In the Heart of the Sea: Fathoming the Exodus

Author(s): Marjorie ORourke Boyle

Source: Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 63, No. 1 (January 2004), pp. 17-27
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/382556
Accessed: 02-02-2017 21:56 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Journal of Near Eastern Studies

This content downloaded from 154.59.124.59 on Thu, 02 Feb 2017 21:56:10 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
IN THE HEART OF THE SEA: FATHOMING THE EXODUS

MARJORIE OROURKE BOYLE, University of Toronto

T he title of a current bestseller is a misnomer. In the Heart of the Sea narrates the
unprecedented tragedy of the ship Essex, rammed, stove, and sunk by a harpooned sperm
whale. It happened in the Pacic, at latitude 0o40u south of the equator, longitude 110o0u
west, more than 1,500 nautical miles from the Galapagos Islands. Herman Melville, who
launched his novel Moby Dick in its wake, called that ocean the tide-beating heart of the
earth. Although the whalers rst mate wondered what unaccountable destiny or design
had shipwrecked its crew, there is no just comparison of the tale of the Essex with the book
of Exodus. Yet, as the epigraph cites, its title is borrowed from the drowning of Pharaohs
army in the Red Sea.1
This arrogation for a nineteenth-century a.d. misadventure illustrates both the endurance
of biblical literature and its misconstruction in popular imagination. Yet biblical scholarship
itself has set adrift the heart of the sea (leb yam). Its negligence disregards a unique con-
vergence of essential biblical beliefs. These are heart (leb, lebab) as the primary anthro-
pological concept in the Hebrew Scriptures2 and the exodus as its normative historical
event and traditional basis for faith.3 The Revised Standard Version reads: At the blast of
thy nostrils the waters piled up,/ the oods stood up in a heap;/ the deeps congealed in the
heart of the sea (Exod. 15:8). The verse is from the Song of the Sea, attributed to Moses
and the Israelites upon their famous deliverance from the pursuing Egyptian army.
In the prose narrative that frames this Song, the Israelites walk securely through a sea-
bed dried up by a strong east wind blowing all night, so that divided waters wall off the
enemy. The Egyptians follow sluggishly in their chariots, their wheels clogged by divine
designor mud and marsh. In the morning the waters rush back to their normal channel,
overwhelming the charioteers and drowning them all. The Israelites witness them washed
up dead on shore (Exod. 14:2131, 15:1920). This account parallels the Israelites going
into the midst of the sea and the Egyptians going into the midst of the sea (14:21). It
declares that the Lord overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea (v. 27). This later
narrative has so determined the meaning of the original Song that in the heart of the sea

1 Nathaniel Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea: The
Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex (New York, 2000),
pp. 90, 89.
2 Hans W. Wolff, The Anthropology of the Old Tes-
tament, trans. Margaret Kohl (London, 1974), p. 40,
who counts 858 occurrences.
[JNES 63 no. 1 (2004)]
2004 by The University of Chicago.
All rights reserved.
002229682004/63010002$10.00.
3 The most primitive of the afrmations of the old
credos (Deut. 26:8, 6:2123; Josh. 24:67; 1 Sam.
12:6), . . . from early times to late . . . celebrated and
contemporanized in song and ritual. James Muilen-
burg, A Liturgy on the Triumphs of Yahweh, in Stu-
dia biblica et semitica (Wageningen, 1966), p. 233.
Recently, canonical, Water Brueggeman, The Book
of Exodus, in The New Interpreters Bible, 12 vols.
(Nashville, 1994), 1:799. See also Ronald Hendel,
The Exodus in Biblical Memory, Journal of Biblical
Literature 120 (2001): 601.

17

This content downloaded from 154.59.124.59 on Thu, 02 Feb 2017 21:56:10 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
18 Journal of Near Eastern Studies

(15:8) has come to mean in the midst of the sea. The translation is as classical and in-
uential as the Vulgate versions in medio mari.4
Yet biblical poetry inset into prose does not typically develop the narrative but, rather,
interprets it after its resolution. Theme, not plot, is central.5 This particular poem, the an-
cient and primary celebration of the exodus,6 is not simply a variant of the prose, despite
their juxtaposition in the redaction of Exodus.7 Its distinctive characterits very lack of
narrativehas been well delineated. Absent are the spectacular elements canonized by the
prose narrative and publicized in modern cinematography. In the poem there is no parting
of the sea, or dry path blown by the east wind to allow an Israelite crossing, or receding of
parted waters upon the Egyptians. Safe passage is but an allusion. The exodus is only in-
ferable from the promised landing of the Israelites on the mountain as a sanctuary (Exod.
15:17).8 The poem tacitly allows for an alternative route for the Israelites, who need not
have passed through the sea. They could have skirted its edge, while the Egyptians chose to
cross it as a shortcut, hoping to catch up with them on the far shore. Literally there is no
exodus, no road out (from the Greek hodos), in the Song of the Sea.
The survey of the phenomenology and signicance of water in the Hebrew Scriptures
omits the heart of the sea from its index of terms but understands it as the bottom of the
sea, with remote, hidden caverns.9 Analysis of the poetic vocabulary of Exodus 15, as es-
tablishing continuity with the prose recital of Exodus 14, ignores the heart of the sea.10
So does extensive scholarship on the poems literary and redactional issues, as if its meaning
were obvious or trivial. A fresh exception glosses it to prove that the waters were mirac-
ulously frozen, both laterally and vertically. This gloss extends a misinterpretation of the sea
as frozen into solid ice to create a path for the Israelites.11 There is no parting of the wa-

