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D e u t e r o n om y 2 8 a n d t h e
A r a m a ic C u r se T r a d i t io n
OXFORD THEOLOGY AND RELIGION MONOGRAPHS
Editorial Committee
D. ACHARYA M. N. A. BOCKMUEHL
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S. R. I. FOOT D. N. J. MACCULLOCH
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OXFORD THEOLOGY AND RELIGION MONOGRAPHS

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Deuteronomy 28 and
the Aramaic Curse
Tradition
L au r a Qu ic k
1
1
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Acknowledgements
This book began as my doctoral dissertation, completed at the Faculty

of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford. I would like to
express my most profound thanks to my Doctor-Father, John Barton.
He has been a truly supportive, kind, and generous supervisor. John
also acted as a mentor during the revision of my thesis for publication,
and I am so thankful that once again I was given the opportunity to
work closely with him on this project.
Significant thanks are also owed to Kevin Cathcart, whom I met
during my first term in Oxford when I took a class he was offering on
Phoenician inscriptions. Since then, I have benefited from his wisdom
in a number of different classes which he kindly ran for students of the
Hebrew Bible at the University of Oxford, in Comparative Semitics,
Aramaic inscriptions, and Ugaritic Grammar. Beyond these classes,
Professor Cathcart’s engagement with my work, along with his pastoral
support, has been immense, and my time in Oxford would not have
been nearly so pleasant or productive without knowing him.
While at the University of Oxford, I have been able to benefit from
a number of classes run by the Faculty of Oriental Studies and the
Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, as well as to attend sem-
inars held at both venues, along with the Faculty of Theology and
Religion. Along the way, I have met and learnt from conversations
with a number of teachers and colleagues, and from whose advice and
support this manuscript was significantly improved: Alma Brodersen,
Carly Crouch, Jacob Dahl, Stephanie Dalley, Graham Davies, Susan
Gillingham, Sondra Hausner, Robert Hayward, Jan Joosten, Ekaterina
Kozlova, Aulikki Nahkola, Hindy Najman, Sonja Noll, Frances
Reynolds, Jonathan Stökl, Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer, Hugh Williamson,
and William Wood. It goes without saying that any errors contained in
the following are my own.
During the completion of the thesis I was financially supported by a
Clarendon Fund D.Phil. Scholarship provided by the University of
Oxford; and a Graduate Teaching and Research Scholarship provided
by Oriel College, University of Oxford. While I was revising the thesis
for publication, Oriel College continued to be my home as I worked
and taught at the college as a Lecturer in Hebrew Bible. The highly
viii Acknowledgements
intelligent and conscientious students of the Hebrew Bible whom I

have been privileged to teach have also contributed to this study, test-
ing me, challenging my assumptions, and in general allowing me to
try out some of the ideas that ultimately crystallized in this book.
I would like to thank all of them.
None of this would be possible without the support and friendship
of my best friend, Sebastian Wedler. I could not have produced this
book without him, and it is only fitting that the manuscript is dedi-
cated to him.
Table of Contents
List of Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
1. Deuteronomy 28 and Ancient Near Eastern Curses 12
2. The Comparative Method in Scripture and Inscription 41
3. The Futility Curse as a Northwest Semitic Trope:
The Old Aramaic Inscriptions 68
4. Futility Curses in the Hebrew Bible 107
5. The Composition of the Tell Fakhariyah Inscription
and Deuteronomy 28 137
6. Writing and Ritual in Deuteronomy 28 159
Conclusion 179
Bibliography 187
Index of Authors 207
Index of Primary Texts 210
List of Abbreviations
ABC Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries

AfO Archiv für Orientforschung
ANE ancient Near East
ANEM Ancient Near East Monographs
AOAT Alter Orient und Altes Testament
AOS American Oriental Series
AOTC Apollos Old Testament Commentary
AJA American Journal of Archaeology
AS Assyriological Studies
BA Biblical Archaeologist
BASOR Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research
BBR Bulletin for Biblical Research
BBRS Bulletin for Biblical Research Supplements
BCSMS Bulletin of the Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies
BDB F. Brown, S.R. Driver, and C.A. Briggs, Brown–Driver–Briggs
Hebrew and English Lexicon: with an Appendix Containing the
Biblical Aramaic (repr.; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2005
[2007])
BEATAJ Beiträge zur Erforschung des Alten Testaments und des
Antiken Judentums
BHK3 R. Kittel, Biblica Hebraica (3rd edn; Stuttgart:
Württembergische Bibelanstalt, 1937)
BHQ 5 C. McCarthy, Deuteronomy, BHQ, vol. 5 (Stuttgart: Deutsche
Bibelgesellschaft, 2007)
BHS K. Elliger and W. Rudolph, Biblica Hebraica Stuttgartensia
(Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1987)
BMB Bulletin du Musée de Beyrouth
BO Bibliotheca Orientalis
BTS Beiruter Texte und Studien
BWANT Beiträge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten und Neuen Testament
BZAR Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für Altorientalische und Biblische
Rechtsgeschichte
BZAW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
CAD M.T. Roth, The Assyrian Dictionary. 21 vols (Chicago, IL: The
Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 1956–2010)
CBC Cambridge Bible Commentaries
CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly
CBR Currents in Biblical Research
xii List of Abbreviations
CC Covenant Code
COS W.W. Hallo and K.L. Younger Jr, The Context of Scripture:
Canonical Compositions, Monumental Inscriptions, and Archival
Documents from the Biblical World. 3 vols (Leiden: Brill, 2003)
CRAI Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des inscriptions et
belles-lettres
CSMS Journal of the Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies
CTH Catalog der Texte der Hethiter
EI Eretz Israel
EST The Succession Treaties of Esarhaddon
FAT Forschungen zum Alten Testament
FES Publications of the Finnish Exegetical Society
HANEM History of the Ancient Near East Monographs
HBS Herders Biblische Studien
HS Hebrew Studies
HSK Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft
HThK.AT Herders Theologischer Kommentar zum Alten Testament
IEJ Israel Exploration Journal
Int. Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and
Preaching
ITC International Theological Commentary
JAJ Journal of Ancient Judaism
JANER Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions
JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
JCS Journal of Cuneiform Studies
JCSMS Journal for the Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies
JESHO Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient
JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies
JPS Jewish Publication Society
JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series
JSS Journal of Semitic Studies
JSSSup Journal of Semitic Studies Supplement Series
KAI H. Donner and W. Röllig, Kanaanäische und aramäische
Inschriften 1 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2002)
KALI Keilschrifttexte aus Assur literaischen Inhalts
LHBOTS Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies
LSS Leipziger Semitische Studien
LXX A. Rahlfs and R. Hanhart, Septuaginta (Peabody, MA:
Hendrickson, 2007)
MAL-A Middle Assyrian Laws, Tablet A
MDOG Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orientgesellschaft
MPAIBL Mémoires présentes à l’ Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres
List of Abbreviations xiii
ms T Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaties at Tell Tayinat

MT Masoretic Text
MUSJ Mélanges de l’Université Saint-Joseph
NABU Nouvelles Assyriologiques Brèves et Utilitaires
NCB New Century Bible
NIBC New International Bible Commentary
NICOT New International Commentary on the Old Testament
OBO Orbis biblicus et orientalis
OIP Oriental Institute Publications
OIS Oriental Institute Seminars
OLA Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta
OTL Old Testament Library
OtSt Oudtestamentische Studiën
ÖBS Österreichische Biblische Studien
RA Revue d’Assyriologie et d’Archéologie Orientale
RB Revue Biblique
RIMA The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Assyrian Periods
RIMA, I A.K. Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Third and Second
Millennia bc (to 1115 BC) (RIMA, I; Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1987)
RIMA, II A.K. Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium,
I (1114–859 bc) (RIMA, II; Toronto: Toronto University Press,
1991)
RIMA, III A.K. Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium
II (858–754 bc) (RIMA, III; Toronto: Toronto University Press,
1996)
RlA E. Ebeling and M. Bruno, Reallexikon der Assyriologie und
Vorderasiatischen Archäologie. 14 vols (Berlin: de Gruyter,
1993–2016)
SAA State Archives of Assyria
SAA II S. Parpola and K. Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty
Oaths (SAA, II; Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1988)
SAA VI T. Kwasman and S. Parpola, Legal Transactions of the Royal
Court of Nineveh, Part I: Tiglath-Pileser III through Esarhaddon
(SAA, VI; Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1991)
SAA X S. Parpola, Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars
(SAA, X; Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1993)
SAAB State Archives of Assyria Bulletin
SAAS State Archives of Assyria Studies
SANER Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records
SBL Society of Biblical Literature
SBLMS Society of Biblical Literature Monograph Series
SEA Svensk Exegetisk Arsbok
SEL Studi Epigrafici e Linguistici
xiv List of Abbreviations
SJSJ Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism

StOr Studia orientalia
SZ Stimmen der Zeit
TA Tel Aviv
TOTC Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries
UF Ugarit-Forschungen
VT Vetus Testamentum
VTE D.J. Wiseman, ‘The Vassal-Treaties of Esarhaddon’, Iraq
20 (1958), 1–99
VTSup Supplements to Vetus Testamentum
WMANT Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen
Testament
WVDOG Wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichung der Deutschen Orient-
Gesellschaft
ZABR Zeitschrift für Altorientalische und Biblische Rechtsgeschichte
ZAvA Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie
ZAW Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
ZDPV Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins
Introduction
15If you do not obey the Lord your God to observe faithfully all
His commandments and laws which I enjoin upon you this day,
all these curses shall come upon you and take effect:
16Cursed shall you be in the city and cursed shall you be in the
country.
17Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.
18Cursed shall be the issue of your womb and the produce of
your soil, the calving of your herd and the lambing of your flock.
19Cursed shall you be in your comings and cursed shall you be in
your goings.
20The Lord will let loose against you calamity, panic, and frustra-
tion in all the enterprises you undertake, so that you shall soon
be utterly wiped out because of your evildoing in forsaking Me.
21The Lord will make pestilence cling to you, until He has put
an end to you in the land that you are entering to possess. 22The
Lord will strike you with consumption, fever, and inflammation,
with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew; they
shall hound you until you perish. 23The skies above your head
shall be copper and the earth under you iron. 24The Lord will
make the rain of your land dust, and sand shall drop on you from
the sky, until you are wiped out.
25The Lord will put you to rout before your enemies; you shall
march out against them by a single road, but flee from them by
many roads; and you shall become a horror to all the kingdoms of
the earth. 26Your carcasses shall become food for all the birds
of the sky and all the beasts of the earth, with none to frighten
them off.
27The Lord will strike you with the Egyptian inflammation, with
haemorrhoids, boil-scars, and itch, from which you shall never
recover.
2 Deuteronomy 28 and the Aramaic Curse Tradition
28The Lord will strike you with madness, blindness, and dismay.
29You shall grope at noon as a blind man gropes in the dark; you
shall not prosper in your ventures, but shall be constantly abused
and robbed, with none to give help.
30If you pay the bride-price for a wife, another man shall enjoy
her. If you build a house, you shall not live in it. If you plant a
vineyard, you shall not harvest it. 31Your ox shall be slaughtered
before your eyes, but you shall not eat of it; your ass shall be
seized in front of you, and it shall not be returned to you; your
flock shall be delivered to your enemies, with none to help you.
32Your sons and daughters shall be delivered to another people,
while you look on; and your eyes shall strain for them con-
stantly, but you shall be helpless. 33A people you do not know
shall eat up the produce of your soil and all your gains; you shall
be abused and downtrodden continually, 34until you are driven
mad by what your eyes behold. 35The Lord will afflict you at the
knees and thighs with a severe inflammation, from which you
shall never recover—from the sole of your foot to the crown of
your head.
36The Lord will drive you, and the king you have set over you, to
a nation unknown to you or your fathers, where you shall serve
other gods, of wood and stone. 37You shall be a consternation, a
proverb, and a byword among all the peoples to which the Lord
will drive you.
38Though you take much seed out to the field, you shall gather in
little, for the locust shall consume it. 39Though you plant vine-
yards and till them, you shall have no wine to drink or store,
for the worm shall devour them. 40Though you have olive trees
throughout your territory, you shall have no oil for anointment,
for your olives shall drop off. 41Though you beget sons and
daughters, they shall not remain with you, for they shall go into
captivity. 42The cricket shall take over all the trees and produce of
your land.
43The stranger in your midst shall rise above you higher and
higher, while you sink lower and lower: 44he shall be your cred-
itor, but you shall not be his; he shall be the head and you the tail.
45All these curses shall befall you; they shall pursue you and over-
take you, until you are wiped out, because you did not heed the
Lord your God and keep the commandments and laws that He
enjoined upon you. 46They shall serve as signs and proofs against
you and your offspring for all time. 47Because you would not
serve the Lord your God in joy and gladness over the abundance
Introduction 3
of everything, 48you shall have to serve—in hunger and thirst,

