The Literary Motif of Cush in the Old Testament

Marta Hoyland Lavik

doi:10.17159/2312-3621/2021/v34n2a9

Abstract

There are 56 references to Cush in the Old Testament and these occur in all the three main corpuses of the Hebrew Bible namely the Law, the Prophets and the Writings. Traditional historical-critical scholarship has not showed great interest in the Old Testament texts about Cush. However, the Nigerian biblical scholar David Tuesday Adamo has through his many contributions about the Cush texts made the guild observant of what can be labelled an African presence in the Old Testament given that Cush is applied as a literary motif in the Old Testament. Following a presentation of the Cush texts in the Old Testament, this paper examines how the literary motif of Cush functions in the text, taking Isaiah 18 as a representative example.

Highlights

There are 56 references to Cush in the Old Testament and these occur in all the three main corpuses of the Hebrew Bible namely the Law, the Prophets and the Writings
The Nigerian biblical scholar David Tuesday Adamo has through his many contributions about the Cush texts made the guild observant of what can be labelled an African presence in the Old Testament given that Cush is applied as a literary motif in the Old Testament
Following a presentation of the Cush texts in the Old Testament, this paper examines how the literary motif of Cush functions in the text, taking Isaiah 18 as a representative example.[1]

Summary

A INTRODUCTION

The Old Testament texts are for obvious reasons centred round Israel/Judah and the Mediterranean. The present contribution is centred round how Cush is used as a literary motif in the Old Testament in general and in Isa 18 in particular. This is more thoroughly elaborated on in my doctoral thesis published in 2007, A people tall and smooth-skinned: The rhetoric of Isaiah 18. And based on an analysis of the rhetoric of the text, I consider the possible literary functions of the motif of Cush in the Old Testament, exemplified by Isa 18

B THE CUSH TEXTS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

C THE FUNCTION OF THE LITERARY MOTIF OF CUSH – ISA 18 AS AN EXAMPLE

D CONCLUSION