The “Chariots of the Sun” (2 Kings 23:11)

Ido Koch
Tel Aviv University

Abstract. Cette contribution s’intéresse à la description des « chars du soleil » en 2 Rois

23,11. Si ce verset a souvent été cité pour montrer l’existence d’un culte solaire en Juda à
l’époque royale, la présente étude suggère qu’il n’y avait en fait aucun rapport entre les
divinités solaires et ces chars hiérosolymitains. Ceux-ci étaient au contraire associés au
culte de Yhwh, dieu de l’orage, et nommés « chars du soleil » du fait de leur ornementa-
tion — le disque ailé, symbole traditionnel de Yhwh.

One of the most quoted verses regarding the so-called solar as-
pect of Yhwh is 2 Kings 23:11. The verse reads:

And he removed the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated
to the sun, at the entrance to the house of the LORD, by the chamber
of Nathan-melech the chamberlain, which was in the precincts, and
burned the chariots of the sun with ire.

Many scholars have deemed the information regarding the

dedication of horses to the sun and the phrase “chariots of the
sun” as the main evidence for sun worship in the Jerusalem Tem-
ple.1 Nonetheless, the association of horses and chariots with sun
worship contradicts ancient Near Eastern evidence of the chariot,
which was mainly associated with the storm god on his way to

*
Acknowledgements: the author would like to thank Prof. Oded Lipschits,
Dr. Carly Crouch, Mr. Omer Sergi, Ms. Keren Ras and Ms. Shirly Ben-Dor Evian
for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
1
Among others, see: May 1937b: 271; Montgomery 1951: 533; Weinfeld 1972:
150-152; McKay 1973a: 32-35; McKay 1973b: 167-169; Cogan 1974: 84-87; Smith
1982: 204*; Spiekerman 1982: 246-249, 252-256; Taylor 1993: 173-179; Dever 1994:
152-153; Lipiński 1995; Hardmeier 2007: 146, 154.

Semitica 54, 2012, p. 211-219.

212 Ido Koch

battle. In these instances, thunder was explained as the roar of

the lions or cherubs that were mounted to the chariot (Weinfeld
1973: 423; Dion 1991: 52, note 34).
This motif of the warrior god riding his chariot is expressed by
the igure of Marduk in the Enuma-Elish:

“He mounted [his] irresistible, terrible storm chariot; he har-

nessed for it a team of four and yoked [them] to it” (IV, lines 50-51;
translation by Heidel 1951).

The same motif also appears in the Assyrian version of Atra-

hasis, in which Adad is depicted as the soaring god:

“Adad rode on the four winds, [his] steeds; the south wind, the
north wind, the east wind, and the west wind; the storm, the gale,
the tempest blew for him… the chariot of the gods… sweeps forward,
it kills, it threshes” (BM 99231, l. 5-13; translation by Lambert and
Millard 1969).

Mesopotamian literature mentions another god, Ninurta, who

rides his chariot (Green 2003: 45), but the best known is Assur,
who from the time of Tukulti-Ninurta II was described as riding a
war chariot, armed with rainbow and clouds. A ine example of
this motif appears in the annals of Sennacherib; it describes the
doors of the king’s palace carved with the images of Assur riding a
war chariot. Noteworthy is Uehlinger’s suggestion that the armed
chariot depicted in the Lachish relief is the symbolic chariot of
Assur (Uehlinger 2003: 291-293).
While the riding storm god is also known from eastern Anato-
lia, such as a statue from Çineköy (Tekoğlu and Lemaire 2000: 962-
967 and igs. 1-6) and reliefs from Imamkulu (Börker-Klähn 1982:
no. 315) and Malatya (Delaporte 1940: pl. 24), the most relevant
examples are from Syria and the Levant. There, written sources
describe the storm gods as riding a war chariot, as in Ugarit,
where Baal is called rkb ʿrpt, “rider of the clouds” (Weinfeld 1973;
Dion 1991: 51, note 32), and in Syria, where Hadad is called “the
crusher who rides his clouds” (Green 2003: 195). rkbʾl, the riding
god of Samʾal/Yaʾadi, had a remarkable role as the patron god of
 The “Chariots of the Sun” (2 Kings 23:11) 213