4 For example, Frank M. Cross and David Noel
Freedman, The Song of Miriam, JNES 14 (1955):
241; Umberto Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of
Exodus (Jerusalem, 1967), p. 175.
5 James W. Watts, This Song: Conspicuous
Poetry in Hebrew Prose, in Johannes C. de Moor and
Wilfred G. E. Watson, eds., Verse in Ancient Near East-
ern Prose, Alter Orient und Altes Testament, vol. 42
(Kevelaer, 1993), p. 353, without mention of Exodus
15. His dating of it to after the nal redaction (p. 356)
contradicts his statement that lack of plot role cannot
serve as evidence that a poem has been inserted into
the prose secondarily (p. 353).
6 Frank M. Cross, The Song of the Sea and Ca-
naanite Myth, in Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic:
Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel (Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1973), p. 123; Cross and Freedman,
Song of Miriam, p. 239. The early dating is con-
tested by, for example, Martin L. Brenner, in The Song
of the Sea: Ex. 15:121, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fr die
alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 195 (Berlin, 1991).
7 Source criticism varies the attribution. For its po-
etics as a fulcrum point for Exodus in its Priestly re-
daction, see Mark S. Smith with Elizabeth M. Bloch-
Smith, The Pilgrimage Pattern in Exodus, Journal for
the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series 239
(Shefeld, 1997), pp. 20426.
8 Cross, The Song of the Sea and Canaanite
Myth, p. 131; Cross and Freedman, Song of Mi-
riam, p. 238. For the lack of exposition in Exod. 15 as
peculiar to biblical poetry among ancient Mediterra-
nean literatures, see Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical
Poetry (New York, 1985), p. 27.
9 Philippe Reymond, Leau, sa vie, et sa signica-
tion dans lAncien Testament, Vetus Testamentum Sup-
plements, 6 (Leiden, 1958), pp. 263, 169. See also
depths, in Cornelis Houtman, Exodus, vol. 2 (Kam-
pen, 1996), p. 283.
10 Bernard Gosse, Le texte dExode 15, 121 dans
la rdaction biblique, Biblische Zeitschrift 37 (1993):
269.
11 William H. C. Propp, Exodus 118: A New
Translation with Introduction and Commentary, An-
chor Bible, 2 (New York, 1999), p. 523. For freezing,
see also Samuel E. Loewenstamm, The Evolution of the
Exodus Tradition, trans. Baruch J. Schwerte (Jerusa-
lem, 1992), p. 267; Alter, Art of Biblical Poetry, p. 51;
Moshe Weinfeld, Divine Intervention in War in An-
cient Israel and in the Ancient Near East, in H. Tad-
mor and M. Weinfeld, eds., History, Historiography,
and Interpretation: Studies in Biblical and Cuneiform
Literatures (Jerusalem, 1983), p. 137; Cassuto, Com-
mentary, p. 175.

This content downloaded from 154.59.124.59 on Thu, 02 Feb 2017 21:56:10 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 In the Heart of The Sea: Fathoming the Exodus 19

ters in Exodus 15 to justify this imagination of a walled path. The assumption is imported
from Exodus 14 to account for the promised landing on the mountain.12
Fascination with the phenomenon/miracle expressed in the verb qp dominates scholarly
attention to the verse about activity in the heart of the sea (Exod. 15:8). Controversy per-
sists over its meaning, whether congeal or antithetically churn.13 The translation churn
honors the motion of the sea, while congeal (AV, RSV) is a scientic anachronism. There
was no prescience of phase transitions in telling the exodus. Although the ancient Israel-
ites might have observed water freezing, they would not have known the phenomenon as
freezing. The formation of ice in the sea is very complex, analyzed in the modern ther-
modynamic model by exchanges of energy.14 Among the ancients, however, engineering
preceded physics. Focus was on the control, not the understanding, of nature. The Egyp-
tians, under whom the Israelites labored as brick makers (Exod. 5:719), were advanced in
the design and construction of systems to regulate water, such as dams, irrigation canals,
and underground channels. Their principles of hydrology, however, were extremely crude.
Hellenic civilization around 600 b.c. ventured the earliest speculations. The pre-Socratic
philosopher Anaximenes supposed the colder water was, the denser, so that in theory water
would contract in freezing. The conjecture lacked observation and experimentation, for the
opposite is true: in freezing, water expands.15 The foundation of atmospheric science was
established by Aristotles Meterologica, which theorized that the formation of ice in air
as frost and snowresulted from a temperature sufciently low to solidify water vapor.16
Only in early modern science would this become the xed point of 0o Celsius, however,
for temperature lagged more than a millennium behind mechanics, with thermometers de-
veloped in the seventeenth century a.d. and specic heats measured in the eighteenth.17
The notion of a congealed sea (AV, RSV) is Latinate, probably derived from the phi-
lologist Varros mare congelatum. His De re rustica comments that northern Europe is not
navigable for half the year because of the frozen sea. Although this is an agricultural
treatise, the remark is ethnographical, rather than physical, for it occurs in an encomium for
Italys temperate climate.18 The comment is in the Greek tradition that identied and judged
the character of nations by their environment of geography, climate, and terrain. The civ-
ilized dwelled in the temperate zone, while the barbarians inhabited the cold and hot zones.19

