XXXII, p. 18, f. It is considerably broken, but the parts which are legible are as follows: Let thy hand grasp the javelin 5. Has sent me to consult thee, Has laid his.... In life.. . upon me. has cast, he has found. [He says]: "[I lay down] and a dream I beheld; This is the dream which I saw by night: 10. [He who made woman] and created man, Marduk, has ordained (?) that he be encompassed with sickness (?)." He said: "How long will he be in such great affliction and distress? "In the dream Ur-Bau ap[peared], A mighty hero wearing his crown, 20. A conjurer, too, clad in strength, Marduk indeed sent me; Unto Shubshi-meshri-Nergal he brought abu[ndance]; By my guardian-spirit (?) he st[opped] (?),” 25. [By] the seer he sent a message: "A favorable omen I show to my people." He approached (?) and the spell which he had pronounced (?), 5. He sent a storm wind to the horizon; To the breast of the earth it bore [a blast], Into the depth of his ocean the disembodied spirit vanished (?); The......of the hag-demons he sent straight to the mountain. 10. The sea-flood he spread with ice; The roots of the disease he tore out like a plant. The horrible slumber that settled on my rest Like smoke filled the sky.. With the woe he had brought, unrepulsed and bitter, he filled the earth like a storm. 15. The unrelieved headache which had overwhelmed the heavens 20. He removed their deafness and restored their hearing. My nose, whose nostril had been stopped from my mother's womb- My lips, which were closed-he had taken their strength He removed their trembling and loosed their bond. 25. My mouth, which was closed so that I could not be understood He cleansed it like a dish, he healed its disease. My eyes, which had been attacked so that they rolled together- The tongue, which had stiffened so that it could not be raised- My spittle which was stopped so that it was not secreted- 2. Comparison with the Book of Job. A commentary on this text, which has been preserved on a tablet, informs us that Tabu-utul-Bêl was an official of Nippur in Babylonia. This story has some striking similarities to the book of Job. It presents also some striking dissimilarities. Tabu-utul-Bêl, like Job, had been a just man. He had been also a religious man. (See lines 23, ff., p. 392.) The virtues which he claims are similar to those of Job (see Job 29 and 31); there is, however, this difference: Job's virtues are social; those of Tabuutul-Bêl consist of acts of worship and loyalty. Tabu-utul-Bêl is smitten, like Job, with a sore disease. To him, as to Job, the providence is inexplicable. He, like Job, charges his god with inscrutable injustice. The chasm which often yawns between experience and moral deserts was as keenly felt by the Babylonian as by the Hebrew. Here the parallelism with the book of Job ends. The two works belong to widely different religious worlds. Job gains relief by a vision of God-an experience which made him able to believe that, though he could not understand the reason for the pain of life or its contradictions and tragedy, God could, and Job now knew God. (See Job 42:4-6.) Tabu-utul-Bêl, on the other hand, is said to have gained his relief through a magician. We are apparently told by the fragmentary text that at last he found a conjurer who brought a messenger from the god Marduk, who drove away 1 Perhaps one of the antediluvian Babylonian kings. (See Part II, Chapter IV.) The Sumerian form of his name was Laluralim and in Rawlinson's Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, Vol. V, p. 44, 17b, is glossed as Zugagib or "scorpion." Zugagib is one of the early kings of Babylonia, who is said to have ruled 840 years. the evil spirits which caused the disease, and so Tabu-utul-Bêl was relieved. This difference sets vividly before us the greater religious value and inspiration of the book of Job. It treats the same problem that the Babylonian poet took for his theme, but between the outlook of the poet who composed Job and that of the Babylonian poet there is all the difference between a real experience of God and faith in the black art. 3. Another Similar Lament. Another fragment of a lament of a somewhat similar character, written in the Sumerian language, comes to us on a tablet from Nippur, the very city with which Tabu-utul-Bêl is said to have been connected. It reads as follows:1 7. .he destroyed, spoke to.. .was destroyed, ..completely from on high was destroyed. 