EDITORIAL

Editorial

Hulisani Ramantswana

Unisa

On behalf of the Old Testament Essays and the Old Testament Society of South Africa (OTSSA), I extend our deep appreciation to Prof Gerrie F. Snyman, who has served as editor of OTE since 2008. Under Gerrie's leadership, OTE continued to grow in its quality and stature attracting contributions from across Africa and beyond. The journal is now listed with SciElO SA making it more accessible online through this platform. Furthermore, the earlier volumes of OTE, published since 1957 are now available online via the African Journal Archive. Since volume 21 issue 2 (2013) of OTE, Gerrie Snyman introduced an editorial section in which he attended to issues such as developments taking place with the journal and briefed the readers on the contents of each volume-a legacy that I am to continue with. I am grateful for the collegiality, the mentorship, and the confidence that Gerrie had in me when he proposed that I should assume the position of editor when he could no longer fulfil the role due to ill health, which led to his resignation. We wish Gerrie good health, and we continue to look forward to his contributions in OT scholarship.

I thank the OTSSA for affording me the opportunity to serve as article editor at its 2014 annual conference. I also thank the leadership of the OTSSA for accepting that I should serve in the capacity of acting editor. This serves to highlight the developments within African biblical scholarship and in the society as this journal for the first time has had a black African scholar as an article editor and now as editor. I hope that this journal would continue to advance African biblical scholarship by increasing the pool of black African scholars publishing in it and also serve as a platform for international scholars to publish. As the Ghanaian proverb states it: "Knowledge is like a baobab tree, no one individual can embrace it."

In OTE 30 (3) of 2017, the editor highlighted that in 2018 we would start implementing ORCID ID for authors and book reviews. Therefore, starting with this issue, we implement ORCID ID as part of the author's identification. For those who do not yet have an ORCID ID, we encourage authors to register online at https://orcid.org.

In the present OTE volume 31 (1) 2018 there are eleven articles. Two of the articles present surveys of biblical scholarship; however, with different focus areas. Cynthia Miller-Naudé and Jacobus Naudé highlight the developments in the field of Biblical Hebrew linguistics in the past 60 years. The authors distinguish three eras, which highlight the developments in the South African  context. David Adamo's article takes OTE itself as a site of its investigation by examining how the journal reflects indigenous African culture and tradition. Adamo challenges the journal and perhaps even more so the scholars who publish therein to take the African contextual approaches seriously and so reflect it in their publications.

Alice Deken's article focuses on Genesis 14 as a narrative that draws from the Assyrian metaphor of "the four quarters" arguing that the author of Genesis utilised the metaphor to challenge the kinship ideology in favour theocratic state through the establishment of the priesthood authority. Thus, considering Deken's arguments, the Genesis 14 narrative rather reflects the post-exilic political dynamics. Matthew Haynes' and Paul Krüger's article focuses on the Sabbath institution as commanded in the Decalogue. For Haynes and Krüger the commandment to keep the Sabbath reflects the ideal longed for as envisioned in the Garden of Eden narrative. Grace Ko's article is focused on 2 Samuel 21-24 reflecting on the issue of Israel's kingship. For Ko the two narratives (2 Samuel 21:1-14; 24:1-25), the two lists of warriors (21:15-22; 23:8-39), and the two poems (22:1-51; 23:1-7) reflect the failure of human kingship, the divine providence, and the election of David as an ideal king.

The article by Peter Kimilike and the one by Solomon Ademiluka reflect what Adamo would regard as reflecting the African contextual approaches. Both articles focus on the book of Proverbs. In his article, Kimilike argues that African Christians should utilise the cultural resources at their disposal through what he calls "transformative contextual exegetical interpretation." Kimilike utilises cultural resources from the Bena people of Tanzania to read Prov 31:1-9. In his article, Ademiluka argues that the proverb in Proverbs 22:1 applies to the current Nigerian situation in which corruption is celebrated rather than vilified. Therefore, drawing from the biblical proverb and the proverbs from within Nigeria, Ademiluka calls for the reawakening of traditional values in the consciousness of people as a way of addressing corruption.

Pinker's article focussing on Job 38:12-15, challenges the commonly held view that this text describes the breaking of the new day; rather, he argues that the text should be viewed from a military perspective. Simango's article focusea on Psalm 137 by engaging in the exegetical study of this text as a way of understanding the content, context, and drawing theological implications from the text.

The articles by Blessing Boloje and Pieter de Vries engage the Prophetic Books. In his article Boloje examines Malachi's use of the tôrāh, thereby arguing that Malachi presents the tôrāh as Israel's wisdom tradition. De Vries focuses on the book of Ezekiel examining the expression מִקְדָּ֣שׁ מְעַט in Ezekiel 11:16. For De Vries, the expression points to a transformation on Israel's temple through the glorious return of God's presence into the new temple in a way that will supersede the holiness of the old temple.

Hulisani Ramantswana, University of South Africa, Department of Biblical and Ancient Studies, P.O. Box 392, UNISA, 0003; Email: ramanh@unisa.ac.za; ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6629-9194