Scriptural Guerrilla Warfare

Appropriation and Subversion of Symbols

The story of Pharaoh’s survival in the Book of Jasher is not merely an echo of Egyptian myth, but a masterclass in scriptural guerrilla warfare—a quiet act of theological judo that absorbs and redirects the deepest symbols of a rival culture. It takes the language of death and rebirth, the sacred cycle of the Nile, and turns it into something stranger, something more disruptive, something that refuses to fit neatly within the categories of either conqueror or conquered.

This is not a crude act of rejection, but a more subtle act of reclamation. It is not the silencing of rival voices, but the reorientation of those voices toward a higher harmony. It is the work of a people who do not merely resist their enemies, but absorb and transform their symbols, turning them into the raw material of new creation. It is a move as ancient as the first word spoken over the deep, a way of speaking across boundaries without flattening the depth of either side.

In the Egyptian imagination, Pharaoh is not merely a ruler, but a living conduit of divine power—a symbol of order in a chaotic world. Upon his death, he is taken by Nun, the primordial waters of creation and chaos, and reborn as a god. This is not just a metaphor, but a sacred expectation, a promise that the mighty king will traverse the abyss and return renewed, joining the celestial barques of the gods in the night sky.

But in Jasher, something subtly different happens. Pharaoh is indeed taken by the waters, but he does not drown in the traditional sense. He is not merely dissolved back into the cosmic womb of Nun, but drawn through the waters and placed upon the shores of Nineveh. He is not reborn in the Egyptian sense, but exiled—a living remnant of a shattered empire, a survivor in a world that has moved on without him.

This is not reincarnation as the Egyptians understood it. It is not the orderly, cyclical return to life and power, but something stranger—something closer to exile, to transformation, to redemption. The Pharaoh who should have been absorbed into the sacred, undulating rhythms of Nun is instead cast out, carried not into the afterlife of the gods, but into the messy, unpredictable world of human history.

In this, the text both honors and subverts the Egyptian cycle of rebirth. It acknowledges the grandeur of the Pharaoh’s expected apotheosis while quietly denying it. He is not claimed by Nun, but by a force higher still—a God who values even the most unredeemable of men, who reaches across the boundaries of myth and empire to reclaim what others would discard.

This is not simply historical revision. It is theological subversion. It whispers to the Egyptian reader that the Nile is not the ultimate cradle, that the abyss is not the final word. It honors the symbols without conceding their claims. And as you will see, it is not limited to non-canonical works.

The Psalms of Canaan

The Psalms, those ancient songs of praise and lament, are often imagined as pure expressions of Hebrew devotion—unsullied, untainted by the echoes of rival gods or foreign myths. Yet, beneath their familiar cadences lies a deeper, more complex history. These are not merely the songs of a chosen people, but the echoes of a world already thick with stories, symbols, and spirits. They carry within them the resonances of older, stranger voices—fragments of Canaanite hymns, Ugaritic invocations, and Babylonian myths—absorbed, transformed, and transmuted into something altogether different. This creative theological act reclaims the raw material of human imagination and redirects it toward a higher vision.

One of the most subtle yet striking poetic reversals lies in the image of the cloud-rider. In Canaanite mythology, Baal is the storm god, the one who rides upon the clouds, his thunderous presence a sign of divine rule and fertility. His chariot is the storm front, his voice the thunder, his reign bound to the heavens.

But the psalmist quietly reclaims this image for Yahweh:

“He makes the clouds his chariot; he rides on the wings of the wind…” —Psalm 104:3

This is not a denial of the symbol—it is a redirection of it. The cloud is still a chariot. The wind is still a throne. But the rider is not Baal. It is Yahweh, the creator of wind and flame, the one whose presence tames the storm rather than springs from it. The poetry does not reject the old images—it redeems them.

Leviathan, Tanninim, and the Playful Monsters of the Deep

Consider the figure of Leviathan, that great, thrashing symbol of chaos and the deep. In Ugaritic mythology, the sea serpent Lotan is the coiled monster of the abyss, a twisted, fleeing serpent, a symbol of chaos and destruction. He is the great enemy of Baal, the storm god, who must defeat him to establish his reign. The Ugaritic text KTU 1.5 refers to him as the “twisting serpent, the crooked serpent, the tyrant with seven heads.”

In Babylonian myth, this same chaotic force is embodied in Tiamat, the primordial sea dragon, the embodiment of chaos and the cosmic womb from which all things arise. In the Enuma Elish, Marduk, the chief god of Babylon, must confront Tiamat in a brutal, world-shaping battle. He splits her body in two, using one half to form the heavens and the other to shape the earth. It is a bloody, primal act—the birth of the world through violence, the imposition of order upon chaos by force.

