90 Thmdorus C. Vrim
The last word, therefore, never rests with man; even in Gen 18:33 God terminates the discussion with Abraham more or less abruptly; and even Is- rael’s prayers of penitence are not always answered by Yahweh (Jeremiah 15; Hosea 6).5 It is for Him to take the decision whether or not to accept man’s words. Therefore Buber just oversteps the mark when he says that in the dialogue between God and His creature man is a real partner in his own right who can speak his own word independently and of his own free wi11.6 This view smacks too much of modern individualism and humanism.
When the communion between the Holy God and man is taken to be the underlying idea of the Old Testament witness concerning God we must always keep in view that there is in this message a strong tension, which for the sake of truth must never be relaxed, between these two ele- ments: the Holiness of God and His communion with man. The fact, al- ready pointed out, that the most fundamental expression for faith or religion in the Old Testament is yir’uth Yahweh, the fear of the Lord, speaks for itself;’ this need not be taken to mean, I[1610 as some com- mentators think, that Israel never managed to rise above the terror of God, for the word fear also occurs as a synonym for faith and expectation;
but the presupposition of the glory and holiness of God is always implicit in the word. When God appears to Israel or to a prophet, the first reaction felt is always that of fear (Exodus 19f.; Isaiah 6; Ezekiel lff.).
All through the Old Testament we find that man cannot behold God, that man must die after having seen God or one of His messengers. God cannot, therefore, really be seen or described. There are a few exceptions to the former, where God is actually seen, so e.g. Exod 24:1Of., where the elders of Israel see God but the appearance itself is not described; it is, ,however, stated emphatically that God did not lay His hand upon the ‘no- bles of the children of Israel’, those who had been specially elected for this purpose. In connection with the concluding of the Covenant we are here informed of a most peculiar event (to a certain extent comparable with St. Paul’s ‘mystical’ experience in 2 Corinthians 12). Also in connec- tion with the concluding of the Covenant God is said to have spoken to Moses face to face (Exod 33:ll; Num 12:8; Deut 34:lO) and the appear- ance of God to Moses is assumed (Exod 34:5ff., 29ff.), but on the other hand Exod 33:18ff. expressly states that even Moses could not bear to see Yahweh in all His glory; God’s face could not be seen, only His back.8 In
.5. Neither does He accept sacrifice-Amos 5, Isaiah 1, Psalm 1, Genesis 4, etc.
6. Buber, op. cit., p. 33. . . .
7. Cf., for instance, Isa 29:13c: ‘their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men’;
another possible translation would be: ‘their religion is a lesson learnt by heart’.
8. The end of Exodus 33, from vs. 12 onwards, looks like a discussion on the question of the reality of knowing God face to face (vs. 11) and reminds of a later collection like the mid- rash; see [Vriezen 197&I] pp. 186ff.
Tk Nature of the Knowledge of God 91
later times the appearance of God is beheld, by prophets such as Isaiah (ch. 6) and Ezekiel, but they cannot see, let alone describe, God properly speaking; for in Isaiah’s case even the seraphim shroud their faces and figures and encircle the throne of God, while in Ezekiel 1 the prophet can only describe the appearance approximately (‘I saw as it were . . .
‘) .
On the other hand the anthropomorphical appearances of God, tak- ing place especially in the stories of the patriarchs, show the other aspect:
the communion between God and man. This representation of the ap- pearance of God may be partially due to a more primitive aesthetic way of expression, going back to oral folk-tales, on which the authors draw, it is at any rate also partly due to the tendency of the authors to make the peo- ple of Israel participate in the experience of 81620 the original intimacy of the relationship between God and man; this tendency is not primitive, but originates purely in religious Yahwism.
Finally we shall point out a few main ideas that dominate Old Testa- ment religion and give expression to various aspects of the leading motif of Israel’s religion, namely the direct relationship between the Holy God and man.
a. One of the most fundamental elements of the Old Testament teaching is the great stress laid on God’s activity in histmyg The belief in God seems to be wholly based on the experience of this activity. The back- ground against which the image of God stands out in the Old Testament is history.lo Yahweh is in the Old Testament rather the God of history than the Creator or the God of Nature, though these latter elements are not lacking (cf. [[Vriezen 197O:O pp. 331ff.). This thought was expressed by Pascal in his well-known words: ‘Dieu! Dieu d’Abraham, d’Isaac et de Jacob! Dieu de Jesus Christ, non des philosophes et des savants.’ Israel derives its knowledge of God from His activity in history on behalf of His people, particularly in Egypt and in the desert. He has intervened in be- half of the oppressed and the forsaken and has thus called Israel into be- ing. This is pointed out continually with great emphasis by the prophets.