naked and lacking everything—the enemies whom the Lord will
let loose against you. He will put an iron yoke upon your neck
until He has wiped you out.
49The Lord will bring a nation against you from afar, from the
end of the earth, which will swoop down like the eagle—a nation
whose language you do not understand, 50a ruthless nation, that
will show the old no regard and the young no mercy. 51It shall
devour the offspring of your cattle and the produce of your soil,
until you have been wiped out, leaving you nothing of new grain,
wine, or oil, of the calving of your herds and the lambing of your
flocks, until it has brought you to ruin. 52It shall shut you up in all
your towns throughout your land until every mighty, towering
wall in which you trust has come down. And when you are shut
up in all your towns throughout your land that the Lord your
God has assigned to you, 53you shall eat your own issue, the flesh
of your sons and daughters that the Lord your God has assigned
to you, because of the desperate straits to which your enemy shall
reduce you. 54He who is most tender and fastidious among you
shall be too mean to his brother and the wife of his bosom and
the children he has spared 55to share with any of them the flesh
of the children that he eats, because he has nothing else left as a
result of the desperate straits to which your enemy shall reduce
you in all your towns. 56And she who is most tender and dainty
among you, so tender and dainty that she would never venture to
set a foot on the ground, shall begrudge the husband of her
bosom, and her son and her daughter, 57the afterbirth that issues
from between her legs and the babies she bears; she shall eat
them secretly, because of utter want, in the desperate straits to
which your enemy shall reduce you in your towns.
58If you fail to observe faithfully all the terms of this Teaching
that are written in this book, to reverence this honoured and
awesome Name, the Lord your God, 59the Lord will inflict extra-
ordinary plagues upon you and your offspring, strange and last-
ing plagues, malignant and chronic diseases. 60He will bring
back upon you all the sicknesses of Egypt that you dreaded so,
and they shall cling to you. 61Moreover, the Lord will bring upon
you all the other diseases and plagues that are not mentioned in
this book of Teaching, until you are wiped out. 62You shall be left
a scant few, after having been as numerous as the stars in the
skies, because you did not heed the command of the Lord your
God. 63And as the Lord once delighted in making you prosper-
ous and many, so will the Lord now delight in causing you to
perish and in wiping you out; you shall be torn from the land that
you are about to enter and possess.
64The Lord will scatter you among all the peoples from one end
of the earth to the other, and there you shall serve other gods,
wood and stone, whom neither you nor your ancestors have
experienced. 65Yet even among those nations you shall find no
peace, nor shall your foot find a place to rest. The Lord will give
you there an anguished heart and eyes that pine and a despond-
ent spirit. 66The life you face shall be precarious; you shall be in
terror, night and day, with no assurance of survival. 67In the
morning you shall say, “If only it were evening!” and in the even-
ing you shall say, “If only it were morning!”—because of what
your heart shall dread and your eyes shall see. 68The Lord will
send you back to Egypt in galleys, by a route which I told you you
should not see again. There you shall offer yourselves for sale to
your enemies as male and female slaves, but none will buy.
69These are the terms of the covenant which the Lord com-
manded Moses to conclude with the Israelites in the land of
Moab, in addition to the covenant which He had made with
them at Horeb.
(Deut. 28:15–69).
The law code of the book of Deuteronomy is capped with a series

of curses that threaten harm upon the individual subject to the legis-
lation, should they fail to keep the Deuteronomic laws. While this
method of divine encouragement to keep the commandments of God
might seem surprising from a theological point of view, curses were an
integral part of the legal, political, and religious life of the ancient Near
East. Indeed, scholarship has been quick to note the parallels that exist
between the structure of the book of Deuteronomy, with its historical
prologue, legal core, and string of blessings and curses, with other
literary forms from the ancient Near East. The treaty was a character-
istic feature of international relations in both the second and first mil-
lenniums bce, first of all among the Hittite Empire, and then again in
the eighth and seventh centuries bce, as the Neo-Assyrians began to
incorporate other states into their empire as they expanded westward.
Like the book of Deuteronomy, these treaty texts also threaten future
harm in the form of curses to any individual who breaks the terms of
the treaty. These texts show significant commonalities to the book of
Deuteronomy, both structurally and, more strikingly, in the content
of their curses. Thus the book of Deuteronomy has been compared to
Introduction 5
treaties from both the Hittite and the Neo-Assyrian worlds. From a
phenomenological point of view, this comparative endeavour provides
insights into the biblical conception of the covenantal relationship
between Israel and her God, in which the relation is defined in terms
akin to a treaty. Yet some scholars have pushed the relationship
between these treaty texts and the book of Deuteronomy even further,
referring the curses of Deuteronomy 28 to a particular Neo-Assyrian
treaty in terms of a direct literary relationship. Thus it has been argued
that some of the curses of Deuteronomy 28 seem to parallel, or even to
translate, portions of a Neo-Assyrian treaty, ‘The Succession Treaties
of Esarhaddon’, known as EST.
This Neo-Assyrian context has often been used to provide an inter-
pretative matrix for understanding Deuteronomy 28. This matrix has
been important not just in terms of literary and cultural context, but
also because the discernment of parallels between Deuteronomy and
the Succession Treaties—which were occasioned during the reign of
King Esarhaddon in the seventh century bce—may provide an exter-
nal reference point for the dating of the book of Deuteronomy. While
dating the composition of Deuteronomy to the late eighth and seventh
centuries, during the reigns of King Hezekiah (2 Kgs 18:3–6, 22;
727/715–698/687 bce) and, especially, of King Josiah (2 Kgs 22–23;
640–609 bce), was at one point something of a linchpin in biblical
scholarship, in recent years this has become a far more controversial
topic. The tendency of some critics has been to situate this book within
the exilic, or even the post-exilic period, instead—and it seems that
there will be no resolution to the problem. An external, datable point
of reference is an attractive prospect to many scholars.
However, while there are undeniably points of similarity between
Deuteronomy 28 and Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaties, the exact
nature of the relationship between the texts is not clear-cut. Though
some scholars propose that Deuteronomy’s authors drew upon the
Succession Treaties as a direct source-text, others have been quick to
point out that the affinities shared between the two are also found in
other treaty texts. They argue that the treaty-like parts of Deuteronomy
do not stem solely from the Succession Treaties, but rather are symp-
tomatic of the genre of the treaty in the ancient Near East in more
general terms. Thus parts of Deuteronomy apparently mirror treaty
texts not because they were directly copied from a sole precursor such
as Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaties, but rather because the scribes
who wrote the biblical book were able to call upon a koine of treaty
and curse terminology that was current at that time. This debate has
reached something of a stalemate in recent years.
The past few decades have brought to light additional inscriptions
that also provide parallel phenomena to the curses in Deuteronomy
28. Unlike the Hittite and Neo-Assyrian treaty texts—written in
Hittite, an Indo-European language written with cuneiform signs cur-
rent in the second millennium, or in Akkadian, an East Semitic cunei-
form language—these new inscriptions are written in Old Aramaic, a
Northwest Semitic language used in Syria during the first millennium
bce. Thus these inscriptions are both geographically and linguistically
closer to the biblical world than any of the Hittite and Neo-Assyrian
texts previously referred to Deuteronomy 28. The particular curses
common to both the Old Aramaic inscriptions and Deuteronomy 28
can be described as curses of futility, with a characteristic syntactical
form and commonalities in both vocabulary and ideation. We might
typify this curse as a threat of maximum effort, but minimal gain.
As well as in the Old Aramaic epigraphs and in Deuteronomy 28,
there are actually multiple examples of this type of curse in biblical
literature, occurring with particular regularity in prophetic texts.
Deuteronomy 28 provides several characteristic examples:
If you pay the bride-price for a wife, another man shall enjoy her. If you
build a house, you shall not live in it. If you plant a vineyard, you shall not
harvest it.
(Deut. 28:30).
Though you take much seed out to the field, you shall gather in little, for
the locust shall consume it. Though you plant vineyards and till them,
you shall have no wine to drink or store, for the worm shall devour them.
Though you have olive trees throughout your territory, you shall have
no oil for anointment, for your olives shall drop off. Though you beget
sons and daughters, they shall not remain with you, for they shall go into
captivity.
(Deut. 28:38–41).
In this study I attempt to show the value of these Northwest Semitic
inscriptions as primary sources to reorient our view of an ancient
world usually seen through a biblical or Mesopotamian lens. Instead,
I aim to show the importance of the futility curse as a Northwest Semitic
literary trope by exploring manifestations of the curse in Old Aramaic
inscriptions and in the Hebrew Bible. By studying these inscriptions
Introduction 7
alongside the biblical text, I aim to increase our knowledge of the early
history and function of the curses in Deuteronomy 28.
The Significance of the Present Study
The significance of the present study lies in several areas. To begin

