The Responsive Self

Personal Religion in Biblical Literature of the Neo-Babylonian and Persian Periods

Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Sour Grapes, Suffering, and Coping with ChaosOutlook on the Individual

Parents eat [have eaten] sour grapes, and the teeth of the children twinge. Ezekiel 18:2; Jeremiah 31:29

The saying, quoted by Ezekiel and Jeremiah, provides a first case study in exploring engagement with the individual in the context of lived religion of the sixth century BCE. As with all traditional forms, the meanings and messages of this deceptively simple saying are variable, complex, multiple, context driven, and difficult to ascertain. Our study pays special attention to the ethnic genre mašal and related matters of content, structure, and meaning, examining the proverb in hypothesized performance contexts. A critical review of more typical scholarly approaches to the proverb in its biblical settings and an overview of approaches to questions of sin and punishment preserved in the Hebrew Bible lead to alternate suggestions for possible meanings of the proverb, ones influenced less by theological considerations than by work in religion as lived and the field of folklore studies. An analysis of the proverb in Ezekiel and Jeremiah asks what the intended audience may have had in mind about the saying and how this interpretation might contrast with each prophet's ideas. Finally, we return to questions about the proverb's place in personal religion to explore whether Jeremiah and Ezekiel are concerned with individual human beings in a retail, life-experiencing sense. Some details of translation need to be addressed first.

Translation

The root translated above as "sour grapes" could also connote "unripe fruit," but the same message would be conveyed whether the hearer imagines one image or the other: fruit with a certain piquancy has an effect on the consumer's (offspring's) teeth. The verb qhh, employed with certainty at only one other biblical location, Ecclesiastes 10:10, is a more difficult problem. It has frequently been translated "to make blunt" or "to set on edge." The passage that includes Ecclesiastes 10:10 is difficult. The mašal follows one of the author's ironic collections of overliteralized sayings that emphasize his theme of life's seeming absurdity. The message of the set, taken as a whole, seems to be that the outcome of particular actions is not as expected.

He who digs a pit will fall into it.

He who breaks through a wall, a snake will bite him.

He who quarries rocks will be hurt by them.

He who splits logs will be endangered by them.

Ecclesiastes 10:8–9

Turning to Ecclesiastes 10:10, we note that scholars usually translate qhh as "blunt," drawing an oppositional parallel with qlql in 10:10b, which they translate as "sharpen." The verb qlql actually means "to move back and forth," as in the motion involved in whetting a knife or ax. It may be that the iron referred to in verse 10 is not what one sharpens, but the steel upon which one sharpens an instrument or weapon. I would translate thus:

If the iron is in bad condition [qhh],
and it does not whet edges,
warriors it will make mighty
and skill will be the advantage.

Rabbinic texts expand the meaning of the root qhh to include "tough," "hard," "unyielding," "difficult," "unsolvable." The iron in Ecclesiastes 10:10 does not work well.

The author seems to suggest again that the results of an action are not as one would expect. Warriors become mighty when the sharpener fails. A sharpened weapon is not necessarily an instrument of victory. Relying on wisdom or skill is what leads to success. The qhh root, thus understood, should have negative nuances regarding condition or effectiveness. While "blunt" or "set on edge" would work, I prefer a phrase that emphasizes the immediate negative reaction of the teeth, their condition, the way they feel. Carole R. Fontaine suggests "pucker," but I translate the term as "twinge."

Form, Context, and Meaning

Having provided a translation, we can move on to questions about the mašal, its texture, structure, and context. In the biblical tradition, the term mašal is applied to a variety of communicative forms that we might call parable, proverb, oracle, or icon. A form of "oblique and artful communication, drawn from personal memory and experience and built upon the traditions claimed by a folk group to be its collective memory," the mašal is rooted in the notion of analogy and comparing, which is the literal meaning of the verb mšl. The person performing a proverb, a type of mašal, draws a comparison between the real-life setting of the listeners and the content of the saying. The proverb may serve as critique, approbation, or neutral observation.

Influenced by the folklorist Alan Dundes and others, Fontaine nicely describes the structure of the proverb and its texture. Dundes suggests that proverbs are composed of one or more topics and one or more comments on the topics, which linguistically often relate to subject and predicate. Fontaine views the topics in this proverb as "fathers/children" and the comments as "eat sour grapes/twinge." One might also see the topic as the first half of the proverb — what the parents do — and the comment as the result — the children's suffering the twinging of their teeth. The theme is clearly generational, not unlike the proverb "like mother, like daughter," also employed by Ezekiel, which, apart from Ezekiel's context, could be used in a positive or negative way, depending upon performance context and tone. Similarly, in U.S. culture, one might say "he's a chip off the old block" to point out that a son is successful like his father or a rogue like his father. The sour grapes proverb causally links an action or event and a subsequent negative experience, not unlike the proverb pattern, "When X sneezes in Y, Z catches a cold in W." Presumably, an action or event could have a positive outcome across time or place, as in the Chinese proverb "One generation plants the trees and another gets the shade," or "Each generation will reap what the former generation has sown." In the latter example, negative and positive possibilities of meaning are available, depending upon the specific situation implied by the saying and the context in which it is performed or quoted.

Were we situated in ancient Israelite culture, we could observe the ways in which the sour grapes saying is employed or ask people to imagine such a setting and describe it. We could listen to the inflection of the speaker and assess the relative status of the speaker of the proverb and those to whom it is addressed. Folklorists including Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Alan Dundes engage in this sort of ethnographic work. They find that proverbs have differing connotations even within the same folk group. The meaning conveyed depends upon the specific context and situation that gives rise to proverb performance, the relationship between the speaker and those who are addressed, the tone of the speaker, the version of the proverb to which the addressees had been previously exposed, and other factors. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, for example, points to a survey indicating that a certain percentage of hearers of the proverb beginning with the topic "a friend in need" understand the comment and conclusion to be "is a friend indeed," whereas others hear the completion of the proverb to be "is a friend in deed." Moreover, in each case the proverb can be applied differently. She shows further how the message of the proverb "money talks" depends upon the economic situation of the speaker and the receiver, the situation upon which the speaker comments, whether the tone is sarcastic or bitter (implying perhaps that a person's money has not led to his advancement), or guilty (implying, for example, that the speaker himself has succeeded through his father's wealthy connections whereas his friend who hears him quote the proverb has not), or sympathetic (for example, directed at a person who has missed out on some benefit because of a lack of money).

Options for performance settings and interpretations of the proverb about eating the sour grapes are many. The saying may serve as a criticism of the way that people reared their children. For example, if parents show no devotion to their children, do not discipline them, or provide bad role models, the children lack self-confidence, ambition, or happiness. Perhaps they run wild or become sociopathic, and suffer the consequences. This use of the proverb might imply a modern view that child miscreants are shaped within family environments and therefore they are not responsible for their crimes. Theologically oriented views explored below suggest that the prophets reject this notion, whereas the people cling to it in an ancient version (or parody) of conservative and liberal approaches to crime. The proverb could be applied to a specific person and his parents. One might use the proverb to comment on the way a neighbor child experiences life (the bad seed, the withdrawn child, the child with an eating disorder). One might say the proverb about him to his parents or to a third party. The proverb might be deployed to generalize about the joblessness of young workers whose parents did not prepare them for work or who ruined the economy.

Other interpretations of the proverb that inform performance settings might explain children's conditions or actions without judging their parents negatively. The "eating" and the subsequent "twinging" do not point to a process of delayed punishment for previous acts of wrongdoing. Rather, the parents have been exposed to suffering, so their children suffer. For example, poverty in one generation can prevent parents from providing their children with proper resources, leading to poverty in the next generation. The bitterness of the fruit they eat leads to the children's discomfort. Alternatively, the ancestors might have unwittingly done something that leads to future generations' problems, for example, smoking in the days before people recognized the health hazards of secondhand smoke.

The proverb can be relevant in all the cases described above whether one knows who the ancestors are or what they did and experienced. That is, it can be applied to specific parents and children or to the links between generations of people. The cause of contemporary suffering is assigned to the unseen, the actions or experiences of those who are perhaps already dead. Deeds long past somehow pile up problems for later. Wrongdoing, whether intentional or unintentional, may lead to the downfall of the perpetrators, but may not. Either way, curse-like, it may float on through generations to lead future people to suffer its consequences. Religious worldviews work out the implications of the floating curse in their own ways.

Why is this proverb cited in these exilic-period texts, and can we tell from the written contexts what it may have meant to the audiences of Ezekiel and Jeremiah and to the prophets themselves? What is the conventional wisdom that each prophet quotes? And what do the saying and its quotation have to do with questions about the representation of individuals and the interest in personal religion? First, some comments on the function of proverbs.

Dundes writes, "Folklore provides a socially sanctioned framework for the expression of critical anxiety-producing problems as well as a cherished artistic vehicle for communicating ethos and worldview." Dundes suggests that forms of communication such as the proverb, which have culturally recognizable structures and flexible, wide-ranging application, help people grapple with challenges, the twinging that human beings, set in culture, experience during their lifetimes and that becomes especially acute in periods of crisis, communal or individual. Fontaine notes that proverbs function as problem-solving media, pointing to tensions faced by people and the need to address these tensions: "The greater the conflict with which a person is confronted, the more apt he or she becomes to fall back on internalized systems of categorization and problem-solving ... The traditional saying deals with these kinds of content."? Surely, the period of Babylonian conquest, like any situation of war, with its deaths, deprivation, and forced migrations, induced inner turmoil and conflict. Scholarly approaches to this particular proverb are generally less attuned to the sort of attention paid to context and function by folklorists than to matters of theology.

In 1987, the biblical scholar Robert A. Oden published The Bible without Theology. Oden was interested in the place and evolution of biblical studies within the context of, and often in tension with, the field of religious studies as informed, in particular, by anthropology. The book deals with trajectories in intellectual history and with scholarly subjectivity. Oden explores what scholars' approaches to the Hebrew Bible say about their own sense of self, identity, and place in the world. As I review contemporary colleagues' treatments of this proverb, I find myself thinking about Oden's title and his project, noting that interpretations of the allusions to the proverb in Jeremiah and Ezekiel are consistently and almost exclusively framed in theological terms of disobedience to God and consequent punishment. Scholars point to the tension between people's self-image of innocence and the reality of their sinfulness, and frequently raise questions about responsibility for sin and whether this responsibility is collective or individual, having to do with the self or the community, and how these two sides of a seeming dichotomy relate or intertwine.

Another area of interest among scholars concerns the nature of wrongdoing. Is it a matter of criminal lawbreaking, dealt with in the human realm, or a matter of sin, falling within the divine purview? A third important and central area explored by scholars concerns the transgenerational implications for punishment projected by the proverb and its challenge to God's justice. Some of these studies compare Jeremiah and Ezekiel's incorporation of the proverb, seeking to understand the views of theodicy expressed by each prophet and by those presumed to have employed the proverb.?? Finally, some raise broader issues about the nature of the moral self and the moral community.

A set of quotations about the proverb cited in Ezekiel 18 sets the interpretive interests of scholars in relief and helps frame the set of questions that I wish to explore.

The people are expressing their worldview — that their fate is determined by the actions of their fathers; their own moral choices are irrelevant. In the rest of the chapter Ezekiel sets out to refute this notion, and to reassert the relevance of virtuous moral selfhood as the only accurate way of understanding their situation.

The people hide behind the old conception of an extended retribution ... in order to avoid their own responsibility for their plight.

Thus, implies the prophet, those in exile are there for their own sins and not those of their parents, and since their relationship with God is not an intractable or inherited fate they can take responsibility for it and return to YAHWEH.

The prophet addresses an audience who are blaming previous generations for the disaster of exile ... He rejects this saying and with it his audience's denial of responsibility for their fate.

These approaches, one way or another, express interest in the way the proverb relates to assignments of blame for the Babylonian conquest and the exile of elites, whose voices are so strongly represented in the written texts of the Hebrew Bible; the proverb is quoted and then rejected in order to insist that the blame for the unfortunate course of events that characterizes the Babylonian conquest lies with the people, not with evil enemies or ancestors or poor leadership or chance. The people themselves are responsible for the disaster; their moral choices count. The Judeans are portrayed as trying to deny responsibility, to refuse to admit to their own sins, to be unwilling to accept that they themselves are the source of their troubles.