In history, by His activity for the good of His people, God has r;yaled Himself as the living God who is near, but who is holy, too. And throughout the course of history God intervenes at critical moments; He
9. See [[Vriezen 1970:1) pp. 26ff. and pp. 19Off.
10. A. Weiser, G&be und Geschichte im A.T., 1931; C. R. North, The O.T. interpretation of histoq, 1946, pp. 141ff.; H. Wheeler Robinson, ‘The Theology of the O.T.‘, Rem-d and Reuela- tion, 1938, pp. 303ff.; id., Inspiration and Reuelation, 1946, pp. 106ff.; Kohler, Theologie des A.T.“, pp. 77ff.; J. deGroot and A. R. Hulst, I[Macht en Wil, 1952,Jl pp. 213ff.; R. C. Dentan, 7’he idea of history in the Ancient Near East, 1955, see the contribution on Ancient Israel by Millar Burrows, pp. 99ff.
11. Cf. for example W. J. Phythian-Adams, The call o/Israel, 1934.
92 Theodmus C. Vrim The Nature of the Knowledge of God 93 follows His people, saving as well as judging them, and He controls their
destiny. The whole life of the people passes under His eyes in times of di- saster and of prosperity; both are signs of His activity. There are always these two aspects to His activity: it is majestic and inspires confidence, for it is the Supreme God who intervenes, who does as He pleases and who is terrible [1631j even when He intervenes in behalf of His people; cf. e.g.
Exodus 15; Psalm 68, 111, 114; Isaiah 45. The works of Yahweh are per- formed to make His people glorify Him, but also give Israel reason to ex- tol Him because they have thus experienced His faithfulness and love
(many Psalms, Deuteronomy, Deutero-Isaiah and Ezekiel).
b. Whereas God’s saving activity in history is the general basis for the certainty of the direct relationship between God and man, prophe9 is the deepest and strongest revelation of the communion between the Holy One and man. It is found throughout the history of Israel and is the most characteristic element of the structure of the Israelite religion. God is not only the God of history, who acts with and on behalf of man, but He is also the God who allows the man whom He has called to share in His ac- tivity by His Spirit or Word. God performs nothing without revealing His decree to His servants, the prophets (Amos 3:7), the prophet is allowed to be a witness to God’s work in history and, as it were, “sees reality through God’s eyes” (Heschel) ; that is why he is called a “seer”.
It is even possible to speak of a ‘pathetic’ theology.‘* God’s work in history is accompanied by the prophetic revelation, God reveals His min’d to man. There must be an miginal connection between Israel’s belief in God who acts in history and the prophetic experience expressed so strongly by Amos; for this word is not merely his conviction, but it is the testimony of the Ol’d Testament generally.13 The prophets did not only explain God’s work in history, but revealed it, too (often also by foretelling it).
That this certainty is found again and again through the course of the centuries can only be attributed to the fact that this connection between prophetic revelation and God’s work in the history of His people forme’d part of Israel’s religious conceptions from the very beginning: the figure of Moses must therefore have been prophetic; it is to him that the reli- gious relationship dates back.14 For this reason k1641j prophecy and his-
12. A. J. Heschel, Die Prop/&e, Krakow, 1936; The A-ophets, 1962. It is this reality of the knowledge of God that is denied to man by Ecclesiastes.
13. Cf. e.g. J. Bright,Jer~iah, 1965, pp. xxviiff.
14. The use of the word ‘prophetic’ in this book to denote the persona1 and moral char- acter of Israel’s religion, is based upon this conviction that the religion of Israel dates back in the first instance to the prophetic work of Moses; besides this general broad use of the word prophetic there is the more limited sense of the word denoting the religious conviction of the classical prophets.
tory are not to be separated, as some theologians are inclined to do, for that would make the prophets mere interpreters of what has alread pened, and history itself would become the medium of revelation.’ r
hap- Hempel rightly says: ’ 6 ‘In the origin of the religion of Israel two ele- ments cooperate: the miracle, the exceptional event in nature or history, experienced as a miracle, and the extraordinary man who explains this miracle; revelation and inspiration, to use dogmatic terminology.’
