THE EARTH STORY IN THE PSALMS AND THE PROPHETS

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2 THE EARTH STORY IN THE PSALMS AND THE PROPHETS The Earth Bible, 4

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4 THE EARTH STORY IN THE PSALMS AND THE PROPHETS edited by Norman C. Habel heffield Academ ic Press THE PILGRIM PRESS Cleveland

5 Copyright 2001 Sheffield Academic Press Published by Sheffield Academic Press Ltd Mansion House 19 KingfMd Road Sheffield Sll 9AS England ISBN Published in the USA and Canada (only) by The Pilgrim Press 700 Prospect Avenue East Cleveland, Ohio USA USA and Canada only ISBN Typeset by Sheffield Academic Press and Printed on acid-free paper in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd Bodmin, Cornwall British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

6 Contents Foreword 7 Editorial Preface 9 Preface 13 List of Abbreviations 16 List of Contributors 19 Six Ecojustice Principles 22 The Voice of Earth: More than Metaphor? 23 The Earth Bible Team PSALMS Friend or Foe? Earth, Sea and Chaoskampfin the Psalms 29 Peter L. Trudinger Rescuing Earth from a Storm God: Psalms 29 and Norman C. Habel and Geraldine Avent Jubilate Deo omnis terra: God and Earth in Psalm Howard N. Wallace The Earth Song in Psalms William J. Urbrock Psalm 104: A Celebration of the Vanua 84 Arthur Walker-Jones The Survival of Earth: An African Reading of Psalm Abotchie Ntreh An Ecobosadi Reading of Psalm Madipoane Masenya (ngwana' Mphahlele)

7 6 The Earth Story in Psalms and Prophets PROPHETS A Prophetic (Fore)Word: 'A Curse is Devouring Earth" (Isaiah 24.6) Norman J. Charles The Vision of Land in Jeremiah 32 Gunther H. Wittenberg Ezekiel's Formula of Desolation: Harsh Justice for the Land/Earth Keith Carley If Earth Could Speak: The Case of the Mountains against YHWH in Ezekiel 6; Kalinda Rose Stevenson Retrieving Earth's Voice in Jeremiah: An Annotated Voicing of Jeremiah 4 Shirley Wurst Earth Community in Hosea 2 Laurie J. Braaten Ecojustice or Anthropological Justice? A Study of the New Heavens and the New Earth in Isaiah Anne Gardner 'The Wolf, the Lamb, and a Little Child': Transforming the Earth Community in Isaiah John W. Olley Bibliography Index of References Index of Authors

8 Foreword Archbishop Desmond Tutu Planet Earth is in crisis. More and more life systems are being threatened. Scientists estimate that at least half, and perhaps as many as 80 per cent, of the world's animal and plant species are found in the rainforests. The rainforests are the lungs of the planet, producing much of the oxygen that humans and other oxygen-dependent creatures need to survive. The rainforests, alas, are still being destroyed at an alarming rate. Resolving the ecological crisis of our planet, however, is no longer a problem we can leave to the scientists. Just as we are all part of the problem, so we are all also part of the solution. We all need to come to terms with the forces that have created this crisis and the resources within our traditions that can motivate us to resolve the crisis. One of those traditions is our biblical heritage. It is significant, therefore, that the Earth Bible Project has chosen to take the Earth crisis seriously and to re-read our biblical heritage in the light of this crisis. The Earth Bible Team has listened closely to ecologists and developed a set of principles to re-read the biblical text from an ecojustice perspective. The concern of Earth Bible writers is not to defend the biblical text blindly, but to identify those passages which may have contributed to the crisis and to uncover those traditions which have valued Earth but been suppressed. I commend the Earth Bible Team for including representative writers from around the globe, including the Southern hemisphere. I commend the team for confronting the biblical tradition honestly and openly in dialogue with ecologists. And, in particular, I commend the writers for daring to read the biblical text afresh from the perspective of Earth. Feminists have forced us to confront the patriarchal orientation of much of the biblical text. Earth Bible writers are now confronting us with the anthropocentric nature of much of the biblical text. We now ask: does the text devalue Earth by making the self-interest of humans its dominant concern? I recommend you read the Earth Bible series with a critical but empathetic eye. As a critical reader you will want to assess whether

9 8 The Earth Story in Psalms and Prophets writers make their case for their interpretation of the text in terms of the principles employed. As an empathetic reader, however, you will need to identify with Earth and the suffering Earth community as you read the text. I hope that the promise of 'peace on Earth' will be advanced by this laudable project as scholars probe our heritage to understand and assist in resolving the crisis of our planet.

