Biblica_1_Layout 1 20/01/12 11:44 Pagina 492 492 JOHN MAKUJINA Moreover, the transition from a pastoral to military orientation in Ps 144,14b-c should not in itself be considered problematic or unprecedented 47. S. E. Holtz points out that the union is also at- tested in Mesopotamian royal ideology, where he observes the reg- ular interface of military success and agricultural prosperity 48. For our purposes, the Marduk Prophecy proves especially appropriate: The rivers will bring fish and field and plain will be full of yield. The win- ter harvest will last until the summer and the summer harvest will last until the winter. The land’s harvest will be plentiful, prices will be favorable … I myself and all the gods will be reconciled with him. He will wipe out Elam, he will wipe out her cities, he will remove her fortresses 49. The dissonance that this type of change creates within the poe- tic structure of Ps 144,13-14, however, is less easily accounted for, according to Allen: However, this interpretation leaves v. 14aa out on a limb. The problem may not be solved by taking it with v 13, so that wnytwcwxb, “in our fields,” is at the beginning of a colon of three beats (Anderson, 935; Tournay, RB 91 [1984] 522), because there appears to be intentional external paralle- lism between wnytwcwxb, “in our fields,” at the end of v 13 and wnytbxrb, taken as “in our broad meadows,” at the end of v 14 ….” 50 The imbalance that Allen recognizes provokes us to take seri- ously two less popular proposals, each of which — in harmony with Allen’s concern — maintains the thematic unity of v. 14 in various ways and with various degrees of persuasion. 47 Likewise, urban imagery can parallel rural imagery, as in Deut 28,3, “Blessed you will be in the city, and blessed you will be in the field”. 48 S.E. HOLTZ, “The Thematic Unity of Psalm cxliv in Light of Mesopo- tamian Royal Ideology”, VT 58 (2008) 373-380. 49 HOLTZ, “Thematic Unity of Psalm cxliv”, 378. 50 ALLEN, Psalms 101-150, 360. Likewise Jacquet, “Expression soit de sé- curité contre d’éventuels assaillants, soit d’appel à la morale, tout à fait étran- ger au contexte d’un verset qui parle, au début, de ‘bestiaux’…” JACQUET, Psaumes 101 à 150, 680-681. On the external parallelism between wnytwcwxb and wnytbxrb, see AVISHUR, Word-Pairs, 581; ZIEGLER, “Ps 144”, 196.