with, I provide an analysis and description of all of the examples of
the futility curse from the ancient Near East, encompassing the Old
Aramaic inscriptions and the Hebrew Bible, as well as considering the
possibility of this form in Hittite and Mesopotamian texts. In so doing,
I show that the syntactical, lexical, and ideational regularity of these
manifestations of the futility curse shows that it was a standard literary
form which was utilized by Northwest Semitic scribes in the first
millennium bce. The implications of this will be important for under-
standing both the book of Deuteronomy, and for another Northwest
Semitic text which has also been typically referred to a Mesopotamian
horizon, the Tell Fakhariyah inscription. However, I will show that
both Deuteronomy 28 and this inscription cannot be understood
according to Mesopotamian conceptions alone. Rather, both texts
mediate between the traditions of the East and West, featuring charac-
teristic examples of the Northwest Semitic futility curse, as well as
curses more common to Akkadian texts. In this way, the cultural con-
text which informed Deuteronomy 28 will be elucidated.
The implications of this for our understanding of Deuteronomy 28
are significant. Dating to the ninth, eighth and seventh centuries bce,
the Old Aramaic inscriptions from Tell Fakhariyah, Sefire, and Bukān
provide an important witness to the antiquity of this particular trad-
ition of cursing in the ancient Levant. In this context, I will reaffirm the
traditional dating for Deuteronomy 28 in the late monarchic period.
As a corollary to this, I will reconsider the aim of the composition of
Deuteronomy 28 in the context of the expansion of the Neo-Assyrian
Empire, couching my concern as to whether Deuteronomy 28 makes
use of these prior literary traditions in order to subvert the Neo-Assyrian
hegemonic regime. Finally, I will make use of the inscriptional evi-
dence to provide new insights into the background and function of
the curses in Deuteronomy 28, arguing that curses typically have a
performative aspect. This observation will be used to provide insights
into the ritual world inherent to the formalization of treaties and the
pronouncement of curses in the biblical world.
Along the way, I consider the methodological underpinnings of the
comparative approach, arguing that scholarship which has previously
concerned itself with Deuteronomy 28 in the light of Esarhaddon’s
Succession Treaties (or indeed, the Hittite treaties) has done so heedless
of the implications of this for the linguistic and literary competence of
the Israelite and Judaean scribes. To rephrase this as a question: would
a version of the Succession Treaties have been available to the authors
of Deuteronomy? And if so, would the Hebrew scribes who wrote
Deuteronomy have been able to read and to translate a cuneiform,
Akkadian document such as these treaties? A negative answer would
similarly negate the argument that Deuteronomy 28 borrows specific-
ally from the Succession Treaties, yet no proponent or critic of the
theory has yet considered this crucial issue of bilingualism in ancient
Israel. This recognition sets the stage for a new examination of what
I would deem to be the crux of the issue: the linguistic means of the
transmission of Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaties to Deuteronomy. This
step is the prerequisite to a re-examination of the parallels between
Deuteronomy 28 and the ancient Near Eastern curse traditions, includ-
ing the evidence from the Old Aramaic epigraphs. But rather than
couching this study as a search for literary texts which are genetically
related to one another via a process of transmission that is able to be
reconstructed from the documentary evidence and according to the
traditional understanding of influence in literary studies, I will instead
operate on the basis of intertextuality as a model for understanding
the associations between these traditions. By utilizing intertextuality
in comparative perspective, this study is thus sensitive to the diverse
means by which traditions can be related: connections can stem from
the written sphere, but may also have been transmitted orally, reflect-
ing the social, ritual, and religious world of the scribe and his cultural
backdrop. The ritual context of treaty and curse traditions in the
ancient Near East is essential to understanding their social-functional
task and therefore cannot be discounted from investigations into
Deuteronomy 28, even if it cannot be fully reconstructed. Against this
background, the importance of the Northwest Semitic literary trad-
ition of cursing and treaties as preserved in inscriptions written across
the Levant during the first millennium bce will be proposed as an
important alternative witness to the ritual world which informed the
composition of the Hebrew Bible.
Introduction 9
The study is divided into six chapters. I begin in chapter 1 by reviewing

previous scholarship pertaining to the composition of Deuteronomy
28 in light of the ancient Near Eastern curse and treaty tradition (and
in particular Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaties). This scholarship has
typically seen the reuse of the Succession Treaties in Deuteronomy 28
as a subversive endeavour on the part of the biblical scribes. Esarhaddon’s
Succession Treaties were written to subjugate the vassals of Assyria
under the heir apparent, Assurbanipal—including Judah. Thus scribes
working in the court of King Josiah wrote a new treaty text, in which
the covenant with Yahweh was written as a substitution for the earlier
treaty made with the king of Assyria, expressing vassalship to Yahweh
instead of vassalship to the Assyrian king. In this context, the curses
of the Succession Treaties, it is argued, were re-appropriated in an act
of literary subversion. On the other hand, several important studies
reject the plausibility of this reconstruction, either denying the exist-
ence of the parallels altogether or by contesting that the appropriation
of the Succession Treaties by Deuteronomy 28 operates in the realm
of subversion. In order to move the debate beyond these polar posi-
tions, I suggest that our model for understanding parallel phenomena
between texts which stem from different literary and linguistic tradi-
tions must be reconsidered. I propose that the problems that these
reconstructions have failed to account for, and which have resulted in
the current scholarly stalemate, are methodological, concerning the
problem of transmission itself.
This will be developed in chapter 2 by an analysis of the dispute which
has crystallized between three of the leading voices in the debate, Jacob
Berman and, working together, Bernard M. Levinson and Jeffrey
Stackert. The latter have accused Berman of providing no plausible
vector of transmission for the parallels which he discerns between the
book of Deuteronomy and the Hittite treaty texts. On the other hand,
Levinson and Stackert themselves have failed to provide sufficient cor-
roboration for the existence of Akkadian literacy among the biblical
scribes that the relation between Deuteronomy 28 and Esarhaddon’s
Succession Treaties requires. This recognition sets the stage for a new
examination of the means of the transmission of the Succession Treaties
to Deuteronomy, with a study of cuneiform culture in Iron II Judah. By
showing that the evidence for the existence of such a tradition is essen-
tially lacking, it will be proposed that Aramaic may have served an inter-
mediary function between the literatures of East and West, given that
the language functioned as a lingua franca during this period. Thus we
can observe two streams of Aramaic influence upon Hebrew literature

during the late monarchic period: the Assyro-Aramaean culture through
which the Hebrew scribes encountered Neo-Assyrian traditions; and
the native Northwest Semitic literary tradition expressed in Aramaic,
Hebrew, Phoenician, and other Northwest Semitic dialects. It is this latter
literary phenomenon which will we explore in the following chapters.
Thus chapter 3 considers the possibility that a Northwest Semitic
tradition of curses circulated in the Levant in the first millennium,
with a description and analysis of examples of the futility curse from
the Old Aramaic inscriptions, encompassing the Tell Fakhariyah bilin-
gual inscription, the Sefire Treaties, and the Bukān inscription. This
has implications for the reconstruction of a putative Aramaic literary
tradition, something often hypothesized but little attested due to the
scant material finds which have survived antiquity. Ultimately, it is
shown that a tradition of cursing expressed in terms of lexical, idea-
tional, and syntactic consistency was shared between these Old Aramaic
epigraphs.
The problem of a West Semitic tradition of curses is then further
problematized in chapter 4 by recourse to the futility curses of the
Hebrew Bible, showing that these examples conform tightly to the
examples in Old Aramaic. The most strikingly similar biblical e xamples
stem from the pre-exilic prophets, while later texts of the exilic and
post-exilic period tend to deviate from the normal syntax and vocabu-
lary, instead providing clauses suggestive of general menace and com-
mination, rather than threatening a specific future curse. On the one
hand, the curses of Deuteronomy 28 also utilize the typical language
and syntactical structure of the futility curses from the Old Aramaic
and pre-exilic Hebrew texts. Yet on the other, the clauses that they
develop are noticeably more sophisticated and complex than the earl-
ier examples. This is suggestive of the literary quality of the futility
curses from the book of Deuteronomy: the scribes have couched trad-
itional ideas and metaphors in a highly literary style, appropriate to
their endeavour to reformulate Israelite and Judaean law in the late
monarchic period.
The compositional process behind Deuteronomy 28 is then further
explored in chapter 5, noting an additional parallel to the Tell Fakhariyah
bilingual inscription. Scholars have typically developed a complicated
textual history for the Tell Fakhariyah inscription, reconstructing a com-
plex compositional process based upon the division of this inscription
into parts which stem from a West Semitic hand and parts which are
Introduction 11
East Semitic in origin. Instead, by exploring the translation technique

that governed the production of this bilingual inscription, this chapter
demonstrates that the inscription stems from a single hand who could
mediate between traditions of East and West. This new understanding
of the compositional process which informed the Tell Fakhariyah
inscription is then proposed as a useful model for understanding the
composition of Deuteronomy 28, which also seems to reflect a com-
plex interplay between Mesopotamian and Levantine traditions.
Deuteronomy 28 makes use of the futility curse as a culturally Levantine
product, but juxtaposes this with curses drawn from the East Semitic
world, typified by the curses of Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaties. While
in Tell Fakhariyah this juxtaposition of traditions worked to create a
text perfectly appropriate to its location in a formerly Aramaean Neo-
Assyrian province, in Deuteronomy this served a different function:
by opposing the Neo-Assyrian literary tradition with native Northwest
Semitic literary forms, Deuteronomy 28 confronts the encroaching
Neo-Assyrian world, in a subversive endeavour far more subtle and
sophisticated than scholars have hitherto recognized.
Nevertheless, we cannot consider this interplay of Eastern and
Western literary forms to have stemmed from the influence of any one
Old Aramaic or Mesopotamian text such as the Succession Treaties
in terms of a direct literary connection. Rather, as putative Aramaic
vectors of mediation must be posited between the Mesopotamian
tradition and Deuteronomy due to the linguistic competences of the
Judaean scribes, we must understand this as a relationship of intertext-
uality. The implications of this distinction for the process of the trans-
mission of these traditions is then considered in chapter 6, where
I argue that ritual behaviours might be just as good a source as literary
texts for the diffusion of this traditional material. The additional
insights which recognition of this ritual context provides for the com-
parative method, the dating and authorship of Deuteronomy 28, and
the subversive impetus thought to have stood behind its composition,
are then reconsidered. Ultimately, the function of the written word in
a largely oral world will be shown to be fundamental to understanding
both the composition and the function of the curses in the book of
Deuteronomy.
Deuteronomy 28 and Ancient Near

Eastern Curses
The Basic Formulation
In 1954, George E. Mendenhall published an article that documented

his discovery of parallels between the covenants of the Hebrew Bible
with Hittite vassal-treaties.1 The dual decision which governed
Mendenhall’s analysis was (1) the dating of the Decalogue to the time
of Moses on the basis of the state treaties of the contemporaneous
Hittite Empire (1450–1200 bce),2 which (2) he believed obtained only
in the latter part of the second millennium.3 Thus Mendenhall was
able to reconstruct an interpretation of the history of Israel in terms of
an original ‘pure’ covenant mediated by Moses and represented by the
Decalogue in Exodus 20 and covenantal ceremony of Joshua 24; the
decay of this Mosaic ideal under and because of the monarchy; and
finally a reform and return to the pure Mosaic tradition, expressed in
the book of Deuteronomy. However pace Mendenhall’s assumption,
1 G.E. Mendenhall, ‘Covenant Forms in Israelite Tradition’, BA 17 (1954), 49–76.

