This is a comprehensive and impressive treatment of the Priestly Blessing found in Numbers 6 as well as on two amulets discovered in a Judean tomb complex at Ketef Hinnom. Smoak emphasizes the “apotropaic” nature of the blessing (that is, it has the power to avert evil in some sense). He bolsters this argument not only through an analysis of the blessing itself, but also of similar blessing formulae on late-Iron Age Phoenician and Punic amulets and other Iron Age inscriptions from the Levant. The language of “blessing” and “keeping/guarding,” which appears in both the Priestly Blessing and in other blessing formulae, seems to have been somewhat of a “stock phrase” in the Levant in the Iron Age, especially in apotropaic contexts. The fact that the Priestly Blessing was used on two amulets strengthens Smoak’s conclusion that it was recognized to be apotropaic in some sense, since the purpose of such amulets was to ward off evil and to protect the individuals who wore them.

The strength of Smoak’s book is that he situates the blessing within the context of other inscriptions, and seeks to understand both the Numbers 6 text and the Ketef Hinnom amulets in this light. I particularly enjoyed his thorough analysis of the two amulets and their mortuary context. As Smoak points out, that these amulets were found in a tomb repository may illuminate ancient Judean beliefs about death and the afterlife—that is, that God’s power extended not only to this life but to the next. Though many scholars assume that beliefs about the afterlife and about God’s power over/beyond death are rather late developments in ancient Israelite/Judean religion, Smoak’s work rightfully pushes back on (or, at least, complicates) this assumption.