House of Weeping

David Bosworth’s book aims to “illustrate how profoundly social we are, and how prayer and weeping reveal our social nature” (p. x). This social nature is both horizontal and vertical as Bosworth draws close attention to the relationship between tears and divine wrath. In the present monograph, he combs through textual references to weeping in more than 1,000 Akkadian prayers and 148 Hebrew psalms, as part of a larger project on weeping in ancient literature. In addition to the present work, Bosworth has published a number of articles related to this field, as well as a monograph, Infant Weeping in Akkadian, Hebrew, and Greek Literature (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2016).The first chapter employs psychological research on human emotion regulation to understand prayer and weeping. Bosworth argues that both prayer and weeping can be understood through attachment theory. Originally used to describe how children interact with caregivers, attachment theory spans human life to include the role of deities as attachment figures. The theory also extends to understanding emotion regulation; for example, weeping is a social, rather than cathartic behavior, and this view can be extended to weeping and prayer. The deity can also become a voice or dialogue partner in prayer. Bosworth notes that weeping as social behavior may elicit empathy or anger and is not always a helpful strategy.Chapter two examines a number of Mesopotamian prayer genres. These include s̆uillas (the most studied type of Akkadian prayer with a focus on greeting the high deity), ers̆aḫungas (Sumerian lament prayers to appease the deity with Akkadian interlinear translations), dingirs̆adabbas (prayers for calming the anger of a personal god), namburbis (warding off of evil portended by an omen), ikribus (a prayer recited by a diviner during extispicy), tamı̄tus (a prayer petitioning Shamash and Adad for an answer before the extispicy ritual), letter and royal prayers, and hymns. Weeping occurs within the genres of some suillas (7 percent, with 30 percent of the prayers involving divine anger including weeping), ers̆aḫungas (22 percent, though 50 percent of the prayers with lament sections), dingirs̆adabbas (20 percent), and hymns (11 percent). The chapter closes with some small lexical comments noting that weeping verbs almost always appear in the durative, depicting the ongoing weeping of the petitioner.In chapter three, Bosworth examines all psalms that mention weeping: these include individual laments (Pss 6, 39, 42/43, 56, 69, and 102),communal laments (Pss 80, 126, 137), thanksgiving (Pss 30, 116), and other types of Psalms (Pss 78, 119). As Bosworth moves beyond Westermann’s form critical analysis of praise and lament, he encourages us to examine prayer as emotion regulation, and so mood changes are expected. This dialogic reading helps to recognize the sudden shift, or multiple shifts from lament to praise within a psalm. The chapter concludes with brief lexical comments on the language of weeping and where images may cluster around weeping. In sum, weeping appears in 7 percent of all psalms and 28 percent of lament psalms involve weeping.A 7-page final chapter offers comparative perspectives to the study. For example, both Akkadian and Hebrew prayers draw on animal imagery to describe human weeping, though dove imagery is more common in Akkadian prayers. Bosworth understands the specific cultural contexts for tearful prayers as very different. The Mesopotamian tradition contained two categories of divine appeasal, ers̆aḫungas and dingirs̆adabbas, while Israelite prayer appears to lack such a genre or liturgical rite. Another difference is the wide variety of linguistic means in Akkadian prayers to illustrate weeping, whereas Hebrew prayer has a comparatively small range of expression. Bosworth closes by asking why weeping is so relatively rare in prayer. Perhaps, Bosworth muses, it would have lost its rhetorical effect, or it was used to mollify divine anger but not used in a general petition.Bosworth’s focus on a corpus study of the psalms can inherently limit his analysis. For example, his opening chapter discusses ritual tears though none of the examples provided are from Psalms. Or, 1 Sam 1:10 describes Hannah’s prayer this way: “She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord, and wept bitterly.” Though the prayer recorded in the following chapter (1 Sam 2) was likely an independent composition, the narrative implicitly reads Hannah’s prayer through the metanarrative of weeping. In this sense, weeping is not lexically attested in the prayer but appears to inform how the prayer was understood. Seen through this light, Hannah’s prayer is one example of a Hebrew prayer that is non-psalm based but profitable for study. Thus, the subtitle of the book really explores Hebrew psalm prayers rather than Hebrew prayers. Bosworth’s comments on the language of weeping may also be enhanced. On one hand, he notes that דמעה is found almost exclusively in poetry but, on the other hand, moves to explore poetic idioms for weeping just within psalm poetry. One interesting motif left unexplored is “Let your face shine,” which appears multiple times in the context of weeping: Pss 80:8, 119:135, as well as in the funerary context of the Priestly benediction at Ketef Hinnom (Num 6:24-27). These comments should not detract from Bosworth’s careful wedding of psychological theory with ancient texts. He has advanced the conversation and has provided a number of new avenues to pursue

Akkadian · Anger · Art · Hebrew · Lament · Literature · Prayer · Psychoanalysis · Ancient Near East History · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Infant Health and Development · Philosophy · Psychology · Religious studies · Social Psychology

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