1. Late prose prayers have been thought to show influence of the psalms: "Imitation of the psalms and of cultic poetry upon the whole is also to be noticed in the prayers of later prose-literature, e.g., the prayer of Solomon . . . I Ki. 8, the confessions of sin in Ezra 9 and Neh. 9" (A. Bentzen, Introduction to the Old Testament , Vol. I [Copenhagen, 1948], 165). Such a view must be reconsidered if the authenticity (the verisimilitude) of extemporized prose prayers in the earlier literature is admitted. The later prose prayers will then rather be literary-liturgical elaborations of and expansions upon established prose patterns—with a good deal of Deuteronomic ideology and language (see M. Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic continue

School [Oxford, 1972], pp. 32-45, and the pertinent references in the Scripture index to the section on Deuteronomic phraseology).

2. Babylonian examples are conveniently at hand in R. I. Caplice, The Akkadian Namburbi Texts , Sources and Monographs: Sources from the Ancient Near East, I/1 (Los Angeles, 1974). For the Roman view that for prayer to be answered it must be "such as the authorities of the State have laid down as the right wording, and if the ritual accompanying it is equally in order," see W. W. Fowler, The Religious Experience of the Roman People (London, 1922), pp. 185-190 (the quotation is on p. 189).

3. Later mishnaic Hebrew Kiwwen ( 'et halleb ) and its cognate noun kawwana ( t halleb )—technical terms for devout intention and attention in the performance of religious duties—are descended both etymologically (from the root kwn ) and semantically from the biblical term hekin leb ( nakon leb) , "direct the heart (have one's heart directed, devoted)"; this was pointed out by H. G. Enelow, in his Selected works , Volume IV, privately printed, 1935, pp. 256 ff.; see also M. Kadushin, Worship and Ethics (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1964), p. 198 and notes—from which I learned of Enelow's work.

4. To be sure, there were classes and the privileges of class in ancient Israel: slave and free, poor and rich, commoner and noble, laity and priesthood. Moreover, even with God (as I said in the conclusion of lecture 1) the status of the pray-er counted, so that a prophet or righteous man might be especially effective as an intercessor. The point I wish to make here is that, in the matter of access to God, and the possibility of winning his favor (a fundamental measure of dignity), class and rank appear not to have been of themselves decisive either in theory or practice; and that extemporized prayer both derived from, and promoted, that tenet.

5. See Y. Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel , pp. 160-161, 366-367.

6. The crucial factors in this spiritual development—all worshipers having ready and constant access to the sole, high God, and his essential righteousness—were distinctively Israelite. "The normal custom of the Babylonians in time of need was to petition their personal gods. . . . For most Babylonians the personal deity was very minor, but it was his duty, if suitably provided with offerings by his client, to look after the latter as need arose" (W. Lambert, A. Millard, Atrahsis * : The Babylonian Story of the Flood [Oxford 1969], p. 10). How he affected this by intercession with mightier, more influential gods is described by T. Jacobsen in H. and H. A. Frankfort continue

et al., The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man (Chicago, 1946), pp. 203-207. Nothing suggests that these minor deities were essentially moral or that their patronage was contingent on the morality of their clients. Even the high gods, who might serve as the personal gods of kings and great men, did not condition acceptance of prayer and worship on rectitude. "There was no distinction . . . between morally right and ritually proper. The god was just as angry with the eating of ritually impure food as with oppressing the widow and orphan. His anger would be appeased no less with the ritual offering than with a reformed life" (W. Lambert, "Morals in Ancient Mesopotamia," Ex Oriente Lux 15 (1957-1958), 194; this citation might well describe a vulgar Israelite's notion which the prophet railed against on the basis of Israel's singular God-concept). The obligations to personal gods, minor or major gods, were summed up thus by a Babylonian sage:

Every day worship your god.
Sacrifice and benediction are the proper accompaniment of   incense.
Present your free-will offering to your god,
For this is proper toward the gods.
Prayer, supplication, and prostration
Offer him daily and  you will get  your reward.
Then you will have full communion with your god.
In your wisdom study the tablet.
Reverence begets favour,
Sacrifice prolongs life,
And prayer atones for guilt. . . .
[W. G. Lambert,  Babylonian Wisdom Literature  (Oxford, 1960), p. 105]

(Jacobsen's recent discussion in his The Treasures of Darkness [New Haven, 1976], pp. 147-164, stresses the paternal aspect of the personal god; this does not affect the point made here.)

The problematic relation of morality to religion in Egypt is notorious. "That Egyptian gods are in essence not ethical powers needs no emphasizing" (H. Bonnet, Reallexikon der Aegyptischen Religions-geschichte [Berlin, 1971], p. 173). In the life of worship, including prayer, the utilitarian motive is dominant. The oft-quoted passage in the Instructions of Merikare, "The loaf of the upright is preferred to the ox of the evildoer" [M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature , continue

Vol I (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1973), 106] is immediately followed by a pragmatic, ritual-centered view of worship:

Work for the god, he will work for you also
With offerings that make the altar flourish,
With carvings that proclaim your name,
God thinks of him who works for him.
[Lichtheim, ibid.]

The suffusion of worship by magic gravely impeded its ethical effect (see Bonnet, p. 175 f.).

Thus even if we allow the prevalence of a vital popular life of prayer among Israel's neighbors, the effect will not have been the same. The combination in Israel of the immediate accessibility of the high God to all Israelites, and his essential righteousness, was a crucial, fateful difference. break