Tree planted by waters in Amenemope and Scripture

 

Koot van Wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Visiting Professor

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint Lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

6 March 2011

 

The metaphor of the fruitbearing tree planted near waters are well known in the literature of the Ancient Near East. From the year 650 BCE comes the work of Amenemope or the Wisdom genre. The source dates from that year and no earlier.

Amenemope Chapter Four Col. VI line 96-107

This unit that we are going to look at was written on a papyrus that used red ink for a line before this unit and red ink for a line after this unit. Clearly the unit is framed by these two red lines (see F. Griffith, JEA 12 [1926]: 191-231).

In lines 96-101 and lines 102-109 are two units that portrays the life and endresult of the bad and good in a well known Ancient Near Eastern metaphor of the fruitbearing tree. Moses already used this metaphor pertaining to the wicked in 1460 BCE when he composed the book of Job, namely in Job 21:18 referring to the agricultural phenomenon of chaff in the wind.

The classical pre-text for this 650 BCE papyrus copy of the Wisdom of Amenemope in thes lines 96-107, is Psalm 1. Notice how Psalm 1 is the shorter more complicated of the two parallels implying seniority over Amenemope.

Psalm 1:3 describes the righteous as a tree by the waters that bears fruit in its season while the wicked is not described in the metaphor explicitly. Implicitly that is the intention of the poet as one can see in Psalm 1:4 "Not so with the wicked".

Amenemope starts off with the Ger Maā as the examplary with a positive side of the same metaphor. By antithetic parallelism it is implied that the Ger Maā is not somebody in the temple of the god (m-h-nr) and he is not of the house of the Lord. One finds him next to the road. This antithesis of localities in 650 BCE Egypt is indicative of a separation between the priestly temple administration and the private "prophet" or wisdom schools next to the "road". In the 7th century BCE Palestine until the martyrdom of Isaiah, that was pretty much the picture in Judah and passages in Micah (a contemporary of Isaiah suggests the same distinction).

Whereas the tree in Psalm 1 is planted next to streams of water for the righteous, here in Amenemope this noisy hotheaded man (p3-šmm) is planted in the courtyard of the temple(?) as in Psalm 92:13. He comes to an end and his unripe fruit drops off and being of no use is thrown into the watercourse, cast in, carried away to a far place to be used as firewood (line 101). The Ger Maā is like a large leafy tree planted not in the courtyard (ntj-š) but on "shining ground" (line 103) (m-tnt). Whereas the hot-headed temple burocrat "comes to an end" (line 98 kmt [Budge] p3jf-3`), the road/mobile school "blossoms" 33 (line 104) it doubles its yield of fruit in Summer (the difference between the metaphor of the righteous as a tree in Psalm 1 and here in Amenemope will be outlined below) it has its place before the lord.

Its foilage/fruit is sweet, its shadow is pleasant (additional elaboration of Amenemope of a cryptic older MT representative pre-text). At its end it is carried into the groves of God. The "of God" is not explicit as elsewhere but an ideogram added inside (m-mnw). In preliminary general observation, it is clear that what existed in the MT as separate pieces of literature in the wisdom-literature in the Hebrew tradition, is pieced together as a mosaic in the Egyptian literature under discussion, almost as if the Egyptian scribe was well versed in the Hebrew Wisdom literature and not only the book of Proverbs as the parallelomaniacs of the past claimed.

Father L. Griffith indicates that the scribe who wrote the three unpublished pages of proverbs at the verso of the papyrus turned it around and at column 6.4-6 or 6.99-101 have smudged and rewrote or corrected in coarser writing with very black ink these lines.

Why did the scribe who wrote the unpublished proverbs at the back saw it fit to correct the portion of the passage that shows resemblance to the metaphor of the good and bad tree in Psalm 1?

Could it be that he felt uncomfortable with the implicit elaboration of the metaphor which is dealt in the Hebrew only implicitly by short suggestions? That is to say, did he not like the fact that Amenemope explicitly considered the final results of the good and bad tree while it is different with Hebrew? In Psalms the bad tree's cycle is not mentioned.

