweh gives Israel the land of Canaan as her possession, but she "forsakes" or "turns away from" him and worships the baalim; (c) Yahweh raises up the Assyrians and the Babylonians to overthrow North Israel and Judah respectively for their sins and to carry them into exile; (d) Yahweh still loves and cares for his people and yearns for them to return to him; (e) Yahweh will restore Israel and Judah to himself and will reestablish his fonner relationship with them. Seock-Tae Sohn suggests that various OT writers drew upon eight common relationships to communicate this historical sequence of Yahweh's relationship with his people. The earliest metaphor used to depict this relationship is that of Yahweh as warrior-king and Israel as his chosen anny. This figure appears in the Song of the Sea (Exod 15:1-18), the accounts of Joshua's battles in Canaan (Josh 5:13-15; 6:2, 16-19; 10:8-13), the Song of Deborah (Judges 5), and the account of Gideon's battle against the Midianites (Judg 7:7, IS, 22); therefore, it is premonarchic. The prophets of the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. were responsible for introducing the other seven metaphors: Yahweh is a husband and Israel is his wife; Yahweh is a father and Israel is his adopted son; Yahweh is a fanner and Israel is his vineyard; Yahweh is a shepherd and Israel is his flock; Yahweh is a potter and Israel is the clay which he shapes and reshapes into a vessel to his liking; Yahweh is a master and Israel is his servant; and Yahweh is a holy God and Israel is a holy people whom he has set apart for himself. The application of certain details of some of these metaphors to the historical relationship...