12 For a philological analysis of the parallel verbs of
this verse to disprove that they connote a wall, see
Al Wolters, Not Rescue but Destruction: Rereading
Exodus 15:8, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 52 (1990):
223 40. He also documents the normative misinterpre-
tation of Exodus 15 by chap. 14, p. 224. Wolters, how-
ever, slips into interpreting the heart of the sea as
the depths of the sea.
13 Cross and Freedman, Song of Miriam, p. 241.
Cf. foam in Smith, Pilgrimage Pattern, p. 209 and
n. 19.
14 See Wang Zhilian and Wu Huiding, Thermody-
namic Processes of Sea Ice and Their Coupling Simu-
lation with Dynamic Process, in Yu Zhouwen, ed.,
Sea Ice: Observation and Modelling, Proceedings of
93s International Symposium on Sea Ice (Beijing,
1994), p. 101.
15 Asit K. Biswas, History of Hydrology (Amster-
dam, 1970), pp. 135, 48. For Anaximenes, see F. M.
Cornford, Was the Ionian Philosophy Scientic?
Journal of Hellenic Studies 62 (1942): 12.
16 Aristotle, Meteorologica 347a. G. S. H. Lock, The
Growth and Decay of Ice (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 20,
167.
17 Keith J. Laidler, The World of Physical Chemistry
(Oxford, 1993), p. 84.
18 Varro, De re rustica 1.2.4; On Agriculture, trans.
William D. Hooper, rev. Harrison B. Ash (Cambridge,
Mass., 1979), p. 169. Note that Varro mislocates the
Arctic region just north of the Alps.
19 The classic text is Hippocrates, De aere, locis,
et aquis. See also Edith Hall, Inventing the Barbarian:
Greek Self-Denition through Tragedy (Oxford, 1989);
Timothy Long, Barbarians in Greek Comedy (Carbon-
dale, Illinois, 1986), pp. 12956; Steven W. Hirsch, The
Friendship of the Barbarians: Xenophon and the Per-
sian Empire (Hanover, New Hampshire, 1985); Ana-
stasios G. Nikolaides, Hellenikos-barbarikos: Plutarch

This content downloaded from 154.59.124.59 on Thu, 02 Feb 2017 21:56:10 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
20 Journal of Near Eastern Studies

Even the Vulgate version did not follow Varro into the mare congelatum but rendered the
Hebrew verb congregata.20 This seems more appropriate. The rare biblical verb qp recurs
about other liquids, in Job 10:10 for the curdling of milk and in Zeph. 1:12 for the sedi-
mentation of wine. This varied attribution recommends its revision to an unscientic mean-
ing such as collected. The freezing of water and the curdling or sedimentation of other
liquids (Job 10:10; Zeph. 1:12) are very different processes, pertaining to the distinct
branches of physical chemistry and biochemistry. The freezing of water is a physical func-
tion of cooling temperature. As crystallization occurs, liberating latent heat during the phase
transition, the agitation of the H2O molecules slows almost to inaction. The curdling and
sedimentation of other liquids, such as milk or wine, result from different, biochemical re-
actions. The biblical appropriation of the same verb to designate these very dissimilar pro-
cesses betrays a supercial observation of liquids thickening or hardening. Even the concept
of solidication21 is too sophisticated, for it involves a complex interplay of many physi-
cal effects,22 beyond the ken of ancient poets.
Collection is the very denition of the sea. In the creational story of Genesis, the waters
that were gathered together he called Seas (Gen. 1:10; cf. Ps. 33:7). Revision to this sim-
pler physical aggregation accords well with the poetic parallelism of the Song of the Sea:
the waters piled up,/ the oods stood up in a heap;/ the deeps gathered in the heart of the
sea (Exod. 15:8). Tautologically the sea acted as the sea is. Yet, despite this consistent col-
lection, the parallelism is not simple synonymity. In biblical poetry, parallels of two verses
develop emphatically from the standard to the literary, the common to the metaphorical, the
prosaic to the poetic, the literal to the gurativeall to reinforce or intensify meaning, or
to focus and specify it. This characteristic invention by sequence and specication23 is
employed in this verse. There is that third parallel, with a coda: waters pile up, oods heap
up, deeps gather in the heart of the sea. Yet, beyond descriptive seascape, what does the
coda convey about these swells?
In the scant commentary on the phrase as recurrent in later biblical books, the seas
heart is assumed to be a location. This heart lies either beneath the surface or at it as
an island or a ship.24 Yet, these verses are all poetry and very likely repeat the phrase from
Exod. 15:8, rendering the argument circular. Most of the texts are interrelated: Jonahs de-
pends on Ezekiels25 or on the Psalms.26 Ezekiel depends on the Psalms, supposedly con-

an active free boundary from which latent heat is liber-

on Greek and Barbarian Characteristics, Wiener Stu-
dien 20 (1986): 229 44; Reimar Mller, Hellenen
und Barbaren in der griechischen Philosophie, in
Menschenbild und Humanismus der Antike: Studien
zur Geschichte der Literatur und Philosophie (Frank-
furt, 1981), pp. 11134.
20 Also noted by Wolters, Not Rescue but Destruc-
tion, p. 235, who correctly states that the Latin means
collection or gathering, not solidication. Cf. coagu-
latae, in John Calvin, Quatuor in formam harmoniae,
in Eduard Reuss, Eduard Cunitz, and Johann Wilhelm
Baum, eds., Opera quae supersunt omnia, Corpus re-
formatorum, vol. 52; 59 vols. in 26 (Brunswick, Ger-
many, 18631900), vol. 24, p. 157.
21 For example, turned solid, in Houtman, Exodus,
vol. 2, p. 283; solidify, Brenner, Song of the Sea, p. 24.
22 See Stephen H. Davis, Theory of Solidication
(Cambridge, 2001), p. 1. The solid-liquid interface is
ated during phase transformation.
23 See Alter, Art of Biblical Poetry, pp. 1323, 29,
33, 38, 62, 63, 94. See also James L. Kugel, The Idea
of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History (New
Haven, Conn., 1981), pp. 158.
24 Jon. 2:4; Ezek, 27:27; 28:8; Ps. 46:2, or Ezek.
27:4, 25; 28:2; Prov. 23:34; 30:19. Propp, Exodus,
p. 523.
25 See Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 2137, Anchor
Bible, vol. 22A (New York, 1997), p. 575; Jack M. Sas-
son, Jonah, Anchor Bible, vol. 24B (New York, 1990),
p. 23.
26 Kenneth M. Craig, Jr., A Poetics of Jonah: Art
in the Service of Ideology (Columbia, South Carolina,
1993), p. 86. For the debate on an independently com-
posed psalm, see Phyllis Trible, Rhetorical Criticism:
Context, Method, and the Book of Jonah (Minneapolis,
1994), pp. 16061.