Other attempts to show correspondence between the Mosaic covenant and the Hittite
treaty form include W.L. Moran, ‘Moses und der Bundesschluss am Sinai’, SZ 170
(1961/1962), 120–133; F.C. Fensham, ‘Clauses of Protection in Hittite Treaties and in the
Old Testament’, VT 13 (1963), 133–143; and the detailed studies of K. Baltzer, Das
Bundesformular: Sein Ursprung und seine Verwendung im Alten Testament (WMANT,
4; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1960); W. Beyerlin, Origins and History of the
Oldest Sinaitic Traditions (trans. S. Rudman; Oxford: Blackwell, 1965); and M. Rose,
Der Ausschliesslichkeitsanspruch Jahwes: Deuteronomische Schultheologie und die
Volksfrömmigkeit in der späten Königszeit (BWANT, 106; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1975),
pp. 27–33.
2 Mendenhall, ‘Covenant Forms in Israelite Tradition’, 53.
3 Thus he declares that ‘[w]hen empires again arose, notably Assyria, the structure
of the covenant by which they bound their vassals is entirely different’: ibid., 56.
Deuteronomy 28 and Ancient Near East Curses 13
this form was not confined only to treaties and instructions of the
second millennium:4 state treaties in both Aramaic5 and Akkadian6
dating from the eighth to the seventh centuries bce clearly show that
similar treaty forms were also prevalent in the first millennium.
Indeed, five years after Mendenhall’s pioneering attempt to explain
biblical covenant with recourse to parallel Near Eastern traditions,
D.J. Wiseman published ‘The Vassal-Treaties of Esarhaddon’7 (VTE;
more commonly called ‘Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty’, or EST, in
the subsequent literature), a document that in both length and charac-
ter considerably increased the data available to researchers of the
ancient Near Eastern treaty.8 Dating to 672 bce,9 the text which
Wiseman p resented constituted a reconstruction from eight separable
4 While Christoph Koch has argued that these Neo-Hittite treaties were the conduits
of legal tradition well into the early Iron Age (see C. Koch, ‘Zwischen Hatti und Assur:
Traditionsgeschichtliche Beobachtungen zu den aramäischen Inschriften von Sfire’,
in Die deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerke: Redaktions- und religionsgeschichtliche
Perspektiven zur ‘Deuteronomismus’-Diskussion in Tora und Vorderen Propheten, ed.
J.C. Gertz, D. Prechel, K. Schmid, and M. Witte [BZAW, 365; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2006],
pp. 379–406; and idem, Vertrag, Treueid und Bund: Studien zur Rezeption des altorientalis-
chen Vertragsrechts im Deuteronomium und zur Ausbildung der Bundestheologie im Alten
Testament [BZAW, 383; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008], pp. 27–79), the plausibility that these
early forms could have influenced the authors of the book of Deuteronomy has become
something of a crux in the debate, and will be discussed in more detail in chapter 2.
5 KAI 222–224.
6 See A.K. Grayson, ‘Akkadian Treaties of the Seventh Century bce’, JCS 39 (1987),
127–160; S. Parpola, ‘Neo-Assyrian Treaties from the Royal Archives of Nineveh’, JCS 39
(1987), 161–189; and SAA II.
7 D.J. Wiseman, ‘The Vassal-Treaties of Esarhaddon’, Iraq 20 (1958), 1–99.
8 Following the publication of EST and the comparative possibilities to Deuteronomy
that this opened up, there was a lull in studies that sought to adduce relations between
the biblical book and Hittite treaties. However, several new attempts have recently
reconsidered this problem, primarily forwarded by scholars who seek to challenge the
connections between EST and Deuteronomy. See, e.g., W.S. Morrow, ‘Fortschreibung in
Mesopotamian Treaties and in the Book of Deuteronomy’, in Recht und Ethik im Alten
Testament, ed. B.M. Levinson and E. Otto (Altes Testament und Moderne, 13; Münster:
LIT, 2004), pp. 111–123; M. Zehnder, ‘Building on Stone? Deuteronomy and Esarhaddon’s
Loyalty Oaths (Part 2): Some Additional Observations’, BBR 19 (2009), 511–534;
J. Berman, Created Equal: How the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 28–46; idem, ‘CTH 133 and the Hittite Provenance
of Deuteronomy 13’, JBL 130 (2011), 25–44; A. Taggar-Cohen, ‘Biblical Covenant and
Hittite išḫiul Reexamined’, VT 61 (2011), 461–488; K.A. Kitchen and P.J.N. Lawrence,
Treaty, Law and Covenant in the Ancient Near East, 3 vols (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz,
2012); and J. Berman, ‘Histories Twice Told: Deuteronomy 1–3 and the Hittite Treaty
Prologue Tradition’, JBL 133 (2013), 229–250 (esp. 231–232).
9 The evidence is in the form of an eponym date: see A.R. Millard, The Eponyms
of the Assyrian Empire 910–612 bce (SAAS, II; Helsinki: Helsinki University Press,
1994), p. 103.
manuscripts10 deduced from hundreds of deliberately smashed frag-

ments discovered in 1955 in the ruined temple of Nabû at Nimrud.11
The twentieth-century excavator of Nimrud, Max Mallowan, suggested
that the Iranian conquerors of the city in 612 bce destroyed the texts as
a revenge upon Assyria;12 Mallowan has been followed in this inter-
pretation by several other prominent scholars.13 Joann Scurlock has
even somewhat fancifully proposed that the Nimrud tablets had ori-
ginally been deposited with the eastern vassals, but were brought by
the conquering Iranians to Nimrud with the specific intention of sym-
bolically destroying the tablets and so breaking the oath;14 other
scholars have dismissed the idea that the Nimrud tablets were kept
anywhere but their find spot.15 Pointing out the unlikelihood that the
raiders would have been able to read and hence identify the highly
compacted script of the treaty tablets, Frederick Mario Fales has dis-
missed the suggestions of Mallowan et al. as mere conjecture.16 The
eight manuscripts were largely identical, the only significant differ-
ences being found in the treaty preamble, where each manuscript has
a different city-lord as the contracting partner,17 and present the
10 See Wiseman, ‘The Vassal-Treaties of Esarhaddon’, 1–2, 92–99, for the list of frag-
ments and their excavation numbers. Further joins are indicated by K. Watanabe, Die
adê-Vereidigung anläßlich der Thronfolgeregelung Asarhaddons (Berlin: Gebr. Mann,
1987), pp. 47–54, with a complete edition of the text, the separable manuscripts laid out
side by side, at pp. 55–142.
11 On the archaeological context, see M.E.L. Mallowan, ‘The Excavation at Nimrud
(Kalḫu)’, Iraq 18 (1955), 1–21; idem, Nimrud and Its Remains, 2 vols (London: Collins,
1966), I: pp. 241–249; and Wiseman, The Vassal-Treaties of Esarhaddon’, 2.
12 See Wiseman, ‘The Vassal-Treaties of Esarhaddon’, ii.
13 M. Liverani, ‘The Medes at Esarhaddon’s Court’, JCS 47 (1995), 57–62 (62); and B.
Porter, ‘Noseless at Nimrud: More Figurative Responses to Assyrian Domination’, in Of
God(s), Trees, Kings, and Scholars: Neo-Assyrian and Related Studies in Honour of Simo
Parpola, ed. M. Lukko, S. Svärd, and R. Mattila (StOr, 106; Helsinki: Helsinki University
Press, 2009), pp. 201–220 (p. 219).
14 J. Scurlock, ‘Getting Smashed at the Victory Celebration, or What Happened to
Esarhaddon’s So-called Vassal Treaties and Why’, in Iconoclasm and Text Destruction in
the Ancient Near East and Beyond, ed. N.N. May (OIS, 8; Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press, 2012), pp. 155–186.
15 E.g., K. Radner, ‘Assyrische ṭuppi adê als Vorbild für Deuteronomium 28,20–44?’,
in Die deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerke: Redaktions- und religionsgeschichtliche
Perspektiven zur ‘Deuteronomismus’-Diskussion in Tora und Vorderen Propheten, ed.
J.C. Gertz, D. Prechel, K. Schmid, and M. Witte (BZAW, 365; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2006),
pp. 351–378 (p. 369).
16 F.M. Fales, ‘After Ta’yinat: The New Status of Esarhaddon’s adê for Assyrian
Political History’, RA 106 (2012), 133–158 (151, n. 114).
17 On the designation ‘city-lord’ (bēl āli), see K. Radner, ‘An Assyrian View on the
Medes’, in Continuity of Empire(?): Assyria, Persia, and Media, ed. G. Lanfranchi,
f ormal record of a treaty concerning the royal succession of Esarhaddon’s

chosen heir Assurbanipal in Assyria. The heir apparent Šamaš-šum-
ukin was instead to be set over the throne of Babylon, and the unortho-
doxy of this decision is reflected in a letter to Esarhaddon by his chief
exorcist Adad-šumu-uṣur: ‘What has not been done in heaven the
king my lord has done on earth and shown us: you have guided a son
of yours with headband and entrusted to him the kingship of Assyria;
your eldest son you have set to kingship in Babylon. You have placed
the first on your right, the second on your left side!’18
The treaty was enforced by oath upon eight vassal city-lords from
bordering states in Iran, though the heading of the treaty (SAA II, 6:
1–12) unequivocally establishes its intended purpose as a pact not just
with these specific recipients, but with a much more vast aggregate
comprising all of the people over whom Assyria ruled. This wider pur-
pose is also confirmed by Assurbanipal’s later annals, which state that
‘Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, my father and begetter . . . convened the
people of Assyria, great and small, from the Upper Sea and the Lower
Sea, (and) made them swear a treaty by the gods, and establishing a
binding agreement to protect my crown-princeship and future king-
ship over Assyria.’19 Already in his editio princeps Wiseman had sug-
gested the possibility that features of this new treaty might provide
parallels to the biblical book of Deuteronomy,20 and thereafter scholars
of the Bible were quick to point out such affinities,21 culminating in the
M. Roaf, and R. Rollinger (HANEM, 5; Padova: Editrice e Libreria, 2003), pp. 37–46
(p. 49); and idem, ‘Assyria and the Medes’, in The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Iran, ed.
D.T. Potts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 442–456 (p. 444).
18 See F.M. Fales, L’impero assiro: storia e amministrazione (secc. IX–VII a.C.)
(Rome: Laterza, 2001), pp. 44–46; and SAA X, Obv. 5–13.
19 K. Borger, Beiträge zum Inschriftenswerk Assurbanipals (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz,
1996), pp. 15–16; SAA II, p. xxix.
20 Wiseman, ‘The Vassal-Treaties of Esarhaddon’, 88.
21 Early attempts include the brief sketches of R. Borger, ‘Zu den Asarhaddon-
Verträgen aus Nimrud’, ZAvA 56 (1961), 173–196 (esp. 191–192); and F.C. Fensham,
‘Maledictions and Benedictions in Ancient Near Eastern Vassal-Treaties and the Old
Testament’, ZAW 74 (1962), 1–9. Fuller in scope is D.R. Hillers, Treaty-Curses and the
Old Testament Prophets (Biblica et Orientalia, 16; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute,
1964), pp. 30–40. Besides these investigations of larger literary problems, studies con-
cerning more detailed correspondences between ancient Near Eastern treaty and bib-
lical covenant were also forwarded: cf., e.g., F.C. Fensham, ‘Salt and Curse in the Old
Testament and the Ancient Near East’, BA 25 (1962), 48–50; W.L. Moran, ‘The Ancient
Near Eastern Background of the Love of God in Deuteronomy’, CBQ 25 (1963), 77–87;
and D.R. Hillers, ‘A Note on Some Treaty Terminology in the Old Testament’, BASOR
176 (1964), 46–47.
two detailed studies of Moshe Weinfeld and Rintje Frankena, which

separately appeared in 1965.22 Both sketched affinities between the
imprecations of Deuteronomy 28 and the maledictions of the Succession
Treaties,23 with slightly different emphases: Weinfeld convincingly
showed that the seemingly arbitrary sequence of leprosy and (judicial)
blindness in Deut. 28:27–35 derived directly from Esarhaddon’s
Succession Treaties. The sequence of curses in this unit apparently lack
a logical rationale: so skin ailments (v. 27) are followed by blindness
(vv. 28–29), violated wife (v. 30a), displaced progeny (v. 32), foreign
military occupation (v. 33), and finally again, this time in inverted
order, blindness (v. 34) and skin ailments (v. 35). While in the con-
text of the Hebrew Bible this particular sequence of curses appears
to be random, Weinfeld showed that the paired motifs ‘leprosy’ and
‘blindness/lawlessness’, as well as the topical sequence of the other
curses in that unit, are attested in EST §§39–42, where the logic of the
order follows the hierarchy of the Neo-Assyrian pantheon. The chief
Babylonian gods Sin (the moon, associated with leprosy) and Shamash
(the sun, the god of justice) appear at the beginning of the curses in
EST §§39–42 (SAA II, 6: 419–424).24 Thus Weinfeld concluded that:
[t]he peculiar association of the curses of leprosy and judicial blindness
in Dt 28,27–29 cannot, therefore, be satisfactorily explained unless we
assume that the pairing of these two concepts—which is comprehensible
only in the light of Mesopotamian religion—was literally transcribed
from a Mesopotamian treaty copy to the book of Deuteronomy.25
22 R. Frankena, ‘The Vassal-Treaties of Esarhaddon and the Dating of Deuteronomy’,

