28

YAHWEH IN ISRAEL - QAUS IN EDOM?

M. Rose,
University of Zurich.

If one consults the standard reference books to see how Edomite

religion is portrayed during the period corresponding to the mon-
archical period in Israel and Judah when Yahweh was worshipped, one
draws a complete blank /1/; at the most there is conjectured for
the pre-literary period a cult relatively close to that of Israel
/2/. In this respect, the reference books represent an earlier and
more cautious stage of inquiry. In recent publications, on the
other hand - like the preceding essay of J.R. Bartlett (above, pp.
2-27) - it seems to be increasingly taken for granted that this _

blank can be filled in by attributing to Edom, alongside Yahweh in

Israel, Milcom in Ammon and Chemosh in Moab, the deity Qaus with
the similar function of &dquo;leading deity&dquo; /3/ or by speaking of Qaus
as &dquo;the Edomite national deity&dquo; /4/. This claiming of Qaus for
Edom originates with Flavius Josephus (Ant. XV,7,9=XV,253), who
remarks that a God Koze was worshipped by the Idumaeans. But only
with the accumulating epigraphic witness to Qaus as a theophoric
element in personal names /5/ did the assumed significance of this
Qaus, which we have just described, reach the status of a national
Edomite deity. In the following essay the possibilities and the
limitations of this new solution (viz. Qaus) to the question of
Edomite religion will be put to the test (1-3) and with the aid of
ancient references (4-6) a new direction will be sought.

1. The archaeological material from Edom itself which contains

personal names incorporating the name Qaus does not reach back
beyond the 7th century B.C. /6/. The relevant evidence from Meso-
potamia belongs in the second half of the 8th century and later
/7/; moreover it is doubtful if the bearers of these names con-
taining the theophoric element Qaus are to be regarded as in every
case Edomites; hence this material cannot prove the Edomite charac-
ter of the god Qaus. M. Weippert himself confesses: &dquo;The divine
name Qaus/Qos is admittedlythe chief indicator of Edomite personal
names, at least outside Edomite territory, so that the argument-
ation comprises elements of circular logic&dquo; /8/. The same holds
for W. Caskel; he asserts on the one hand, without foundation,
that &dquo;Qaus originates from Edom&dquo; /9/, but is obliged on the other
hand to qualify this: &dquo;An undoubted difficulty attends ... the

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distinction between indigenous and foreign gods, since no criteria

exist for it&dquo; /10/.
z

Furthermore, the O.T. material in which the divine name Qaus is

ostensibly found is, except for a postexilic list (Ezra 2,53 and
Neh.7,55), highly dubious /11/; the O.T. associates Edom with gods
such as El, Baal and Hadad rather than with Qaus: &dquo;The only direct
evidence for the cult of the god Qaus dates from the Nabatean per-
iod at the earliest&dquo; /12/.

All this makes it rather doubtful whether Edom should be

regarded as the ancestral home of Qaus to the extent that one is
justified really in speaking of Qaus as an Edomite deity, without
qualification.

2. A series of indications points to the fact that an original

centre of diffusion other than Edom should be considered for Qaus.
It is remarkable that [as
Th.C. Vriezen frankly &dquo;it is concedes,]
clear that the name (sc. Qaus) has an Arab background and is not to
be explained from Western-Semitic&dquo; /13/. If one wishes to take
this argument further, one must attribute great significance to a
fact which is no longer coincidental - namely, that a conspicuously
wide distribution of Qaus as a theophoric element can be establish-
ed in precisely the Arab world (cf. the Nabatean and Lihyanic
inscriptions) /14/.
To regard this widespread evidence as indicative of an Arabis-
ing absorption of the Edomite deity Qaus imposes a considerable
demand on the potential for expansion of an Edomite deity. A more
plausible explanation is the penetration of Qaus as an Arab deity
into Edom. This also accords well with the state of affairs in the
wider historical context.