10 Editorial Preface Norman C. Habel I was the Englishman overcome with enthusiasm for a barbarous place... I walked a little way, barefooted, and then lay down in nakedness on loamy earth and began to scoop it up and inhale it. The earth groaned, so I thought, like the beloved, caressed (Kenneally 2000). These are the opening words on the dust jacket of Tom Keneally's new work, Bettany's Book. They reflect a poetic image of how one character heard the groaning Earth in the wilds of Australia. The groaning of Earth under the curse of human greed, heard long ago by Jeremiah, is of quite a different kind. And the groaning has intensified for those who can hear. Many of the writers in this volume are Earth people, Indigenous people and prophets who hear the many voices of Earth both in pain and in celebration. Since this volume makes connections with the prophets, we have included a number of articles that may be classified as a prophetic word rather than a typical scholarly analysis of the prophetic word, even though a scholarly analysis may inform the prophetic insight. The first of these is the prophetic (fore)word by Norman Charles. A Cree/Metis from Saskatchewan in Canada, Charles challenges the academic community of writers to be accountable and to heed the word from Indigenous peoples who know how Earth suffers from the curses that came with colonization. Another prophetic challenge comes from Kalinda Rose Stevenson, who reads the harsh word from Ezekiel's God in terms of the reality and rhetoric of the wife batterer. She hears the groaning of Earth as the response of a woman who hears the harsh voice of Ezekiel's cruel male God as the voice of a batterer. Keith Carley explores the uncomfortable formula of desolation for Earth used by Ezekiel to exact a selfish and harsh justice. There seems to be little justice for Earth in the biblical book of Ezekiel, even when God promises restoration. In this biblical book God does promise a future, it seems, but only to vindicate God's name, not for the sake of the suffering people or suffering Earth. The message of Isaiah 65, analysed by Anne Gardner, offers a

11 10 The Earth Story in Psalms and Prophets more positive picture of hope for Earth, as do the scenarios that depict animals as an integral part of the transformed Earth community according to John Olley's study of key texts in Isaiah. A recurring theme in a number of these studies is the deep bond or kinship between land and traditional custodians of the land that lies behind Indigenous peoples' history of mutual care/custodianship. One could dismiss the eccentric action of Jeremiah purchasing land already under Babylonian siege (Jer. 32) as the impetus for a romantic rural vision. Gunther Wittenberg in his article, however, suggests that Jeremiah's redemption of the land connects with an ancient Israelite kinship between family and land. Their future is bound up together. Laurie Braaten sees a similar bond between people and Land in Hosea 2, and discovers Land speaking for Earth. Madipoane Masenya suggests that this family-land bond is also fundamental to the life experiences of Indigenous peoples in pre-colonial Africa. By developing an ecobosadi reading of Psalm 127, she exposes how pursuing the traditional ideal of a large family to perpetuate the male line violates the underlying bond between human mother and Mother Earth that is necessary for sustaining the Earth community in the future. Two readings of Psalm 104 make similar connections. Mutual custodianship and kinship with Earth are integral to Indigenous understandings of life. These two readings of Psalm 104 the one by Arthur Walker-Jones, who worked for many years in the Pacific, and the other by Abotchie Ntreh from Ghana represent illuminating dialogues between Indigenous cultures and the biblical text. As Native American Norman Charles declares in his prophetic word, it is time for scholars to hear the Indigenous voice both in our reading and in our relationship with Earth. Other articles on the Psalms also challenge us as we read from the perspective of Earth. Peter Trudinger and Howard Wallace offer a fresh understanding of 'chaos waters' and Earth fertility and their possible ancient Near Eastern connections. William Urbrock's reading is a bold creative reorientation of the tradition with the voice of Earth enabling us to hear the songs of three psalms afresh. My study with Geraldine Avent challenges the tradition that a theophany while it may be spectacular is necessarily a good thing, especially when Earth suffers unfairly in the process. My thanks to all contributors, including Lloyd Geering, one of the founding figures of Religion Studies in New Zealand, whose preface was part of the talk he gave to launch the Earth Bible in Christchurch. My thanks also to the core members of the team Vicky Balabanski, Charles Biggs, Duncan Reid, Marie Turner, Peter Trudinger, Alan

