1 Corinthians 15 has always been a mighty consolation to Christians suddenly confronted with the relentlessness of death. Here the apostle Paul, with the absolute confidence of the truly faithful, triumphantly announces Christ’s victory over death, a victory in which ultimately all his followers may snare.

However, even if we do not experience any difficulty in sharing the emotional content of Paul’s defiant question ‘O Death, where is thy sting?’ (1 Cor 15:55), it is still the exegete’s duty to ask: What exactly do these words mean? What is the ‘sting’ of death?

According to Paul, it is sin, αμαρτια (1 Cor 15:56). We are inclined to regard that as an abstract concept, but to Paul it was a personified, demonic power. It ‘lives’ (Rom 7:9) to work ‘death’ in people, who are subjected to its tyranny (Rom 7:13). Is the ‘sting’ a demonic power then?

In I Cor 15 Paul uses several elements of the belief in resurrection that became increasingly popular in Palestine during the inter-testamental period. We now know why this belief hardly ever found expression in the canonical books of the Old Testament. It appears to have been one of the fundamental concepts of Baalism. Only when the direct threat of a Baalistic syncretism had faded did such ideas become acceptable in wider Jewish circles. Probably very few of those who adopted them realized they were making use of the legacy of pagan Canaan. This circumstance explains the disagreement between Paul and the Old Testament prophet he quotes in support of two of his key arguments in I Cor 15, the prophet Hosea. In I Cor 15:4 Paul refers to Hos 6:2 when he says that Christ was raised ‘on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.’ Hosea, however, was far from accepting the idea of resurrection there. On the contrary, with heavy irony he quotes from the mouth of those who thought they could represent YHWH in Baalisitc terms. It was Baal who supposedly revived the dead ‘on the third day’ when he himself returned from the Nether World. Hosea utterly rejects such a view of YHWH. What had been unacceptable to the Old Testament prophet could be adopted by Paul in light of the resurrection of Christ.

In I Cor 15:55 Paul is again quoting from the book of Hosea. In this case too the prophet did not mean to pronounce a message of hope. In Hos 13:14 the call

‘O Death, where are your plagues?

O Sheol, where is your “sting”?

is a summons to execute the judgment of YHWH on Ephraim. It is a prophecy of doom.

The Hebrew word traditionally translated by ‘sting’ is qṭb. It does not occur in Hosea, but also in Deut 32:24, Isa 28:2 and Ps 91:6. On the sole basis of the Masoretic text of these passages it cannot be decided whether qṭb was a demon or not. However, the Septuagint presupposes a different Hebrew text in Ps 91:6. Instead of MT mqṭb wšd ṣhrym ‘for the moon-day,’ in the Septuagint has read mqṭb wšb ṣhrym ‘for the qṭb and the demon of moonday (δαιμονιου μεσημβρινου).’

The word šd is attested as a name of a ghost in Babylonian, Ugaritic, and Hebrew. This reading of the Septuagint strongly suggests that either the original Hebrew text or at least a very early tradition regarding the qṭb as a demon.

This agrees with the mainstream of Jewish interpretation. Targum Onkelos paraphrases Deut 32:24 wlḥmy ršp wqṭb mryry as ‘(those who are like) people eaten by the fowl and afflicted with evil spirits’. It has been demonstrated that Targum Onkelos rests on ancient tradition here because the same interpretation is found in the Genesis Apocryphon of Qumran. The Palestinian Targums have translated qṭmryry by ‘people possessed (or puffed up) by evil spirits.’ Also the rabbis discussing the meaning of Deut 32:24 in the Babylonian Talmud (bBerakoth, 5a) are convinced that the qṭb is an evil spirit. In a Hebrew-Aramaic amulet against demons we find a qṭb nrqy which in the opinion of the present writer is best translated as ‘the qṭb that has been charmed.’

An explicit description of the qṭb is found in the Babylonian Talmud, tractate bPesaḥim 111b:

‘There are two Keṭebs, one before noon and one another noon; the one before noon is called Keṭeb Meriri, and looks like a ladle turning in the judge of kamka (a cause made of milk and breadcrumbs). That of the afternoon is called Keṭeb Yashud Zaharaim (“destruction that wasteth at noon day”); it looks like a goat’s horn, and wings compass it about. […] From the first of Tammuz until the sixteenth they are certainly to be found; henceforth it is doubtful whether they are about or not, and they are found in the shadow of ḥazabe (a species of shrub) which have not grown a cubit, and in the morning and evening shadows when these are less than a cubit (in length) but mainly in the shadow of a privy.’