OtSt 14 (1965), 122–154; and M. Weinfeld, ‘Traces of Assyrian Treaty Formulae in
Deuteronomy’, Biblica 46 (1965), 417–427. Weinfeld was later to develop these insights:
cf. idem, ‘Deuteronomy: The Present State of Inquiry’, JBL 86 (1967), 249–262 (253–
254); idem, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972), pp.
59–157; and idem, ‘The Loyalty Oath in the Ancient Near East [Hebrew]’, Shnaton 1
(1975), 51–88 (an English translation of this may be found in UF 8 [1976], 379–414).
23 Frankena focused in particular upon parallels between Deut. 28:20–57//EST
ll. 414ff. (see Frankena, ‘The Vassal-Treaties of Esarhaddon and the Dating of
Deuteronomy’, 154); Weinfeld upon Deut. 28:26–35//EST ll. 419–430 (Weinfeld, ‘Traces
of Assyrian Treaty Formula in Deuteronomy’, 418–422; cf. idem, Deuteronomy and the
Deuteronomic School, pp. 119–121), also noting similarities between Deut. 28:53–57//
EST ll. 448–450 (idem, ‘Traces of Assyrian Treaty Formula in Deuteronomy’, 425). In
his later book-length treatment of Deuteronomy, Weinfeld went on to outline further
parallels between the apostasy laws of Deuteronomy 13 and EST ll. 81–82, 120–122
(idem, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, p. 94).
24 Weinfeld, ‘Traces of Assyrian Treaty Formula in Deuteronomy’, 418–422; cf.
idem, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, pp. 119–121.
25 Weinfeld, ‘Traces of Assyrian Treaty Formula in Deuteronomy’, 422 (my emphasis).
Frankena’s hypothesis concerning the relation of Deuteronomy 28 to

the Succession Treaties was also one of literal transcription,26 supple-
menting this analysis with a supposition that sought to explain by
what means this could have taken place. Thus, noting that Manasseh
was listed as a vassal in Assyrian sources, Frankena supposed that a
copy of the Succession Treaties must have been sent to Jerusalem;27
the book of Deuteronomy was the expression of the Josianic reform,
and the transposition of this, the vassal-treaties, had tied Judah to
Assyria as vassal state. The historical background of these reforms was
the increasing threat of imperial domination: the Northern Kingdom
of Israel had fallen under Neo-Assyria only a century before (722 bce;
2 Kgs 17), and continuing Assyrian incursions in the Levant had seen
Judah significantly reduced (2 Kgs 18:13). Hezekiah had made a pact
with Assyria to preserve his nation’s autonomy (2 Kgs 18:13–18); Josiah’s
reforms—the restriction of all sacrificial worship to Jerusalem and the
removal of foreign elements from the cult—made a bid for Judaean
cultural, political, and religious autonomy. Josiah could introduce his
reform only because following the death of Assurbanipal the empire of
Assyria was politically in decline; Josiah thus extended his reforms into
the former Kingdom of Israel and hence into territory directly under
Assyrian control (2 Kgs 23:15–20). While the book of Deuteronomy
had long been associated with Josiah’s reforms,28 Frankena linked this
literary production to a copy of the Succession Treaties putatively
available in Jerusalem: Josiah’s covenant with Yahweh was considered
a substitution for the former treaty with the king of Assyria, express-
ing vassalship to Yahweh instead of vassalship to the Assyrian king,
and re-appropriating the curses of the Assyrian treaty for his new
composition in an act of literary subversion.29
In his Succession Treaties, Esarhaddon had stipulated the legitim-
acy of his chosen heir, Assurbanipal, focused particularly upon the risk
26 Thus he wrote of ‘discovering’ the curse text which lay behind Deuteronomy 28:
see Frankena, ‘The Vassal-Treaties of Esarhaddon and the Dating of Deuteronomy’, 145.
27 ibid., 151.
28 This view is usually attributed to W.M.L. de Wette, ‘Dissertatio critica-exegetica
qua Deuteronomium a prioribus Pentateuchi Libris diversum, alius cuiusdam recentioris
auctoris opus esse monstratum’ [‘A Critical-Exegetical Discussion which Shows that
Deuteronomy is a Work that Differs from the First Books of the Pentateuch, and is the
Work of Another, Later Author’] (Ph.D. diss., University of Jena, 1805); see idem,
Opuscula Theologica (Berlin: G. Reimerum, 1830), pp. 149–168.
29 Frankena, ‘The Vassal-Treaties of Esarhaddon and the Dating of Deuteronomy’, 153.
of conspiracy against the crown prince arising from both the address-
ees of the treaty and from the royal family itself—this likely reflected
the experience Esarhaddon had faced following the death of his own
father Sennacherib in 681 bce, when a major civil war had ensued,
contesting Esarhaddon’s promotion.30 Now Deuteronomy’s authors
could rework these prohibitions against incitement to disloyalty
against Assurbanipal into laws addressing disloyalty to Yahweh. The
very instrument of Neo-Assyrian imperialism could thus be twisted in
order to support a Judaean attempt at liberation from the imperial
rule. Taken together, the studies of Weinfeld and Frankena thus pro-
vided not only a wealth of parallels, but also a plausible suggestion
concerning the means by which these had come about.
Early Criticism
The historical reconstructions of Weinfeld and Frankena were not met

with universal acceptance. Chief among critics of this formulation was
Dennis J. McCarthy. In 1963, McCarthy had published his own study
concerning the relation of biblical covenant to the ancient Near
Eastern treaty form, in which he stressed the general continuity of this
form through the centuries.31 This conclusion governed McCarthy’s
response to the Weinfeld–Frankena model in his 1978 revision of this
earlier study: more than half as long again as the first edition, never-
theless the deductions there made were not significantly altered. Thus,
while in the earlier study he had interpreted elements of Deuteronomy
in analogy to Mesopotamian literature, due to the unity which he per-
ceived in the ancient Near Eastern treaty form over the millennia he
did not recognize any specific treaty to be the primary source of such
elements: rather, these were symptoms of a common tradition. Thus,
in 1978 he asked:
What, then, do the parallels say about the text as such? Do they show that
Dt. 28, rather than simply belonging to a common ancient near eastern
tradition, actually derived from a Vorlage, an Assyrian treaty? Frankena
30 SAA II, pp. xxviii–xxxi.

31 D.J. McCarthy, Treaty and Covenant: A Study in Form in the Ancient Oriental
Documents and in the Old Testament (Analecta Biblica, 21; Rome: Pontifical Biblical
Institute, 1963), p. 80.
insists on the parallels between the texts that we have listed. They are
striking enough, but he must admit that the variation in the sequence of
the curses is odd if they are directly connected.32
Thus, while McCarthy did indeed regard the Mesopotamian treaty trad-
ition to be important for understanding the biblical book, he rejected
Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaties as the model for Deuteronomic
composition.33 Thereafter the scholarship tended to fall between these
positions, either stressing with Frankena and Weinfeld the Deuteronomic
reuse of the Succession Treaties, or with McCarthy the more general
nature of the affinities to the Near Eastern treaty within the book of
Deuteronomy. The scholarly dissent can be seen in the various commen-
taries which have been written concerning the book of Deuteronomy:
thus we can divide between those who stress the affinities of Deuteronomy
to the Succession Treaties and so the implications which as a corollary
come along with such a position (e.g., the dating of elements of the
book of Deuteronomy to the Neo-Assyrian period, etc.),34 and those
who decline such suppositions.35 Nevertheless, no proponent of the
theory attempted to deal with McCarthy’s valid questioning of the dis-
parity between the sequence of the curses shared in Deuteronomy 28
and the Succession Treaties. It was not until some twenty years later
that this question was reconsidered by a model which proved more
sensitive to the subtleties of textual (re)production in ancient Israel,
and building from a study by Bernard M. Levinson concerning
32 D.J. McCarthy, Treaty and Covenant: A Study in Form in the Ancient Oriental
Documents and in the Old Testament (rev. 2nd edn; Analecta Biblica, 21A; Rome:
Biblical Institute, 1978), p. 178.
33 ibid., p. 171, n. 27; McCarthy had already expressed caution concerning the cov-
enant–treaty parallel in idem, Old Testament Covenant: A Survey of Current Approaches
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1973), p. 15.
34 E.g., A.C.J. Phillips, Deuteronomy (CBC; Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1973), pp. 4–5; J.A. Thompson, Deuteronomy: An Introduction and Commentary
(TOTC, 5; Nottingham, NH: Inter-Varsity, 1974), pp. 22–26; M. Weinfeld, Deuteronomy
1–11 (ABC, 5; New York: Doubleday, 1991), p. 9; I. Cairns, Deuteronomy: Word and
Presence (ITC; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1992), pp. 7–8; P.D. Miller, Deuteronomy
(Int.; Louisville, KY: John Knox, 1994), pp. 13–14; C.J.H. Wright, Deuteronomy (NIBC;
Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996), pp. 2–3; R.D. Nelson, Deuteronomy: A Commentary
(OTL; Louisville, KY: John Knox, 2004), pp. 112–194; and J.R. Lundbom, Deuteronomy
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013), pp. 20–21.
35 E.g., P.C. Craigie, The Book of Deuteronomy (NICOT; Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 1976), pp. 22–29; A.D.H. Mayes, Deuteronomy (NCB; Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 1981), pp. 31–34; J.H. Tigay, Deuteronomy (JPS Torah Commentary;
Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1996), p. 497; and J.G. McConville,
Deuteronomy (AOTC, 5; Leicester, MA: Inter-Varsity, 2002), pp. 402–403.
Deuteronomic reuse of the Covenant Code, Exodus 20–23.36 Before

