The following text is from a Canaanite (Ugaritic) tablet, early third millennium B.C. It was from the Canaanite people that the Jewish people eventually emerged. The Canaanites were polytheistic; the Israelites, centuries later, were monotheistic (worshipping Yahweh). The speaker here is Baal, the Canaanite god of fertility, and storms. He is addressing another deity.
"I have a word to tell you,
a message to recount to you:
the word of the tree and the whisper of the stone,
the murmur of the heavens to the earth,
of the seas to the stars.
I understand the lightning that the heavens
do not know,
the word that people do not know,
and earth's masses cannot understand.
Come, and I will reveal it."
Ugaritic is very close to Hebrew. Many of the Psalms are direct translations of Ugaritic poetry into the Hebrew language.
