I
F THE PRECEDING CHAPTER has given us a n y i n s i g h t at all into the living growth of individuality even in the earliest period of Israel’s history, then it will also be apparent that a personal relationship with God was already possible in Israel, and in fact existed, before the emergence of the explicitly individual thinking of the prophets. Moreover, leaving aside the marked differentiations which were to be made in later epochs, the early stage exhibits ofte fundamental feature in common with all the later forms in which piety found expression, namely the demands made upon the will far above all else, and the strong sense of the permanent gulf between God and Man.1 In view of the discussion already given in vol. I, there is no need to do more than mention that the decisive reason for this consistent note in Old Testament piety lies in something which is true of all periods- the awe-inspiring grandeur and the jealous exclusiveness of the will of God as revealed.I . T H E F E A R O F G O D
I. This predominant trait in the personal relationship of Man with God in the Old Testament is given linguistic expression in the habit of describing the whole religious relationship as the fear of God or of
Yahweh, yir’at ‘eZ6him or yir’at yhwh, and likewise, right religious conduct is termed God- or Yahweh-fearing, JJV? Whim (yhwh), a usage which persists with remarkable regularity from the earliest to the latest times.2 There can be no doubt that this shows the sense of the gap between God and Man to be the dominant element in Old
1 Cf’. J. Hempel, Goft und Mensch im AT, 1926, 21935.
sGen. 20.11; 22.12; 42.18; Ex. 18.21; II Kings 4.1; Isa. 11.2; 29.13; 50.10;
Deut. 4.10; 25.18; Ps. go.1 I ; Prov. 2.5; Job I.I,~; II Chron. 6.33; Eccles. 7.18, etc.
268
THE FEAR OF GOD 269
Testament piety, and the temptation is never very far distant to take this fact as justifying a depreciatory assessment of such piety as servility and decadent self-surrender. A moment’s consideration, how- ever, of the universal importance of fear in all religions may be sufficient warning against such a step. Indeed, when this distinctive pheno- menon is investigated, it becomes plain that religious fear is not simply a matter of a naked feeling of terror, putting one to flight, but of an oscillation between repulsion and attraction, between mysterium tremendum and farcinans .I Certainly in many primitive cults of the dead or of demons the feeling of terror may predominate, and, in fact, come to exercise almost complete control. But this limiting case, in which the pendulum of inner emotion has swung far to one side, should not be allowed to obscure the fact that religious fear is bi-polar or ambivalent, and conceals within itself at the same time both anxiety and trust. The focus of the interior emotion is therefore just as capable of shifting to the other pole, causing fear to be all but for- gotten in trustful love. Even here, however, some element of anxiety, however slight, remains, so that the true mid-point of this basic religious feeling may be described as ‘awe’.2
II. There can be no doubt that in the Old Testament statements about the fear of God the inward agitation produced by the mysterium tremendum emerges with extraordinary emphasis. Trembling in face of the divine presence, and fear of the flaming wrath of the avenger of all faithless- ness, not only mark the Moses narratives, but are similarly found throughout the accounts both of the early Israelite and of the pro- phetic period. In full accord with what was said earlier about the nature of Gods this implies an attitude in the human psyche exactly corre- sponding to the divine self-communication. This is made clear particularly in demonstrations of God’s holiness, for fear is, in fact, in all cases the human correlate of this divine attribute.4 Not only is n6r2, ‘terrify- ing’, used as the correlative concept to bld2, ‘holy’,5 but holiness as 1 cf. R. Otto, i9.e Idea of the Holy; S. Kierkegaard, The Concept of Dread; G. van der Leeuw, Phiinomenologie der Religion2, I 956, pp. 527ff.
s So R. Otto (the original German term is ‘Scheu’). The word ‘reverence’
(‘Ehrfurcht’) preferred by Hanel (Religion der Heiligkeit) may well be too refined to keep one aware of the intended element of inward terror.
s Cf. vol. I, pp. 228f.
4 Rightly pointed out by H. A. Brongers, ‘La crainte du Seigneur’, Oudtesta- mentische Studien V, I 948, pp. I 5 I ff.
5 Cf. Gen. 28.17 with Ex. 3.5f., and Ps. 139.14 (emended text as adopted in RSV) with the praise of the Holy One in I Sam. 2.2; n.b. also the praise of the terrible God in Ex. 15.1 I ; Pss. 99.3; I I I .g.
