Hymn of the Righteous Sufferer

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

The Hymn of the Righteous Sufferer recounts the story of the suffering of Shubshi-meshre-Sakkan and his eventual rescue by Marduk. The reader sees Shubshi-meshre-Sakkan become progressively isolated, outcast, and ill. The first tablet begins with a paean to Marduk. The arc of the plot begins when Shubshi-meshre-Sakkan is abandoned by the gods, his family, and his colleagues. He becomes terminally ill and in a delirious state begins to dream of his recovery. Ultimately, Marduk rescues him and restores his health and social position.

With ancient texts, the use of many tablets for large documents is done intentionally with regard to logical breaks in the subject matter. Thus, the first tablet can be thought of as the first chapter or first canto, and readers can expect a shift in the subject as the story advances from one tablet to the next. Given the condition of many ancient tablets, gaps in the text are inevitable. As such, translators follow certain conventions when translating a text with gaps or illegible passages. If a word or two is missing, the translator indicates the gap with an ellipsis. If a larger section is missing, the translator indicates the gap with brackets, often including information such as the number of lines that are unclear. Parenthetical or bracketed question marks indicate places where the translator has provided suggested words to restore the text.

Tablet I

The first tablet can be divided into two sections. The first section (lines 1–36) is an objective discourse on the personality and powers of Marduk. The second, subjective section (lines 37–120) speaks directly of the narrator’s experiences.

The initial lines set the tone and literary style of the entire work. It is obvious at the outset that this is a sophisticated poem. Many Akkadian cuneiform tablets have a limited vocabulary and a paucity of descriptive imagery; perhaps such tablets were used as mere guidelines to be fleshed out by skilled narrators rather than as literary works in themselves. Here, however, the range of vocabulary is wider than most religious texts. Moreover, the Hymn of the Righteous Sufferer shows substantial foreshadowing between the tablets as well as the use of opposing contrasts between various attributes.

The use of contrasting extremes in the opening quatrain is obvious at first glance. In line 2, Marduk is described as both “furious” and “calming.” In lines 7 and 8, we see him in his fury and in his mercy. In lines 9 and 10, we learn that he is so heavy-handed that “the skies cannot sustain the weight of his hand,” but he also has “a gentle palm.” These contrasting pairs often refer to the weather and light. Just as daylight and mild weather are routinely associated with positive attributes, evening and storms are associated with negative ones.

These sudden shifts from night to day and from furious to calming moods parallel sudden shifts in mood that recur throughout the rest of the poem. The transitions are important because they are used only to describe Marduk. They are not found in other parts of the poem pertaining to the narrator or his situation. Only Marduk has the power to embody two completely opposite attributes.

Marduk’s powers and attributes are described in surprisingly physical terms. He has a “gentle palm” and “quickly feels pain like a mother in labor.” He has the power to heal as “his bandages are soothing, they heal the doomed.” By establishing Marduk’s powers as a divine healer, the narrator foreshadows his own physical suffering and delivery by Marduk that will be fully described in the second and third tablets.

This paean to Marduk establishes him as a wise and merciful god whose wrath is to be feared because he has the power of life and death. This is consistent with the view of him set forth in the Babylonian creation story, the Enuma Elish, in which Marduk is a fearsome warrior god who creates man while simultaneously destroying his enemy. However, the Marduk described in the Enuma Elish seems adolescent and two-dimensional compared with the Marduk portrayed in this work. Here Marduk is invested with great mystery, which is emphasized by the repeated phrases in lines 28–32 to the effect that no other god can understand him.

The objective portion of the hymn comes to an abrupt conclusion at line 37. Up to this point the author has pointedly left himself out of the text and dwelt instead on Marduk’s attributes. Now the focus suddenly shifts as the narrator tells how Marduk has inexplicably become angry with him. This change in circumstances leaves no aspect of the narrator’s life unaltered. Psychologically, he is thrown into a world that makes no sense to him, leaving him with a sense of existential trauma. The very tools that the narrator uses to make the world comprehensible have stopped working. This sense of loss is not merely psychological and spiritual. Having lost his “protecting spirit,” the narrator also loses his vigor and manly appearance. Beset by “terrifying signs,” he wanders the streets by day like a lost soul and by night is terrorized by dreams.

The suffering narrator moves through a world that has become polarized against him. Not only is the “king, incarnation of the gods,” enraged with him, but he has become the focus of public animosity. A group of courtiers plot against him and launch schemes to strip him of his position and his house. Taken together, this group assumes a supernatural power “equal to demons.”

The focus of the first tablet changes once more at line 70. While maintaining the subjectivity established in line 37, the narrator shifts from describing how the authorities have maligned him to the effect that this treatment has on him. The physicality hinted at in the early lines of the poem recurs in a more developed form as the narrator describes his reduced circumstances by referring to his mouth, lips, heart, breast, and arms in lines 70–76. References to the physical expression of his reduced status recur later in this first tablet, particularly with regard to his face. The narrator’s eyes cannot see because he is constantly crying. His eyelids smart through the tears. His face has become jaundiced by terror and pain. His mouth and lips are no longer functional, as his speech becomes gibberish when he tries to talk.

The narrator’s position in his family and community changes. He becomes a loner, since his family, friends, comrades, colleagues, and slaves are united in their open animosity to him. A social pariah, he has no champions; “death came early” to anyone who tried to help him. Stripped of his social position, he says that his opponents “appointed an outsider to my prerogatives.” The final insult—the ravaging of his farm and means of subsistence—appears close to the end of the tablet. Striking at the heart and source of Mesopotamian life, his opponents destroy his irrigation system.