And it is exactly in this prophetic experience focused on the history of today and tomorrow that the two elements of the knowledge of God, the Holy One, and of communion with Him are most closely linked; we men- tion here the figure of Isaiah who comes to know God as the Holy One in the vision of his vocation and announces His judgment with great force, but who on the other hand is the very proclaimer of confidence, or faith, almost more so than any other prophet (cf. Isa 7:9: ‘believe’, 30:15: ‘quiet- ness and confidence’); another such prophetical figure is Deutero-Isaiah, in whose message both elements are found very strongly supplementing each other, compare Isaiah 40 and 45 with Isaiah 55. But with Hosea, too, the preacher of God’s love, the element of dreadfulness in the Nature of God stands out clearly. He depicts Yahweh as a lion (5: 14)) or even as a consuming disease (5:12), a lion or a leopard by the way (13:7ff.). The same applies to the earliest prophet Amos, who sees God as a destroyer (7:7ff., &lff., 9:lff.), and as a roaring lion (1:2, 3:8), but also as saving righteousness. To this experience of communion by the prophets clearly corresponds the message they teach, always ending in the proclamation that Yahweh shall be Israel’s God and Israel Yahweh’s people (e.g. Hosea 2, 14; Isaiah 2; Jeremiah 31; Ezekiel 36f; Isaiah 45, 51f; Zechariah 8, etc., see Kp. 89 above]
) .
The keystone of the message of salvation is always the proclamation of the actualization of communion with God.c. A third typical characteristic of Israel’s religion, connected with the preceding, is the personal character of religious lijk Like the belief II 1650 in Yahweh as the God who acts in history, this element of Israel’s religion may also be looked upon as closely connected with its prophetic charac- ter. Like the two preceding elements this characteristic, too, is of a very early date and it is, as it were, the product of the first two; it stands out clearly in the Yahwistic narratives of the patriarchs in the calling of Abra- ham and his faithful obedience in the Word of God. We may agree here with A. Ah who discovers evidence of the personal character of the rela- tionship between the patriarchs and their God in names such as “the God
15. Cf. W. Pannenberg c.s., Offmbumng a/s Ceschichte, 1961, particularly the contribution of R. Rendtorff, Die Offenbanmgsuorstellungen im A. T. and the discussion between W. Zimmerli and RI[endtorffl in f%. Th. 1962, pp. 15ff and 62ff. . . .
16. J. Hempel, Gott und Mmsch im A. T. ‘L, 1936, p. 2 n. 2 now also Geschichten, p. 232. . . .
94 Thmdorus C. Vriaen
of the fathers”, “the God of Abraham”, “the fear (relation?) of Isaac”, “the Mighty One (?) of Jacob”.” As to the stories concerning Moses, which are highly coloured by later religious conceptions, as are the patriarchal nar- ratives, we may be brief. In Exodus 33f., Numbers 12 and Deuteronomy 34 the personal relationship is emphasized so strongly, that any sense of dis- tance seems to have disappeared altogether. The same is true of the earli- est historical work that has come down to us, the history of David and his succession; for in 2 Sam 12: 16 we already find how David very personally
‘besought God for the child’ to which Bathsheba had given birth; this chapter is a profound account of David’s spiritual struggle with God to save the child’s life. In 1 Sam 30:6 we read that David, in one of the most difficult moments of his life, when he stood all alone during a catastrophic event, ‘encouraged himself in the Lord his God’. In the Psalms God is in- voked again and again with the simple, direct exclamation: ‘Elohai, my God,“’ and on comparing this appellation with the many titles and names of deities that we meet with in the initial verses of Accadian psalms it be- comes quite apparent that there is a vast difference in distance between gods and men in Babylon and God and man in Israel;” the word ‘my God’ bear witness to the intimacy of the communion between man and God. Many other Psalms (Psalm 33, 16, the final vss of 73, etc.) testify to the reality of the communion and to the spiritual strength radiating from it. In the prophetic type of piety, especially in Jeremiah’s confessions, we are struck by the directness of the relationship between man and God, which is perhaps brought out even more clearly by the way in which Micah (6%) defines religion: ‘He hath shewed thee, I[1661 0 man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?’ The simple farmer of More- sheth near Gath must have known a very direct contact with God. The personal relationship to God as the God of history brings with it faith, complete reliance on God; this is stressed by the prophet Isaiah, and it is by this faith that Abraham’s life is judged in Gen 15:6.