3. The period to which the oldest evidence of a Qaus in Edom

corresponds, namely the 8th-7th century is, according to archaeo-
logical evidence, &dquo;a time of rapid decline and disintegration&dquo; in
Edom /15/. The reason for this was increased pressure at about
this time on the part of Arab bedouin from the West (which reached
a climax with the consolidation of the Nabatean empire) /16/. The
state of affairs in Edom is only part of an extensive process: the
role which Arab nomads play in Babylonian and Assyrian sources
from the 8th century onwards /17/ was significant to this extent
for Edom, that - as it may still be maintained - &dquo;the Arabs did
not venture to seize Assyrian territory&dquo; /18/ so much as to
really
strike at the empire indirectly &dquo;by attacking the Western lands,
that is, in the first instance Syria and Palestine&dquo; /19/. The

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30

increasing importance of Arab influence in this area from the 8th

century onwards must therefore be reckoned with /20/.

Less directly, Judah also experienced this Arab wave of expan-

sion in the region between the steppe and the arable land, since
the southern part of Judah came, in turn, increasingly strongly
under Arab pressure /21/. Conversely, Edom was subject to direct
Arab influence, and it is therefore here that the beginnings of a
growing Arabising of the Edomites are to be sought.

As a result, we must offer the suggestion that Qaus is of Arab

origin and that in the wake of the westward movement of Arab tribes
beginning in the 8th and 7th centuries, he found his way into Edom
and gave his name to a specific deity long established in Edom.
Yet, if Qaus acquired this role only secondarily, we are once again
fumbling in the dark after the identity of the Edomite god whom
this Qaus supplanted. It is by no means improbable that the Edom-
ite god for whom we are searching may have had features character-
istic of the Israelite Yahweh /22/. &dquo;

4. A mystery which despite continuing recent efforts /23/

remains unsolved is the well-known theme of the &dquo;brotherhood&dquo; of
Israel/Judah and Edom, which is far more clearly distinguished by
very bitter enmity than by good relations, and the fluctuating
interpretation of which, alternating between a positive and a nega-
tive attitude,is not adequately accounted for on the historical
level alone, as the outcome of political changes of fortune. The
&dquo;brotherhood&dquo; between Israel and Edom contains an element of
communality in the religious sphere also: Edom was one of the
nations which practised circumcision (Jer.9,25).

5. It is remarkable that in the O.T. one finds mention of

neither the god nor the gods of Edom. A solitary exception (but
still lacking the name) is 2 Chron.25,14.20: this is, however, an
obvious secondary expansion by the Chronicler of the Deuteronomis-
tic Vorlage /24/. A characteristic passage, in fact, is 1 Kings 1L
lff. where Edomite women are mentioned among the foreign concubines
of Solomon, and yet from the enumeration of the gods of these con-
cubines the Edomite representative is missing.

6. In addition to this silence about the Edomite god there

occur certain statements associating Yahweh with Edom. Apart from
the usually-quoted text in this regard, Jud.5,4 (&dquo;Yahweh, when You
set out from Seir, when You marched from the fields of Edom&dquo;) we
should look in particular at the Deuteronomistic introduction to
the book of Deuteronomy /25/. According to this theological

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 31

material, the foreign nations are not at all objects in their own
right of God’s dealings, but only instruments in his dealings with
Israel (this is not, however, a characteristic which raises the
God of Israel above ancient Near Eastern deities in general, as
ancient Near Eastern texts easily demonstrate). Only Israel is the
object of Yahweh’s active concern (as well as its subject) - with
the one exception of EdomI Yahweh gives not only Israel, but also
Edom, its land (Deut.2,5) /26/.

That Yahweh has dealings with Edom can therefore hardly be a

product of Israelite, literary conceptions, nor a state of affairs
arising only from the forcible conversion of the Idumeans. In
fact, the origins seem to lie much further back. We must not, of
course, make the mistake of replacing the Qaus worshippers of Edom
with associate members of the Israelite Yahweh-amphictyony /27/, as
if to deny the Edomites Baal, Astarte or any other god and make of
them pure worshippers of Yahweh. The O.T. Israel-amphictyony ought
to be regarded as an artificial model which is no longer capable of
explaining the early history of Israel. For instance, another pos-
sibility occurs: to go back, as A. Alt, for the roots of the
&dquo;brotherhood&dquo; to a pre-Yahwistic period when in the south of Judah
Edomite and Judahite clans worshipped an El-deity (of the patri-
archal typeF&dquo;Vatergott] ) who later became, for Israel, Yahweh /29/.
But still the question remains, whether, allowing for the justifi-
able hesitation about the patriarchal god as a type, it is reason-
able to go back into such a pre-literary period and at the same
time to rule out the possibility of a common name of Yahweh also.
On the contrary, if the deity worshipped in Israel by the name
Yahweh had originally enjoyed a wider cult outside Israel /30/ and
only in Israel - and that relatively late - had been confined by
the theological claim of exclusivity to 3elohe yisradel and by the
application of the Tetragrammaton /31/ as a name, then the divine
name which preceded the Tetragrammaton (possibly YHW) could have
remained as a particularly deeply-felt link to &dquo;brother&dquo; Edom.