One Line Long

This content downloaded from 154.59.124.59 on Thu, 02 Feb 2017 21:56:10 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 In the Heart of The Sea: Fathoming the Exodus 21

verting the general gure of the heart of the seas to the specic location of Tyre.27 But
is the phrase a general gure? Interpretation thus reverts to the Song of the Sea. Jonahs
prayer from the belly of the sh strikingly echoes the exodus. The prophet ees, experi-
ences a tempest at sea raised by the Lords great wind, and is cast into the deep. In distress
he acknowledges the Lords hand. For thou didst cast me into the deep,/ into the heart of
the seas,/ and the ood was round about me;/ all thy waves and thy billows passed over
me (Jon. 2:2). The verse also associates with those psalms designating a judicial ordeal to
determine innocence or guilt by immersion in a rushing river.28
Ezekiels phrase the heart of the sea has been interpreted as initially no more than
in the water (Ezek. 27:4) and subsequently on the high seas (vv. 2627). The word
heart occurs eight times in the brief oracle, as the seat of pride (28:2, 5), the seat of
wisdom or mind (vv. 2, 6), and the inner partas opposed to the shoreof the sea (vv. 2,
8).29 The translation high seas (cf. Prov. 30:19) is infelicitous, however, because of the
legal denotations of the term in English: the sea within the jurisdiction of the courts of
admiralty and the area not within the territorial jurisdiction of any nation, but the free
highway of any nation.30 Whereas the RSV translates high seas, the AV repeats the Vul-
gates midst, avoiding the legalism common in seventeenth-century England.
Ezekiels lamentation against Tyre locates its borders in the heart of the sea (Ezek.
27:4), which the following verses clarify as metaphorically the city/nation as a mercantile
ship. Laden with choice wares for trade, it was in the heart of the seasparalleled with
into the high seaswhen an east wind wrecked it in the heart of the seas. The pilot
and crew, the men of war, and the rich cargo sink into the heart of the seas on the day of
your ruin (vv. 26, 28). Ezekiels lamentation explains the reason for the shipwreck: be-
cause your heart is proud,/ and you have said, I am a god, I sit in the seat of the gods, in
the heart of the seas, yet you are but a man, and no god, though you consider yourself as
wise as a god (28:1). Because of this arrogation of divine wisdom in lucrative trading,
God threatens that a foreign and terrible nation will dele its beauty with the sword.
They shall thrust you down into the Pit,/ and you shall die the death of the slain/ in the
heart of the seas (v. 8). This lamentation again imitates the Exodus narrative and poem
in the enemys proud claim to divine status, the military motif of Yhwh as a man of war,
wreckage by the east wind, and sinking into the seas to death. The attribution of the ship
of Tyre as heavily laden (Ezek. 27:25) notably repeats kbd. This amply described Pha-
raohs hardened heart31 and the strophic motif of the sinking of his charioteers in the sea
like a stone, like lead, like a stone (Exod. 15:5, 10, 16; cf. Neh. 9:11).
Another contention has been that lebab rarely refers to the inside of inanimate objects,
with its construct with waters in Jonah as unique. In prose the expression the heart of
the sea supposedly means open sea(s), in poetry an unfathomable and unchartable ex-
panse that can swallow mountains whole and even contain the congealed Deep. It thus sym-
bolizes a hopeless situation.32 This inference from extension to despair is a non sequitur.

27 Greenberg, Ezekiel, p. 575.
28 See P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., The River Ordeal in
Israelite Literature, Harvard Theological Review 66
(1973): 403 4.
29 Greenberg, Ezekiel 2137, pp. 549, 573.
30 Oxford English Dictionary (unabridged), s.v.
31 Exod. 8:11, 28; 7:14; 9:7, 34; 10:1, 27.
32 Sasson, Jonah, pp. 17475. For the heart of the
sea as its interior, see also Stanislav Sergert, Cross-
ing the Waters: Moses and Hamilcar, JNES 53 (1994):
197.

This content downloaded from 154.59.124.59 on Thu, 02 Feb 2017 21:56:10 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
22 Journal of Near Eastern Studies

Moreover, the claim that the heart of the seas can refer to the inside of an inanimate ob-
ject has no scriptural basis. Only a few verses even support the location of heart inside
an animate being: always the body of a male warrior. These few texts all involve sharp
weaponsarrow, dart, swordpiercing an enemy (2 Sam. 18:14; 2 Kings 9:24; Pss. 37:15,
45:5). The most instructive example is the stabbing of Absalom. Since he had stolen the
hearts of the men of Israel (2 Sam. 15:6, 13), the retribution was meet according to the law
of talion: a heart taken for hearts taken. The reference of these several texts is not to the
physical location of heart but to its just punishment. The placement of heart within the
body accords with psychosomatism. There is no biblical evidence of any anatomical or
physiological knowledge among the ancient Israelites of the cardiac organ.33 The general-
ization that biblical heart means insides34 is gratuitous.
None of the historical retrospectives and none of the psalms attributed to the exodus re-
peat the word heart.35 Although the deliverance has been appraised as a minor theme in
the psalter,36 one psalm does echo the phrase the heart of the sea. It afrms Gods security
and strength for Israel as the militant Lord of hosts, who breaks bows, shatters spears, and
burns chariots, to win victory. Therefore we will not fear though the earth should change,/
though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea (Ps. 46:2). The psalm echoes the mar-
tial spirit of the Song of the Sea, even its incongruent image of water mixed with re,
when Pharaohs drowning chariots are destroyed by a divine fury that burns them like
chaff (Exod. 15:7). The famous historical citation of the Song of the Sea is military: in Eu-
sebiuss praise of Constantines defeat of Maxentius at the Mulvian Bridge to establish the
western Roman Empire.37 In sum, the common reference of the several biblical citations
of the heart of the sea(s) beyond Exod. 15:8 is to the divine destruction of an enemy of
Israel by punishment to death.
The Song of the Sea exults in its initial verse that the Lord has thrown the Egyptian
charioteers into the sea (Exod. 15:1). It emphasizes that they are cast into the sea and
sunk in the Red Sea (v. 4). These verses have been assumed to indicate location, either
geographical as a reedy lake or mythological as the maws of the monster Yam. Scholarship
intent on establishing the historicity of the exodus has deliberated archaeological evidence
to locate the Re(e)d Sea among a series of waters along the Isthmus of Suez: Lakes Man-
zeleh and Bardawil, El-Ballah, Timsah, and the Bitter Lakes. Also regarded is the Red Sea
(Gulf of Suez) itself, since in antiquity its northern boundary may have seasonally over-
owed to the southern boundary of the Bitter Lakes, rendering both sea of reeds and
Red Sea accurate translations. The exodus has also been rejected as unhistorical: a c-
tional invention of Israels national origins, an etiological and ideological myth. The once
radical proposal, now a respectable opinion, is that Israel never was in Egypt, but a pas-
toral tribe indigenous to Canaan.38

