Dating the Songs of Degrees

Introduction

The “Song of Degrees”, or the “Songs of Ascent” or otherwise the “Songs of Steps”[1] is a title given to fifteen short Psalms (120–134) characterized by use of a key-word, or by epanaphora (i.e., repetition), and by their epigrammatic style. More than half of the fifteen Psalms are joyful, and all of them hopeful. Four of them (122, 124, 131 and 133) are linked in their ascriptions to David, and one (127) to Solomon. They were well suited for being sung, by their poetic form and the sentiments they express. These fifteen Psalms stand together as a short collection – the question is why?  Why were they written and who wrote them?  Are they post-exilic or from the early or late monarchical period? What were they used for?  To answer the latter question first, we can safely assume that they were composed for liturgical purposes. They were used for temple worship.

Liturgical setting

During the time of Christ these psalms were connected with the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkoth) in Jerusalem.[2] At the water-drawing ceremony (cf. John 7:37) there, the Levites stood “upon the fifteen steps leading down from the court of the Israelites to the Women’s Court, corresponding to the fifteen Songs of Ascent in the Psalms; upon them the Levites used to stand with musical instruments and sing hymns” (Mishnah, Sukkah 5.4). At some stage these fifteen Psalms were associated with “fifteen steps” that linked the temple courts, but does this traditional ascription reflect their original usage?

Rabbi Akiva asserted that the water libation was based on the famous verse from Isaiah 12:3. On the morning of the first day of the feast, after the daily sacrifice and daily libation of wine, a procession went from the Temple mount to the spring of Shiloah (Siloam). A priest drew the water and returned to the Temple through the Water Gate that led to the inner court. There he chanted the words of Isaiah: “With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation” (Isa 12:3), and poured out the water on the altar as a libation.[3] A text from the Talmud states: “He who has not witnessed the joy of the water drawing has never in his life experienced real joy.” (B.Suk 5:1-3)

The Feast of Tabernacles (Booths or Sukkoth) is associated with Israel’s deliverance from Egypt but it is also an agricultural feast specifically allied with rainfall and water. Arthur Schaffer points out that all four of the plant species (Lev 23:40) used at Tabernacles are symbols of water.[4] Sukkoth was then an appeal to God to bless the land with the former rain without which the earth could not be prepared for crops.

The Pharisees claimed that the water libation was a tradition handed down orally from Moses, but this is obviously a ploy to give the practice Mosaic legitimacy.  The practice was of much later origins than Moses. This custom became a controversial issue between the Sadducees and the Pharisees. When Alexander Jannaeus, who was both king and high priest and a follower of the Sadducees, publicly refused to pour the water on the altar, the congregation became so enraged that it pelted him with etrogim (fruit) (Sukkah 48b; Ant. 13.13) In the aftermath of this incident, he is said to have massacred more than 6,000 of his fellow Jews. This occurred approximately 95 BC. Therefore, the water libation was definitely established at least a century before Christ but do its origins lay further in antiquity?

This article argues that the water libation was added to Sukkoth (including the singing of the fifteen Psalms) during the reign of Hezekiah. It is important to know something about this water. It was taken from a spring just east of Jerusalem called the Spring of Gihon. This spring may have been used to anoint David’s son, Solomon, King of Israel (1 Kings 1:45) and that anointing was symbolic of the Holy Spirit coming upon an individual (1 Sam. 16:13), the living waters of Siloam became associated with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. It was probably during this feast that the Solomon’s temple was dedicated and the Shekinah descended (1 Kgs 8:2, 10). What the author may have meant is that the celebration of ‘the Feast’ during the last seven days of the Jewish month Ethanim continued into a celebration of the temple[5] inauguration during the first seven days of Bul.