The first tablet comes to an abrupt end with an unconvincing expression of hope in the future. The reference to the moon in line 120 most likely has astrological significance. This conclusion notwithstanding, the narrator’s hope in a better future remains unpersuasive.

Tablet II

Tablet II takes a different approach to Shubshi-meshre-Sakkan’s suffering. Whereas the first tablet spoke to his suffering at the hands of others, the second opens with lines that suggest supernatural agencies may be at work. This change is particularly fascinating because it sheds light upon Mesopotamian religious practices and spiritual beliefs and reveals how intertwined they are with physical health.

Medicine has a long history in the Middle East. Six hundred and sixty tablets from Ashurbanipal’s library in Nineveh describe the treatment of disease and preparation of different drugs. According to these works, individual gods and lesser deities control particular parts of the body, which explains why Shubshi-meshre-Sakkan obsessively lists individual body parts in lines 52–105. Two different types of medical practitioner—the ashipu and the asu—are well known in the literature. Whereas the asu deals with mechanics of bandages and herbs, the ashipu is more like a spiritual healer who diagnoses disease and tries to determine if it is the result of some sin on the part of the invalid. The practitioners that Shubshi-meshre-Sakkan refers to in lines 6 through 9 seem to be some variety of ashipu. He catalogs their inadequacies, saying that none of them relieved his situation.

This shifts to a long passage in which Shubshi-meshre-Sakkan likens his suffering to those who neglected appropriate religious practices. Once again, the comparison sheds light on the customary rites and practices. We learn that prostration and prayer were common, as were observances of holy days, offerings of flour to the gods, along with oaths. Prayers and praises for the king were routine.

Shubshi-meshre-Sakkan argues that his present straits are undeserved because he did all these things and went to lengths to encourage others to do the same. Frustrated, he complains, saying that his fate is identical to that of people who failed to make the proper observances. He ponders the inexplicability of his fate, saying he can make no sense of the gods’ reasoning.

An extended head-to-toe description of his debilitated physical condition begins at line 52. The narrator claims that supernatural agencies such as a “malignant specter, ” a “relentless ghost,” and a “she-demon” are responsible for his condition. Shubshi-meshre-Sakkan describes his condition in the conventional Babylonian manner, starting with his head (“they struck my head, they closed around my pate”), and working his way down to the afflictions in his chest, bowels, and limbs. The graphic description of that narrator’s physical state leaves no doubt that he is very close to death, as he describes himself as completely incapable of response. His eyes cannot see, his ears cannot hear, and a bolt bars his lips. Paralyzed, his “feet forgot how to move.” The physical portrait he paints is that of a dying man.

The second tablet ends with a curious reversal of the light-and-dark imagery mentioned earlier. In line 117, the narrator tells us, “when my ill-wisher heard, his face lit up.” This continues in line 118: “When the tidings reached her, my ill-wisher, her mood became radiant.” Here the pattern established earlier in which positive events were associated with light has become as topsy-turvy as the behavior of the gods.

Tablet III

The critical turning point of the drama is found in the third tablet. At first, the narrator speaks of his cosmic oppressor but fails to give him a name. Shubshi-meshre-Sakkan is being coy with his reader in not naming the one whom he blames for his trials. However, despite his invocation of various demons, goddesses, and lesser deities, it is clear whom he is referring to because “heavy was his hand” (line 1) echoes the earlier language about Marduk’s “heavy palm” in the first tablet. However, by refraining here from directly blaming Marduk for his condition, the narrator can later praise him for his recovery.

Beginning with line 9, the narrator recounts three dreams. It is not clear whether these are ordinary dreams, vision states, or merely sick delirium. However, each episode is marked by the visitation of a supernatural character. In the first dream, the visitor is “A remarkable young man of extraordinary physique. / Magnificent in body, clothed in new garments.” The second visitor is an exorcist of some sort, and the third is a beautiful young woman.

Each of these three characters works a form of magic upon Shubshi-meshre-Sakkan. The tablets are so crumbling that it is impossible to tell exactly what the first messenger does, although it appears that he may be a forerunner sent to announce the impending arrival of the other two. The second figure is clearly a healer in the tradition of the ashipu mentioned earlier. It is he who pronounces “the resuscitating incantation” (line 28). The narrator builds the suspense slowly and carefully; it is not until the third dream that an exorcist, specifically sent by Marduk, works the final healing cure. If Shubshi-meshre-Sakkan is reluctant to blame Marduk for his trials, he is quick to credit him with his release. While the exact content of lines 54–61 has been obscured, it is obvious that “the feelings of merciful Marduk were appeased” and the situation is reversed.

In a second portion of the third tablet, the sufferer is released from the physical and spiritual woes that tormented him. The “evil vapor,” “malignant specter,” “relentless ghost,” and “she-demon” that had beset him are overthrown and “dissipated like smoke filling the sky.” Just as the narrator’s physical woes were cataloged from the head down, his relief begins at his eyes and ears and moves down to his gullet until his abilities to breathe, speak, hear, and see are completely restored.

Tablet IV

All that is known of Tablet IV are various separate fragments from which it is not possible to divine the plotline. Fragments A, B, and C are entirely different pieces. As of 2010, scholars remained unclear as to which portions belong on the obverse or reverse (front or back, respectively) of the tablet or where they fit together. It has even been speculated that there may be more than four tablets. Taken together, these fragments seem to document the narrator’s grateful recognition of Marduk as his savior. It was Marduk “who put a muzzle on the mouth of the lion that was devouring me.” The reader learns more about Babylonian religious practices, such as the various ritual offerings of oil, butterfat, and grain that are made in Marduk’s honor.