the local dynasty (Olyan 1988: 52; Novák 2004: 332-333). An icono-
graphic representation of this motif appears on a relief in the
temple of the storm god of Aleppo, who is shown jumping onto
his war chariot (Kohlmeyer 2009: 200). Finally, even the warrior
goddess Anat is described as riding a war chariot (Wyatt 1992:
420-421). Overall, the chariot does not appear in Semitic literature
as part of the sun or the sun-god symbolism, but rather as an
element of the storm sphere (cf. Cogan 1974: 85, note 106; Acker-
man 1992: 95).
Yhwh is also described as riding a chariot (2 Kings 19:23; Isaiah
37:24; Habakkuk 3:8; Psalms 68:18). In other occurrences, he is
described as riding a cloud (as in Isaiah 19:1 and 25:5; cf. Exodus
19:8; Deuteronomy 19:9; Psalms 68:34; 104:1-4), while elsewhere,
he is portrayed as riding a cherub (2 Samuel 22:11). According to
Mowinckel and Weinfeld, these designations mean that the cloud
or the cherub is harnessed to god’s chariot. In other places, the
chariot is associated with Yhwh indirectly, as in the case of Eli-
jah’s ascension heavenward on the chariot of ire (2 Kings 2:11;
6:17; 7:6; cf. Ezekiel 1; Psalms 65:5). These descriptions are charac-
terized by a storm-god theophany symbolism (clouds, lightning
and ire), as other ancient Near Eastern riding storm gods (Miller
1973: 60, 85, 105; Day 2000: 92-95; Green 2003: 266-269).
Thus, ancient Near Eastern civilizations have associated the
chariot with the storm sphere, while the Semitic sun gods were
never described as riding a chariot; furthermore, the chariot, or
the horse itself, was never associated with sun worship (Smith
1990: 34; Keel and Uehlinger 1998: 344).2 The connection of the

2
McKay (1973a) and Taylor (1993) argue that the horse was a common West
Semitic trait in the cult of the sun god. McKay (1973a: 33-34; see also Lipiński
1995) based this argument on his view of the local gods in the Kingdom of Samʾal
all being from the solar sphere. According to McKay (ibid.), this equestrian sun
cult in Samʾal and Judah is similar to the Greek one and differs from the East
Semitic cult. However, out of the five deities mentioned by McKay (rkbʾl, El,
Hadad, Shamash and Resheph), only Shamash is known as a solar deity. Conse-
quently, this assumption must be rejected. Taylor (1993: 177-178) also argued for
an equestrian sun cult in Judah by pointing to the verse in 2 Kings 23:11, and the
Taanach cult stand, in which he sees the bovine as a horse. Against this view, see
Beck 1994: 372-373.
214 Ido Koch

Semitic sun god to the chariot, as assumed by diferent scholars

(see above), comes from the Indo-European world (like the Greek
Helios or the Roman Sol Invictus), and it is foreign to the ancient
Near Eastern world.
Moreover, there is a major diiculty for those who see the
“chariots of the sun” as a foreign cultic element that was brought
from Aram or Assyria (cf. Spiekermann 1982, esp. 271). The deu-
teronomic movement was opposed to the local, non-centralized
and traditional cult, and not a single non-Canaanite deity is men-
tioned within the description (Day 2000: 151-152, 230-232). In
light of this observation, Spiekermann and Uehlinger connected
the horses and chariots in the Jerusalem temple with a modiied
custom of Assyrian origin that had taken on a local-Judahite
adaptation. Spiekermann (1982: 245-251) connected the “chariot
of the sun” with the tāmītu ritual, in which an oracle of Adad and
Šamaš chose a horse to serve a divine chariot that was wor-
shipped. On the other hand, Uehlinger (2007: 302) pointed out
that the tāmītu ritual is solely linked with the city of Assur. There-
fore, he suggested an alternative candidate for the borrowed As-
syrian ritual, one that was popular during the reign of Sennacher-
ib and Esarhaddon. In this ritual, an oracle performed in front of a
chariot that bore the standards of Adad and Šamaš. According to
Uehlinger, this oracle was chosen to serve in the Jerusalem tem-
ple because of the traditional sun worship within its cult.
Nevertheless, these rituals are not mentioned outside of the
Assyrian heartland, and there is no mention of them in the bibli-
cal text. In addition, this is a classic case of circular argument, in
which Spiekermann and Uehlinger based their interpretation of
the chariots upon the speculated sun worship of Yhwh, while
scholars like Taylor (1993) based their reconstruction of the sun
aspect of Yhwh on the biblical evidence of the “Chariot of the
Sun.” It seems, therefore, that a diferent understanding of the
chariots in 2 Kings 23:11 is due.
The basis for the presented view is the fact that the infor-
mation regarding the dedication of the horses to the sun by the
kings of Judah, as well as the title “Chariots of the sun,” is given
by the Dtr. Thus, it may be that the Dtr processed, adapted and
presented in a negative way the cultic reality of the pre-deutero-
 The “Chariots of the Sun” (2 Kings 23:11) 215