Much positively than J.R. Bartlett does in his essay, the

more
old YHW-cult should be taken as the origin and as the start-
common

ing point of the &dquo;brotherhood&dquo; of Israel and Edom. This cult is

still mentioned in Deut.23,8, but no longer as a matter of course.
David’s, and his successors’, anti-Edomite policy and Edom’s
efforts at emancipation from Israel/Judah led to a crisis for this
religious community. As a result of the ever more exclusive char-
acter of Yahweh in Israel and the increasing strain in political
relations between Israel and Edom, religious and political differ-
ences between the two nations grew. But the previous YHW(H)-
connection with Edom also could never be quite forgotten. Theo-

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32

logical writers in Israel had the difficult task of reconciling the

precarious political situation of their time with the old and hon-
ourable tradition. They explained the common bonds no longer by a
common religion but gave &dquo;historical&dquo; reasons:

a) historical-geographical: long ago during the time of Israel’s

&dquo;exodus&dquo; the two peoples came into contact with each other. This
version can be interpreted ambivalently (Num. 20,14-21; Deut.2,4-8),
b) the second solution is historical-systematic: it goes still
further back in history by depicting Israel and Edom as descendants
of Jacob and Esau, the patriarchal twins. This means that Jacob’s
conduct (i.e. Israel’s policy) was not entirely that of a good
brother. But Esau’s clumsy behaviour disqualifies Edom and thus
makes it also responsible for the strained relations. Here the
ambivalence actually becomes the theme.
c) historical-actual: in 587 B.C. ambivalence was replaced by a
polemical frankness; full of hatred, the writers speak of Esau’s
inexpiable guilt.

This view of the original cultural interplay and of a closer

common cult needs, of course, the confirmation of archaeology.
The sparse archaeological material relating to the cult of Edom so
far unearthed in any case affords no satisfactory conclusion, eith-
er in the sense of confirming this thesis of a YHW(H) connection
with Edom or in the sense of contradicting it, so that up to this
point such indirect methods of argumentation as the foregoing have ’

had to be used.

Footnotes .

1. M. Noth, Art. "Edomiter" in RGG II(1958), 308f.; L. Grollenberg

Art. "Edom" in LThK 111(1959), 663f.; V. Maag, Art. "Edom" in BHH
I (1962), 366-368.
2. Cf. M. Noth: "presumably cultic contacts between Israel and
E[domite]s" (art. cit. 308f.);
Maag even mentions in this con-
V.
nection the name Yahweh:
Edomites "are admitted as ’brothers’ (i.e.
cult-members) of Yahweh-worshipping Southern Israelite tribes"(art.
cit., 367). Cf. more generally n. 27.
3. Th.C. Vriezen, The Edomite deity Qaus, OTS 14 (1965), 330-353
(330).
4. B. Oded, Egyptian References to the Edomite Deity Qaus, in
Andrews University Seminary Studies 9 (1971), 46-50(46); cf.
earlier J.T. Milik in Syria 35 (1958), 239 ("chief national god of
the Edomites") and in Syria 37 (1960), 95 ("national god of the land
of Edom").

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 33

5. The source material has been collected by M. Weippert, Edom .

Studien und Materialien zur Geschichte der Edomiter auf Grund
schriftlicher und archäologischer Quellen (typewritten dissert-
ation), Tübingen, 1971, 466f.
6. Vriezen, art. cit., 331. On the Edomite ostracon No. 6043
from Tell el-Kheleifeh cf. now also N. Glueck, Tell el-Kheleifeh
Inscriptions, Near Eastern Studies in honor of William Foxwell
, 1971, 226-229 (228: "the first half of the sixth century
Albright
B.C."). For the seal-impressions with Qausc anal, ibid. 237f.
(237: "seventh-sixth centuries B.C."; 238: "are to be dated
approximately no later than the first half of the sixth century
B.C.") .
7. Vriezen, art. cit., 331f.
8. M. Weippert, Edom, 708, n.1738.
9. W.
Caskel, Lihyan und Lihyanisch (Arbeitsgemeinschaft für
Forschung des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen, Geisteswissenschaft-
liches Heft 4
, 1954, 39, cf.47.
10. W. Caskel, Die alten semitischen Gottheiten in Arabien, Le
Antiche Divinità Semitiche (ed. S. Moscati), 1958, 100.

