My God is an Angry God
[Note to
sensitive readers: please do not judge this post until you have read all the
way through it.]
“All you need is
love, love, all you need is love.” That is the gospel according to John Lennon.
Let’s hear the gospel according to the prophet Nahum.[1]
a passionate God;
Yahweh is an
avenger,
expert in wrath.
Yahweh is an
avenger against his foes,
he seethes in anger against his enemies.
Yahweh is slow to
anger,
but massive in strength:
he will not remit
punishment.
Yahweh is in the
whirlwind,
his path is in the storm,
clouds are the dust on his
feet.
He rebukes the
sea, and dried it up,
he made all the rivers dry.
Bashan and Carmel languish,
the bloom of Lebanon languishes.
The mountains
quaked before him,
the hills fluidified.
The earth became
a waste in his presence,
the expanse, and all who inhabit it.
In the presence
of his fury, who can stand?
Who can withstand the heat of his wrath?
His anger is
poured out like fire,
rocks are dislodged before him.
Yahweh is good to
those who wait for him,
a fortress on a day of distress.
He takes care of
those who find shelter in him
in the overwhelming flood.
He makes a full
end to opposition,
and pursues his enemies into darkness.
What are you thinking
with regard to Yahweh?
He will make a full end.
No adversary
opposes him twice.
Like a thicket of
tangled thorns
and like those liquored up with liquor,
they were
consumed like straw
fully dried.
From you has left
the one who designed evil against Yahweh,
the counselor of wickedness.
Thus said Yahweh:
Though they were vigorous and many,
even so they were cut off and
have gone away.
I humiliated you:
I will humiliate you no more.
And now:
I will break his yoke from you,
and burst your bonds asunder.
(Nahum 1:2-13)
Even Christians,
who are supposed to believe in the God revealed to them in the words and
actions of Jesus, who, in a highly symbolic act, cursed the fig tree which bore no
fruit, and drove out the moneychangers from the Temple, declaring it to have
become a den of robbers (Mark 11:12-17); and in the God proclaimed by Peter,
who struck dead Ananias and Sapphira after they lied about their possessions
(Acts 5:1-11); and in the God proclaimed by Paul, who spoke freely of “the
wrath of God revealed from heaven against all ungodliness” (Romans 1:18) - yes, even Christians prefer to the God of the New
Testament a cuddly God, a warm fuzzy, a
wish projection out of a life of velvet slippers and bunnies, bunnies
everywhere, even on Easter.
But as Heschel
says, “the anger of God is not a blind, explosive force, operating without
reference to the behavior of man, but rather voluntary and purposeful,
motivated by concern for right and wrong.”[3]
Plato, too,
recognized that there is a limit to forbearance beyond which it becomes its
opposite: no longer a blessing, but a curse:
The unrighteous and vicious are always to be
pitied in any case; and one can afford to forgive as well as to pity him who is
curable, and refrain and calm one’s anger, not getting into a passion, like a
woman, and nursing ill-feeling. But upon him who is incapable of reformation
and wholly evil, the vials of our wrath should be poured out; wherefore, I say,
that good men ought, as the occasion demands, to be either gentle or
passionate.”[4]
It is also
necessary to note the following, in Heschel’s words again, “The All-Wise and
Almighty may change a word that He proclaims. Man has the power to modify His
design. Jeremiah had to be taught that God is greater than His decisions. The
anger of the Lord is instrumental, hypothetical, conditional, and subject to
His will.”[5] If this were not the case,
if God were impassible and indifferent to the fate of humans – as indeed Greek
philosophers were wont to argue – such a God would indeed be an ogre, an
incorrigible wretch, an implacable tyrant.
The Bible is a
book of questions, not answers. “Thus says the Lord God of hosts, the God of
Israel: Why do you commit this great evil against yourselves? . . . Why do you
provoke Me to anger?” (Jer 44:7-8).[6]
“There are
moments in history when anger alone can conquer evil.”[7]
What is the
gospel according to Nahum? It is that God had routed the Assyrians according to
his steadfast love for the sake of his people. “Therefore a fierce people must honor you,
an outpost of tyrannical nations fear you” (Isa 25:3). They had left the land,
and soon their yoke would be removed altogether (so also Isa 14:24-27).
It is true that
the gospel according to Nahum has to be read in tandem with the gospel according to
Jonah, in which even Assyria is given the
chance to mend its ways – and does so!
