Water and Water-Related Phenomena in the Old Testament Wisdom Literature

An Eco-Theological Exploration

Kivatsi Jonathan Kavusa

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780567692276
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Kivatsi Jonathan Kavusa addresses a gap in the field of ecological readings of the Old Testament, exploring the theme of water in the Wisdom books, including the often-ignored deuterocanonical works. Kavusa focuses on both the negative and positive potential of water, drawing in particular on four of the Earth Bible principles: intrinsic worth, interconnectedness, voice, and purpose. Kavusa begins with a summary of the extant studies and literature reviews on water and water-related motifs in the Old Testament. He then analyses the books of Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Deutero-canonical wisdom, examining the various references to water as life-giving or life-threatening entities, and expanding upon the themes of water management and sustainability, the intrinsic worth of nature and the unpredicatable, chaotic state of water. This volume concludes with several insights for ecological responsibility and valuable wisdom for an eco-theological perspective, both in Kavusa's African context and with a more universal application.

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1. Water as an Interdisciplinary Subject

Water is essential for all life. Covering nearly 70 per cent of the earth, it is uncertain that life on earth would have arisen without water, since no organism can live without it. Water is predominant in all living things: water makes up 60 per cent of a tree’s weight; most animals contain an average of 50–60 per cent water.

And yet, while water is a basic condition of life, it is also an agent of destruction across the globe. For many readers of this book, water is an everyday commodity. The global demand for water is increasing at such significant rates that experts in international relations and conflict studies think that the major wars of this century will be fought not over oil but water. In many parts of our world, water is increasingly becoming a matter of life and death. In many developing countries, women and children spend hours walking to fetch clean water from distant sources.

For all its life-giving and life-preserving importance, water is involved in the death of many people. In Africa, roughly 600,000 people die every year from unsafe water, while water-related diseases kill millions more. Water is thus a valuable treasure and a potential threat that can both give and threaten life through its variable and complex aspects. It is not surprising that water has long been revered and feared. Wells and springs/fountains have been and still are (by some) regarded as sacred places, as places where deities reside and as sources of healing and refreshment (Prov. 5:15-20); seas, great lakes and rivers have, it seems, always had the ability to induce fear.

For this reason, the modern discussion of water has become a subject involving interdisciplinary approaches. UNESCO argues that the sus­tainable future of the planet requires cross-disciplinary investigation.¹ The present study is a theological perspective on the subject of water. It examines the life-giving and life-threatening potential of water and related phenomena in the Old Testament wisdom books.

1.2 Formulating the Problem

The crisis of water, which is a current and pressing problem of our time, was already one of the most important issues in the biblical world. As such, the subject of water occurs in the Bible broadly and in multivalent ways either as a metaphor for a given reality or a real physical domain. However, since Lynn White alleged that Western Christianity is liable for the current ecological crisis in 1967, biblical scholars and eco-theologians have tried to prove the contrary. Notably, their responses have been too narrow, as they favoured certain biblical texts about nature (water) and leaned towards the romantic view of nature (water) in the Bible.

Many publications exploring water and water-related phenomena select texts from the Pentateuch, Prophets and Psalms² that expressis verbis deal with water as a physical reality. These biblical loci have evolved as a kind of ‘canon within the canon’,³ one that entails ignoring texts that do not present themselves as having ecological wisdom. As a result of this, the Old Testament wisdom books have not gained enough attention in the study of water and related phenomena. In the early 1980s, Loader⁴ observed that very little or no attention is given to the Old Testament wisdom books in eco-theological studies. This tendency continues to date in studies about water in the Old Testament.

The 2011⁵ volume of the journal Interface, entitled Water: A Matter of Life and Death, is one of the most noteworthy biblical and eco-theological studies on water in the Bible. This volume provides a series of contributions from biblical scholars and scientists who seriously engage with the concept of water as a spiritual and physical entity. However, even in this volume, which was explicitly entitled to highlight the opposing aspects of water in the Bible, the Old Testament wisdom books were ignored.

Another prominent example of the lack of interest in the wisdom books is the recently published scholarly book entitled Thinking of Water in the Early Second Temple Period.⁶ This work clearly favours texts from the Pentateuch and prophetic books. Despite the fact that the books of Proverbs, Qoheleth, Sirach and Wisdom of Solomon belong to the Second Temple period, their views on water are simply ignored. The book contains only ‘a brief overview’ about thinking related to water in the book of Job.

As for the subject of water itself, many publications have a reductionist romanticist view of nature and, therefore, display a one-sided outlook. For the romanticist ecologists, the view of ‘nature’ needs not be confined to settings of Big Wilderness – as a negative entity – but must be perceived through eyes of wonder and beauty. This is the perspective that always animates tourists as they visit national parks and reserves. In this way, many eco-theological studies approach biblical texts about water and related phenomena with the aim of only retrieving the eco-friendliness of elements of nature.

To my knowledge, thorough study of water and water-related phenomena in general, and water as bearing life-giving and life-threatening potential in particular, in the Old Testament wisdom literature has not been done before, especially not from an eco-theological point of view. In addition, the romanticist view of nature is dominant in eco-theological Old Testament scholarship, which does not do justice to the global perception of elements of nature as depicted in the Old Testament texts.