In line 103 it is stated that he is like a large leafy tree that is planted in shining ground. The wisdom analogy of this comparison is in Psalm 1:3 where the tree is planted by living waters. The topography and geomorphological differences between Egypt and Israel demanded a different ideal image for the farmer. The Utopia thought pattern is moulded by the needs and desires of the audience or author who lives under two different circumstances. In Egypt trees are not planted next to living waters and in Palestine they are. In Egypt they are planted in shining ground. Could it be that there was more water in Palestine than in Egypt so that the wisdom thinker of Israel in the time of Solomon (950 BCE) hoped for a certain quality water, but that the Egyptian wisdom thinker 300 years later could only imagine a certain quality of ground.

Griffith commented that in Egypt the pit in which a tree has been planted in a garden is surrounded by a raised rim to retain water (Griffith 1926: 202). In line 8 [also line 103] the word that was confusing etymologically to Sir Budge and even Griffith, was the word for pit. Griffith also recognized the connection simile in Psalm 1.

Looking at line 104, one can see that the Wisdom literature in Egypt of 650 BCE has a similar line as that of Psalm 1:3: "It blossoms, it doubles its yield of fruit in summer". Somehow the language of Psalm 1 and that of Amenemope differ. Psalm does not indicate a season. It can be any season. Amenemope is indicating "summer" explicitly (šmw). According to Amenemope, not only is there a timely advantage of the tree but also will the tree at that time quantitatively add to its yield. Not so in Psalms. There the tree will yield its fruit in its season indicating that not only a specific season's fruit is in mind. In Psalm 1 nothing is said about the quantity of the advantage. The tree (whether of any season) will yield its fruit (not necessarily doubles them as in the case of Amenemope).

In line 105 we see that in short abbreviated words the idiom is carried to its fullest in Amenemope because the farmer knows the extend of the symbolism well. A tree that finds its place before the face of its Lord is one who past the scrutiny of judgment (Psalm 1:5) and is known by its Lord (Psalm 1:6). In the Psalm, the nature is left behind and the priests or learned teacher adresses the judgment motif and the contrasting results of the application. In Amenemope the application is taken for granted so that the deeper application is not explicitly dealt with. The only possible connection with the human application can be that the tree is carried into the groves of God (mnw in line 107). In Psalm 1 the bad tree has an end. Implicitly by parallelism the good tree in Psalm 1:4-6 will stand forever. In Amenemope the good tree has an end and contrary to agricultural practices it is carried into the "groves of God". This phenomenon that the tree receives anthropomorphic attributes at the end of the idiom is a strong indication that Amenemope also attempted to adress the comparison on two levels: concrete nature and humanly applied.

The book of Jeremiah explains that there was a connection between Jeremiah and Egypt as one can see in Jeremiah 2:18 and Jeremiah 44:1. This was the year 586 BCE and that is nearly 75 years after Amenemope. Now also Jeremiah used the tree metaphor as one can see in Jeremiah 17:7-8. There are differences and also comparisons between Amenemope and Jeremiah. Line 101 is against Jeremiah 17:8 that says that she shall not see when heat comes. Line 98 is against Jeremiah 17:8 saying that her leaf shall be green.

It is very important when we analyse and compare biblical and non-biblical material that we honor the dates and chronology of each text separately and do not superimpose one over the other. It is not superimpose when we sometimes do see connections between Psalm 1 and Amenemope, since the Israelites were in the diaspora since 723 BCE. Some of these Assyrian scribes at Niniveh and also in Egypt, were exiled Israelites and thus Hebrews who knew Psalm 1 as pre-text very well. Connections at Niniveh at that library of Ashurbanipal in 660 BCE has already been shown by this researcher in previous articles at http://www.egw.org. Similar ones can be expected also in Egypt and the Wisdom of Amenemope is such an example.

 

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