Midian

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Midian ( Hebrew מִדְיָן) is the name of the ancestor of the Midianites in the Tanach , the Hebrew Bible . This is what this people and their settlement area are called at the same time. The name literally means "dispute" or "court judgment" ( Arabic مَدْيَن madyan ).

Progenitor

Midian is mentioned in Gen 25: 2-4 as the fourth son of Abraham and his second wife Ketura . His brothers were Simran, Jokschan, Medan, Jischbak and Schuach. Isaac was therefore his half-brother from Abraham's first marriage to Sarah . The 1st book of Chronicles 1,32f takes up this point and places Midian in the ancestral table of Israel . It also names five of its sons: Epha, Epher, Hanok, Abida and Eldaba.

Like Ishmael, Midian was sent east by Abraham and given gifts, apparently so as not to come into conflict with Isaac. As the firstborn son of Sarah , Abraham's chief wife , he became his heir .

Also in the Koran and the following Arabic and Islamic tradition, Midian is considered the legitimate son of Abraham and ancestor of the Midianites, who mixed with the Ishmaelites. The Arabs emerged from this. The Egyptian historian Al-Maqrīzī (1364–1442) emphasized this as early as the Middle Ages .

People and region

Midianites around 1200 BC Chr.

According to the Bible, the Midianites were a tribe of warlike desert nomads . Their appearance falls in the pre-state " time of judges ", which around 1200-1000 BC. Is set.

The country of Midian is located in the Bible only in an approximate direction southeast of Palestine in the mountainous desert . Their exact location therefore remains uncertain.

Since, according to Ex 3.1, there was God's mountain Horeb - which was only identified much later with Mount Sinai in the south of the peninsula of the same name - it is assumed that the area is in the northwestern part of today's Saudi Arabia, east of the Gulf of Akaba was located.

Biblical meaning

Midian and the Midianites are of great importance for the origin history of the people of Israel in the Pentateuch . According to biblical tradition, Moses fled to Midian after his murder of an Egyptian slave driver , where he married Zippora , the daughter of Jitros , the priest of Midian, who bore him two sons, Gerschom and Eliezer (Ex 2). After 40 years (Acts 7.30–35), Moses then met YHWH , the god of his forefathers who had been unknown to him until then, on Horeb , the mountain of God, in a burning bush and was called to be the leader of his people from slavery (Ex 3).

After the successful exodus from Egypt , the priest Jitro recognized that YHWH is greater than all gods, then brought him a sacrifice on the God's mountain Horeb and held the sacrificial meal with Moses, Aaron and the elders of the Israelites (Ex 18). Following this scene, the great Sinai revelation, the proclamation of the Torah and the covenant of God with the people of Israel take place (Ex 19-24).

It is true that today's historical-critical biblical research sees this representation predominantly as a construct that was only intended to connect different, originally independent tradition complexes afterwards. An indication of this is the different naming of the priest of Midian in different biblical texts as Reguel (Ex 2,18) or Hobab and his partial assignment to the Kenites (Ri 4,11), another tribe in eastern Palestine traced back to Cain .

In Num. 25 and 31 as well as Ri 6, the Midianites appear as archenemies of Israel, whose complete extermination (ban) is commanded by YHWH or carried out through the charisma given to the general Gideon .

Nevertheless, an early encounter between Hebrews and Midianites or Kenites and joint veneration of the god YHWH is believed to be probable, since this divine name is also documented in extra-biblical finds such as the Mesha stele and these partly also refer to an area east of the Gulf of Aqaba .

See also

literature

  • Ernst Axel Knauf : Midian. Studies on the history of Palestine and Northern Arabia at the end of the 2nd millennium BC Chr. Treatises of the German Palestine Association. Vol. 10. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1988. ISBN 3-447-02862-9

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://www.uibk.ac.at/theol/leseraum/bibel/gen25.html
  2. ↑ compare Iron Age I (1200–1000 BC) in the Levant . The question of the historicity of the Old Testament and the corresponding dating is associated with a high degree of inaccuracy.
  3. ↑ Ex 3.1
  4. ↑ Ex 2
  5. ↑ Acts 7.30-35
  6. ↑ Ex 3
  7. ↑ Ex 18
  8. ↑ Ex 19-24
  9. ↑ Num 25
  10. ↑ 31
  11. ^ Judgment 6