11. So also Vriezen, art. cit., 332f.; cf. Weippert, Edom, 712ff.,
esp. 713f. para. 6.

12. Weippert, art. cit., 465.

13. Art. cit., 334.
14. Cf. Vriezen, art. cit., 333f.; Weippert, Edom, 713f., para. 6.
15. N. Glueck, Explorations in Eastern Palestine, II, AASOR 15,
(1934/5), 137, cf. 138.
16. So also Weippert, Edom, 458; cf. R. Dussaud, La pénétration
des Arabes en Syrie avant l’Islam
, 1955.
17. The previous work of T. Weiss Rosmarin, Arabi und Arabien,
1932, (=
JSOR 16 (1932), 1-37 was simply endorsed in respect of
chronology by I. Ephcal ("Arabs" in Babylonia in the 8th Century
B.C., JAOS 94 (1974), 108-115).
18. T. Weiss Rosmarin, Arabi
, 27 (=
JSOR 16 (1932), 19).
19. Ibid., 26 JSOR 16,
(= 18).
20. Ibid., 15 JSOR 16
(= , 7f.).
21. Evidence from the beginning of the 6th century is offered by an
ostracon from Arad (cf. A. Lemaire, L’ostracon "Ramat-Négeb" et la

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34

topographie historique du Négeb, Semitica 23 (1973), 11-26, esp.

22f.); but the period of pressure upon Edom had already begun
before the 6th century.

22. Cf. Th.C. Vriezen, OTS 14(1965), 353n.

23. The preceding article by J.R. Bartlett renders an extensive
review of the literature unnecessary here.

24. While Amaziah in 2 Kings 14,2 is commended for having done

"that which Yahweh approved", 2 Chron. 25,14 reproaches him for
worshipping foreign gods. But this is a theological construction
of the Chronicler rather than an historical piece of information.
(Cf. W. Rudolph, Chronikbücher, HAT 1,12, 3rd ed., 1968, 283;
Weippert, Edom, 336.
25. On the extent of this Deuteronomistic stratum see M. Rose, Der
Ausschliesslichkeitsanspruch Jahwes (BWANT 106), 1975, 149.
26. This idea extended only secondarily to Moab (2,96) and
was

Ammon (2,19.21f.) the descendants of Lot and so, after Edom,

as

Israel’s closest relations.

27. K. Galling (Das Gemeindegesetz in Deuteronomium 23, in

, 1950, 176-191) sees
Festschrift A. Bertholet zum 80. Geburtstag
Edomite groups participating in the cult at Beersheba (p. 183);
from there may arise the question, around 1000 B.C., (189) of the
affiliation of the Edomites to the qehal yahweh (183), of the
cultic assembly at the "amphictyonic sanctuary" (189). With ref-
erence to Galling, G. von Rad (Das funfte Buch Mose. Deuteronom-
ium, ATD 8, 104 and n.1) regards the positive evaluation of Edom
in Deut. 23,8 as belonging to a "splendid piece of ancient Yahwist-
ic legal matter" which in its most ancient form "certainly reaches
back to the time before there was a state in Israel" (105).

28. Cf. the archaeological argument: N. Glueck, AASOR 15 (1934/5),

136.

29. Cf. A. Alt, Der Gott der Vater, 1929, in Kleine Schriften I,
60 and n.l.

30. We are thinking here not only of the (Midianite-) Kenite

hypothesis, but also of divine names comparable to YW (Jaw, Jaul),
YHW etc. (cf. n.31).

31. On the (later) origin of the Tetragrammaton, cf. my study on

the name Yahweh, which will shortly appear in Theologische Studien
.

(Translated from the Author’s German by P.R. Davies)

Editorial :
Note A response from Dr. J.R. Bartlett will be
published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal
.

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