Yet the Hebrew psalmist, singing centuries later, offers a radically different vision. In the Psalms, this same symbol of chaos, this sea serpent, is not a primordial enemy but a creature of God’s own making, a playful beast formed for delight:

“There go the ships, and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it.” —Psalm 104:26

Here, the great sea monster is not a rival to be subdued, but a creature at play, a symbol not of chaos overcome, but of life freely given. It is a radical reframing—a quiet, but profound act of theological subversion. The psalmist takes the symbol of ultimate chaos and turns it into a symbol of divine creativity, an image of playfulness and power, a participant in the divine order rather than a threat to it.

This same impulse can be found in the opening lines of Genesis, though it is often masked by the conventions of English translation:

“So God created the great sea creatures (tanninim) and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds…” —Genesis 1:21

But the word tanninim is far more evocative in the original Hebrew. It refers to sea monsters, dragons, or serpents—creatures of the deep, chaotic, primeval beings that, in nearly every other instance in the Hebrew Bible, are symbols of cosmic threat and mythic fear:

In Isaiah, the tannin is a sea monster that must be struck down (Isaiah 27:1).
In Ezekiel, it is the “great dragon” that lies in the Nile (Ezekiel 29:3).
In the book of Job, it is the twisted serpent that God conquers (Job 26:13).

And yet, in Genesis, this creature is not an enemy but a creation. It is not the antagonist of the divine, but a participant in the first act of God’s creative play. It is made, formed, named, and called good. This is a bold move, a kind of theological judo that takes the weight of ancient fears and redirects them into a different story, a different vision of creation. The sea monsters of Canaan, the dragons of Ugarit, the chaos serpents of Babylon—they are all drawn into this new, expansive vision, absorbed and transformed without being destroyed. They are not merely conquered, but invited into a higher order, a place where their twisted forms become playful, their chaos becomes potential, their terror becomes delight.

Divine Assembly

This same impulse carries into the psalmist’s treatment of the divine council. In Canaanite religion, the gods gather in council, presided over by El, the high god, or Baal, the storm god, depending on the era and context. This divine council is a place of decisions, judgments, and decrees—a heavenly court where the fate of the world is determined.

The Hebrew psalmist draws on this imagery, but with a crucial twist:

“God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment.” —Psalm 82:1

Here, the divine council is not denied, but reoriented. Yahweh is not merely a voice among many, but the singular, sovereign judge. The gods, stripped of their independent authority, become mere figures in His court, subject to His judgment:

“I said, ‘You are gods, you are all sons of the Most High. But you will die like mere mortals; you will fall like every other ruler.’” —Psalm 82:6-7

This is a profound theological move. It acknowledges the structure of the divine council, the great assembly of the gods, but reclaims it, placing Yahweh at its head. The mighty ones are reduced to mortal status, their divinity stripped, their immortality revoked. What was once a cosmic senate becomes a mere gathering of pretenders, presided over by the one true King.

This is not a rejection of the council, but a reclaiming of it—a drawing of even the highest symbols of rival power into a higher harmony, a single, encompassing vision of divine presence. It is a form of symbolic elevation, a way of absorbing the echoes and aspirations of the ancient world without being overwhelmed by them. It is not a strategy of political control, but a form of creative engagement—a way of inviting even the deepest myths of human imagination into a place of renewed purpose, a place where chaos becomes order, fear becomes delight, and the many become one… through invitation.

It is the same impulse that leads the Hebrew authors to draw on the language of kingship, even as they reject the divine pretensions of the earthly kings around them. It is a way of speaking across boundaries without flattening the depth of either side—a way of drawing foreign symbols into a higher register, without erasing their resonance.

The Flood and the Fractured Myth

The Hebrew authors did not only absorb symbols—they absorbed stories. And few stories loomed larger in the ancient Near East than the great flood. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the gods are disturbed by the noise of humanity and send a deluge to silence the chaos. Utnapishtim, warned by the god Ea, builds a boat, survives the flood, and is granted immortality. It is a rare divine exception, a new god formed in the wake of devastation. He is exiled to the edge of the world—a sacred survivor, removed from the mortal order. But in the Hebrew imagination, the flood ends not with the creation of a god, but with the grieving of one.

“And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.” (Genesis 6:6)

The waters come, the ark floats, and Noah survives. But there is no divine promotion, no ascent to the heavens. The end of Noah’s story is not apotheosis—it is a vineyard, a tent, and a man drunk on his own labor. He is still human. Deeply, vulnerably human. And yet, God binds himself to him—and to all who come after him—not because humanity has changed, but because God chooses not to change.