The waters of Siloam (Shiloah) feature in the Immanuel prophecy given to Hezekiah’s father Ahaz.   Isaiah found Ahaz standing by “the end of the conduit of the upper pool” (7:3) and the prophet offered a sign concerning the establishment of the Davidic dynasty (which Ahaz refused),

Forasmuch as this people refuseth the waters of Shiloah that go softly…Now therefore, behold, the Lord bringeth up upon them the waters of the river, strong and many, even the king of Assyria… (Isa 8:6-7).

King Hezekiah later redirected the water of this spring into the city of Jerusalem through a long underground conduit known as Hezekiah’s Tunnel. Within the walls of Jerusalem, the waters of Gihon ran into a pool named the Pool of Siloam.

The waters of Siloam were therefore connected (both literally and figuratively) with the survival of the Davidic dynasty. Figuratively by God (through the prophet Isaiah) and literally when Hezekiah hid the source of Siloam by digging a tunnel to ensure the survival of his dynasty,

So there was gathered much people together, who stopped all the fountains, and the brook that ran through the midst of the land, saying: Why should the kings of Assyria come, and find much water? (2 Chron 32:4)

It is then highly likely that the water drawing ceremony celebrated in Isa 12:3 was added to Sukkoth during the reign of Hezekiah and that the Psalms of Degrees (steps/ascents) were composed/redacted to be sung on this festal occasion.

Therefore, with joy ye shall draw water out of the wells of salvation. (Isa 12:3)

The Hebrew intensive plural is used in Isaiah (wells of salvation), but there was only one well[6] and it had been detoured by Hezekiah’s tunnel inside the cities defences.  It seems then that the traditional rabbinical memory that associates the water libation with Isa 12:3 is correct. Hezekiah instituted this addendum to Sukkoth to celebrate the deliverance from Assyrian aggression and to pray for the blessing of water (rainfall) on the devastated and burnt land:

A fire devours before them, and behind them a flame burns; the land is like the Garden of Eden before them, And behind them a desolate wilderness; surely nothing shall escape them. (Joel 2:3)

Be glad then, you children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God; For He has given you the former rain faithfully, And He will cause the rain to come down for you — The former rain, and the latter rain in the first month. (Joel 2:23)[7]

For the Lord will comfort Zion, he will comfort all her waste places; he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness will be found in it, thanksgiving and the voice of melody. (Isa 51:3)

Joy and thanksgiving was found again….and the voice of melody;

The Lord was ready to save me; therefore we will sing my songs (Hezekiah’s songs) with stringed instruments all the days of our life, in the house of the Lord. (Isa 38:20)

The Fifteen Steps

James W. Thirtle[8] proposed that the fifteen Psalms of Degrees come from the Hezekiah period and are written to celebrate the fifteen years of extension granted to him. On this occasion the sign given was the reversal of the shadow on the “sundial” by ten degrees (2 Kgs 20:8-11),

And Hezekiah said unto Isaiah, What shall be the sign that the Lord will heal me, and that I shall go up into the house of the Lord the third day?   And Isaiah said, this sign shalt thou have of the Lord, that the Lord will do the thing that he hath spoken: shall the shadow go forward ten degrees, or go back ten degrees? And Hezekiah answered, it is a light thing for the shadow to go down ten degrees: nay, but let the shadow return backward ten degrees. And Isaiah the prophet cried unto the Lord: and he brought the shadow ten degrees backward, by which it had gone down in the dial of Ahaz. (2 Kgs 20:8-11)

The same Hebrew word is employed in the Psalm title “Song of Degrees” as for “degrees” [9] in 2 Kgs.20:8-11 and the same word is employed for sundial. When he died, Hezekiah was buried in “the upper (same word) tombs” (2 Chron 32:33/NKJV), thus, even in death, associating Hezekiah with his miraculous sign. The sense of the word is “to go up” or “ascend” in a literal sense by using steps (i.e., by increments) or by “degrees” as in the old English of the KJV.  The “sundial” of Ahaz was therefore a staircase leading up to the temple and the hour of worship would probably have been determined by the interplay of shadows cast on the steps by adjacent walls etc. For example, we might expect that a certain act of worship might be scheduled to take place when the shadow was on the fifth step (degree).

