- HE-OF-THE-SINAI I. Occurring twice in the OT (Judg 5:5; Ps 68:8-9) zeh sinai ‘He-of-the-Sinai’ is to be understood according to the analogous Nabatean divine name ‘Dushara’ as the ‘God (Lord) of the Sinai’ (H. Grimme, ZDMG 50 [I896}:573 n. 1). II. The divine epithet ‘He-of-the-Sinai’ appears in Judg 5:5. Here ‘He-of-the-Sinai’ is a qualification of Yahweh, and stands in parallelism to the epithet ‘God of Israel’. Before becoming the god of Israel Yahweh was the lord of the Sinai who came from Seir/Edom to fight for Israel (Judg 5:4-5; cf. Deut 33:2; Hab 3:3). The Hebrew construction Yahweh zeh sinai has an anology in the Nabatean designation Dushara ‘He-of-the-Sara[-mountain)’. The original name of this deity has been completely superseded by the epithet ‘dusara ‘. Several authors want to delete ‘He-of-the-Sinai’ from Judg 5:5 as a gloss. Thus Fishbane argues that it is an interpolation indicating that “this (refers to the event at) Mount Sinai” (1985:75). Considering the Nabatean analogy, this suggestion is open to debate.
- The argument in favour is strengthened further by a second mentioning of ‘He-of- the-Sinai’ in the OT. Ps 68:8-9 is a quotation of Judg 5:4-5 which shows that the author of this psalm treated ‘He-of-the-Sinai’ in his Vorlage as a divine name. Furthermore, the author of Ps 68:9 replaced Yahweh on the basis of Judg 5:4-5 by elohim thus creating a distich “before God the Lord of Sinai. before God, the God of Israel”. (Note, however, that Fishbane reverses the chronological order of these hymns). Judg 5:4-5 and Ps 68:8-9 show that there was a tradition of a god ‘Yahweh-he-of-the-Sinai’. This was originally a specification of a god according to his cult-place. It can be understood in analogy to the Ugaritic divine name ‘Baal Zaphon’ by which a local manifestation of the Northern Syrian weather-god is differentiated from other Baal-deities also venerated in Ugarit. That further local Yahweh-manifestations were also known in Israel is shown by the inscriptions of Kuntillet Ajrud which know “Yahweh of Teman” and “Yahweh of Samaria” (J. RENZ & W. ROLLIG. Handbuch der althebraischen Epigraphik I/I [Darmstadt 1995] 61-62.64).
- Source: Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible
- Römer believes that Yahweh as a divinity linked with Sinai is a close parallel to Dushara. See The Invention of God, 2015, pp. 44-45.