“I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” (Genesis 8:21)

The flood ends not in forgetfulness, but in covenant. Not with a man made godlike, but with a God who stoops. The bow set in the clouds is not a symbol of divine power—it is a weapon hung up, disarmed, a gesture of restraint and remembrance. The Hebrew authors do not deny the older flood stories—they rewrite them from within. They keep the structure but alter the soul. The flood still comes—but it no longer ends in distance. It ends in intimacy. Not mythic transcendence, but covenantal nearness. The point here is not to confirm or deny the flood as a historical event. Countless cultures hold flood narratives, and their divergences are telling. What matters most is not whether the waters once covered the earth, but how each culture interpreted what those waters meant. The Hebrew authors do not merely preserve a tale of survival—they reshape the spirit behind the story, revealing not just what happened, but who God is in the face of human failure.

Two Models of Absorption

Yet this act of symbolic absorption stands in stark contrast to the strategies of Israel’s imperial neighbors. Where Rome would crush a rival and then absorb its gods as tokens of conquest, the Hebrew authors absorb without erasure, transform without domination. They do not merely add foreign deities to their own pantheon, but reframe those deities as echoes of a deeper, more encompassing truth.

The Roman model is a strategy of force, a way of domesticating the gods of the conquered, folding them into the imperial cult, stripping them of their autonomy while preserving their names. It is a form of symbolic control, a way of saying, “You may keep your gods, but only if they are absorbed into our own structures, only if they serve the architecture of our power.” It is the absorption of the many into one by force, hierarchy, and control—a consolidation of spiritual control that mirrors the political domination of the empire itself.

The Hebrew model, by contrast, absorbs the symbols of its neighbors not as a form of conquest, but as a form of transformation. It takes the twisted serpent and turns it into a playful beast, takes the storm god and turns him into a footnote in a larger, more expansive vision of divine power. It absorbs without erasing, transforms without consuming, reclaims without destroying.

It does not flatten the voices of its rivals, but draws them into a higher harmony, a larger story, a deeper truth.

It is a form of symbolic elevation, a way of absorbing the fears and hopes of the ancient world without being overcome by them. It is not a strategy of political control, but a form of creative engagement—a way of inviting even the deepest myths of human imagination into a place of renewed purpose, a place where chaos becomes order, fear becomes delight, and the many become one… through invitation.

A Different Beginning

If this act of symbolic reclamation seems novel, it is only because we have forgotten how thoroughly this pattern runs through the Hebrew imagination. From its opening words, the Hebrew Bible resists the mythic structures of its neighbors, not by rejecting them outright, but by absorbing and transforming them, bending them to a different purpose, a different rhythm, a different vision of power.

But this approach is not limited to the symbols of foreign empires. It also turns its gaze inward, breaking the echo of cultural triumphalism and exposing even its own prophets to the sharp edge of divine critique. It is a tradition willing to question itself, to lay its own failures bare, to make a spectacle not just of its enemies, but of its own frailties.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the paradox of Jonah.

Both Jonah and the man we have called Pharaoh pass through the waters, both descend into symbolic death, both emerge alive but profoundly changed. Yet their transformations are not the same. One man is cast out and humbled, his pride broken, his gods discarded, his throne exchanged for exile. The other is swallowed by the chaos of the deep, entombed in the belly of a beast, yet rises again to become a voice of warning, a reluctant herald of grace.

Yet, it is the insider—the prophet, the chosen one—who struggles to accept the grace extended to his enemy. It is Jonah, not Pharaoh, who finds himself reeling in the face of mercy, staggering under the weight of a God who refuses to draw the boundaries where he would have them drawn.

This is not the language of propaganda. It is not the self-assured boast of a people convinced of their own moral superiority. It is a form of internal subversion, a way of reminding the chosen that they are not immune to the very failures they see in their neighbors. It is the same instinct that leads the psalmists to lament their own failings, to question their own motives, to wrestle with their own doubts.

It is a form of symbolic transparency, a refusal to shield itself from the judgment it levels against the world. It is a form of self-critique that stands in stark contrast to the triumphalist tone of imperial propaganda. It is a kind of narrative humility, a refusal to paint itself as the unblemished hero of its own story.

And this, too, is a form of strength. It is the strength to absorb not just the symbols of one’s enemies, but the symbols of one’s own failures, to bend even the harshest critiques into the shape of a larger, more encompassing truth. This reflects the very nature of the God it serves—a God who transforms darkness into light, chaos into order, death into life. Just as the raw materials of creation are shaped into form and meaning, so too are the raw materials of human imagination—twisted serpents, storm gods, and divine councils—absorbed into a larger, truer story.