But the “two”
gospels are two sides of a single coin. Deface one side, and the
other side is also defaced.
[1] The Hebrew text on which my
translation is based differs slightly from MT on a few occasions. I will
present the Hebrew text according to an analysis of its poetic structure on
another occasion.
[2] Abraham J. Heschel, The
Prophets. Part II (New York: Harper & Row, 1975 [1962]) 59.
[3] Idem, 62.
[4] Plato, Laws, 731.
Cited by Heschel, op.cit., 65, n. 9 (translation slightly adapted). Plato weakens his argument by stereotyping women.
[5] Idem, 66.
[6] Cited by idem, 74.
[7] Idem, 77.
Excellent post.
I am curious why you chose "fluidified" rather "liquified, " which seems a more familiar word for the same thing.
Posted by: Veronica | July 18, 2007 at 01:26 PM
Yes, Heschel (like Buber) has had an unusually broad influence in general Jewish circles. Thanks for the suggestion -- in time, I'll write more about this.
Posted by: Iyov | July 18, 2007 at 01:49 PM
expert in wrath is an awesome translation!
Posted by: Bob MacDonald | July 18, 2007 at 07:06 PM
Veronica,
I enjoyed taking a look at your blog. You have a gift with words.
Both 'fluidified' and 'liquified' are onomatopoeic [it helps to know Greek in spelling that one] to some extent, like the underlying Hebrew, the former perhaps more than the latter, which is why I chose the former.
Posted by: John Hobbins | July 18, 2007 at 08:41 PM
Very, very nice translation! As usual, the best translations reflect a knowledge and command of both languages involved. It'll be good to see your Hebrew text.
(I will never, however, get used to the Tetragrammaton being vocalized.)
Posted by: Kevin P. Edgecomb | July 19, 2007 at 03:24 PM
The semantic economy of the original cannot be respected, so far as I can see, unless the Tetragrammaton is translated as a personal name, which it is.
At times the sound orchestration of the underlying text comes alive if and only if Yahweh is pronounced as such.
That said, I nonetheless struggle with using the name, though not for fear of taking it in vain, which I fear indeed, but in far weightier contexts.
I remain open to suggestions.
Posted by: John Hobbins | July 19, 2007 at 04:35 PM
Perhaps leaving just the consonants. I'll go that far, but that's about it. I'm not a "sacred names" type, not in the least. But there's just something about it that doesn't sit right with me, so I don't do it. I'm perfectly content with "the LORD," "my Lord," etc. But I also don't think that this Name itself would've been just a sound-pattern-as-label in the way that we hear names today, any more than Yirmiyahu was, or Dawid, or Azmaveth, for that matter. My preferred translation/understanding of it is simply "He is" in keeping with the likelihood that HWH is simply an obsolete parallel to HYH, in Qal imperfect 3ms. This would be in keeping with the earliest epithets, YHWH-nisi, YHWH-sal(i, and so on: "He is my banner", "He is my rock." The sense would be that of "he" with a capital H, I take it, thus hizqiyahu, He is my strength, eliyahu, He is my God. That's what I read, anyway. It doesn't make for a very interesting translation, though, does it?
This reading is also shared by the LXX translators, who place ΕΓΩ ΕΙΜΙ Ο ΩΝ in Exodus 3.14 where Hebrew has אהיה אשר אהיה, that is "I am He who is" rather than "I am who I am."
(As an iconographical aside, you'll often find in the nimbus around Christ's head in Orthodox icons exactly that Ο ΩΝ, the above-mentioned equivalent of the Tetragrammaton, in keeping with the Orthodox understanding that the Son was YHWH, and came to reveal the Father more clearly, as is implied at various points in the NT.)
Posted by: Kevin P. Edgecomb | July 19, 2007 at 11:43 PM
Very good take on this issue. Thanks for reminding me about this side of the God of the Bible!
Posted by: Cristian Ratza | May 09, 2008 at 09:40 AM
Thank you for your passion and hard work! In America it seems much easier to sell books and tv shows about a God who is love and everything is beautiful...who wants to talk about sin and judgement? The bible is filled with promises of Gods love - but we must remember God is holy - and we must first deal with his holiness (get clean) before we can delight in his love.
Posted by: david | May 10, 2008 at 07:54 AM