270 M A N ’ S P E R S O N A L R E L A T I O N S H I P W I T H G O D
the unapproachable majesty of the divine, convincing every creature of its own nothingness by the exercise of supramundane miraculous power, evokes that most profound of all forms of terror, which cannot be further explained or derived, and which yet as an overwhelming primal feeling seizes the whole of life and shakes it to its foundations.1 The pre-eminence of this feeling in the psychical attitude of the Old Testament believer is ensured by twofactors: first, that all magical practices, by means of which a man might be able to exert pressure on the deity, and escape from his claims, are excluded from the Yahweh cult;2 secondly, that any transference of religious fear on to divine beings other than Yahweh is ruled out by the withdrawal of demonic powers from the religious picture of the world.3 Conse- quently t/ze encounter Z&Z Uze one Lord ofthe divine realm, in whom all the saving and destructive effects of higher powers were combined, constituted an absolute imperilling of human existence, against which there was no protection. The fear of God is here deepened to a basic attitude affecting the whole man.
This makes it all the more remarkable that alongside this profound awareness of the destructive and therefore terrifying otherness of the divine nature we find, as equalb indispensable elements in the fear of God, conjdence and trust in the help of this very same Being. The religious feeling of terror does not have the character of panic, nor even that of servile anxiety, but contains a mysterious power of attraction which is con- verted into wonder, obedience, self-surrender, and enthusiasm. This is expressed not only in hymns of praise evoked by God’s mighty acts -which, in any case, being confessions of the faith of the community, cannot be taken just as they stand as evidence for the fundamental mood of the individual-but in the unreflecting joy in Yahweh’s presence, and the confidence in his protection and succouring justice, shown by the very people who are gripped with terror at the sudden outbreak of God’s anger. Thus the Ark as the locus of God’s presence is not only an object of fear in face of the devastating divine holiness, but also of joy in the divine power and in the promise of his being near at hand to aid.4 Jacob’s fear of the mysterious divine world
11 Sam. 6.20; Ex. 15.11; I Sam. 2.2; Lev. xo.2f.; 20.3; 22.2f., 32; Num. 16;
Amos. 2.7; 4.2; Isa. 6.3ff.
2 Cf. vol. I, pp. I 73ff., 2o7f. On the revival of magic in later Judaism, cf. vol. I, pp. 2 1 gf., and the Mishna, Tract. Sabb. VI.2.
3 cf. pp. 223ff. above.
4 For the former cf. I Sam. 6.rgff.; II Sam. 6.9; for the latter I Sam. 6.13, Ig (LXX); II Sam. 6.r5.2If.
T H E F E A R O F G O D 271
manifested to him at Bethel does not stop him from seizing on the promise of this God, and placing himself permanently under his pro- tection.1 Nor does recoil from the mortal peril inherent in seeing God prevent men from counting this vision as the supreme blessing.2 Clearly it is the very fact that men survive the deadly effect of God’s entry into human life which results in their feeling an exuberant sense of liberation when they experience his turning to them as some- thing hidden in the heart of apparent rejection; and this sense finds its natural expression only in thankfulness and joy. The intensity with
which, in the right sort of fear of God, men are aware of this attracting and binding force in God’s self-communication, and feel it as a counterpoise to the sense of sheer terror, is perhaps most strikingly summed up in the words of Moses addressed to the people on Sinai, when they were filled with consuming anxiety: ‘Do not fear! for God has come to prove you, and that the fear of him may be before your eyes, that you may not sin.‘3
That which made itpossible, however, for thefear of God to take this special form was the deity’s distinctive self-communication as a covenant God. Here the terrifyingly unapproachable God reveals himself as at the same time a leader and protector of his people, one who has bound up his gift of life with fixed ordinances governing the way in which that life is to be lived by the nation. The transformation of religious feeling which this induced, from a sense of numinous terror to a reverential awe in which trust already predominates, may be seen at its finest in the writings of the Yahwist narrator. For here age-old stories, only slightly retouched, and still testifying to the most archaic emotions of the people, are combined with passages wholly permeated by the spirit of the Yahweh religion. Thus something of the shriek of numinous horror still sounds through the story of Yahweh’s attack on Moses by night;4 it breaks out, too, in the accounts of Gideon5 and Manoah in their encounters with God. This inner trembling also plays a part in
1 Gen. 28.17, 2off.; 35.3.
2 Cf. on the one hand Ex. 19.21; 33.20, on the other Ex. 24. I I ; 33.18; also Gen.
16.12. Elsewhere the richer meaning of y-r-’ occurs even in secular usage : cf.
Josh: 4.14, where Kautzsch-Berthole<(Dk klige Schr@ des AT*) renders ‘hold in hoyt& (‘h;$halten’) .
. . . 4 Ex. 4.24ff.
s Judg. 6.22.
8 Judg. 13.6. The angel of Yahweh is described as &a” r&Cd; cf’. the fear of death expressed in 13.22.
272 M A N ’ S P E R S O N A L R E L A T I O N S H I P W I T H G O D
the story of God’s making a covenant with Abraham,1 though on that occasion it is directly overcome by the promise of the covenant God.