Although it is clear that the rabbis try to reconcile the various data from the Old Testament itself, their extra information is certainly interesting. Freedman’s translation is not entirely accurate with regard to the description of the qṭb mryry. The Talmud reads wmyḥzy by kd’ dkmk’ whdr byh bḥš’ ‘and it looks like a jug with curdled milk in which a ladle is turning’, or its appearance resembled a whirlpool. This description differs considerably from another account we find in the Midrash on Psalms:

‘The demon “Bitter Destruction” is covered with scale upon scale and with shaggy hair, and he glares with one eye, and that eye is in the middle of his heart. He has no power when it is cool in the shade and hot in the sun, but only when it is hot in both shade and sun. He rolls like a ball, and form the seventeenth day in Tammuz to the ninth day in Ab he has power after the fourth hour in the day and up to the ninth hour. And every man who sees him falls upon his face. Hezekiah saw him and fell upon his face. R. Phinehas the Priest bar Ḥama said: I know of a man who saw him and fell flat upon his face and became an epileptic.’

It is no doubt significant that both descriptions of the qṭb agree in one respect, viz. the connection between the qṭb and extremely hot weather. Its main time of activity is in summer. According to Ps 91:16 the qṭb is most harmful at the middle of the day. In Hos 13:15 YHWH sends a hot desert wind which will dry up all the wells. Its arrival seems to be the result of the summons directed to the qṭb in v. 14. The scorching desert wind is apparently the sirocco which in Ugaritic was thought to be a manifestation of the god of death Motu. The ś’r qṭb mentioned in Isa 28:2 also points to a violent, destructive wind. Because it was directed against the ‘blossom’ of Ephraim (28:1, 4) it may well have been the sirocco of spring which is particularly harmful to the blossom of fruit-trees.

Now it would seem possible to confirm all these finds on the basis of a fragmentary passage from the Ugaritic myth which relates how the rain god Ba’lu (Baal) had to succumb to Motu (Mot, Death):

šmh . bn ‘ilm . mt

[tn .] gh . w’aṣḥ .

‘ik . ylḥn [b’l .]

[‘ik . hd .] yqr.

‘un [.] hd [ttbr . ydy .]

kp . mlḥmy [ršp]

[‘an .š] lt .qzb

. . . (broken)

‘Motu, the son if Ilu, rejoiced.

[He gave forth] his voice and cried:

“how can [Ba’lu] provide moisture now?

[how can Haddu] sprinkle now?

[My hand will shatter] the strength of Haddu,

the palm of my warrior [Rashpu]!

[I myself be]got the Sting,”’ . . . (broken)

The Ugaritic name of the Sting (qzb) is only a variant of Hebrew qṭb. He appears to be a son of Death and of course this brings to mind Job 18;13 y’kl bdyw bkwr mwt ‘the first-born of Death will devour his limbs.’ As in Deut 32:23 this agent of the Nether World is paired with hunger in Job 18:12 yhy b’b ‘nw ‘his strength will become “hungry”.’ Job 18:13 seems to suggest that the first-born of Death inflicts a deadly skin disease on people. If he would indeed be identical to the qṭb this would be an argument in favour of an etymological connection proposed long ago by the Count of Landberg. He compared qṭb with modern South-Arabic qaṭīb ‘smallpox.’ This would not contradict in the least out earlier observation that the qṭb seems to manifest itself in the sirocco because to this day the sirocco is feared as the cause of all kinds of diseases.

The literal meaning of qṭb may well be ‘sting’ however. The translation of the Septuagint, followed by Paul in 1 Cor 15, argues in favour of this. Arabic quṭb(ah) denotes the point of an arrow. In Ps 91:5-6 we find the following external parallelism: pḥd lylh ‘the terror of the night’ // dbr b’pl ‘the pestilence in the darkness’ next to ḥṣ y’wp ywmm ‘the arrow that flies by day’ // qṭb wšd ṣhrym ‘the qṭb and the demon of noonday” (LXX). So the qṭb seems to be equated with an arrow. In Deut 32:23-24 r’b ‘hunger,’ ršp ‘Resheph’ and qṭb are the arrows shot by YHWH. Assuming a slight re-vocalization of the consonantal text we may translate the whole passage as follows:

‘I will assemble evils against them,

I will spend my arrows on them:

Hunger, my Sucker,

Resheph, my Warrior,

and the Sting, my Poisonous One.

And I will send the teeth of beasts among them,

with venom of crawling things of the dust.’

The warrior-like Resheph was feared because he used to kill people with his ‘arrows’ (diseases). As we have seen, the Canaanites of Ugaritic seem to have regarded Resheph as the right hand of Death. It is certain that they equated him with the Babylonian warrior-god Nergal, lord of the Nether World.

The Sting was indeed a sinister helper of Death and it would seem likely now that the Israelites borrowed his concept from the Canaanites. However, there is one big difference. Whereas to the Canaanites Death and his satellites were dreaded gods always threatening to overpower the forces of life represented by Baal, the Israelite tradition firmly states their total subordination to YHWH. To them it is said: ‘You need not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the Sting that devastates (?) at noonday (or, with the LXX: the Sting and the demon of noonday).’ ‘You need not fear’—Death has already lost its Sting within the Old Testament. In this respect there is no real tension between Paul’s message in 1 Corinthians 15 and that of the Old Testament as a whole. Both Testaments are far removed from the original Canaanite background of the Sting of Death. To borrow a phrase once used by Peter Craigie: the words would create a sense of recognition in the ears of Canaanites, but the message focused firmly on the one true God.