33 See my article, The Law of the Heart: The Death
of a Fool (1 Samuel 25), Journal of Biblical Litera-
ture 120 (2001): 40127.
34 Harold Louis Ginzberg, Heart, in Encyclopedia
Judaica, vol. 8: 7.
35 See, for example, Deut. 11:4; Josh. 4:23, 24:6
7; Judg. 11:16; Pss. 78:13, 53; 106:7, 9, 22; 136:1315.
36 Susan Gillingham, The Exodus Tradition and
Israelite Psalmody, Scottish Journal of Theology 52
(1999): 19 46.
37 Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 9.9.59; Vita
Constantini 1.78.
38 James K. Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt: The Evi-
dence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition
(New York, 1997), pp. 199222, 2551.

This content downloaded from 154.59.124.59 on Thu, 02 Feb 2017 21:56:10 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 In the Heart of The Sea: Fathoming the Exodus 23

A consensus interprets the conict at the Re(e)d Sea as mythological, derived from com-
parative Canaanite texts of divine creation by the defeat of chaos, embodied as a sea mon-
ster.39 Yet, the Song of the Sea celebrates no such mythological combat between inimical
deities. Yam (sea) is neither personied nor hostile. Yam is a divinely controlled agent against
the enemy, which is not cosmological but human, the Egyptian army. The breath of Yhwh
stirs the placid sea into a destructive storm.40 The trumpets blast that mustered holy war41
is imitated by Yhwh blowing through his nostrils like a wind instrument. To the precise
point: the comparative creational myths are heartless. Yam lacks heart. There is only the
Akkadian phrase in the heart (ina libbi) associated with a ship sailing going to sea or
situated in the midst of the sea.42
Beneath the hermeneutics of fact versus ction lies the unplumbed but deep meaning of
in the heart of the sea. The phrase is almost unique in the Hebrew Scriptures for its natural,
impersonal attribution. The single other occurrence is the heart of the heaven (Deut. 4:11).
This signicantly relates to the heart of the sea, for the Song of the Sea established a
motif of movement from the sea to the mountain (Exod. 15:17). Toward the heart of the
heaven the mountain burns with re. From that re the Lord speaks to Moses the ten com-
mandments in the presence of the assembled people (Deut. 4:11). Beyond the sea and the
heaven, all other biblical hearts belong to God, to humans, or to Leviathan/crocodile (Job
41:24). That creature also relates to the exodus because its heart is hard, like Pharaohs.
This notorious hardness is the most prominent attribution of quasi-materiality to heart,
occurring numerous times in Exodus and later books.43 Its meaning is not physical, how-
ever, but gurative. It signies stubborn resistance to a divine command, paradigmatically
Pharaohs refusal to let the Israelites go from Egypt. The reverse of hardenedmelted
does not designate softening and yielding, but fearing. This fright usually reacts to words,
especially the report of an enemys might.44 Melting is related to hearts trembling, fainting,
and failing, usually in a military context.45 Of the other sensual qualities classically attrib-
uted to material objectshot and cold, smooth and rough, dry and wet, etc.only heat is

39 See, for example, Carola Kloos, Yhwhs Combat
with the Sea: A Canaanite Tradition in the Religion of
Ancient Israel (Amsterdam and Leiden, 1986); John
Day, God s Conict with the Dragon and the Sea: The
Echoes of a Canaanite Myth in the Old Testament
(Cambridge, 1985); Mary K. Wakeman, God s Battle
with the Monster: A Study in Biblical Imagery (Lei-
den, 1973) and many commentaries and articles.
40 Cross, Song of the Sea, pp. 13132; Cross and 34, 35; 10:1, 20, 27; 11:10; 14:4, 8, 17; cf. 1 Sam. 6:6; Ps.
Freedman, Song of Miriam, p. 239. See also Sa-
Moon Kang, Divine War in the Old Testament and
in the Ancient Near East, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fr
die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 177 (Berlin, 1989),
pp. 12324; Alan J. Hauser, Two Songs of Victory:
A Comparison of Exodus 15 and Judges 5, in Elaine
R. Follis, ed., Directions in Biblical Hebrew Poetry
(Shefeld, 1987), p. 270; Neil Forsyth, The Old Enemy:
Satan and the Combat Myth (Princeton, 1987), p. 95;
Brevard S. Childs, The Book of Exodus: A Critical
Theological Commentary (Philadelphia, 1974), p. 251;
Martin Noth, Exodus: A Commentary, trans. J. S. Bow-
den (London, 1962), p. 251.
41 Gerhard von Rad, Holy War in Ancient Israel,
trans. Marva J. Dawn (Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1958),
p. 41.
42 See Jrgen A. Knudtzon, ed., Die El-Amarna
Tafeln 114.19, 288.33, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1915), cited
by Kloos, Yhwhs Combat, p. 129; William L. Moran,
ed. and trans., The Amarna Letters (Baltimore, 1992),
pp. 188, 221.
43 Exod. 4:21, 7:3, 13, 14, 22; 8:15, 19, 32; 9:7, 12,
81:12; Jer. 7:24; 11:8; 13:10; 18:12; Zech. 7:12; Ezek.
3:7. See also Deut. 2:30; 15:7; Josh. 11:20; 2 Chron.
36:13; Pss. 95:8; Prov. 28:14; Isa. 63:17; 11:19;
36:26; Dan. 5:20; Pss. 17:10; 81:12; Isa. 46:12; Jer.
5:23; 7:24; 9:14; 11:8; 13:10; 18:12, 23:17; Lam.
3:65.
44 Deut. 1:28, 20:8; Josh. 2:11, 5:1, 7:5, 14:8; Isa.
19:1; Ezek. 21:7, 15; Isa. 13:7.
45 Lev. 26:36; Deut. 20:3; Job 23:26; Ps. 61:2; Isa.
1:5, 7:4; Jer. 51:46; Lam. 1:22; Nah. 2:10; Deut. 28:65
67; 1 Sam. 4:13, 17:32, 25:37, 28:5; Job 37:1; Isa. 7:2,
35:4; Pss. 40:12, 73:26; cf. Ps. 27:3. Amos 2:16. Cf.
strengthening in Judg. 19:5; Pss. 10:17, 27:14, 31:24,
73:26, 104:15.

