Mazzebe
As Mazzebe , another spelling Massebe (Hebrew מַצֵּבָה maṣṣevāh ), a stone raised by people with a religious meaning is referred to in the Hebrew Bible .
Translation options
The term is translated as “stone mark” in the revised Luther Bible as well as in the standard translation; in the Zurich Bible it generally remains untranslated (translated as: "Malstein" in the Book of Exodus). In the ancient Greek translation ( Septuagint ), the mazzebe is almost always rendered as στήλη "stele".
Tombstone
For מַצֵּבָה meaning “Jewish tombstone” see the main article: Mazewa .
Examples from the Bible:
- Stone over Rachel's tomb on the road to Bethlehem ( Gen 35,20 LUT );
- Stone for the childless Absalom , erected by himself ( 2 Sam 18,18 LUT ).
Stone as a cult symbol
The Israelite expression of the stone cult is reflected in the written sources as follows:
Positive or neutral rating
The story of Jacob and the ladder to heaven ( Gen 28,10-22 LUT ) is the aetiology of Bet-El , the central sanctuary of the northern kingdom of Israel . In a dream, Jacob learns that exactly where he lay down to sleep there is a connection between heaven and earth. He unknowingly set up camp in a holy place. Jakob reacts accordingly and sets up the (apparently small) stone on which his head rested as a mazzebe. By anointing with oil he separates the stone from the profane realm and hands it over to the deity.
In the context of the story of Jacob, the cultic meaning of the stone placed on it has faded, for the narrator the stone is a reminder of God's loyalty. In earlier times the mazzebe was the center of the sanctuary Bet-El, it represented YHWH (or El). Nothing is known about their size or their position in the sanctuary. But it had its parallel in the YHWH shrine of Tel Arad : “In the Iron Age temple of Arad one or more mazebas were found in the holy of holies. Here the location suggests that the stones had the function of an image of God. ”The Lachish relief also shows that there were mass levels in the pre-exilic YHWH cult.
Negative rating
Basically is Dtn 16,22 LUT : YHWH hates Mazzeben. That is why their installation is prohibited.
(The standard translation is based on a different understanding of the text : “You should not erect a stone monument of the kind that the LORD your God hates.” This leaves room for the assumption that there could have been mazzebas in the YHWH cult tolerated, according to the archaeological findings from Arad.)
In the 1st and 2nd Book of Kings , mazebos are regarded as illegitimate cult symbols. Whether a king is assessed negatively or positively is determined, among other things, by whether he built mazebos or had them torn down. One example is King Joram of Israel: he removed the mazzebe of Baal, which his father Ahab had set up ( 2 Kings 3.2 LUT ). But now Ahab had consecrated an altar to Baal according to 1 Kings 16.30–32 LUT . This shows the hand of the Deuteronomist historian: he replaced the altar with Mazzebe in order to establish a clear reference to Deut. 16:22: Joram implemented a commandment of the Torah.
Stone as a contract sign and land marker
In Gen 31,44-52 LUT it is told that Jacob and Laban conclude a contract and a mazzebe is built together with a pile of stones to commemorate this legal act. If God is called as a witness when the contract is concluded (v. 50), but heaps of stones and Mazzebe are also called as witnesses (v. 51-52), then these two stone marks - at least for the biblical figure Laban - are equivalent to God.
In Ex 24,4 LUT it is told of Moses that he set up twelve mazzebi to commemorate the covenant of Israel with YHWH. These stones represent the twelve tribes, the whole people of Israel. In the covenant ritual on Sinai, they have a similar function to the twelve precious stones on the high priest's breast pocket ( choschen ) on which the names of the tribes were engraved. In this way the whole people should be present in the ritual. Since the mazebas are no longer mentioned in the course of the story, Christoph Dohmen , taking up an interpretation by Abraham ibn Esra , considers whether Moses built the altar out of the twelve mazebos (similar to how this is reported by Elijah , 1 Kings 18: 31-32 LUT ).
A line of monumental stone placements runs through the book of Joshua , which remind us of important milestones in the Israelites' conquest . "All these deliberate stone placements show that the landscape is designed with them and staged as a history-memory landscape."
Web links
- Rüdiger Schmitt: Mazzebe
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hubert Tita: Vows as Confession: a study of the vows in the Old Testament . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, p. 50 .
- ↑ Melanie Köhlmoos: Bet-El - memories of a city: Perspectives of the Old Testament Bet-El tradition . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2006, p. 266-267 .
- ↑ Klaus Koenen: Bethel: History, Cult and Theology . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2003, p. 134 .
- ↑ Sven Petry: The image of God of the ban on images . In: Brigitte Groneberg, Hermann Spieckermann (Hrsg.): The world of gods . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2007, p. 268 .
- ↑ Christoph Levin: The piety of the kings of Israel and Judah . In: Promise and Justification: Collected Studies on the Old Testament . tape 2 . De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2013, p. 154-155 .
- ↑ Johannes Klein: Sworn Self-Commitment: A Study of the Oath in the Old Testament . TVZ, Zurich 2015, p. 274 .
- ↑ Dominik Markl: On the literary and theological function of the sanctuary texts in the book Exodus . In: Matthias Hopf et al. (Ed.): Sacred space: exegesis and reception of the sanctuary texts in Ex 24–40 . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2016, p. 64 .
- ↑ Christoph Dohmen: Exodus 19–40 . In: Herder's theological commentary on the Old Testament . Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 2005, p. 202 .
- ^ Egbert Ballhorn: Israel on the Jordan. Narrative topography in the Book of Joshua . V&R unipress, Göttingen 2011, p. 446 .