Bible Review

The Hebrew has “may God do thus and more to the enemies of David.” The italicized words are lacking in the Greek Septuagint, on which many Christian Bibles are based.

Or “boor” (New Jewish Publication Society) or “churl” (Revised English Bible) or “brute” (New Jerusalem Bible).

Jack M. Sasson, “Circumcision in the Ancient Near East,” Journal of Biblical Literature 85 (1966), pp. 473–476.

Uzi Avner, “Sacred Stones in the Desert,” BAR 27:03.

Saul M. Olyan, “Why an Altar of Unfinished Stones? Some Thoughts on Ex 20, 25 and Dtn 27, 5–6, ” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentlichen Wissenschaft 108 (1996), pp. 161–171.

Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961), p. 408.

On Moses’ (and Yahweh’s) Midianite connection, see Frank M. Cross, From Epic to Canon: History and Literature in Ancient Israel (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1998), pp. 53–70; Lawrence E. Stager, “Forging an Identity,” in Oxford History of the Biblical World, ed. Michael Coogan, pp. 142–149; and Moshe Weinfeld, “The Tribal League at Sinai,” in Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross, eds. Patrick D. Miller et al. (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), pp. 303–314.

See Rudolf Smend, “Mose als geschichtliche Gestalt,” Historische Zeitschrift 260 (1995), pp. 1–19.

Fitzmyer, Aramaic Inscriptions of Sefire, p. 85.

Trans. by Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Aramaic Inscriptions of Sefire, 2nd ed. (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1995), p. 45.