The Motif of the Sleeping Divinity

I

The motif of the sleeping divinity, as Batto has already noted¹, is present in the Old Testament. He has studied it in his article, especially in the second part, where he speaks about "Biblical Appropriations of the Motif of the Sleeping Deity". It is also the subject of a note by H. Jacobson².

        This motif appears in the biblical passages where the root N#$y refers to God. The root in its various verbal forms means "to sleep, to rest, to be quiet"³. In Ps 44,24; 78,65; and 1 Kings 18,27 it is accompanied by the verb Cyq which means "to wake up, to rise from sleep, to get up". In Ps 121,4 the verb N#$y appears along with the verb Mwn, which is a synonym for N#$y in the prophetic texts⁴. The combination N#$y – Cyq, to sleep and to wake up, is the basis of the biblical motif (Ps 78,65 and 1 Kings 18,27). In Ps 44,24 these two verbs are complemented by a third verb, rw(, "to rise, to get up". In Ps 78 the three verbs create a sequence: to sleep, to wake up, to get up.

        The root N#$y appears in different contexts and is part of various formulations. In Ps 44,24 we find it in the question N#$yt hml, "why do you sleep?", followed by two imperatives, hrw( "get up, wake up", and hcyqh, "wake up". These three verbs together comprise an appeal to God to wake up. The sleep of the divinity has been interpreted in different ways. Kraus sees a plea in Ps 44,24, "Stürmische Bitten beschließen das Klagelied des Volkes"⁵ addressed to God who has hidden his face so that it seems that he has fallen asleep or has forgotten his people⁶. The sleep of God could indicate his inattention to this prayer, as Dahood observed⁷.

        Ps 78, 65 uses the very graphic image of a hero who wakes up from his sleep, rwbgk ynd) N#$yk Cqyw, to describe the god who intervenes⁸. However, in 1 Kings 18,27 the question, Cqyw )wh N#$y ylw), "perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened" is a kind of provocation that Elijah addresses to the priests of Baal. To complete this brief survey of the motif of the sleeping divinity we also note Ps 121,4 where it is said that the guardian of Israel, N#$yy )lw Mwny-)l, "does not doze and does not sleep".

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The most common element in these verses is God who wakes up and rises from sleep: why do you sleep? Wake up, get up! (Ps 44,24); he wakes up (Ps 78,65); perhaps he is sleeping, it is necessary to awaken him (1 Kings 18,27).

        There are also some other texts in which an appeal to God uses the imperatives hrw( (e.g. Ps 7,7) and hcyqh (e.g. Ps 35,22-24; 59,5), "get up, wake up!". But since the verb N#$y is absent it is not certain that these passages refer to the motif of the sleeping divinity⁹.

II

        Some texts from Mesopotamia are very useful, even necessary, for the understanding of the biblical motif of the sleeping divinity¹⁰ because they also contain it; but it appears in two explicitly different forms: a) the divinity wants to sleep but cannot; b) the divinity is sleeping and must be awakened.

        The first topos appears in Atrahasis I¹¹ and Enuma Elish¹².

        In Atrahasis I Enlil cannot sleep because of the noise that the human race is making.

[Twel]ve hundred years [had not gone by],
[The land had grown wide], the peoples had increased,
The [land] was bellowing [like a bull].
The god was disturbed with [their uproar],
[Enlil heard] their clamor.
[He said to] the great gods,
"The clamor of mankind [has become burdensome to me],
"I am losing sleep [to their uproar]¹³.

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In Enuma Elish the primordial gods cannot sleep because of the noise made by the younger gods.

"Their behavior is noisome to me!
"By day I have no rest, at night I do not sleep!
"I wish to put an end to their behavior, to do away with it!
"Let silence reign that we may sleep"¹⁴.

        The second topos — the sleeping god who must be awakened — appears in Atrahasis II. Here Enlil’s sleep is interrupted because the lesser gods, tired of working to support the greater gods, are about to attack his house.

Nusku woke [his] lord,
He got [him] out of bed,
"My lord, [your] house is surrounded,
"Battle has run right up [to your gate].
"Enlil, your house is surrounded,
"Battle has [ru]n right up to your gate!"¹⁵.

        This same topos also appears in the Sumerian poem Enki and Ninmah, a text which, as far as we know, has not yet been noted in the discussion of the sleeping biblical divinity.