turning to this new school of textual exegetics, we must first pause to
consider two further scholars who have continued according to the
Frankena–Weinfeld theory of direct copying, greatly consolidating
and adding to this position.
Consolidation
Hans-Ulrich Steymans’ monograph-length treatment of the problem

continued along the same vein as Weinfeld and Frankena,37 positing
the direct literary dependence of Deuteronomy 28 upon Esarhaddon’s
Succession Treaties via an Aramaic translation of the treaties putatively
to be found in the Jerusalem temple,38 and argued explicitly against
McCarthy’s supposition that both traditions independently drew upon
‘a canon of (ancient Near Eastern) curse motifs’.39 Steymans was later
to reformulate this initial proposal. Based upon his analysis of the
rhetoric of Deuteronomy compared to the Neo-Assyrian text, he con-
cluded that the sophistication of the Assyrian text and the sediments
to be found from this in Deuteronomy could not have been rendered
in an Aramaic translation before transmission to the authors of
Deuteronomy.40 With an Akkadian tablet of the Succession Treaties
apparently set up for formal display inside the temple of Jerusalem,
36 B.M. Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1998).
37 H.-U. Steymans, Deuteronomium 28 und die adê zur Thronfolgeregelung Asarhaddons:
Segen und Fluch im Alten Orient und in Israel (OBO, 145; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 1995). Steymans has also written extensively on this issue in a series of
articles: see idem, ‘Eine assyrische Vorlage für Deuteronomium 28,20–44’, in
Bundesdokument und Gesetz: Studien zum Deuteronomium, ed. G. Braulik (HBS, 4;
Freiburg: Herder, 1995), pp. 119–141; idem, ‘Die neuassyrische Vertragsrhetorik der
“Vassal Treaties of Esarhaddon” und das Deuteronomium’, in Das Deuteronomium, ed.
G. Braulik (ÖBS, 23; Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2003), pp. 89–152; idem, ‘DtrB und die adê
zur Thronfolgeregelung Asarhaddons? Bundestheologie und Bundesformular im Blick
auf Dtn 11’, in Deuteronomium—Tora für eine neue Generation, ed. G. Fischer, D. Markl,
and S. Paganini (BZAR, 17; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011), pp. 161–192; and idem,
‘Deuteronomy 28 and Tell Tayinat’, Verbum et Ecclesia 34 (2013), Art. #870.
38 Steymans, Deuteronomium 28 und die adê zur Thronfolgeregelung Asarhaddons,
pp. 284–312.
39 ibid., p. 2.
40 For this analysis and conclusion, see Steymans, ‘Die neuassyrische Vertragsrhetorik
der “Vassal Treaties of Esarhaddon” und das Deuteronomium’.
‘scribes working in the administration of state and temple must have

passed by the cuneiform tablet every day’.41
Steymans’ reconstruction essentially consists of a three-fold hypoth-
esis in which (1) he restated Weinfeld’s original formulation that the
curse motifs of Deut. 28:27–30 occur in the same sequence as in EST
§§39–40;42 while also adding considerably to the parallel data by
positing that (2) the same kinds of motifs were shared between Deut.
28:23–24 and EST §§63–64;43 and (3) finding a common thematic
structure which characterized both EST §56 and Deut. 28:20–44—
thus Steymans could propose that Deut. 28:20–44 was formed by a
direct translation or modification of those parts of EST (§§39–42; 56)
which are concerned with the sun-god, and undertaken by apparently
bilingual Judaean scribes working in Jerusalem at the time of Josiah’s
reform.44
In seeking to increase the possible parallels which may be discerned
between the two texts, Steymans was attempting to legitimate his pro-
posal of the literary dependence of parts of Deuteronomy 28 upon the
Succession Treaties—but in so doing Steymans actually makes our
understanding of the literary relationship between these two texts
more problematic. Previous studies had focused on the comparative
possibilities between Deuteronomy 28 and EST §§39–42 and 63–64;
Steymans’ outline demonstrated that it was also possible to detect
close connections between Deuteronomy 28 and another passage in
the Succession Treaties, namely §56. While it is not wholly improbable
that both parts of the Succession Treaties could have functioned as a
model for Deuteronomy 28, this certainly complicates the attestation
of the direct literary dependence of Deuteronomy 28 upon the Succession
Treaties in a way that Steymans fails to account for. Moreover, his
assertion that Judaean scribes were ‘certainly’ able to read cuneiform
consists of an uncritical assumption without additional qualification.
The possibility of the existence of a cuneiform culture in monarchic
period Judah will be discussed in chapter 2.
41 Steymans, ‘Deuteronomy 28 and Tell Tayinat’.

42 E.g., skin ailments, blindness, violated wife, etc. see Steymans, Deuteronomium
28 und die adê zur Thronfolgeregelung Asarhaddons, pp. 284–299.
43 So a sky and earth made of metal; rain transforming into coal and ashes, etc. See
ibid, pp. 129–138.
44 Thus along with Frankena, Steymans associated the basic parts of Deuteronomy
28 with the law book of Josiah’s reform, albeit not discounting additions which were
made in the exilic and post-exilic periods. See ibid, pp. 300–312.
Both criticisms might also be levelled at perhaps one of the most

prolific voices calling for the recognition of the influence of Esarhaddon’s
Succession Treaties upon Deuteronomy, Eckart Otto, who brings
cuneiform data external to the Succession Treaties into his reconstruc-
tion, and whose coherent body of scholarship45 makes the position for
a direct literary dependence in no uncertain terms.46 Like Weinfeld
et al., Otto focused upon parallels between the Succession Treaties and
Deuteronomy 28 (noting further similarities in Deuteronomy 6 and
1347). With these previous scholars, Otto dated an original version of
the Deuteronomic laws to the seventh-century reign of Josiah:48 dur
ing the period of Neo-Assyrian hegemony, Judaean scribes adapted
the Assyrian image of a covenantal relationship with the god Aššur
into a subversive claim for the unique status of Yahweh.49 Thus the
composition of Deuteronomy was necessitated in part by the need to
counter the cult of Aššur, with its single temple located in the capital,
by a centralized cult and temple dedicated to the patron god Yahweh
45 See, e.g., E. Otto, ‘Treueid und Gesetz: Die Ursprünge des Deuteronomiums im
Horizont neuassyrischen Vertragsrechts’, ZABR 2 (1996), 1–52; idem, ‘Das Deuteronomium
als archimedischer Punkt der Pentateuchkritik: Auf dem Wege zu einer Neubegründung
der de Wette’schen Hypothese’, in Deuteronomy and Deuteronomic Literature: Festschrift
C.H.W. Brekelmans, ed. M. Vervenne and J. Lust (Leuven: Peeters, 1997), pp. 321–340;
idem, ‘Die Ursprünge des Bundestheologie im Alten Testament und im Alten Orient’,
ZABR 4 (1998), 1–84; idem, Das Deuteronomium: Politische Theologie und Rechtsreform
in Juda und Assyrien (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1999); idem, ‘Political Theology in Judah and
Assyria’, SEA 65 (2000), 62–65. For a synthesis of this earlier work, see idem, Gottes
Recht als Menschenrecht: Rechts- und literaturhistorische Studien zum Deuteronomium
(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2008).
46 Contra Carly L. Crouch, who in her survey of the scholarship concerning this
field of problems creates a binary between ‘those who see similarities to VTE [EST] as
reflecting the book’s origins in the Assyrian period’ and ‘those who see it as a feature of
Assyrian treaties which persisted into the exilic or postexilic period, whence it made its
way into Deuteronomy’, listing Otto among the latter group of scholars (C.L. Crouch,
‘The Threat to Israel’s Identity in Deuteronomy: Mesopotamian or Levantine?’, ZAW
124 [2012], 541–554 [541, n. 2]): an interpretation clearly in contrast with the coherent
body of Otto’s scholarship, as will be outlined in the following, and which draws a clear
picture of Deuteronomy’s authors’ specific appropriation of EST—and not of the
Assyrian treaty tradition in general. This confusion between differing scholarly opin-
ions is characteristic of the tendency in some of the later literature to create polar
schools from earlier scholarship, and to attribute this scholar or that to one from these
positions: while the same names appear again and again (Weinfeld, Steymans, Otto,
Levinson, etc.), to which side these scholars might find themselves aligned changes
according to who is providing the account, symptomatic of the reduction of a complex
body of work into tidy dichotomies.
47 See Otto, Das Deuteronomium, pp. 61–62, 362–363. Parallels to Deut. 6 can be
found especially (though not exclusively) in EST §§17, 24, and 34.
48 Otto, Das Deuteronomium, p. 359. 49 ibid., pp. 86–88.
in Jerusalem;50 in this way, the pre-Dtr Ur-Deuteronomium had its

genesis as an anti-Assyrian loyalty oath to Yahweh. While this much is
familiar, Otto extended the position of the previous scholars in his
assertion that the pre-Dtr core of Deuteronomy 1351 is more than just
a mere subversive adaptation of parts from the earlier document, but
like Deuteronomy 28, is rather a direct translation of EST §10. This is
explicit in his statement that ‘[d]ie Texte Dtn 13:2–10*; 28:15*, 20–44*
sind Übersetzungen aus den EST . . .’.52 Such a conclusion is symptom-
atic of Otto’s understanding of what constituted scribalism and liter-
acy in ancient Judah—like Steymans, Otto supposes that the Judaean
scribes would have had no difficulty in reading, and hence translating,
cuneiform texts. Otto takes this position to its fullest articulation,
claiming influence from a wide body of cuneiform materials in
Deuteronomy: thus, along with Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaties, vest-
iges of Esarhaddon’s Succession Oracles and the Middle Assyrian Laws,
Tablet A (MAL-A)53 (along with portions of the Covenant Code,
Exodus 20–23) may be found in Otto’s Ur-Deuteronomium.
This position has not escaped criticism.54 Questions concerning the
scribal culture of the Deuteronomic scribes and related issues (access
to Akkadian documents, etc.) are discussed in chapter 2. What is suffi-
cient instead at this stage is to consider the plausibility of the vectors of
transmission by which all these additional cuneiform traditions could
reach and influence the Deuteronomic authors. All of the MAL texts
with the exception of MAL-A consist of a single exemplar, found in the
south western courtyard of the Aššur temple at Assur. The texts form
part of some one hundred Middle Assyrian tablets, which may have
50 See also B.A. Levine, ‘Assyrian Ideology and Israelite Monotheism’, Iraq 67 (2005),
411–427.
51 Found at Deut. 13:2a; 3aβ, bα; 4a; 6aα; 7a, bα; 9a, bα, bβ; 10aα. see Otto, ‘Political
Theology in Judah and Assyria’, 62–63.
52 Otto, Das Deuteronomium, p. 68. He has elsewhere characterized the relation
as ‘eine direkte Übertragung’: idem, ‘Die Ursprünge des Bundestheologie im Alten
Testament und im Alten Orient’, 37.
53 As well as discerning a more general parallel between the organizational tech-
niques found in both MAL-A and Deuteronomy, Otto sees specific parallels between
this and the form and content of the marriage laws found in Deut. 22:22–29 (Otto, Das
Deuteronomium, p. 216).
54 See, e.g., the critiques of J. Pakkala, Intolerant Monolatry in the Deuteronomic
History (FES, 76; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999), p. 42; U. Rüterswörden,
‘Dtn 13 in der neueren Deuteronomiumforschung’, in Congress Volume Basel 2001, ed.
A. Lemaire (VTSup, 92; Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 185–203; and W.S. Morrow, ‘Cuneiform
Literacy and Deuteronomic Composition’, BO 62 (2005), 204–213, the latter reacting
especially to Otto’s claim that the MAL-A influenced Deuteronomic composition.
belonged to the temple library or which constituted a separate collection;55