12 Editorial Preface 11 Cadwallader and Shirley Wurst, who continues to be the indispensible team editor. I remain grateful to those who have supported the project in various ways, whether with funds, in kind or in person. The project is now located in the Centre for Theology, Science and Culture associated with the Adelaide College of Divinity and Flinders University of South Australia. The body whose financial support has underwritten the project to date is the Charles Strong Memorial Trust. This Trust is named after the founder of the Australian Church, a Christian denomination which operated from 1885 to The Trust promotes the sympathetic study of all religions and fosters dialogue between religion and other disciplines. This project is the result of a dialogue between religion, especially Christianity, and ecology. Continuing supporters of this project include Flinders University and the Adelaide College of Divinity. A special word is in order about the logo for this series. The artist who worked with me in developing this logo and drafted its final form is Jasmine Corowa. Jasmine is a young Indigenous Australian whose art reflects traditional Aboriginal techniques of communication. Her father, Dennis Corowa, is one of the Rainbow Spirit Elders whom I supported in their publication Rainbow Spirit Theology. I was also privileged to edit a set of Jasmine's paintings, published in 2000 by The Liturgical Press and entitled The Rainbow Spirit in Creation: A Reading of Genesis L The logo is a symbol of Earth. The land dots are in Earth colours, forming that maze of shimmering life we call Earth community. The white dots of the sky rise above Earth. The surface of land/earth is an open book. This is a double symbol: not only do we read land/earth like a book (as Australian Aboriginal peoples do); when we read The Book in the Earth Bible Project also we do so from beneath, from Earth. I appreciate the continued commitment of Sheffield Academic Press and The Pilgrim Press. I want to express my personal gratitude to the publishers David Clines and Philip Davies, who have made the academic component of the Earth Bible Project possible. The staff of Sheffield Academic Press also deserve commendation for their professionalism and patience.

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14 Preface Lloyd Geering It was my pleasure to participate at Christchurch New Zealand in the launching of the first volume of the Earth Bible, Readings from the Perspective of Earth. And I am honoured to be invited to introduce this fourth volume. During the last four to five hundred years, radical changes have been taking place in the way we humans view the world and understand ourselves and our cultural traditions. Our view of the universe has changed out of all recognition from that of the ancients and from that which was still universal in Europe of the Renaissance and Protestant Reformation. It has expanded both spatially and in age from what it was once thought to be. We now entertain entirely new ideas about the origin of the world and of the human race. We are much more aware today of the human origin of our cultural traditions and of what we call their religious dimension. As part of this radical change there has been nothing less than a revolution in the way we understand the Bible. It could be called 'The Re-Earthing of the Bible'. For very many centuries the Bible had come to be regarded as a holy book sent down from heaven. Christians tended to regard it in the way Muslims regard the Qur'an, a book to be attributed wholly to the authorship of God. We now know the Bible to have had a very Earthly origin and to be a wholly human product. The Bible is a little library of books which, however inspiring we may still find them, also reflect the limited knowledge and even the prejudices of the people who wrote them. This revolution has meant that for many people the Bible has now become a fallen idol. They reject it as having passed its use-by date. The Bible may still be the world's best-seller but the majority of people in the so-called Christian world no longer turn to it and read it regularly in the way they used to. We are in danger of falling into the heresy of the second century Marcion. So impressed was he by the message of love that came from Jesus, and so repelled was he but what he thought was the antithesis of this in what was then the only

15 14 The Earth Story in Psalms and Prophets Bible possessed by the Christians, namely, what we now call the Hebrew Scriptures (also known as the Old Testament), that he urged the church to abandon these Jewish books. He set out to replace the Hebrew Bible with his own 'New Bible', which consisted of ten of the letters of St Paul plus the gospel of St Luke (suitably edited by himself). He was actually the first to gather together Christian writings together and to regard them as Holy Scripture (or what we now call the Christian Scriptures, or the New Testament). The Christian church did not follow Marcion's drastic rejection of its cultural origins. It responded to his challenge by retaining the Hebrew Scriptures, and adding to it its own and more extended form of the Christian Scriptures. Today the Bible has not only become a fallen idol in the popular mind but it is also coming under severe criticism. The feminist movement has strongly condemned it for its support of patriarchy. Some conservationists and members of the Green movement claim that it is responsible for the current ecological crisis because it portrays God as one who gave authority to exploit the earth, saying, 'be fruitful and multiply...and subdue the earth'. One of the important aspects of the biblical revolution has been the recognition that the Bible was written by many different authors, drawn from many different times and contexts. This means that the Bible does not always speak with one voice. The Bible, in fact, is a collection of voices. Some are no longer relevant, while others that have fallen on deaf ears for centuries suddenly speak to us with new relevance. Those who have promoted the Earth Bible believe, following the lead of the second century church, that we should not, in Marcionite fashion, simply reject our cultural roots as found in the Bible; rather, we should learn how to reinterpret them in the light of the new global situation in which we live and in the ecological crisis we now face. The Earth Bible is not a new Bible but a fresh way of reading and understanding the Bible. For many centuries Christians have been reading the Bible through spectacles tinted by the theological doctrines that developed in the post-biblical period. These placed all the emphasis on an other-worldly form of spirituality and left the physical Earth somewhat down-graded. That is why the interest shown by St Francis in the trees and the flowers, the birds and the beasts along with the natural world, generally was regarded at the time as somewhat eccentric. Now that we are looking at the natural world very differently and are being forced to take seriously a growing number of ecological issues, we also find we are reading the Bible differently, as if with new