This content downloaded from 154.59.124.59 on Thu, 02 Feb 2017 21:56:10 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
24 Journal of Near Eastern Studies

applied to heart. The usage is again metaphorical, for anger.46 It was an ancient theme that
matter is extension endowed with properties.47 Biblical heart lacks extension: length,
width, and depth. It acquires surface only in Jeremiahs metaphor of heart as a tablet on
which the Lord will write a new covenant to replace the old one carved on tablets of stone
(Jer. 17:1).
Fathoming the heart of the sea begins with the preposition in that introduces the
phrase. Heart receives and contains in itself purposes and thoughts, intentions and plans.48
These concern cult in the historical books: building a house for the Lord (1 Kings 8:17,
18; 1 Chron. 22:7, 2 Chron. 6:7, 8), arranging a feast to him (1 Kings 12:33), and making
a covenant with him (2 Chron. 29:10). The psalms insert the law into the heart (Ps. 37:31;
40:8), as does Isaiah (Isa. 51:7). These volitions are not innate but introduced to heart. It can
be the Lord himself who puts the beautication of the Jerusalem temple into the kings heart
(Ezra 7:27) or who condones his intention to build the house of worship (2 Sam. 7:3; 1
Chron. 17:2). Commonly people take or lay to heart words, notably commands and
law.49
This receptivity is not passive but active. The heart is not neutral storage but dynamic
movement. Heart inclines toward and against. Inclination means more than tendency, for
heart actually goes out to. It moves directionally. Although all movement is necessarily
directed, the concept of heart emphasizes it. Its objective can be religious, either the Lord
or foreign gods and idols.50 It can be men or, pejoratively, seductive women.51 Inclination
toward the Lord in the historical books is cultic, complementary with the rejection of for-
eign gods (Josh. 24:23) and idols (2 Chron. 20:33). It involves building the Lord a sanctu-
ary (1 Chron. 22:19), offering sacrice (2 Chron. 11:16), bringing money to the temple
(2 Kings 12:4), observing ritual cleanness (2 Chron. 30:19)in sum the work of the house
of God (Ezra 6:22). In Exodus heart is moved, specically to craft and give offerings
to the temple.52 This religion extends to the study, observance, and teaching of the law
(Ezra 7:10). Consistent with the psalmic placement of the law in the heart, the heart in-
clines to the divine testimonies to perform the statutes (Ps. 119:36, 112). Inclination inten-
sies in the psalms to desire (Pss. 20:4, 21:2, 37:4). Heart is activated by searching.53
Decisively heart walks. It walks before the Lord54 in his ways. It does so by keeping
his commandments (1 Kings 8:58; 2 Kings 10:21; Ps. 119:10). The new heart of esh walks
in the divine statutes and observes the ordinances (Ezek. 36:26). An associated construc-
tion is departing and returning, or forgetting and remembering. Heart sets itself against the
covenant (Dan. 11:28). The ten commandments depart from the heart (Deut. 4:9; 8:14) and
the heart turns aside to the worship and service of other gods (11:16, 17:17, 29:18). Heart

46 Ps. 39:3; Jer. 20:9; Hos. 7:6; cf. Prov. 19:3. Cf.
Job 36:13.
47 Richard J. Sorabji, Matter, Space, and Motion:
Theories in Antiquity and Their Sequel (Ithaca, New
York, 1988), p. 3.
48 1 Chron. 29:18; 2 Sam. 7:3; 1 Chron. 17:2; Job
17:11.
49 Deut. 6:6, 11:18; 1 Sam. 21:12; 2 Sam. 13:20, 33;
1 Kings 8:47; 2 Chron. 6:37; Job 22:22; Ps. 119:11;
Eccles. 7:2, 9:1; Isa. 42:25, 47:7, 57:1; Ezek. 3:10;
Mal. 2:2.
50 Josh. 24:23; 1 Chron. 29:18; 2 Chron. 19:3; or
Deut. 11:16, 29:18; Ezek. 20:16; Jer. 9:14, 13:10;
Ezek. 14:3, 4, 7; 20:16; cf. 9:14.
51 Judg. 9:3, 5:9; 2 Sam. 14:1, 15:6, 13; 19:14;
Mal. 4:6, or Job 11:9, cf. Eccles. 7:26.
52 Exod. 25:2, 35:21, 22, 26, 29; 36:2; cf. 2 Chron.
29:31.
53 Deut. 4:29; Judg. 5:15, 16; 1 Chron. 16:10, 22:19;
2 Chron. 11:16, 12:14, 15:12, 19:3, 22:9; Pss. 27:8,
62:10, 69:32, 105:3, 119:2, 10, 58; Jer. 29:13.
54 1 Kings 8:23; 2 Chron. 6:14; Pss. 84:5, 101:2;
Eccles. 11:9; Jer. 11:8.