a single fragment of MAL-A was found at Nineveh. Otto infers from
this that Neo-Assyrian scribes consulted the MAL, and that the frag-
ment from Nineveh shows that the MAL were transmitted widely in
this era.56 Yet as William M. Morrow has argued, the MAL cannot
have been considered particularly important by the Neo-Assyrian
period: there are no extant copies produced by Neo-Assyrian scribes,
though other Middle Assyrian texts were extensively copied at this
time; all fragments of the MAL apparently stem from Middle Assyrian
times. Unlike, for example, Codex Hammurabi, which was extensively
copied by Neo-Assyrian scribes, the MAL did not enter the stream
of Neo-Assyrian scribal school texts, and so Morrow is compelled
to conclude that ‘[i]f the MAL were not being copied, they were not
being transmitted, least of all to the peripheries of the Neo-Assyrian
Empire’.57 This is also the case for Esarhaddon’s Succession Oracles, a
single tablet of which, K 2401, written in the same year as Esarhaddon’s
coronation, forms the entirety of Otto’s reconstruction. The probabil-
ity that members of Judah’s administrative classes could have come
across these documents seems low.
This is not necessarily the case for Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaties,
which as a loyalty oath could have been sent out to all the vassals
of Assyria (including Judah)58—and as we shall see, the discovery in
2009 of a new example of the oath from Tell Tayinat59 has brought the
Succession Treaties closer to the biblical world than ever before. That
the Judaean scribes might have had access to the Succession Treaties is
plausible, as may be attested to by the precursors to Otto’s reconstruction.
55 O. Pedersén, Archives and Libraries in the Ancient Near East 1500–300 b.c.
(Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 1998), pp. 83–84, 132–133.
56 Otto, Das Deuteronomium, pp. 3, 208–209.
57 Morrow, ‘Cuneiform Literacy and Deuteronomic Composition’, 206.
58 Karen Radner has explored ways in which the Judaean scribes may have come
into contact with the Neo-Assyrian treaty-tradition: Radner, ‘Assyrische ṭuppi adê als
Vorbild für Deuteronomium 28,20–44?’, pp. 354–375. Reinforcing her argument is the
Neo-Assyrian evidence that suggests that Manasseh (687–642 bce) swore a loyalty-
oath to his over-lords, see H.-U. Steymans, ‘Die literarische und historische Bedeutung
der Thronfolgeregelung Asarhaddons’, in Die deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerke:
Redaktions- und religionsgeschichtliche Perspektiven zur ‘Deuteronomischen’-Diskussion
in Tora und Vorderen Propheten, ed. J.C. Gertz, D. Prechel, K. Schmid, and M. Witte
(BZAW, 365; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2006), pp. 344–349.
59 See J. Lauinger, ‘Some Preliminary Thoughts on the Tablet Collection in Building
XVI from Tell Tayinat’, CSMS 6 (2011), 5–14; and idem, ‘Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty
at Tell Tayinat: Text and Commentary’, JCS 64 (2012), 87–123.
Less plausible is Otto’s description of the interaction of these scribes

with the Assyrian treaties: the concept of direct translation goes
beyond the available evidence. What the scholars whom we have so far
examined have failed to explain is that if Esarhaddon’s Succession
Treaties really were taken as a negative model and Deuteronomy 28
intended to be a counter text, why did the Deuteronomic authors not
make this clearer, instead of veiling their intentions by following the
prototype only in non-literalistic ways and by changing the sequence
of curses? In answer to this question, the next scholars whom we will
examine have preferred to characterize scribal interaction with earlier
traditions as one of selective adaptation and creative transformation.
The Nature of Textual Reuse in

Ancient Israel
Working both separately60 and together,61 Berman M. Levinson and

Jeffrey Stackert have produced a body of scholarship that can be taken
as a coherent entity due to the methodological starting point that
informs both of their interactions with the textual traditions. In 1998,
Levinson published a revision of his doctoral thesis, an exploration of
the parallel material found in key passages of the instructions on cultic
and legal institutions in Deuteronomy 12:16–17 and in the Covenant
60 B.M. Levinson, ‘“But You Shall Surely Kill Him!”: The Text-critical and Neo-
Assyrian Evidence for MT Deuteronomy 13:10’, in Bundesdokument und Gesetz: Studien
zum Deuteronomium, ed. G. Braulik (HBS, 4; Freiburg: Herder, 1995), pp. 37–63; idem,
‘Recovering the Lost Original Meaning of ‫( ולא תכסה עליו‬Deuteronomy 13:9)’, JBL
115 (1996), 601–620; idem, ‘Textual Criticism, Assyriology, and the History of the
Interpretation of Deuteronomy 13:7a as a Test Case in Method’, JBL 120 (2001), 211–243;
idem, ‘The Neo-Assyrian Origins of the Canon Formula in Deuteronomy 13:1’, in
Scriptural Exegesis: The Shapes of Culture and the Religious Imagination, Essays in
Honour of Michael Fishbane, ed. D.A. Green and L.S. Lieber (Oxford: Oxford University
Press), pp. 25–45; idem, ‘Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty as the Source for the Canon
Formula in Deuteronomy 13:1’, JAOS 130 (2010), 337–347; idem, ‘Die neuassyrischen
Ursprünge der Kanonformel in Deuteronomium 13,1’, in Viele Wege zu dem Einen:
Historische Bibelkritik—Die Vitalität der Glaubensüberlieferung in der Moderne, ed.
S. Beyerle, A. Graupner, and U. Rüterswörden (Biblisch-Theologische Studien, 121;
Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2012), pp. 22–59; and J. Stackert, ‘The Syntax of
Deuteronomy 13:2–3 and the Conventions of Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy’, JANER
10 (2010), 159–175.
61 B.M. Levinson and J. Stackert, ‘Between the Covenant Code and Esarhaddon’s
Succession Treaty’, JAJ 3 (2012), 123–140.
Code, Exodus 20–23: Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal

Innovation.62 Here Levinson argued that the writers of Deuteronomy
meant to replace older law with their own legislation of cultic central-
ization, the replacement of local altars and shrines with the central
sanctuary in the seventh century bce.63 However, Deuteronomy’s
authors disguised their legal innovations by claiming continuity with
the older tradition: they appropriated idioms and axioms from prior
legislation but gave this a new context and meaning that often trans-
formed—even reversed—its previous significance, by means of a
so-called ‘hermeneutic of legal innovation’. Thus the creative impulse
behind much of biblical literature was in fact recreative: intertextual
and interactive, a process of radical interpretative activity which left in
its wake a number of editorial markers such as resumptive repetition
(Wiederaufnahme) and Seidel’s Law, that ‘repetition may reverse the
elements of the original’.64 The former picked up a previously inter-
rupted thread and in effect bracketed a disruptive comment that had
been interpolated into the primary text; the latter signaled a citation
borrowed from another context.65 Levinson underscored these liter-
ary techniques with insights gained from Mesopotamian scribal prac-
tice (although these statements would have nevertheless benefited
from a wider and more nuanced view of ancient Israel’s writing prac-
tices as distinct from the Mesopotamian tradition), so as to provide a
more detailed account of textual reuse in the ancient world of the Bible
than had hitherto been available.66
Moving from Deuteronomy’s reuse of the Covenant Code to the
problem of Deuteronomy and Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaties,
Levinson nevertheless interpreted these issues according to his under-
standing of a hermeneutics of literary innovation as developed in his
62 Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation. Stackert was

to follow with his own study of these issues some years thereafter: J. Stackert, Rewriting
the Torah: Literary Revision in Deuteronomy and the Holiness Legislation (FAT, 52;
Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007).
63 And so a reconstruction largely in agreement with that of Otto, see above.
64 Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation, p. 18. Levinson
also pointed to other techniques such as citation formulas, devoicing, revoicing, and
intertextual allusion: see ibid., pp. 5–6.
65 To what extent Seidel’s observation that inversely parallel formulations frequently
indicate citation constitutes a ‘law’ for determining original and secondary contexts is
difficult to assess: an author may reuse his own lemma in inverse formulation as a fea-
ture of literary strategy, and even when editorial activity may be proven, the diachronic
relation of the interpolated materials remains to be uncovered.
66 Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation, pp. 17–18.
earlier study. Therein Levinson was to provide an account of the

Deuteronomic authors’ interaction with this prior tradition that went
beyond that of merely literal transcription or translation. Levinson
(and Stackert) additionally differed from the preceding scholarship
in their specific emphasis upon the parallels between the Succession
Treaties and Deuteronomy 13;67 and in their primary aim to support
the authenticity of the Masoretic Text (MT) of this chapter against the
variant readings that may be found in the ancient versions.
Chapter 13 is one of the more difficult chapters of the book of
Deuteronomy, commanding religiously sanctioned violence requiring
the execution of various religious functionaries (prophet or oneiro-
mancer), one’s own spouse, son, or daughter—even an entire city—in
the case of incitement to apostasy. Compounding the problem of the
interpretation of these unpalatable injunctions, the majority of the
ancient versions offer variant readings which ensure that any such kill-
ing should conform to the laws of due process, and providing an
ostensibly more logical list of the family members addressed by the
law—and scholarly consensus has long advocated that the MT should
be restored in light of these versions.68 But Levinson argued that this
solution mapped a postexilic ‘Jewish’ view onto the earlier Israelite
text, and that the variant readings were actually exegetical corrections
of the religiously problematic MT Vorlage. Instead of looking to these
later variants, Levinson found context to support the MT in Esarhaddon’s
Succession Treaties. Thus the MT is correct against the LXX and other
witnesses to Deut. 13:7a in referring only to ‘your mother’s son’ and not
the father’s, the author having redeployed the conspiracy topos of EST
§10 along with its requirement of summary execution: specific clusters
of its language are reused, including both its detailed list of the imme-
diate members of the addressee’s family (so ‘brother’, ‘son’, ‘daughter’,
each inflected with the second-person pronominal suffix) and the
alternative, religious officials who serve as divine spokesmen (‘prophet’,
67 Although Weinfeld had initially noted these parallels already in 1972 (see Weinfeld,
Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, p. 94), with the exception of P.E. Dion’s
masterful article concerning this chapter (P.E. Dion, ‘Deuteronomy 13: The Suppression
of Alien Religious Propaganda in Israel During the Late Monarchic Era’, in Law and
Ideology in Ancient Israel, ed. B. Halpern and D.W. Hobson [JSOTSup, 124; Sheffield:
JSOT, 1991], pp. 147–216), most scholarship has focused primarily upon the curses and
imprecations of Deuteronomy 28.
68 Thus J. Hempel recommended the priority of the LXX variants of chapter 13 in his
widely influential editions of the Hebrew text of Deuteronomy, first as probable in BHK
(p. 285) and then without reservation in BHS (p. 310).
‘ecstatic’, ‘oneiromancer’, each as an indefinite noun). From this tem-