16 Preface 15 eyes. Even though many of the prophetic voices in the Bible were strongly antagonistic towards the deification of the forces of nature, seeing them in competition to the God of Israel, they still acknowledged the glory of Earth and affirmed that when God looked at everything God had made, it was very good. The contributors to the Earth Bible are approaching the biblical texts section by section, and examining them from the point of view of Earth. In doing so they are rediscovering elements long overlooked and also bring the text under the judgement of Earth.

17 List of Abbreviations AB ABD AJT AnBib ANET ANF BASOR BDB BETL BHK BHS Bib BN BWANT BZAW CBQ EBib FOIL GKC HAR ICC IDE IDBSup Int JBL JNSL JPSV JQR JSOT JSOTSup JSS Anchor Bible David Noel Freedman (ed.), Tlie Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992) American Journal oftjieology Analecta biblica James B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950) Anti-Nicene Fathers Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research Francis Brown, S.R. Driver and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon oftjie Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907) Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium R. Kittel (ed.), Biblia fabraica (Stuttgart: Wurttembergische Bibelanstalt, 1937) Biblia Jwbraica stuttgartensia Biblica BibliscJw Notizen Beitrage zur Wissenschaft vom Alten und Neuen Testament Beihefte zur ZA W Catholic Biblical Quarterly Etudes bibliques The Forms of the Old Testament Literature Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar (ed. E. Kautzsch, revised and trans. A.E. Cowley; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910) Hebrew Annual Review International Critical Commentary George Arthur Buttrick (ed.), Tlie Interpreter's Dictionary oftjie Bible (4 vols.; Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962) IDB, Supplementary Volume Interpretation Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages Jewish Publication Society Version Jewish Quarterly Review Journal for tjw Study oftjie Old Testament Journal for tlie Study oftjie Old Testament, Supplement Series Journal of Semitic Studies

18 Abbreviations 17 KB NASB NCB NICOT NJB NRSV OIL SBLDS SBLMS SBT TDOT TliWAT UF VT WBC WMANT ZAW ZTK Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner (eds.), Lexicon in Veteris Testamenti libros (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1953) New American Standard Bible New Century Bible New International Commentary on the Old Testament New Jerusalem Bible New Revised Standard Version Old Testament Library SBL Dissertation Series SBL Monograph Series Studies in Biblical Theology G.J. Botterweck and H. Ringgren (eds.), Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament G.J. Botterweck and H. Ringgren (eds.), TJieologisches Worterbuch ziim Alien Testament (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1970-) Ugarit-Forschungen Veins Testamentiim Word Biblical Commentary Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament Zeitschrift fiir die alttestamentliclie Wissensdiaft Zeitschrift fur Tlieologie und Kir die

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20 List of Contributors Geraldine Avent is a doctoral candidate at the Adelaide College of Divinity in South Australia. Her major areas of research include Psalms, Job and ecojustice hermeneutics. Laurie J. Braaten is Professor of Old Testament at Judson College, Elgin, IL, USA. He is an ordained elder in the Church of the Nazarene, and a member of the Society of Biblical Literature, the Wesleyan Theological Society, the Appalachian Trail Conference and the Green Mountain Club. His recent publications include 'God Sows the Land: Hosea's Place in the Book of the Twelve'; and 'That God may Heal the Land: A Liturgical Context for the Book of the Twelve'. Keith Carley is Lecturer in First Testament Studies at the Joint Theological Colleges of St John's and Trinity in Auckland and Honorary Lecturer in Theology at the University of Auckland. Among his publications are Ezekiel Among the Prophets and 'Psalm 8: An Apology for Domination 7 in The Earth Bible, 1. Norman J. Charles, a Cree/Metis from Saskatchewan, is active in prison ministry at Rockford Institution (a minimum security men's penitentiary near Winnipeg), and helps facilitate a men's group at St Raphael Centre. He has published articles on recovery from addiction and is currently writing a book on Aboriginal self-government and exploring Aboriginal spirituality. Anne Gardner is Senior Lecturer at La Trobe University, Melbourne. Her publications include a number of articles on women in the biblical and post-biblical tradition as well as articles on the Maccabean period. Her current research focuses on King David and Jerusalem and on the book of Daniel. Lloyd Geering is Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies, Victoria University of Wellington and formerly Professor of Old Testament Studies at Emmanuel College Brisbane and at the Theological Hall,