The Psalms in the Ritual: Aage Bentzen, Part Two

In my last post, I provided a look at Aage Bentzen’s King and Messiah, focusing on his review and summarization of research on the psalms and how some scholars began to see in them a pattern that seemed to define an ancient Israelite ritual that involved the king’s participation in a ritualized drama that portrayed Yahweh’s victory over the forces of Chaos, the subsequent creation of the cosmos and Yahweh’s enthronement in his temple as King.¹ The earthly king, imitating Yahweh, would participate in a dramatic re-enactment of these primordial events, leading to his “deification” and enthronement at the right hand of God.

In this post, I would like to present some of the details of this ritual, as outlined by Bentzen.  While this ritual is, again, hypothetical, the arguments for its existence are quite persuasive, based on the comparison of certain psalms to the rituals of other Near Eastern cultures, for which we have more detailed textual evidence.  In the non-Israelite cultic poems, we see the inclusion of certain “rubrics,” or scoring tools useful for determining their cultic function. While the OT psalms include no such helps, a comparison to similar texts help us understand their possible use and how they fit into the overall ritual.  Bentzen, following other scholars, seems to work with the assumption that almost all of the psalms had a place in the royal rituals.

Victorious soldiers from stone relief at Assurnasirpal's Northwest Palace at Nimrud, c.865-860 BC (room B, panel 8, top register; BM ANE 124548). Photo by Eleanor Robson.

While a careful study of, for example, Psalms 2 and 110 could lead to a conclusion like that of Mowinckel, that these are “oracles belonging to the liturgy of the day of anointing the king,”² a comparison to known ANE rituals can provide much more specific details. For example, we know from the Assyrian liturgy that the Supreme Eunuchs must kiss the feet of the king twice–compare to Psalm 2:11–12, where someone is instructed to “kiss the Son (i.e. the king).” While I don’t believe that the Israelite ritual should necessarily contain all the elements of Assyrian, Babylonian, or Egyptian rites, a careful comparison can certainly be fruitful.

Bentzen cites Durr’s interpretation of Psalm 110 as a basic outline of the Israelite coronation ritual, an agenda for this ceremony. Durr finds in the psalm the following events:

1.  the Enthronement (v. 1)
2. the Investiture, especially with sceptre (v. 2)
3. the Acclamation (v. 3)
4. the Ordination as priest [after the order of Melchizedek] (v. 4)
5. the Promise of victory over enemies (v. 5-6)
6. the Sacramental drink of water from the Holy Well (v. 7)

Bentzen agrees with this reconstruction of the ritual, but adds that it should be seen as “connected with the New Year Festival and its Creation drama.”³ The central conflict of this drama is what Bentzen terms “the ritual combat.” This goes back to the tradition of Yahweh battling and overcoming the forces of Chaos which are attempting to impede the good work of the Creation. In the ritualized drama, this is represented as the victory of the king over his enemies. The ritual includes, according to Bentzen:

• the preparations for battle; 
• the battle itself; 
• the suffering of the king/god under the heavy attacks of the enemies; 
• the death of the king/god (which Bentzen wants to attribute only to the non-Israelite systems); 
• his salvation and return from the underworld; 
• his final seizing of power and his enthronement in the newly-built temple. 

'Investiture of Narseh' at Naqsh-e Rostam

According to this pattern, psalms like 2 and 110 would be recited and acted out before the representation of the cosmic battle.  Bentzen suggests that Psalm 110 “is an oracle promising the king what he needs before entering the battle against the enemies, whom he will be able to annihilate by the mighty help of his God.”⁴ The drink from the Holy Fountain (v. 7) must be meant to strengthen him before the great fight. He goes on to state that

we must take it that enthronement, investiture, proclamation of the divine sonship of the king and of his priesthood, as well as sacramental communion, are placed before the ritual combat, as a preparation for it.⁵

This is a very insightful concept for LDS readers who are familiar with the concept of receiving the temple endowment before being sent off on missions or before marriage, and of Brigham Young’s push for as many saints as possible to receive their temple blessings before the trek west.