nomic revolution, according to its own needs and agenda. I sug-

gest that this pre-deuteronomic cult of Yhwh (like the other
storm gods in the ancient Near East; see: Wyatt 1998; Green 2003:
134-136) included rituals that dramatized the myths of his battles
against the chaos (cf. also Mettinger 1982: 67-72; Smith 1990a: 56;
Bloch-Smith 1994, 2002). Within this cult, various weapons, in-
cluding the war chariot, were used in order to emphasize divine
power and victory (Koch forthcoming). This type of chariot was
probably decorated with divine symbols, just as other ancient
Near Eastern cult chariots were decorated. The most famous ex-
amples of these kinds of decorations were unearthed in Nimrud,
where the ivory treasure includes some horse frontlets and blink-
ers, probably of Phoenician and Syrian origins (Orchard 1967;
Gubel 2005: 113-114; Herrmann and Laidlaw 2008: 78-79, 81-82).
These are decorated with symbols and igures of divinities, in-
cluding Atum and Nut (Herrmann and Liadlaw 2008: 195-197 and
pls. 75-78), an armed storm-god with a spear and a sword, and a
Bes igure next to him (idem: 80-81 and pls. 69-71), and a Sphinx
(idem: 78-79; see also: Gubel 2005: 113-114, 121-127). An example
from Assyrian reliefs may be found among the famous conquest
of Lachish relief from Nineveh. In this relief, the presence of As-
sur in the battleield is represented with a decorated chariot. The
decoration includes a combination of two divine symbols, that of
Ishtar and that of Ninurta, which testify to the chariot as the
property of a superior god, who was identiied as Assur (Ueh-
linger 2003: 291).
In light of the above, I suggest that the burnt chariots in 2
Kings 23: 11 were the chariots of Yhwh. According to this sugges-
tion, like the chariots of the gods in the ancient Near East, Yhwh’s
chariot was decorated with his symbol, which, for a long period,
was the winged disk. As was shown by Ornan (2005), the winged
disk was transferred from Egypt to the Levant and Mesopotamia
in the early 2nd millennium BCE, and during this relocation it lost
its solar attribution and became a symbol of celestial being in
general, and in most cases the symbol of the head of the local
pantheon. This symbol was known in the Kingdom of Israel, as in
the Taanach cult stand (Beck 1994), and in the Kingdom of Judah,
with the bulla that was unearthed in the pool in the City of David
216 Ido Koch

(Reich, Shukron and Lernau 2007). In the latter kingdom, the

winged disk was commonly used by the administrative system of
the lmlk stamped jar handles (Ornan 2005: 231-242), and possibly
also by the system of the concentric circle incisions that fol-
lowed,3 until it was replaced by the rosette stamped handle sys-
tem (Koch 2008: 50-52). At this stage, the deuteronomistic move-
ment saw the winged disk, alongside other traditional symbolism
of Yhwh (Ackerman 1992; Albertz 1994: 209; Dever 1994: 158-161;
Smith 2001: 57), as “foreign” and condemned it as worship of the
host of heaven. As a result, the chariots that were a cultic object
of Yhwh for years and became known by their decoration, were
associated by the Dtr as foreign worship of the sun, and hence
doomed.

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