I Yahwe do all things.
—Isaiah 45:5, 7.
These and a great many similar lines have a good deal of the phraseology and the atmosphere of the Assyrian hymns of Belit and Ishtar, and in so far support the Babylonian origin of Isaiah 40-45, but there is in the Assyrian hymns no such clear relationship of the deity to history as is characteristic of the Hebrew hymns in Isaiah 40-45.
There remains of Assyrian hymns still to be recognized a small and distinct group in which deity is praised by man in the third person. One of these, Nergal No. 7, has been included among the Antiphonal hymns and already studied. That portion, which is in the third person is simply narrative, with many repetitions, telling of Nergal’s heroic attack upon the hostile land. It is mythological and epic material adapted to hymnal purposes. Similarly the hymn to Ramman No. 2 was included among the Antiphonal hymns, beginning as it does with fourteen lines spoken by man in praise of Ramman, and continuing with Enlil’s charge to Ramman in the next twelve lines. However, this hymn comes to its conclusion in the next four and last lines with the use of the third person, telling how Ramman obeyed the bidding of his father Enlil:
Ramman gave heed to the words which his father spoke to him;
Father Ramman went out of the house, the storm of sonorous voice,
Out of the house, out of the city he went up, the youthful lion,
Out of the city he took his way, the storm of thunderous voice.
Beside this can be placed the fragment of eight lines, Ramman No. 1. Heaven and earth quake before Ramman’s anger. The gods flee to the heights and to the depths before the mighty god of the tempest. This hymn invites comparison with Psalm 29, the Hebrew hymn in praise of the “Voice of Yahwe”:
The lord in his fury, the heavens quake before him;