Rev. Bryant J. Williams III:
1. I agree with your synopsis of Numbers 21.
2. You then wrote: “Balak in Numbers 22-25 tries to curse the
Israelites through Balaam, but that did not work. You will notice that Balak
had
Moabite and Midian elders try to purchase Balaam to curse the Israelites.”
Certainly you would agree that Balaam himself is from eastern Syria, near
the Upper Euphrates River. I believe that is agreed to by all analysts.
Deuteronomy 23: 4; Numbers 22: 5
At Numbers 31: 8, Balaam is connected with “five kings of MDYN”, who
appear to be 5 princelings in the former state of Mitanni in eastern Syria,
not
long after the central state apparatus of Mitanni had effectively
disappeared in the mid-13th century BCE. As to their names, in addition to CWR
[discussed in #3 below], the most obvious name from Mitanni is XWR, which is
the attested name Xu-ú-ra at Mitanni; that name recalls the Hurrians of
Mitanni based on the sound.
In connection with the names analyzed at #3 below, it’s very clear that
various persons from Mitanni with classic Mitannian names are involved here.
To me, that backs up, rather than undercuts, my assertion that Biblical “
Midian”/MDYN = historical Mitanni, the Late Bronze Age Hurrian state in
eastern Syria.
3. You wrote: “This gives even more credence to the story that Midian
is near the Dead Sea since it was the Israelites who put to death all the
inhabitants of Midian after the "Sin of Baal-Peor" (Numbers 25).”
Actually, Numbers 25 reports the killing of only one person from MDYN:
Cosbi/KZBY, daughter to Zur/CWR. Numbers 25: 15. The name CWR of a man
from MDYN/Mitanni is redolent of $u-ú-ri, an attested name at Mitanni. At
Mitanni, a sin or emphatic sin/ssade most often comes out as a shin/$. This
is a 3-segment name, thus having 3 Hebrew letters. As with the name XWR
above, the Hebrew vav/W here is rendering the Hurrian accented vowel U.
As to the woman’s name KZBY, note the following attested woman’s name at
Mitanni: Ki-za-a-a. If the frequent suffix -ba were added after the root
and before the theophoric ending, that name would be Ki-za-ba-ya, which is
the Biblical name KZBY.
4. You wrote: “It does not make any sense for the Israelites to travel
over 300 + miles to destroy the inhabitants of Mitanni (if Midian is
Mitanni; which it is not) when the scene of the crime with Balaam is near
Jericho where the battle against Og, Sihon and Balak had occurred.”
I don’t know if I’m quite following you there. The Israelites never went
to Mitanni/MDYN, that’s for sure. The farthest northeast the Israelites
ever got with Moses was the “desert”/XRB mountain Jabal al-Druze, near the
city of Ashtaroth, east of the Sea of Galilee in the northern Transjordan.
That’s about 100 miles south of MDYN/Mitanni. It’s where Moses had led
his father-in-law’s flock at Exodus 3: 1 and encountered the burning bush at
Exodus 3: 2-4, and it’s the mountain at which YHWH commanded Moses to “
serve God” eternally at Exodus 3: 12. T-h-a-t indeed is why Moses attacked
princeling Og [E-wa-ge] and conquered Bashan for the Israelites.
I certainly agree with you that the Israelites then massed for the
Conquest at Jericho, far, far south of Bashan. That’s actually my point, you
see.
Bashan was not on the route of the Conquest, not by a long shot; nor
was Bashan part of the originally Promised Land of Canaan, west of the Jordan
River. So then why did Moses march the Israelites up north to Bashan in
the northern Transjordan? The reason, in my opinion, is that Moses was
divinely commanded to take over for the Israelites permanent possession of the
“
desert”/XRB mountain where Moses had seen the burning bush: Jabal
al-Druze, 100 miles south of MDYN/Mitanni, east of the Sea of Galilee near the
city
of Ashtaroth, in the northern Transjordan.
* * *
Rev. Bryant J. Williams III, I think we’re agreeing on most aspects of
what is said in the Bible in these various connections. The one place where
you and I disagree is whether MDYN is way down south in Arabia near Aqaba
[the traditional view, but no name MDYN is attested there, and Zipporah of
MDYN sure as heck doesn’t act like an Arabian woman, being w-a-y too
assertive and aggressive, while initially opposing circumcision, so that
Zipporah
acts e-x-a-c-t-l-y as would be expected of a woman from Mitanni], or
whether MDYN instead is historical Mitanni in Late Bronze Age eastern Syria.
If it helps clarify my position, the Israelites under Moses’ command never
got farther north than the northern Transjordan, being about 100 miles or
so south of MDYN/Mitanni.
Balaam is definitely from eastern Syria, so he fits better with 5
princelings of MDYN/Mitanni from eastern Syria than he would with 5
princelings from
Arabia near Aqaba!
If I’m somehow missing the gist of what you’re saying [since I think I
agree with most of your analysis, except the identity of MDYN], please
clarify what you’re asserting and then we’ll take a closer look at it, based
on
the Biblical texts. We all learn in these exchanges of different points of
view, especially if we keep citing and analyzing relevant Bible verses.
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois
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