https://doi.org/10.17159/2312-3621/2021/v34n1a2

OTE Editor  (Hulisani Ramantswana)

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Ramantswana and Human, “Editorial,” OTE 34/1 (2021): 9-12      9 
 
 
 
Editorial1 
HULISANI RAMANTSWANA (UNISA) AND DIRK HUMAN (UP) 
Over the years, Old Testament Essays (OTE) did not charge page fees to 
international authors. To cover our publication costs, we relied mostly on South 
African authors or those affiliated with South African universities to cover the 
production costs. However, this model is no longer viable and all contributors 
are now expected to pay page fees. We have kept the cost fees as low as possible 
as the journal does not aim to make profit but rather to disseminate scholars’ 
research across the globe. Therefore, we are thankful to all the authors who have 
taken OTE as the preferred journal for disseminating their research and look 
forward to receiving their articles even in the future.  
Like OTE 33 (3) 2020, this issue comprises two sections—the general 
section, which is reserved for our contributors and the special section focused on 
“Psalmody and Suffering.” 
Part I of this issue contains nine articles. In the first, Bartosz 
Adamczewski draws correlations between Abraham, as characterised in the book 
of Genesis, and Sanballat in the book of Nehemiah. For Adamczewski, the 
correlations between the two provide hints for the dating of the book of Genesis, 
which he assumes to be in the late fifth century. Nissim Amzallag, in his reading 
of Ps 124, identifies the identities of the two opposing groups in the psalms—the 
us group, which he regards as the Edomites, and the them-group, which he 
regards as the wicked Edomites. In Amzallag’s view, the group that is 
responsible for authoring Ps 124 is the us-group, foreign Edomites who joined 
the Israelite community during the late Babylonian/early, whereas the them-
group did not join the Israelite community nor adopted Yahwism. Katherine 
Gwyther considers the feasting versus fasting theme in the book of Esther as an 
indication of hybridity in Persian and Jewish activity. She argues that the text 
projects primarily the Persians as engaging in feasting, whereas the Jews engage 
in fasting. However, with the institution of the Purim, the boundary between the 
two becomes blurred. From a postcolonial perspective, Gwyther points out that 
the dominant and subaltern cultures influence each other. Cephas Tushima, reads 
the Lot story in Gen 19:1–29 as an indication of marginality that comes as a 
result of Lot’s dissociation from the covenantal promises through Abraham and 
his association with the Sodomites. Lot ultimately ended up as a homeless cave 
dweller. Tushima regards, in a theological sense, people’s sense of displacement 
as mainly a result of their disassociation with YHWH. In his article, Gesila 
Uzukwu interrogates the manner in which woman are used in the patriarchal 
 
*  To cite: Hulisani Ramantswana and Dirk J. Human “Editorial,” Old Testament 
Essays 34 no. 1 (2021): 9–12. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17159/2312-3621/2021/v34n1a2. 
10     Ramantswana and Human, “Editorial,” OTE 34/1 (2021): 9-12      
 
narratives with special attention to Abraham and Isaac. For Uzukwu the 
patriarchal narratives project a culture of objectification and commodification of 
women, which fosters violence against women. Modern interpreters, for 
Uzukwu, need to critically appropriate biblical texts to avoid the perpetuation of 
a culture of abuse, oppression, and violence against women using the Bible.  
Albert Coetsee reads Deut 3:24 in contributing to the key theme of the 
uniqueness of YHWH, which he regards as permeating the rest of the book. In 
his view, the intersecting motifs of YHWH’s greatness, mighty hand, deeds, and 
might acts support the key theme. The next article by Michael A. Lyons engages 
the scholarly view that certain texts are “unreadable” due to the incoherence 
inherent in the text due to redactional activity. Lyons focuses mainly on 
“allusions” as the cause of “incoherence” in the biblical texts. For Lyons, 
incoherence should be viewed as a deliberate compositional or editorial strategy, 
which composers of biblical texts utilised to produce readable texts for them. 
Michael K. Mensah engages in a reading of Ps 119 in light of African proverbs 
and, therefore, points to parallels between Israelite and African wisdom, 
particularly the Akan and Ewe proverbs. Jakob Böckle, utilising Conceptual 
Metaphor Theory, reads Ps 23 in light of the ancient Near Eastern vassal treaties. 
Böckle argues that Ps 23 projects the divine-human relationship in covenant 
terms through the imageries of the shepherd (king) and the human (sheep).  
Part II (the special section) continues with a series of contributions on the 
theme of Psalmody and Suffering. Six articles articulate the theme, beginning 
with Danie Veldsman’s article entitled “Suffering as Expressed in the Psalter and 
Beyond: An Unfinished Systematic-Theological Perspective on Evolutionary 
Theodicy,” which touches on suffering and creation. He argues, with specific 
reference to expressions of suffering in the Psalter, from an evolutionary 
perspective. The essay opens up a broadened and deeper but gracious 
understanding of human suffering within a kind God’s good creation. From the 
diverse voices as responses to diverse kinds of suffering, which if 
hermeneutically embedded in a post-Darwinian evolutionary framework, the 
analysis prompts and revisits different existential and theological horizons of 
interpretation. These same horizons that interpretively open up direct us as 
embodied persons of flesh and blood on the one hand to new and other 
dimensions of our being vulnerable creatures before God and, on the other hand, 
direct us to different glimpses of a kind creator God in a world of dynamic 
relationships and forces, at the same time. Ultimately, embedded in a post-
Darwinian evolutionary framework, the Psalter eventuates here and now, and in 
contexts of suffering for embodied persons, a gracious cognitive-affective re-
appraisal of their faith.  
Eckart Otto investigates the idea of “The Suffering Moses in Pentateuch 
and Psalms.” He presents the prophetic profile of Moses in the context of the 
“final text” of Deuteronomy, especially Deut 4 and Deut 29–30. In Deut 30:1–
Ramantswana and Human, “Editorial,” OTE 34/1 (2021): 9-12      11 
 
