Rough text? Elizabeth Coleman continues her search for the God of the Hebrew Bible

‘God is a god of anger, but also of mercy.’

One of the things we may have learned at school and Sunday school is that the God of the Old Testament was a God of anger, while the God of the New Testament is a God of love. But is that fair? Who is the God of the Old Testament? (I prefer to speak of it as the Hebrew Bible, since ‘Old Testament’ may imply that Christianity has superseded Judaism.)

Many different answers are given in the books that comprise this text. These were written and edited by many hands over long periods of time, but some themes do emerge. God is:

• the creator of everything: ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth’ (Genesis 1:1). God is also the creator of each individual: ‘thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made’ (Psalm 139:13-14)

• king: ‘For God is the King of all the earth’ (Psalm 47:7)

• a maker of covenant: God makes a covenant with Abraham, whereby Abraham obeys and will become father of many nations (Genesis 17). This covenant continues between God and the Israelites

• lawgiver: God gives the law to Moses on Mount Sinai (Exodus 19 onwards)

• shepherd to the Israelites: ‘Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, that leadest Joseph like a flock’ (Psalm 80:1). He is also shepherd to each individual: ‘The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters’ (Psalm 23:1-2)

• a father: ‘But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou art our potter’ (Isaiah 64:8) and ‘When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt’ (Hosea 11:1)

• a bringer of joy in the temple: God is infinite (‘the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee’ (1 Kings 27)) but the temple in Jerusalem is the special place for sacrifice, and of joyful celebration. Referring to the ‘sons of the stranger’ (non-Israelites) God says, ‘Even them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer’ (Isaiah 56:7). There are numerous references in the psalms to the joy of temple worship.

So far, so good. But now I move on to aspects that are more problematic to us as Quakers. First, let’s look at God as ‘warrior’. Living in a situation of warring tribes, and empires fighting for control, success in battle was crucial to the Israelites. God is seen as a warrior defending the Israelites. ‘The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name. Pharaoh’s chariots and his host hath he cast into the sea’ (Exodus 15:3-4). Equally, God is a destroyer: God orders Joshua to kill everyone living in the promised land and to take their lands and goods: ‘the LORD thy God commanded his servant Moses to give you all the land, and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land from before you’ (Joshua 9:24). Mass murder like this is, of course, totally unacceptable to Quakers. It is extremely unlikely that it happened as described – how would a band of escaped slaves who had been wandering in the wilderness for forty years have the weapons and military skills to conquer a land of fortified cities? – but the problem remains: why did the Israelites describe God’s action in their history in this way? And what does it tell us about their ethics?

One consolation is that there are different streams of thinking in the Hebrew Bible: the Deuteronomistic stream, including the books of Deuteronomy and Joshua; and the Priestly stream, including, for example, the book of Ruth, which is positive about non-Israelites – Ruth herself is not an Israelite, but is an ancestor of David the king. The Priestly books do not advocate mass murder.

Then what about God’s anger at the sins of the Israelites? We need to start by understanding that although they believed that God was all-powerful, the idea of an afterlife did not exist except in a very shadowy, limited form. When Christians suffered persecution and martyrdom, they could look forward to great rewards in the afterlife. When the Israelites suffered defeat in battle and exile, they could only explain this by saying that God was angry with them and punishing them. The reality of their lives led them to believe in God’s anger at their unfaithfulness.

One of the other images used, mainly to express the Israelites’ unfaithfulness to God (usually by worshipping other idols), is to depict God as a husband and Israel as an unfaithful wife. Let us begin with an example of God valuing the Israelites’ faithfulness, as a husband values a wife’s faithfulness, when they followed Moses into the wilderness: ‘I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown’ (Jeremiah 2:2). This is moving to me, as it reminds me of a German friend whose grandfather was Jewish. When the time of Hitler came, his non-Jewish wife joined him in the ghetto, probably saving his life by her faithfulness.

But there is much more about unfaithfulness than about faithfulness. The book of Hosea develops this theme. The prophet is told, ‘Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredoms, departing from the LORD’ (Hosea 1:2). But there is hope at the end: ‘O Israel, return unto the LORD thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity… I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for my anger is turned away from him’ (Hosea 14: 1–4).

God is a god of anger, but also of mercy: ‘The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy. He will not always chide: neither will he keep his anger for ever (Psalm 103:8-9). The worst punishment that the God of the Hebrew Bible would impose was a miserable and short life, and to be completely forgotten after you died. The horrific idea of eternal damnation, believed by many Christians, did not exist.

So there are number of themes for us to grapple with, but by this I do not mean to suggest that the Hebrew Bible gives them equal weight. For example, God the warrior is much more prevalent than God the father. Yet the God of Jesus was also the God of this Hebrew Bible. In all this complexity, Jesus found a loving God whom he called Father.

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Comments

Thank you Elizabeth for offering us these varied images of God in the Hebrew Bible. Your article echoes a book I am reading by Deepak Chopra called ‘How to know God’. It was recommended by a friend and I was initially put off by the title but I am now caught up in its wonder and insight. It is an exploration of the many ways (seven categories) humans experience God in our own image. It’s author is a medic by training and has a wide understanding of the journey of the soul through a lifetime. As well as God the Protector and God the law-Maker, the book moves on to the mystical and miraclulous; it draws insight from physics, neurology and psychology, as well as from the great religions.

By Judith Roles on 13th April 2024 - 18:39

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