Thus, generally speaking, fear takes on a different character when it expresses the mental attitude of a servant in the presence of his lord, a relation in which the patriarchal. history portrays its heroes with inimitable understanding. Unshakeable confidence and willing obedience, humble renunciation of one’s own way and unconditional adherence to the goal of God’s leading, are all here described in such a way as to reveal with deep feeling that turning of the individual to God which is such a vital element in the fear of God.
Even at this stage the Old Testament fear of God shows itself characteristically different from the attitude to the deity which lies at the root of neighbouring religions. There, even when men know full well the numinous terribleness of the power of God, and bear eloquent testimony to it, 2 it is unable to release effects similar to those in Israel, because the impression made does not produce in men the certainty that they have been totally abandoned. The juxtaposition of diverse and to some extent rival gods, the derogation from the power of the gods by the demons, and the eagerness with which men had recourse to prophylactic magic, prevented that abolition of all safeguards in face of the terrifying nature of the divine which is the typical mark of the Old Testament evidence. Conversely, the con- fident trust which constantly prevails as the basic note in Israel’s fear of God has no parallel in the other religions of the ancient Near East.
The will of these nature gods is too little reliable and too ambiguous for men to be able to credit them with a coherent total purpose; and they are themselves too strongly exposed to the evil power of the demons for their promises to be able to banish anxiety. Certain beautiful expressions of trust in individual prayers3 cannot blind us to the fact that the confidence which lives in them was unable to embrace and dominate the whole of Man’s relation to God. Anxiety remains ‘one of the basic elements in Babylonian piety’.4
1 Gen. I 5. I 2 ; similarly also Gen. 28. I 7 ; Ex. 3.6; Job 4. I 2ff.
2 Cf. e.g., the descriptions of Ninib and Nergal in M. Jastrow, Die Religion Babylon&m und Assyriens I, 1904, pp. 455 and 474ff., or that of the frightful effects of the divine word in the Enem hymns (pp. 4of.).
3 In addition to many Babylonian prayers the Egyptian lay prayers from the New Kingdom deserve especial mention in this context. Erman was the first to draw attention to them, and Gunkel devoted a whole essay to them alone (Reden und Aufsiitze, pp. 141ff.). Cf. also A0 T, p. 32.
4 So H. Seeger in his first-class treatment of the problem of piety: Die TKeb- kriifte des religiiisen Lebens in Israel und Babylon, I 923, p. I 7.
THE FEAR OF G O D 273
Above all, however, there was lacking that which gave the Old Testament fear of God its distinctive character, namely its connection with the sense of obligation toward the will of God, whether this was thought of as the original source of the settled ordinances of cosmic life, or as something which invades history in living self-demonstration.
Consequently thefear of God is mentioned again and again as the basis of
respect
for
the divine norms. Men shrink from injustice in view of the majesty of the divine lawgiver, who alone is to be feared; and that not only in Israell- a similar attitude to the holiness of the law is assumed to exist also among the pious heathen.2 Hence the fear of God is an indispensable virtue of the judge,3 and part of the necessary equipment of the king.4 There is a very close, almost stereotyped connection, in admonitions to observe the law, between the fear of God and walking in his ways;5 indeed, the word by which God reveals his will is seen as the best guidance to a right fear of God.6 The wisdom teachers, too, group together the fear of God and the avoidance of evil.7What is happening is clear enough. Because the fear of God is understood as a relationship with the sovereign divine will, the irrational element in that fear, the numinous feeling of terror in face of a divine power which is unknown and which may break forth abruptly at any time, is being repressed in favour of an attitude of reverence, learned by human mediation, for divine ordinances which can certainly be known and which remain permanently present. The fear of God is thusJilled with a complex rational content, with the result that predominance is given to the positive element in the God-Man relationship.
Because the will of God is known primarily as something consistent and perspicuously clear, and is accepted into the fabric of life, quiet con.dence in the manifest God gets the upper hand over terror in the presence of the hidden one. Moreover, this confidence acquires a sure foundation in men’s constantly renewed experience of the goodness of the lawgiver as this allows itself to be discerned in the practical direction of life at the hand of the law. For with the commandment is bound up also the promise of divine mercy and forgiveness, con-
1Gen. 39.9; Ex. 1.17, 21.
2 Gen. 20.8, I I ; 42.18.
3 Ex. 18.21.
4 II Sam. 23.3; Isa. x 1.2.
5Deut. 10.12, 20; Josh. 24.14, cf. Ps. 86.11.
’ Deut. 4.10; X7.19; 31.13.