The other side to this personal relationship between God and man is the consciousness that all lies exposed before the Holy God, who knows man in all his ways (Psalm 139; Isa 29:15ff.), and calls him to account for all his acts (Amos 3:2). Moreover, communion with God also leads to the experience of the terribly severe demand which serving God involves. It is
17. See A. Ah, Der Gott der V&r, 1929, pp. 42ff. and 62ff.
18. See also Hempel, op. cit., pp. 185-86; 0. Eissfeldt, ‘“My God” in the O.T.‘, l51. Quar- terly, XIX, 1947, pp. 7ff. (cf. p. 83, n. 2).
19. An exception to this in Mesopotamia is the relationship to the personal tutelary deity, a lower deity who must intercede with the mighty gods as an intermediary; see H.
Frankfort, Intellectual adventure, 1946, pp. 203ff. . .
The Nature of the Knowledge of God 95
precisely the man who has been called personally by God who is led into the fight by Yahweh (Mic 38; Jeremiah 1; 8:18ff.; 9:lff.; 11:18ff.; 15:15ff.;
16; 17:14ff.; 20:14ff.; 36ff.). The prophet of the exile who experienced this personally (Isaiah 1) realized most profoundly how the true Servant of the Lord, the ‘ebed Yahweh, would have to suffer and die for God’s people, ac- cording to God’s will.
d. In the preceding more general structure
forms
of Israel’s religion, as depicted in the Old Testament, it becomes quite clear that the relation- ship between God and man is a communion. The same holds good for the two following important theological conceptions: the idea of the Covenant and the doctrine of man us the image of God. On closer examination, however, we also see that these, too, are based on the recognition of the fundamen- tal distinction between God and man.We shall first deal with the conception of the Covenant, as this idea was the most influential in the Old Testament writings, especially in and influ- enced by Deuteronomistic theology.
. . . . [168] The doctrine of the Covenant presupposes a relationship be- tween Yahweh and Israel which arose in history, not a natural relation- ship. The Covenant relation was established by Yahweh alone-in the Old Testament Yahweh is always the subject of the verb used to indicate the concluding of the Covenant. This clearly shows that Yahweh and Israel are not co-equal partners: everything originates with Yahweh, it is He who states the terms of the Covenant. The Judaic theological notion of a bi- lateral covenant is hardly supported by the Old Testament data, but rather by a later theological interpretation of these data. It is true, though, that especially in the Deuteronomic works such a tendency is, indeed, to be observed: we see how Israel as a partner to the Covenant confirms it and agrees with it; in this way Israel acknowledges its responsibility for ad- hering to the rules of the Covenant decreed by Yahweh (e.g. Deut 26:16- 19; Exod 19:7, 24:2ff.)20
By concluding the Covenant with Israel Yahweh enters into commu- nion with this people. The Hebrew word be&h (covenant) means some- thing like ‘bond of communion’; by concluding a covenant a connective
20. Especially in Joshua 24 the bilateral aspect seems to be emphasized, but the situa- tion is different; this appears to be a description of the historical formation of the Yahweh- amphictyony, in which the ancient pre-Mosaic tribes enter into the Yahweh-religion and join the Yahweh-league. Even here, though, those who enter into the Covenant do not decide on the condition of entering.
96 Theodorus C. Vriezen The Nature of the Knowledge of God 9 7
link is effected21 (by means of a sacrifice or a meal or both) between the two partners, who thereby enter into an intimate relationship.
Yahweh entered into such a relationship with Israel. To that end he has drawn up the rules that are to obtain, rules which Israel could not but accept if it wanted to be accepted or remain within this circle. Thus Israel was admitted to God’s Covenant and thus it was sanctified. By allowing Is- rael to enter into this Covenant God by no means gives up His holiness, but Israel is admitted to His holy sphere of life (cf. Leviticus 19).
The Covenant may be ‘transgressed’ (‘abar), ‘left’ ( Cu.zab), ‘broken’
(he@-), but Israel cannot meddle with its laws. We must, therefore, 111690 certainly not represent the Covenant as a ‘voluntary agreement’ between the two parties.22 As we said above, and Kiihler himself admits (p. 45) God is always the subject when the Covenant is concluded, and in later times He is always said to ‘cause the Covenant to exist’, ‘to establish’ (he- qim) , ‘found’ (sim) or ‘give’ (nuthun) it!