        The text is known from fragments of three different copies¹⁶ from the old-Babylonian period. Unlike most of the texts that made up the Sumerian literary corpus of this period, Enki and Ninmah continued to be copied after the old-Babylonian period and even exists in a fragmentary bilingual edition from the neo-Assyrian period in which the Sumerian is accompanied by an Akkadian translation. The Sumerian text in the old-Babylonian version differs in places from that in the neo-Assyrian version. The translation that follows uses, as much as possible, the old-Babylonian version.

        The first part of the poem states that, after the separation of heaven and earth, the gods had to work for their sustenance. They found this unacceptable. Enki, the clever water god, is asleep "in the deep abyss". As in Atrahasis II the lesser gods rebel and refuse to work to support the greater gods¹⁷. Namma, Enki’s mother, goes to awaken him. She asks him to create a substitute for the gods, a creature that would work in their place and maintain them¹⁸.

Enki and Ninmah¹⁹

8 After the gods were forced to [work for?] their food...
for their dining halls,
9 The great gods stood at the work, the lesser gods bore the labor.
10 The gods dug the canals, they heaped their dirt in Harali.
11 The gods were sweating, they complained about their lives.
12 Then the one of broad intelligence, the creator of the great gods;
13 Enki in the deep abyss, in the flowing water, a place whose interior
no god can look on,
14 Lay on his bed, did not rise from sleep.
15 The gods wept: "He (Enki) brought about (our) lamentation" they said.
16 To the one who was in the swamp, who was lying down, who did not rise from his bed,
17 Namma, the primordial mother who gave birth to the great gods,
18 brought the weeping of the gods to her son.
19 "Lord, you are certainly lying down; you are certainly sleeping.
20 You [yourself do not] rise [from your sleep.]
21 The gods you created are smashing [their tools].
22 My son, rise from your bed; with your knowledge it is you who have sought out skills.
23 Make a substitute for the gods: they will let go of their toil".
24 Enki at the word of his mother Namma rose from his bed.

        These two different topoi must not be confused. In the first two texts a god wishes to sleep but cannot because of human (Atrahasis I) or divine (Enuma Elish) noise. In the other two texts (Enki and Ninmah as well as Atrahasis II) a god is sleeping and must be awakened.

III

        In the biblical texts we have emphasized the awakening of the divinity. This awakening is either requested (1 Kings 18,27; Ps 44,24) or takes place spontaneously (Ps 78,65). Although the context of these texts is different, the awakening of the divinity is common to them all. In Ps 44 God is called upon to wake up and save his people. The community of believers insistently asks that God intervene, that he wake up and act in its favour (44,24). In Ps 78 God appears as a hero who awakens (78,65) and gets

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up on his own. In 1 Kings 18 the motif of the sleeping god appears but its function in this story is very different than in the Psalms. Elijah encourages the priests of Baal to yell with insistence so that their god will wake up.

        In two of these texts (Ps 44,24 and 1 Kings 18,27) appeal is made to the sleeping god to wake up and intervene. The third text (Ps 78,65) is different from these two in that God is compared to a hero who spontaneously wakes up.

        Study of these various biblical verses permits us to see which Mesopotamian texts have elements in common with the biblical texts in which a sleeping divinity must be awakened because his intervention is necessary.

        Atrahasis II and Enki and Ninmah are the Mesopotamian texts that contain parallels to the biblical passages in which God sleeps, is awakened, and gets up. The appeal to the sleeping god to awaken is the element common to the biblical verses and to Atrahasis II and Enki and Ninmah. Atrahasis I and Enuma Elish are not parallel to these biblical passages because in these texts the gods do not sleep. They cannot sleep because of human or divine noise. There is no need to appeal to them to wake up because they are already awake. The problem that we find in the Bible is not divine insomnia as in Atrahasis I and Enuma Elish; rather, it is the opposite.

        In summary, the Mesopotamian parallels to the sleeping god in 1 Kings 18,27 and to Ps 44,25 are Atrahasis II and Enki and Ninmah rather than Atrahasis I and Enuma Elish precisely because the point of the biblical comparison is a sleeping god who must be awakened, not a god who wants to sleep but cannot.

Summary

This note discusses biblical and Mesopotamian texts that contain the motif of a sleeping divinity. Their comparison shows that the presence of the same theme, sleep, is not sufficient of itself to make the texts parallel. The other common element, the need to awaken the sleeping divinity, must be present in the texts for parallelism. The note shows that the biblical texts have their Mesopotamian parallel not in the texts where a deity wishes to sleep and cannot, but rather where he is sleeping and must be awakened.

© 1999 Biblica

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