In his dissertation on time measurement in ancient Israel, David Miano[10] proposes that the “dial of Ahaz” or the stairway (steps) of Ahaz is a structure built on the roof chamber of his residence (cf. 2 Kgs.23:12) he bases this on the Cairo model of a shadow clock noted by Yadin in which two opposite pyramid staircases (facing east and west) function as a “shadow clock”.  However, there is no such evidence for such a structure, “the staircase of Ahaz” was probably connected with that “covered way for the sabbath that they had built in the house, and the king’s entry without”,  which Ahaz turned “round the house of Yahweh, because of the king of Assyria” (2 Kgs 16:18 the Revised Version, margin). This staircase, called after Ahaz because the alteration was due to him, may have been substituted for David’s “causeway that goeth up,” which was “westward, by the gate of Shallecheth” (1 Chron 26:16), or more probably for Solomon’s “ascent by which he went up unto the house of Yahweh” which so impressed the queen of Sheba (2 Chron 9:4).

However, it is more likely to refer to the steps ascending from Siloam or the steps between the temple courtyards en route from Siloam. Ahaz probably began the construction work on water security (Isa.7:13 cf.8:6) that was later completed by Hezekiah and no doubt Ahaz repaired the damage caused by the earthquake, [11] so it is not improbable that access to Siloam was the work of Ahaz and therefore “Ahaz’s stairs”. The royal palace is understood to have been placed southeast of the Temple, and it is therefore probable that it was some part of the Temple buildings that had cast its shadow down the stairway in full view of the dying king, as he lay in his chamber.

Objections Considered

Some commentators presume that the interpretation of “Songs of Ascent (Degrees)” indicate a pilgrimage upwards (to Jerusalem) and therefore paraphrase the Hebrew as “A Pilgrimage Song.[12] Another common interpretation is that, since these psalms are likely post-exilic, they may come from the time of Nehemiah, and thus the tAl[]M;h (‘degrees’) refer to those in exile returning, that is, going back up to Jerusalem. As the Psalms specialist, M. D. Goulder, says,

The word hl'[]m; is common for a step; but it is also used at Ezra 7.9 for an expedition of exiles returning to Palestine.[13]

The songs, according to this view, are meant to accompany pilgrims as they approach and eventually stand inside the city (cf. Ps 122:1-2). Apart from the superscriptions, though, the theme of pilgrimage is simply not part of many of these psalms.

The Hebrew of the Songs of Ascents is thought to display late (post-exilic) features (e.g. the relative pronoun še instead of ’ášer and other Aramaisms[14]) and, because of this, the collection is given a late date.  Goulder, for example, endeavours to link them directly to the first person narrative of Nehemiah. His four (characteristically bold) propositions are worth stating in full:

(1) The Songs of Ascents are a unity, coming from the hand of a single author.

(2) The author of the Songs composed them to celebrate the achievement of Nehemiah.

(3) Psalms 120-27 follow the stories in the original, first-person, so-called Nehemiah memoir, Neh 1.1-7.5a, in sequence, as do 133-34 its continuation in Neh 12.27-43; 128-32 follow that part of the original Nehemiah ‘memoir’ for which Neh 7.5b-12.26 has been substituted—principally Neh 13.4-31, which has been displaced.

(4) Nehemiah’s ‘memoir’ was in fact his testimony, proclaimed to the people evening and morning through the feast of Tabernacles in 445; and the Songs of Ascents were responses to those testimonies, sung at the fifteen services through the week.[15]

Zenger does not find his evidence compelling and remarks that Goulder’s proposals (along with others) suffer from two fundamental methodological deficits:

(1) They do not reconstruct the history of the psalms’ origins from the psalms themselves but import them into the text from outside. That, of course, is the general problem involved in the historical dating of texts when there is no existing external evidence.