 
 
10, Moses announces the idea of the circumcision of hearts and his song in Deut 
32 confirms his message of doom and final salvation for the people of Israel. It 
solves the problem of the collective salvation of the people by a kind of canonical 
theology that quotes as a subtext from the Prophets, Psalms and Wisdom 
literature. Nevertheless, Deuteronomy has no answer to Moses’ fate of suffering 
death. He has to die so that in his place, the written Torah could accompany the 
people into the Promised Land. In the end, Moses’ fate of suffering death is not 
at all overlooked because Pss 90–92 also function as a subtext for Moses’ fate, 
developing a perspective of salvation for him as a kind of subtext for Moses 
narrative in Deuteronomy. 
In his article entitled, “Reading Ps 13 as a Strategy for the Cathartic 
Release of Negative Emotion,” Sampson Ndoga demonstrates that Ps 13 moves 
from debilitating circumstances registered therein into resolution in six short 
verses. He explores the Psalmist’s strategies to engage with the reality of victims 
of war rape in managing their feelings of abandonment. The article draws on 
African hermeneutics which primarily interested in meaning derived from the 
text beyond the critical issues in interacting with existential challenges. Due to 
the psychological nature of the experiences of victims of war, rape atrocities and 
post-traumatic disorders, the cathartic release is envisioned in recognition that 
healing may remain unattainable for some. The article ends with some 
considerations for deriving meaning from the Psalm as the methodological 
premise seeks to do.  
A second article on Ps 13 is Dirk Human’s “Human Suffering in Need of 
God’s ‘Face’ and ‘Eyes’: Perspectives on Psalm 13.” The COVID-19 global 
pandemic and its consequent outcomes have caused immense suffering and 
distress in all levels of life worldwide. Theological and religious communities 
raise the question of God’s involvement in the causes of and healing from this 
horrendous misery and grief. These questions become paradigmatic of how God 
is involved in suffering and how the supplicant could experience deliverance 
through interaction with God whilst situated in such a crisis. Exegetical 
contemplation of Ps 13, a well-known lament song, provides an exemplary 
experience of a psalmist in a severe life-endangering context. An exposition of 
the text, its historical, cultic and literary contexts and the genre of ‘lament’ offers 
insight into the Yahweh-believer’s interaction. Without pretending to provide 
answers to enigmatic forms of suffering, this article intends to portray how 
Yahweh-believers in ancient Israel understood and reacted to suffering. Human 
suffering indeed needs the ‘face’ and ‘eyes’ of Yahweh to experience healing 
and redemption.  
Frances Klopper enriches the special section with an article entitled, “‘Oh, 
that I Had Wings Like a Dove…’ Psalm 55 and Breaking the Silence about 
Violence against Women.” Klopper examines the notion of suffering in Ps 55 in 
relation to women as victims of sexual violence. She explores redactional and 
12     Ramantswana and Human, “Editorial,” OTE 34/1 (2021): 9-12      
 
compositional issues underlying the text as they speak to the world of the text as 
the setting of lament. The discussion takes its inspiration from a reading of Ulrike 
Bail and argues that the speaker of Ps 55 appears to be resorting to forms and 
contents of expression associated with the trauma of rape. In supplementary 
relation to this, a reader-response approach is adopted to show how a female 
persona as the projected narrator and her language of distress relate to 
conceptions of sexual assault. Thus, the study offers confirmatory findings from 
Ps 55 of how women use words and lament to break the silence and cope with 
the devastating physical and psychological effects of rape.  
Jaco Gericke contributes an article entitled “Ps 89 and the Logical 
Problem of Evil: A Comparative-Philosophical Perspective.” He takes as its 
starting point the relationship between divine attributes and suffering in Ps 89, 
showing that some of the beliefs expressed in verses 39-52 contradict those in 
verse 1-38 (53). Gericke provides a comparative-philosophical perspective on 
the reasoning operative within the Psalm’s associated religious language. He also 
identifies the so-called “Logical Problem of Evil” (LPE) in the analytic 
philosophy of religion in the Psalm. Conceptual and correlation-relations in Ps 
89 are clarified by drawing correlations and contrasts to argue that the logical 
status of the beliefs involved as a contradiction makes more sense when 
interpreted as part of a protocol in which prayer and poetry satisfy the conditions 
of a possible theodicy. Thus, restating the Psalm’s associated content in its own 
terms contributes to our understanding of why certain states of affairs in the 
world of the text are the way they are or why they are at all. 
General Editor: Hulisani Ramantswana, Department of Biblical and Ancient 
Studies, University of South Africa, P.O. Box 392, UNISA, 0003; Email: 
ramanh@unisa.ac.za; ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6629-9194 
Guest Editor: Dirk J. Human, Department of Old Testament and Hebrew 
Scriptures, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Pretoria; Email: 
dirk.human@up.ac.za; ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0346-4209  


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