plate, the Deuteronomic authors created two consecutive legal para-
graphs, the first envisioning incitement to disloyalty against Yahweh as
coming from ‘a prophet or oneiromancer’ (in each case an indefinite
noun);69 the second, as arising from the immediate family of the
addressee (‘brother’, ‘son’, ‘daughter’, adding ‘wife’ and ‘friend’, each
term with second-person pronominal suffix). According to Levinson’s
reconstruction, beyond merely copying his source text in any linear or
literalistic way, the Deuteronomic author has actually reordered the
source. What in the treaty was arranged as a single continuum—royal
family (A) = addressee’s family (B) + divine spokesmen (C)—has been
divided into two separate laws, moving from the sphere of public reli-
gion (C’) into the sphere of the addressee’s private life (B’). (In this
context, there is, of course, no reference to threats to the sovereign
from within his own family.) Hence the citation is exactly chiastic:
(A)BC:: C’B’.70
This understanding of creative textual reworking has underpinned
Levinson’s further interactions with the text of Deuteronomy 13. In
v. 9, ksh means not ‘conceal’ or ‘shield’ as in the LXX and followed by
modern translations,71 but ‘condone’. The common idea underlying
the ancient and modern renderings is that the law forbids its address-
ees from concealing or shielding the inciter from disclosure to the
outside world. In the immediate continuation, whereas the MT reads
ky hrg thrgnw, ‘rather shall you kill him’ (MT Deut. 13:10), the LXX
reads anaggellō anaggellō peri autoυs, ‘you shall report him’ (LXX
Deut. 13:9). That reading, retroverted to Hebrew *hgd tgydnw, is almost
universally accepted as original:72 the probable interchange of reš >
dalet and the transposition of consonants could conceivably explain
the corruption of the original Hebrew into the MT. Thus the Hebrew
can be revised to remove any notion of summary execution: ‘do not
conceal him but *report him’. However, with recourse to EST §10,
Levinson is able to defend the originality of this contentious motivation
69 Here Levinson notes that the Hebrew for oneiromancer (lit., ‘dreamers of
dreams’) closely represents the grammar of the Akkadian formula mār šā’ili amāt ilī
(lit., ‘inquirer of divine oracles’), employing a masculine singular active participle in
construct to a following noun: Levinson, ‘Textual Criticism, Assyriology, and the
History of the Interpretation of Deuteronomy 13:7a’, 238, n. 80.
70 ibid. The LXX provides the expected symmetry of ‘your brother from your father
or from your mother’.
71 Thus we find ‘conceal’ in RSV; NJPS and NRSV prefer ‘shield’.
72 See, e.g., BHK, p. 285; and BHS, p. 310.
to cold-blooded murder:73 the Deuteronomic injunction reflects the

normative Neo-Assyrian practice for dealing with a threat to the sov-
ereign: execution.74 The canon formula in Deut. 13:1 is found to have
the same structure as the canon formula in EST §4, but in reverse
order.75 In this way, Levinson is able to confirm the originality of prob-
lematic passages from the MT of Deuteronomy 13 through his creative
understanding of the means of intertextuality in ancient Israel, high-
lighting not only cases of direct transcription, but also more subtle
examples of the reuse of Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaties within
Deuteronomy, encompassing a creative reworking and so widening
the possibilities of this reuse to include nuanced examples of allusion
and chiasmus. Even so, while Levinson provides a more differentiated
account of the method of Deuteronomic textual production, he is still
able to conclude with the earlier commentators concerning the reason
for such activity, so ‘Deuteronomy’s authors inserted the loyalty oath
by wielding the genre against its imposers and transforming it into an
oath of loyalty to Israel’s divine sovereign, Yahweh.’76
Stackert has adopted Levinson’s hermeneutical understanding of
textual innovation, focusing on Deut. 13:2–3 and the problematic
issue of the relative clause ’šr dbr ’lyk in v. 3aβ and its relation to what
precedes and follows it, so the perceived inelegance of the l’mr that
follows this relative clause, and the identification of the antecedent to
the relative pronoun. Previous solutions to these difficulties posited
an interpolation in the verses, the elimination of which would then
alleviate their awkwardness, so as to propose an Urtext for vv. 2–3
which would read:
73 Levinson, ‘Recovering the Lost Original Meaning of ‫’ולא תכסה עליו‬.

74 Levinson, ‘“But You Shall Surely Kill Him!”’. These arguments for the originality
of the readings witnessed by MT Deut. 13:7 and 13:10 have found wide accord, evident
from their acceptance into C. McCarthy, Deuteronomy, BHQ, vol. 5 (Stuttgart:
Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2007), pp. 91–92 (hereafter BHQ 5). However, it is notable
that another contemporary treaty tradition, the Sefire Treaties, actually support the
LXX reading: ‘any man who rants and utters evil words against me, [you] must [not]
accept such words from him. You must hand them [i.e. the men] over into my hands’
(KAI 224: 1–2).
75 Levinson, ‘The Neo-Assyrian Origins of the Canon Formula in Deuteronomy
13:1’; cf. idem, ‘Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty as the Source for the Canon Formula in
Deuteronomy 13:1’.
76 Levinson, ‘Textual Criticism, Assyriology, and the History of the Interpretation
of Deuteronomy 13:7a’, 237.
ky yqwm bqrbk nby’ ’w ḥlm ḥlwm l’mr nlkh ’ḥry ’lhym ’ḥrym ’šr l’ yd‘tm
wn‘bdm
If a prophet or dream diviner arises in your midst, saying, ‘let us go after
other gods’—whom you do not know—‘that we may serve them . . .’77
Like Levinson, Stackert prioritizes the MT over other and hypothetical
versions, and so, contra the above reconstruction, he prefers an alter-
native understanding of the relative clause in Deut. 13:3a, which pro-
vides the key to overcoming the syntactic awkwardness of this text,
and built from his interaction with ancient Near Eastern material such
as Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaties: thus Stackert recognizes that the
series of events imagined in the law is not presented sequentially, so as
to maintain the coherency of the MT, despite first appearances.78
Such is the congruence of the approaches that have separately been put
forward by Levinson and Stackert that in 2012 they produced an article
outlining the fruits of their combined efforts.79 Here, they confirmed their
previous inferences concerning the use of the Succession Treaties in
Deuteronomy, while responding to the various critiques which had sub-
sequently been levelled at the formulation;80 what proved innovative was
their integration of their previous conclusions concerning Deuteronomy’s
reuse of the Covenant Code, Exodus 20–23, with its reuse of material
from the Succession Treaties. Thus they proposed that ‘the authors
of Deuteronomy exploited EST and CC [the Covenant Code] in a
single compositional event . . . EST provides a conceptual template for
Deuteronomy’s reorientation and subversion of CC’s laws’.81 The exact
ramifications of this insight have yet to be fully outlined and explored by
either scholar, who instead point towards a future co-authored mono-
graph that will unpack this insight, and will surely provide the fullest treat-
ment yet of Deuteronomy’s r e-use of prior textual traditions, both native
and otherwise. It remains to be seen whether this account will be nuanced
by detailed study of scribal culture in ancient Israel and Judah as distinct
from Mesopotamia, and which Levinson’s previous study on the book of
Deuteronomy and the Covenant Code could have benefited from.
77 E.g. Dion, ‘Deuteronomy 13’, p. 168.

78 Stackert, ‘The Syntax of Deuteronomy 13:2-3 and the Conventions of Ancient
Near Eastern Prophecy’.
79 Levinson and Stackert, ‘Between the Covenant Code and Esarhaddon’s Succession
Treaty’.
80 See Chapter Two of this monograph.
81 Levinson and Stackert, ‘Between the Covenant Code and Esarhaddon’s Succession
Treaty’, 137 (their emphasis).
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Deuteronomy 28 and the Aramaic curse

OXFORD THEOLOGY AND RELIGION MONOGRAPHS

OXFORD THEOLOGY AND RELIGION MONOGRAPHS

This book began as my doctoral dissertation, completed at the Faculty

intelligent and conscientious students of the Hebrew Bible whom I

ABC Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries

xii List of Abbreviations

List of Abbreviations xiii

ms T Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaties at Tell Tayinat

xiv List of Abbreviations

SJSJ Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism

2 Deuteronomy 28 and the Aramaic Curse Tradition

of everything, 48you shall have to serve—in hunger and thirst,

4 Deuteronomy 28 and the Aramaic Curse Tradition

The law code of the book of Deuteronomy is capped with a series

6 Deuteronomy 28 and the Aramaic Curse Tradition

The Significance of the Present Study

The significance of the present study lies in several areas. To begin

8 Deuteronomy 28 and the Aramaic Curse Tradition

The study is divided into six chapters. I begin in chapter 1 by reviewing

10 Deuteronomy 28 and the Aramaic Curse Tradition

can observe two streams of Aramaic influence upon Hebrew literature

East Semitic in origin. Instead, by exploring the translation technique

Deuteronomy 28 and Ancient Near

The Basic Formulation

In 1954, George E. Mendenhall published an article that documented

1 G.E. Mendenhall, ‘Covenant Forms in Israelite Tradition’, BA 17 (1954), 49–76.

Deuteronomy 28 and Ancient Near East Curses 13

14 Deuteronomy 28 and the Aramaic Curse Tradition

manuscripts10 deduced from hundreds of deliberately smashed frag-

Deuteronomy 28 and Ancient Near East Curses 15

f­ ormal record of a treaty concerning the royal succession of Esarhaddon’s

16 Deuteronomy 28 and the Aramaic Curse Tradition

two detailed studies of Moshe Weinfeld and Rintje Frankena, which

22 R. Frankena, ‘The Vassal-Treaties of Esarhaddon and the Dating of Deuteronomy’,

Deuteronomy 28 and Ancient Near East Curses 17

Frankena’s hypothesis concerning the relation of Deuteronomy 28 to

18 Deuteronomy 28 and the Aramaic Curse Tradition

The historical reconstructions of Weinfeld and Frankena were not met

30 SAA II, pp. xxviii–xxxi.

Deuteronomy 28 and Ancient Near East Curses 19

20 Deuteronomy 28 and the Aramaic Curse Tradition

Deuteronomic reuse of the Covenant Code, Exodus 20–23.36 Before

Hans-Ulrich Steymans’ monograph-length treatment of the problem

36 B.M. Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation (Oxford:

Deuteronomy 28 and Ancient Near East Curses 21

‘scribes working in the administration of state and temple must have

41 Steymans, ‘Deuteronomy 28 and Tell Tayinat’.

22 Deuteronomy 28 and the Aramaic Curse Tradition

Both criticisms might also be levelled at perhaps one of the most

Deuteronomy 28 and Ancient Near East Curses 23

in Jerusalem;50 in this way, the pre-Dtr Ur-Deuteronomium had its

24 Deuteronomy 28 and the Aramaic Curse Tradition

belonged to the temple library or which constituted a separate collection;55

Deuteronomy 28 and Ancient Near East Curses 25

Less plausible is Otto’s description of the interaction of these scribes

The Nature of Textual Reuse in

Working both separately60 and together,61 Berman M. Levinson and

f ormal record of a treaty concerning the royal succession of Esarhaddon’s