(2) They extract individual aspects of the psalms and use them as the basis for a general hypothesis.

The OT scholar, J. Day, employs the same linguistic argument to determine a late date for many of the Songs of Ascent;

An interesting example concerns the use of the Hebrew relative particle še instead of the normal classical Hebrew form ’ášer. Whilst this can be early, as its presence in Judges 5 suggests (cf. v.7), the fact that it became the regular relative particle in Mishnaic Hebrew proves that it could also be a late form, and such it surely is when it occurs in the Psalter.  It appears there in some of the Psalms of ascent or steps (Pss 122.3; 123.2; 124.1, 2, 6; 129.6, 7; 133.2, 3), as well as in Pss 135.2, 8, 10; 136.23, 137.8, 9 and 144.15. Of these Psalms 124, 133 and 144.12-15 already appear in Hurvitz’s list of indubitably late psalms and Psalm 135 has been adjudged post-exilic above on the basis of its reference to the ‘house of Aaron’ in v.19 (cf. Ps.133.2), whilst Psalm 137 clearly reflects the experience of exile.  Add to this the observation that all the instances of še in Psalms occur in the last third of the Psalter, where cumulative evidence indicates that a large number of late psalms are concentrated, and the case becomes overwhelming that all psalms containing še are no earlier than the exile, and apart from Psalm 137[16] are very likely post-exilic.[17]

The same linguistic argument is used to accord a late (post-exilic) date to Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes; however, we noted in an earlier article that linguistic evidence alone cannot be decisive for late dating, especially since some OT scholars, such as Gary Rendsburg, have identified northern linguistic Hebrew features in some of these Psalms (e.g. Pss 132, 133). In that article, it was proposed that the influx of northern refugees and pilgrims during the reign of Hezekiah could explain the inclusion of northern Israelite linguistic characteristics.[18]

Leon Liebreich believes that these Psalms are related, directly or indirectly, to four key words of the Priestly Blessing[19] but Zenger remarks;

Liebreich’s observation that Psalms 120-134 are related to the Aaronic blessing is correct in principle, but it by no means explains the overall program of their composition. Above all, the close linking of the collection to the course of the Temple liturgy posited by Liebreich is rather implausible. In contrast to Num 6:24-26, Psalms 120-134 also lack the theologoumenon of “YHWH’s countenance,” which speaks against a direct correlation of the two texts.[20]

Composition

The fact that four of these psalms (122, 124, 131 and 133) are linked in their ascriptions to David, and one (127) to Solomon would seem to weigh against common authorship—either by a single person or a “school” of inspired composers.[21] However, the number of unifying features in this small collection leads Kevin Haley to remark that,

The links between these psalms are so pervasive that if these do not come from the pen of a single author, or perhaps school, then they certainly have a common redactor.[22]

Haley reproduces Hendrik Viviers diagram (Figure 1, below),[23]

His comment is,

In his article “The Coherence of the Ma‘alot Psalms,” Hendrik Viviers has done a great service by distilling enormous amounts of research, including much of Seybold’s monograph, into a single article. He notes several of these other unifying factors including the noticeably shorter length of these psalms, a network of word repetitions, similar figures of speech, and the pervasive theme of trust in YHWH.[24]

Whether or not some of these fifteen Psalms were originally composed by David, or whether they were dedicated to him,[25] the intertextual connections between these Psalms point to intensive redaction to adapt them as a collection suitable to the reign of Hezekiah.

Conclusion

The ascription “Songs of Ascent” (Degrees/Steps) points to the reign of Hezekiah and the singing of Psalms on the Temple court steps leading up from Siloam during the feast of Sukkoth. Linguistic evidence is not decisive for dating these Psalms to a later period. The “Songs of Ascent” present themselves as an integrated collection.   Part two in this series will continue the investigation.