Special Issue IOSOT 2013 - Books and Journals

D. T. Tsumura / Vetus Testamentum IOSOT (2013) 113-116 115
in KTU 1.10:II:21-22 may support “the close association of ‘horn’ and ‘power’ ” in
this passage.9
On the other hand, the term has been taken as “rays” in the light of qrn “to
shine” in Ex. xxiv 29-35 as well as of the rays issuing from the body of solar
deities in ANE iconography.10 N. Shupak, who sees here the symbolism of the
Egyptian sun god from the Amarna period, interprets the second line as having
the meaning of “God’s rays are his hands”.11 However, as Andersen warns us,
“Poetic comparison of God with the sun is a literary resource, a commonplace,
but it is going too far to find behind such language either an original hymn
to the sun transferred to Yahweh or traces of an ancient identity of Yahweh
and the sun god.”12
The scholary world is thus divided between the view which takes qarnayim
as “horns” and the view which takes it as “rays” and between the position which
sees here a storm-god image and that which sees a solar-god image. However,
the close connection between “horns” and “rays” has been noted in the description
of the new moon as “horned” in Mesopotamia and Ugarit.13 Also, in an
Eblaite incantation text the phrases “the tail of the Sun” and “the two horns of
San-Ugaru (= Moon-of-the-Field)” appear. In this context both “the tail” of the
sun and the “two horns” of the moon refer to “ray(s)” of the sun and the moon
respectively.14 Nevertheless, in these extra-biblical texts the “horn” is associated
with the rays of the moon rather than of the sun.
But, in some cases, the “horn(s)” is associated with the rays or brilliance of
the sun. For example, the horns of the crown of Enlil, who is like a wild ox,
are said to “shine like the brilliance of the sun” (kīma šarūr šamši ittananbiṭu)
(BA 10/1 83 No. 9:14f.).15 The association of “horn” and “ray” is in fact made possible
in Sumerian by the sign SI, which is identified sometimes with Akk. qarnu
(“horn”) and sometimes with Akk. šarūru (“radiance, brilliance, sunlight”).16 As
Andersen notes, “if the sun of the first five colons [of the Habakkuk passage, i.e.
vs. 3-4a] supplies the picture, the ‘rays’ could be the beams of light that come
9) Haak, Habakkuk, p. 87.
10) Haak, Habakkuk, p. 86, n. 373.
11) Shupak, “The God from Teman and the Egyptian Sun God”, pp. 105-06.
12) F. I. Andersen, Habakkuk: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 25; New
York, 2001), p. 298.
13) Haak, Habakkuk, p. 88, n. 386. For the horns of the moon, see CAD, Q, p. 137. See also
C. H. Gordon, Ugaritic Textbook (Rome, 1965), §19.2279.
14) C. H. Gordon, “The Ebla Exorcisms”, Eblaitica 3 (1992), pp. 136-37.
15) CAD, Sh/II (1992), p. 141; Q (1982), p. 139.
16) CAD, Sh/II (1992), p. 141.