8. I, even I, am a man of destruction. 9. With might from below he destroyed, 10. I, even I, am a man of destruction. 11. Nippur (?)-its temple verily is destroyed, 12. My city verily is destroyed. 13. O Enlil, from the height descend, 14. May Ububul destroy them! 4. The ground grain is removed, with the hand he seized it; 6. The shrine of the mother which the silver-smith cast, 8. Its contents on the earth verily he flung 9. I am a man of destruction!— 10. Its contents on the earth verily he destroyed; 11. I am a man of destruction! 12. The man from above is wise; 13. On earth he dwells. 14. The man who went before, 15. Hides in the rear. 16. Namtar my maiden (he snatched away); 17. Who shall bring the maiden back? 1 Translated from S. Langdon's Historical and Religious Texts from the Temple Library of Nippur. Munich, 1914, No. 16. Column III 1. Namtar verily is smitten, yea verily, 3. The smiter has smitten, 4. Who shall strike him down? 5. The hero bearing the dagger 6. He has cast down, 7. Who shall drag him off? 8. At the gate of my palace no protector stands, 9. A man of desolation am I! 10. The land is completely overthrown, I have no defender, 12. The flood fills not the marsh land; 13. My eye thereon I lift not. 14. To man's plantations water reaches not, 15. My hand stretches not out to it. 16. To the marsh land which the flood filled From this point on the tablet is too broken for connected translation. Dr. Langdon calls this the lament of a Sumerian Job, but his woes, in so far as this fragment recounts them, are due to the conquest of his land by an enemy, and to famine due to a failure of the rivers to overflow. The parallelism to Tabu-utul-Bêl and to Job might be closer, if we had the whole tablet. As this tablet is in the script of the first dynasty of Babylon, it is evident that this kind of lamentation was as early as 2000 B. C. CHAPTER XXI PSALMS FROM BABYLONIA AND EGYPT CHARACTER OF THEIR PSALMS. BABYLONIAN PRAYERS TO THE GODDESS ISHTAR. COMPARISON WITH THE PSALTER. A BABYLONIAN HYMN TO THE MOON-GOD. A BABYLONIAN HYMN TO BEL. AN EGYPTIAN HYMN TO THE SUN-GOD. IS THE HYMN MONOTHEISTIC? AN EGYPTIAN HYMN IN PRAISE OF ATON. COMPARISON WITH THE PSALTER. BOTH from Babylonia and from Egypt a large number of hymns and prayers have been recovered. Some of these are beautiful on account of their form of expression, the poetical nature of their thoughts, and the sense of sin which they reveal. Most of them are clearly polytheistic, and it is rare that they rise in the expression of religious emotion to the simple sublimity of the Old Testament Psalms. Such likenesses to the Psalms as they possess only serve to set off in greater relief the rich religious heritage which we have in our Psalter. A few examples only of the many known hymns are here given. 1. A Babylonian Prayer to the Goddess Ishtar.1 O fulfiller of the commands of Bel. Mother of the gods, fulfiller of the commands of Bel, Thou bringer-forth of verdure, thou lady of mankind,5. Begetress of all, who makest all offspring thrive, Mother Ishtar, whose might no god approaches, Majestic lady, whose commands are powerful, A request I will proffer, which-may it bring good to me! O lady, from my childhood I have been exceedingly hemmed in by trouble! 10. Food I did not eat, I was bathed in tears! Water I did not quaff, tears were my drink! .I do not walk like a man. Reverse ....painfully I wail! My sighs are many, my sickness is great! O my lady, teach me what to do, appoint me a resting-place! My sin forgive, lift up my countenance! 1 Translated from Haupt's Akkadische und sumerische Keilschrifttexte, 116, ff., with comparison of Zimmern's Babylonische Busspsalmen, 33, f. |