Although there is a scarcity of scholarly works on water and water-related phenomena in these books, the Old Testament wisdom books overflow – pun intended – with references to waters that deserve a thorough exploration.⁷ If we agree that the biblical texts can be the basis on which modern thoughts can be drawn for inspiration, then we need to discern the complexity of the subject of water as it occurs in the different parts of the Bible.

Therefore, after years of viewing the ‘subject of water’ primarily through the lenses of the Pentateuch, Psalms and prophetic literature, biblical scholars and eco-theologians are here invited to embrace a new way of thinking and acting imbued by the wisdom books’ focus and observations that may provide a useful means of formulating realistic and practical answers to contemporary water crises.

This book attempts to address not only the issue of favouring certain texts by taking up the challenge of offering an eco-theological interpretation of water and related phenomena in the Old Testament wisdom books, but it also critically explores this subject of water in its complexity in terms of its life-giving and life-threatening potential. We need to analyse what the wisdom literature has preserved about ancient Israel’s views on water, this significant and indispensable element of life, and yet a potential threat on earth.

Therefore, the following are the main guiding questions of this book:

1. How often do references to water occur in the Old Testament wisdom books?
2. Do the Old Testament wisdom texts where the waters of life and death occur offer ecological wisdom?

1.3 Stating the Thesis

Through its analyses, this book shows how, despite a shortage of scholarly interest in water in the Old Testament wisdom books, this part of the Bible contains a rich variety of references to water and water-related phenomena relevant for an eco-theological analysis. Additionally, this book’s explorations into the positive and negative potential of water exemplifies how the romantic view of nature does not do justice to the biblical texts themselves. I hope that the insights of this book will shed light on contemporary attitudes towards water.

1.4 The Relevance of Wisdom Books to Eco-theology

Firstly, it is necessary to clarify what the word ‘wisdom’ means. There is a difference between (1) wisdom as a human faculty and (2) wisdom as wisdom literature with its characteristic ideas and literary forms. The faculty of wisdom is designated through a number of expressions in the Old Testament, most prominently חׇכְמׇה. The distinctive feature for חׇכְמׇה in all its occurrences is a high degree of knowledge and skill in any domain, in other words, expertise.⁸

The wisdom books are literary constructs that seek to instil this wisdom. In Prov. 8:22-31, Wisdom claims to have been personally present at creation: it is the principle in which God established creation. Thus, the main teaching of the wisdom books is that one recognises the order, which God put in creation from the beginning, and lives according to it.⁹ This optimistic sapiential idea is clearly stated in the book of Proverbs, which suggests that if one desires happiness and success then one needs to adjust his/her life with the creation order. Failure to abide by this order/wisdom (ma’at in Egypt) will lead inter alia to calamity.

Seen in this way, the wisdom books would seem to be relevant when addressing the current ecological crisis. This is not surprising, since the wisdom literature might best be understood as storing and preserving observations and experiences accumulated by humans over a long period of time.¹⁰ Water is both a basic need of living beings, and sometimes a destructive factor that is present in the daily life of human beings. For this reason, the subject of water and water-related phenomena extensively occur in the wisdom books in multivalent ways.

Surprisingly, very little or no attention has been paid to their vision on water. The Old Testament wisdom books teach wisdom ‘not incidentally, not as one aspect among many (more) important things, but as the very fundamental cornerstone of all human culture’.¹¹ In this part of the Bible, there is no polarity between humans and nature, but a quest for order.

It is interesting that there is a self-criticism within the sapiential literature. The books of Job and Qoheleth argue that the created order is made up of both life-giving and life-threatening entities that are beyond human knowledge. Therefore, chs. 38–42 of Job conclude with the harmony of the cosmic order in a poetic symmetry, while Qoh. 11:1-6 depicts the human incapacity to master the mysteries of nature (also Sir. 24:29).

Fundamentally, the wisdom books provide such a realistic vision that, without being anachronistic, they offer the potential for re-defining and re-questioning our relationship with nature. They offer insightful wisdom that we can use to address our contemporary ecological crisis, including water issues.

1.5 Theoretical Framework

This study is approached within the eco-theological framework, informed by a hermeneutics of suspicion and retrieval/trust as well as insights from the six eco-justice principles of the Earth Bible Project, namely intrinsic worth, interconnectedness, voice, purpose, mutual custodianship and resistance. According to the Earth Bible Team,¹² readers of the Bible may not find all these principles useful in reading a given biblical text afresh. This study is an attempt at reading the wisdom texts containing water as a life-giving or life-threatening entity in the framework of four eco-justice principles, namely the principles of intrinsic worth, interconnectedness, voice and purpose.

Additionally, this study makes use of a hermeneutics of suspicion and retrieval/trust. With regard to the element of suspicion, we suspect that biblical texts, written by human beings for human readers, reflect primarily the interests of humans. Briefly, the Bible has long been understood as God’s book for humans in that all its passages are normally interpreted from the perspective of humans. The new ecological awareness requires that we begin reading the biblical text with the suspicion that it is likely to be inherently anthropocentric and/or has traditionally been read from a human-fo...