The Covenant is, therefore, ‘unilateral’, not bilateral in origin: Israel is expected to obey the rules of the Covenant drawn up by God and by Him alone. After the Deuteronomic reformation Israel was called God’s heri- tage, His own, to the glory of God in the world. Israel is elected by God, and therefore the object of His electing will, committed to this will. As the elected people Israel is the ‘ebed, the servant, as Deutero-Isaiah has it.
Though the Covenant is broken by Israel and God punishes His head- strong and wilful people, the Covenant itself is not set aside by God. Even if God rejects the empirical Israel in its entirety for some time, that does not mean that Israel as such is rejected. None of the prophets taught that the judgment of the people in their days implied the lasting rejection of the people as such! Each prophet was, somehow, a prophet of salvation as well as a prophet of evil and hoped that God’s Covenant, which owed its existence to His love would also be restored by Him. Israel was never re- jected absolutely, a conception which is found with the ancient Orientals,
e.g. the Babylonians, who in their Creation-narratives supposed that the wrath of the gods had in view the complete destruction of mankind.23
21. According to Buber, Kiinigtum Gottes, 1932, pp. 113, 231, Berith means ‘Um- schrankung’ (‘circumscription’, ‘confinement’). The word cannot be divorced from the As- syrian bititu, intervening space, in the sense of what is common, and unites (ina
bid = between); cf. B. Landsberger, Ana ittik, MSL I[11 1937, p. 89; W. von Soden, Akkudisches HandwGrterbuch, S.U. and M. Noth, Das alttest. Bundschliessen im Licht eines Mari-textes [in &sum- melte Studien zum Alten Testament, 19601, pp. 142ff.
22. Kohler, Theobgie, p. 52.
23. The view that the counterpart of the election of Israel in the O.T. is the rejection of Israel (Kohler, Theolo@e, p. 66) cannot be maintained in this general form. It is true that in Ps 78:67 the rejection of the northern tribes-because of their idolatry-is mentioned, and in Isa 14:l and Zech 1:17,2:6 (R.V.12) we read of the ‘further’ (Hebr. ‘od is ‘anew’, or ‘further’)
All this points the same way: the Covenant between God and the people did not bring these two ‘partners’ into a contract-relation, but into a com- munion, originating with Cod, in which Imae was bound to Him completely and made dgbendent on Him.
The Covenant absolutely obliges Israel to do God’s will. Israel cannot remain itself but must let itself be sanctified. Particularly the book of Deu- teronomy emphasizes strongly the spiritual obligations while the Priestly Code stresses the fact that God has made the Covenant and that Israel is sanctified to the Lord.
11700 The priestly author considers all communion between God and man from the angle of the Covenant. In his conception of history (see [Vriezen 197O:O pp. 62ff.) there are three kinds of covenant: besides the Mosaic Covenant there is the Covenant with Abraham (Genesis 17) sealed by circumcision, and before that the Covenant with the whole of mankind and, indeed, with all creation-the Noachian Covenant (Gen 9:9ff.).
The doctrine of the Covenant implies, therefore (1) the absolute rec- ognition of the reality of a true communion between God and people (man) ; (2) the absolute recognition of God, the Holy One, the Supreme, who has established and guides this relationship; (3) the absolute ac- knowledgment of the rules of the Covenant, given by God. Thus the doc- trine of the Covenant is the clearest illustration of communion with God, the fundamental idea of the Old Testament message.
The Covenant-relationship is one of the most important forms in which the communion between God and man reveals itself in Israel’s reli- gion, but this communion is also expressed by quite different relations, such as those between father and child, husband and wife, lord and ser- vant, king and people. For that reason the present author thinks it prefer- able, for various reasons, to use the much wider term ‘communion’ in a theological exposition to denote the relationship between God and man rather than the more definite notion of the ‘Covenant’.
e. Finally: the doctrine of man as the Image of Cod.
. . . . I[1710 The outstanding feature of the conception of man in the Old Testament is the pronouncement of the Priestly Code that man is created in Cod’s image, after His likeness (Gen 1:26f., cf. 5:1, 9:6; Psalm 8). Like
election of Jerusalem. This implies the continuous faithfulness of the electing God rather than the possibility of definite rejection by God of what He has once elected. In any case re- jection is a judgment based on the inconvertibility of man and never founded on the unwill-
ingness of God, as may be found elsewhere, as far as Israel is concerned rejection only exists partially and temporarily as punishment. Cf. my Die EruGhlung Ismek, pp. 98ff.