This content downloaded from 154.59.124.59 on Thu, 02 Feb 2017 21:56:10 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 In the Heart of The Sea: Fathoming the Exodus 25

backslides (Isa. 57:17). Heart goes astray, and steps turn aside from the way (Job 31:7; Ps.
44:18). This deviation is mapped to the left (Eccles. 10:2), according to the ancient dual-
ism that favored the right as sacred.55 Heart can also reverse its direction. It can return
wholly to the Lord (Jer. 24:7; Joel 2:12), paralleled with removing foreign gods to serve
him alone (1 Sam. 7:3, 10:9). Such is the hearts repentance (1 Kings 8:47, 48; 2 Chron.
6:37, 38). This biblical walking to and fro is not some primitive expression of (dis)obedi-
ence that requires improvement by conversion to philosophical categories. It embodies the
essential cultural observation that humans alone of all animals are bipedal, capable of walk-
ing erect. Hence the moral extension to an upright person and upright heart. It is de-
nitive of humans to walk. Where and how they walkthe path and the posture, the going
and the gaitembody the traits of personal character.56 The case of Absalom stabbed in
the heart is again illustrative, for his stoppage on the road dramatically reverses his mis-
deed of taking away others from the right path. Reduced from his erect human status, he
hangs treed like an animal (2 Sam. 18:9).
The biblical concept about heart as inclination and pursuit of the Lords way, meaning
obedience to his law and observance in cult, is remarkably coherent. In the heart are the
highways to Zionto walk uprightly (Ps. 84:5). To seek the Lord with the whole heart
parallels with not doing wrong but walking in his ways (Ps. 119:2). The heart inclined to
the Lord walks in his ways and keeps his commandments (1 Kings 8:58). Yet some refuse
to listen to the Lords words but stubbornly follow their own hearts to go after other gods
to serve and worship them (Jer. 13:10). Although the hearts right direction can be general-
ized as integrity and its deviation from the way as the pursuit of evil,57 the context is legal
and/or cultic, not philosophical. Because of the inclinations of the heart, biblical scholar-
ship has misidentied heart with the will.58 Although the Hebrew heart has volitional
motions, its reication is an anachronism, since the will was the invention of Augustines
introspection.59 Augustine did not know Hebrew. Moreover, he was convinced that biblical
language was divine baby talk, on the Latin rhetorical principle of accommodation, like a
doting parent or nanny stooping to a toddlers capacity. For mature adult understanding
scripture required elevation to philosophy.60 This apologetics of pabulum still informs mod-
ern biblical dictionaries that classify Hebrew heart anachronistically according to philosoph-
ical faculties.61
Heart as inclination coincides in Exod. 15:8 with the described storm at sea. The waves
that pile up, stand up, gather together are all inclining, surging upward at the winds strong

55 For the dualism, see Robert Hertz, Death and
the Right Hand, trans. Rodney and Claudia Needham
(Glencoe, Illinois, 1960), pp. 89113.
56 For the paleoanthropological origin and histori-
cal development of this topic, see my Senses of Touch:
Human Dignity and Deformity from Michelangelo to
Calvin, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought,
vol. 71 (Leiden, 1998). For aimless repetitive locomo-
tion, see Michael L. Barr, Wandering About as a dia Biblica, vol. 11 (Rome, 1988), pp. 6667, for the
Topos of Depression in Ancient Near Eastern Literature
and in the Bible, JNES 60 (2001): 17787.
57 Ps. 141:4; Eccles. 8:11, 9:3; Jer. 3:17; Ezek.
11:21; Zech. 7:10, 8:17.
58 Wolff, Anthropology, pp. 5253.
59 See Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Clas-
sical Antiquity, Sather Classical Lectures, vol. 48
(Berkeley, 1982). For the Hebrew Scriptures, ibid., pp.
1318.
60 See my article Augustine in the Garden of Zeus:
Lust, Love, and Language, Harvard Theological
Review 83 (1990): 11739.
61 Beyond the dictionaries, see, for example, Luis
Alonso-Schkel, A Manual of Hebrew Poetics, Subsi-
resort to contemplation to explain Hebrew poetic syn-
onymy. Contemplation (theoria) is not a biblical word
or concept. Also the invention of Hebrew imagery is
anachronistically explained by Aristotelian epistemol-
ogy, p. 95.
62 See Biswas, History of Hydrology, p. 58.

This content downloaded from 154.59.124.59 on Thu, 02 Feb 2017 21:56:10 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
26 Journal of Near Eastern Studies