7 Prov. 3.7; 8.13; 14.2; 16.6; Job 1.8.
274 MAN’S PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD
stantly proclaimed to the penitent in the cult, and assuring him of life and peace as Yahweh’s beneficent will. It is true that this close association of the fear of God with the Law also has its dangers. It may happen that external legal observance covers itself with the name of the fear of God, when it no longer has any living relationship with him, and so can be justly stigmatized by the prophetic critique as a
mechanical commandment of men.1 Yet here, too, the way is prepared for a striving after inner unity with the will of God which develops the God-Man relationship to an entirely new level of in- tensity
This help which the Law gives men in overcoming by trust their anxiety in the face of God has no counterpart in the other religions of the ancient Near East. The Babylonians indeed knew of many divine commands which they had to keep, both cultic and moral, but no unified law, because they knew of no unified divine will. Hence the discovery of the will of God remained quite literally an endless task, the fulfilment of which was a goal which could never be attained with certainty.
In addition, however, to the static supremacy and grandeur with which the divine majesty confronted the Israelite in the ordinances of the Law, there was also God’s mighty intervention in history to present him with t/ze @zamic ofan unknown and impenetrable will, and to direct his fear along the path of adventurous trust. Thus it is the very shrinking, awe and alarm of the elders of the people in face of the wonder-working God which leads them to recognize Moses as his messenger and to accept in faith the liberation promised by him.2 Whereas the Egyptians refuse to fear before Yahweh, and therefore despise the one whom he has sent,3 in Israel the experience of his marvellous acts confirms the fear of God, and awakens trust in him and in his servants for the future as well.4 If Yahweh is worshipped through the centuries as ‘majestic in holiness, terrible in glorious deeds’ (Ex. 15.1 I), this is linked with the strong hope that he will triumph over all resistance and achieve his goal in history, the blessing of mankind through his chosen people (Gen. 12.1-3). Thus fear, transformed into daring trust, lays the foundation for the eschato- logical hope. Only by hardening their heart against the terrifying
1Isa. 29. t 3.
2 Ex. q.~ff., 31.
3 Ex.g.2of., 30.
4 Ex. 14.31; 19.9.
THE FEAR OF GOD 275
I
I working of Yahweh’s power can the people, in the course of their journey through the wilderness, fall into that irreverent derision of and contempt for God which refuses to believe his promises, and I
through its disobedience conjures up his judgment.1 Elsewhere, too, we find this fear of the God who summons men to obedience by the I agency of his messengers, compelling them to submit to his will in 1 trust, and only then allowing them to count on his protection against threatening dangers. 2 This self-commitment, which is ready for the most extreme demands, and which bestows on the true fear of God the character of unconditional trust even in face of his enigmatic and uncomprehended will, is grasped most profoundly in the Elohist’s narrative of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac.3
Outside Israel there is at most a number of individual oracles, such as those which conveyed to Assyrian and Egyptian kings the consent of the gods to their undertakings, and the promise of their help,4 which can be cited as expressions of a divine authority in history calling for the response of faith. There is no question that such divine messages were capable of arousing powerful confidence in the help of the gods, as the prayers of kings testify.5 Nevertheless this spiritual condition was unable to determine men’s total attitude to life. This I
was not due only to the effect of those obstacles already mentioned, polytheism and the fear of demons. Above all, there could be no com- I prehension of a clear moral saving will, guiding the whole of history, because neither was there a clear concept of history to hand,6 nor was I there any understanding of how the will of God might be considered
from universal angles which would take in his whole providential government of the world. In Israel, however, it was precisely this
1 Num. 14.1 I, 22, 24.
2 I Sam. 11.7; 16.4; I Kings 18.12ff.
3 Gen. 22.
4 Cf. the oracles of Ishtar to Esarhaddon (0. Weber, Die Liter&r der Babylonier und Assynr, rgo7, pp. I 8 I ff. ; A0 T, pp. 28 I f. ; ANET, pp. 44gf.) ; also the enquiries made to the sun+od (Weber, RD. I 77ff.1, and the oracle of the moon-god Sin to the same king (A. J&emias, ATAb, p: ‘738). Cf. also M. Jastrow, op. I&, vol. I, pp.
443f.; II, p. 152. Also, the answer of the god Nebo to the supplication of Assur- banipal (H. Zimmern, Babylonische Hymnen und Gebete II, rgr I, pp. 2of. = A.Ung- nad, Die Religion der Babylonier und Assyrer, 192 I, pp. 18off.), the oracle of Ninlil to the same king (ANET, pp. 45of.), and the encouraging call of the god Re to Rameses II in the battle of Kadesh (A. Erman, Liter&r der Agypter, rgq, pp. 32gf.) should be mentioned.
s Cf. the prayer on the memorial of the king of Cutha, cited in 0. Weber, op. cit., p. 203, and the prayers of Assurbanipal to Nebo connected with the above- mentioned Nebo oracle.
s Cf. vol. T, pp. 41f.