Ancient Hebrew Poetry

Divine Anger according to Abraham Heschel

Some of the most insightful treatments of biblical texts and themes come from scholars whose area of specialization lies beyond the Bible. Examples include students of literature like Erich Auerbach, Meir Sternberg, and Robert Alter. Anthropologists like Mary Douglas. Philosophers like Soren Kierkegaard and Emmanuel Levinas. 

Then there is Abraham Joshua Heschel. To my mind Heschel is the most important example of a philosopher and theologian who was conversant with the entire tradition, Jewish and non-Jewish, philosophical and devotional, and found it within himself to set aside Maimonides and all the others in an attempt to reclaim the God of the Bible from the viselike grip in which philosophers and tradition have held him. This works itself out with riproaring intensity in his treatment of divine anger and divine pathos as absolutely essential features of the experience of God vouchsafed to ancient Israel and to Israel’s prophets in particular. Key quotes:

The bawdy speech of an angry, loving God: Ezekiel’s dilemma

The prophet Ezekiel reports the words of an angry, loving God who repetitively communicates “lamentations, mourning, and woe,” the taste of which is – this is the kicker - “as sweet as honey” (Ezek 2:10). How can the taste of anticipatory lament be as sweet as honey? In the answer to that question lies the mystery of the book of Ezekiel’s power.

On the Impassibility of God

Ancient Hebrew poetry is awash in descriptions of God’s anger. Classical prophecy, many of the Psalms, the book of Job fall apart conceptually if one removes this element from the whole.

Let's assume, as do legal systems and ethical codes without exception, that there is a principle of justice that transcends polities, family units, and individuals. For the sake of argument, let us identify the arbiter of said justice with the beginning and end of history, with a transcendent "one," conceived of in personal terms, as do monotheistic and, mutatis mutandis, polytheistic religions. Is it possible to speak truthfully about this "one," this God, without language that refers to anger? Over the long haul, I'm not sure it is.

Apples, Oranges, and Nahum 1:2-3a

In an earlier post I stated that comparing a text of the Hebrew Bible to resignifications of it by subsequent tradition is like comparing apples to oranges. An example may illustrate.

My God is an Angry God

“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]