Bentzen then goes on to describe how he sees a number of other psalms fitting into this proposed liturgy. I will briefly summarize some of his points:

• Psalms 20 and 21 should also be seen as part of the coronation before the great battle
• Psalms 3, 11, 12, 13 and 14 + the “royal psalms of lamentation” should be seen as being used during the ritual combat, and make reference to the suffering of the king
• Psalms 22, 69, 27 + “royal psalms” contain “adoption” theme (see Psalm 2) and king saved by being “taken up” (27:10)
• Also Psalms 42-43 describe the king’s plea for salvation as he is brought near to death 
• Psalm 88:2–9 possibly represents the symbolic death and descent to the underworld of the king
• Although Bentzen doesn’t fully agree, Psalms 35:23; 44:24; 59:5 seem to plead for Yahweh to “wake up”, while 18:46 declares that “Yahweh lives!” 

He cites Widengren as saying that this was likely a cultic phrase proclaiming the resurrection of the god. According to Widengren:

This is what we must expect, because the role of the king in the cult as suffering and being in the hands of the underworld, but also as victor and coming forht in living power, would be unexplained without this supposition.⁶

Bentzen singles out Psalm 89 as particularly noteworthy for this part of the ritual. The Lord gives the king great promises associated with the covenant God has made with him.  The greatness of the king is modeled after the greatness of Yahweh. However, the last part of the psalm records the king’s complaints that God has abandoned and forsaken him and gone back on his promise to protect him.  This is very interesting in light of Christ’s expression of being forsaken while on the cross.

Finally, he looks at the “great liturgy” of Psalm 132. He calls this psalm a “Liturgy of the Entry of the Ark of Yahweh.” Apparently, the events described in this psalm are “strongly reminiscent of the Babylonian New Year celebrations on the 5th Nisan.”⁷ This psalm should be read in conjunction with the “historified” accounts of 1 Sam 4-6 and 2 Sam 6.  Bentzen interprets the connection between these narratives and Psalm 132 thus:

Psalm 132 belongs to a ritual related to this “historified myth”. Yahweh returns from the “Hell” of the Land of the Philistines, where he has defeated his enemy Dagon.  In the last phase of the fight David has come to his help and has brought him into his sanctuary. David here plays the role of the forerunner preparing the way of Yahweh, just as the Messiah (anointed messenger) does in Malachi 3:1ff.  Psalm 132, therefore, must be the conclusion and the culmination of the ritual, parallel to Psalm 24, where Yahweh returns to his sanctuary as the “King of Glory”. ((Ibid., p. 32))

For some reason, Bentzen doesn’t see Yahweh’s descensus ad inferos (descent into hell) as a death, but affirms that it is a “victorious battle.” He then compares this theme to the expression used for Christ: “Death could not control him” (Acts 2:24).  I don’t know why, if Bentzen is willing to compare Yahweh’s “descent into hell” to Christ’s, that he doesn’t accept the symbolic death of Yahweh in the Israelite ritual.  The answer is probably the obvious–that he sees Yahweh as the Almighty God, whose death would be unthinkable.  If he were open to the idea that Yahweh was the Son of God and not God Most High⁸ — this would not be a predicament, as he would not be opposed, I imagine, to a representation of the Son of God dying.

Although Bentzen’s ideas are quite old now, and have certainly been discussed and rehashed numerous times, I have only recently obtained a copy of his book recently, and have found it to be very fruitful.  After this discussion of the ritual to be found in the psalms, he goes on to discuss the idea of the Israelite king as a “present messiah”, the notion of the Messiah as the “First Man”, a discussion of the identity of the Servant of Yahweh (is he a king or prophet?), and the “eschatalogizing” and renaissance of the ancient rituals in later, and especially Christian, literature.  While I probably won’t get to all of this great material, I hope to share at least some highlights in the near future.

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1. See the comments on the previous post for Blake Ostler’s objection to this enthronement ritual being an annual event. [↩]
2. As cited in Bentzen, p. 22 [↩]
3. Ibid., p. 23 [↩]
4. Ibid., p. 24 [↩]
5. Ibid. [↩]
6. As cited in Bentzen, p. 27 [↩]
7. Ibid., p. 31 [↩]
8. see Margaret Barker’s The Great Angel [↩]