Song of Moses
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The Song of Moses is a poem that appears in Deuteronomy at 32:1-43. According to the modern documentary hypothesis the poem was an originally separate text, that was inserted by the deuteronomist into the second edition (of 2), of the text which became Deuteronomy (i.e. was an addition in 'Dtr2').
The poem, cast partly in the future tense, describes how Yahweh is provoked into punishing the Israelites due to their apostasy, resulting in the Israelites being destroyed. Dtr2 is believed to have been produced as a reaction to the Kingdom of Judah beings sent into its Babylonian exile, and thus to Dtr1's (the hypothesised first edition of Deuteronomy) positive outlook, and suggestion of an upcoming golden age, being somewhat no longer appropriate. Consequently the poem fits the aim of Dtr2, in retroactively accounting for Israel's misfortune, and, indeed, may have been composed at a similar time.
The conditions presupposed by the poem render the Mosaic authorship of it impossible. The Exodus and the wilderness wanderings lie in the distant past. The writer's contemporaries may learn of them from their fathers (verse 7). The Israelites are settled in Palestine (verses 13-14); sufficient time has passed for them not only to fall into idolatry (verses 15-19), but to be brought to the verge of ruin. They are pressed hard by heathen foes (verse 30); but Yhwh promises to interpose and rescue His people (verses 34-43). The post-Mosaic origin of the poem is therefore clear; and these historical arguments are confirmed by the theological ideas and phraseology of the poem, neither of these being characteristic of the age of Moses.
On the other hand, there are many points of contact, both in expression and in theological conception, with the prophets of the eighth to the fifth century B.C. Critics are not agreed, however, on the precise date of the song. Formerly, when all of Deut. xxxi. 14-23 was referred to JE, the poem was believed to be anterior thereto, and was believed to be contemporary with the Syrian wars under Jehoash and Jeroboam II. (c. 780). To this period it is referred by Dillmann, Schrader, Oettli, Ewald, Kamphausen and Reuss. Kuenen and Driver, believing the expression "those which are not a people" of verse 21 to refer to the Assyrians, assign the poem to the age of Jeremiah and Ezekiel (c. 630), while Cornill, Steuernagel, and Bertholet refer it to the closing years of the Exile—the period of the second Isaiah. In the present state of modern knowledge the date can not be definitely fixed; but there is much to be said in favor of the exilic date.
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[edit] References
- Kamphausen, Das Lied Moses, 1862;
- Klostermann, in Studien und Kritiken, 1871, pp. 249 et seq.; 1872, pp. 230 et seq., 450 et seq.;
- Stade's Zeitschrift, 1885, pp. 297 et seq.;
- Cornill, Einleitung in das Alte Testament, 1891, pp. 70 et seq.,
- Driver, Deuteronomy, in International Critical Commentary, 1895, pp. 344 et seq.;
- Steuernagel, Deuteronomium, in Nowack's Handkommentar, 1900, pp. 114 et seq.;
- Bertholet, Deuteronomium, in K. H. C. 1899, pp. 94 et seq.