impulse. The water is actively in movement, tendentiously so. Just as heart goes on a def-
inite way, so goes the sea on a trajectory upward. Although the Egyptians were no hydrolo-
gists, the one principle of water they demonstrably knew from damming it was that it always
owed down.62 In the Song of the Sea this physical law is amazingly reversed, then nat-
urally obeyed to engulf them. A historically plausible and contextually satisfying meaning
for the heart of the sea in this verse is movement. This word encompasses both the
physical turbulence of the water and the divine purpose of punishment with which Yhwhs
breath/wind invests it. The waters gathered in the movement of the sea.
As an active inclination, formed in the reception or rejection of divine commands, heart
judges. Heart is also conversely judged, for the Lord as sovereign examines, knows, and
judges all hearts.63 This religious belief affords a better context for understanding in the
heart of the sea than a literal location in the midst, inside, or bottom of a lake or
monster. Running water, especially a deluge, was biblically associated with divine wrath
and judgment.64 Philological analysis has also established the legal denotation of the exo-
dus: to go out, to bring out, to dismiss, to let go, to cause to go out, to cause to bring out,
to go meaning to go out. This deliverance is a legal process. It is associated with judging
and judgments, especially for a subordinate individual or nation.65 Judgment allows for
the context of destruction that comparative mythology argues in general for Exodus 15 but
fails to explain about the phrase in the heart of the sea. The deeps in which the Egyp-
tians drown are usually interpreted as primordial, mythological waters.66 Yet an enlight-
ening verse compares these deeps with divine judgment: thy judgments are like the great
deep (Ps. 36:6). Judgment is precisely what happens in the heart of the sea. By the prov-
ocation of the divine breath counter-moving the waters into chaos, rather than creation (cf.
Gen. 1:2), Pharaohs army drowns. The sea obstinately resists their passage through itself.
Beneath metaphorical hardness is also the physical fact of the sea experienced as hard
against sentient bodies. This is not because the liquid solidies into ice but because by the
velocity of the wind the water attains a forceful mass that feels hard to confronted objects.
This drowning in the heart of the sea is compared to the sinking of stones in deep water.
They went down into the depths like a stone (Exod. 15:5). Since stone is the quintessen-
tially hard element, the punishment of the Egyptians is just by the law of talion: hard hearts
cast into the hardened heart of the sea.67 Weights for measurement were called in Hebrew
stones.68 An intriguing comparison is the Egyptian judgment of the dead, in which
mythology the heart (ib, hty) is divinely weighed in the goddess Maats scales against an
ostrich feather. If the humans pan sinks below the level of balance, the heart is punished
in the afterlife.69 Yhwh instructed Moses to demand liberty from Pharaoh lest plagues be

63 1 Sam. 16:7; 1 Kings 8:39; 1 Chron. 28:9, 29:17;
2 Chron. 6:30, 32:31; Pss. 7:9, 17:3, 26:2, 44:2, 139:18;
Prov. 15:11, 17:3, 21:2, 24:12; Jer. 11:20, 17:10, 20:12.
64 See Reymond, Eau, p. 109.
65 See David Daube, The Exodus Pattern in the
Bible (London, 1963), pp. 2238.
66 Gen. 1:2, 7:11, 8:2, 49:25; Deut. 33:13; Job
28:14, 38:16, 30; 41:32; Pss. 33:7, 42:7, 77:16, 78:15,
104:6, 106:9, 135:6, 148:7; Prov. 3:20, 8:27, 28; Isa.
51:10; Ezek. 26:19, 31:4, 15; Amos 7:4; Hab. 3:10.
67 Cf. the waters became hard like stone (Job
38:30), although the parallel translation and the face
of the deep is frozen is improbable.
68 M. A. Powell, Weights and Measures, Anchor
Bible Dictionary, vol. 6, p. 905.
69 Jan Assmann, Maat: Gerechtigkeit und Unsterb-
lichkeit im Alten gypten (Munich, 1990); Reinhard
Grieshammer, Das Jenseitsgericht in den Sargtexten,
gyptologische Abhandlungen, vol. 20 (Wiesbaden,
1970), pp. 4670; S. G. F. Brandon, The Judgement of
the Dead: An Historical and Comparative Study of the
Idea of Post-Mortem Judgement in the Major Reli-
gions (London, 1967), pp. 28 41; Jean Yoyotte, Le
jugement des morts dans lgypte ancienne, in Le

This content downloaded from 154.59.124.59 on Thu, 02 Feb 2017 21:56:10 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 In the Heart of The Sea: Fathoming the Exodus 27

visited on these Egyptian hearts (Exod. 9:14). Egyptian texts also describe the deceased
kings passage by a ferry or oat over a sea of reeds to the celestial realm.70 A biblical
reference would thus punish Egyptian refusal of Yhwhs command by the very justice of
Egyptian religious belief about the heart and its passage in death on the reedy sea.
Yet, even without comparative allusions, the Hebrew Scriptures witness to judgment by
weight. As Job protests on the way of his heart, If I have walked with falsehood,/ and my
foot has hastened to deceit;/ (Let me be weighed in a just balance, and let God know my in-
tegrity!). Footsteps astray are paralleled with the hearts desire (Job 31:57; cf. Ps. 62:9).
Proverbially the Lord delights in a just weight and all the weights in the bag are his work
(Prov. 11:1; 16:11). Israelite law about just human weighing depends on the exodus. The in-
junction that the Israelites in settlement love the sojourner because they were themselves
once strangers in Egypt is immediately followed by the commands about just measurement.
You shall do no wrong in judgment, in measures of length or weight or quantity. You
shall have just balances, just weights [stones], a just ephah, and a just bin: I am the Lord
your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt (Lev. 19:3536). The injunction to
have a full and just weight, or stone, is a condition for longevity in the land God gives
(Deut. 25:15). The hard-hearted Egyptians fail the test, sinking overweighted in the heart
of the sea, in its collective motion of judgment.

70 See Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt, pp. 204, 21314;

jugement des morts, Sources orientales 4 (Paris, 1961),
pp. 3650. See also Sarah Ben Reuben, And He Hard-
ened the Heart of Pharaoh, Beth Mikra 29 (1984):
11218. Although the biblical measure is hardness, not
heaviness, kbd encompasses both meanings. See Wil-
helm Caspari, Die Bedeutung der Wortsippe kbd im
Hebrischen (Leipzig, 1908), pp. 910.
Whitney M. Davis, The Ascension-Myth in the Pyra-
mid Texts, JNES 36 (1977): 17376; John R. Towers,
The Red Sea, JNES 18 (1959): 15053; see also
Walter Wifall, The Sea of Reeds as Sheol, Zeitschrift
fr die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 92 (1980):
32728.

This content downloaded from 154.59.124.59 on Thu, 02 Feb 2017 21:56:10 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
This content downloaded from 154.59.124.59 on Thu, 02 Feb 2017 21:56:10 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms