The Spirit and the Word
Part 3: Opposition to and final triumph of God’s work Sin and redemption
Death and the future life The consummation
11-35 11-26 27-30 31-35 37-120 37-42 43-64 65-67 68-72 73-85 86-93 94-102 103-107 109-l 13 114-117 118-120 121-279 121-135 136-150 151-182 183-232 233-279 281-344 281-298 299-316 317-344
Edmond Jacob on the Spirit and the Word
Excerpted with permission from Edmond Jacob Theology of the Old Testament (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), pp. 37-42, 121-34.
The Living God: Centre of Revelation and of Faith [37] What gives the Old Testament its force and unity is the affirmation of the sovereignty of God. God is the basis of all things and all that exists only exists by his will. Moreover, the existence of God is never questioned; only fools can say, ‘There is no God” (Ps 14: 1; 53:2; Job 2: 10) ; and even when the prophet Jeremiah speaks of the unfaithful Israelites who denied Yah- weh by saying, “It is not he” (lo hu) (5:12) he does not intend to speak of those who disbelieve in God but of rebels who question his sovereignty. The passages which can be invoked as proofs of the existence of God are meant to lay stress on certain aspects which can be discussed, but the reality of God imposed itself with an evidence which passed beyond all demonstra- tion. The knowledge of God in the sense of the awareness of divine re- ality- and not in the profounder sense the prophets will give to it-is to be found everywhere. The entire world knows God; not only Israel but all the peoples praise him; even nature has only been created to proclaim his power (Ps 148:9-13). Even sin itself proclaims the existence of God by con- trast, for it is either desertion from God or revolt against him; the sinner is a man who turns his back on God, but who does not dream of contesting his existence. The fact of God is so normal that we have no trace of spec- ulation [38] in the Old Testament about the origin or the evolution of God: whilst neighbouring religions present a theogony as the first step in the organization of chaos, the God of the Old Testament is there from the beginning. He does not evolve, and the various names which are given him are those of originally independent gods and do not mark phases of his de- velopment. The Old Testament gives us no “history” of the person of Yah- weh, who nevertheless existed in another form before becoming the national God of the Israelites, and the gods of the patriarchs only have a chronological and not a genealogical connection with Yahweh. From the time that Yahweh appears he is a major God whose eternity could be affirmed (Ps 902; 139:16), but the idea of eternity is secondary to that of life. God is not living because he is eternal, but he is eternal because he is living. The Israelite felt God as an active power before positing him as an t’ternal principle. God is never a problem, he is not the ultimate conclusion
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154 Edmond Jacob The Spirit and the Word 155
of a series of reflections; on the contrary, it is he who questions and from whom the initiative always comes. Strongly typical in this respect is the sud- den and unexpected appearance on the scene of history of the prophet Elijah, who justifies his intervention simply by the words, ‘Yahweh is living”
(1 Kgs 17:l). Jus as life is a mysterious reality which can only be recog-t nized, so God is a power which imposes itself on man and comes to meet him without his being always prepared for it.
The expression “living God” (‘el chug, ‘elohim chuyyim) has a less deeply imprinted theological character than other formulae such as holy God or God the King, and so we do not agree with Baudissinl that it is of recent date and that it sprang into being from the polemic of Yahwism against the cult of dying and rising gods who claimed to have the monopoly of life, nor with L. Koehler* that it sprang up as an answer to the criticism that God had neither life nor power. To say of God that he was a living God was the elementary and primordial reaction of man in face of the experience of the power which, imposing itself on the entirety of his being, could only be envisaged as a person, that is, as a living being. It is to the power and succour of that person that the Israelites appeal [[39] when they are men- aced in their own personal life, chay Yahweh [‘Yahweh’s life’], and when Yahweh himself wishes to confirm by an oath the dependability of his threats or promises he introduces it by the affirmation of his life: “I am liv- ing, says the Lord Yahweh. . . . I will make the effects of my oath fall upon his head” (Ezek 17:19), but also: “I am living, oracle of the Lord Yahweh, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked” (Ezek 33:ll).
Life is what differentiates Yahweh from other gods; before it is ex- ,pressed in a well formulated monotheism, the faith of Israel is confident of the feebleness of the gods of the nations and contrasts that weakness to the living God; the gods of the nations are stupid and foolish while Yah- weh is the true God and the living God (Jer 10:9-10). Yahweh does not die: “Thou shalt not die” cries the prophet Habakkuk3 (1:12). The idea of God as living also implies that Yahweh is the one who gives life: “As true as Yahweh lives, who has given us this nqbhesh [‘soul’D ” (Jer 38:16). It is be- cause they see in the Living One essentially the source of life that believers regard as the supreme aspiration of piety the ability to approach the living
I. In Adonis und Eshmun, Leipzig 1911, pp. 450ff. The expression “living God” does not necessarily imply a relation to nature. Yahweh-to whom the title is given more often than to El or Elohim-is living because he is bound to a social group, which is a living reality par excellence.
2. L. Koehler, Thrologie des A. 7:, p. 35.
3. The actual form of the verse: “We shall not die” is due to a @gun qbherim designed to correct the disrespect which the mere thought of the death of God would involve.
God (Ps 42:3; 84:3); and finally it is belief in the living God which will lead to the affirmation of victory over death.
From a literary point of view, faith in a living God attained its best ex- pression in anthropomorphic language; “the idea of a living God,” writes F. Michaeli, “gives to the anthropomorphism of the Bible a significance quite other than that which applies to similar expressions about pagan idols . . . it is because God is living that one can speak of him as of a living man, but also in speaking of him as of a human being one recalls contin- ually that he is living. “4 Anthropomorphism is found throughout the Old Testament; it is by no means a “primitive” way of speaking of God and it easily harmonizes with a highly spiritual theology, as, for example, in Sec- ond Isaiah: God speaks (Gen 1:3), hears (Exod 16: 12)) sees (Gen 6: 12)) smells (1 Sam 26:19), laughs (Ps 2:4; 59:9), whistles (Isa 7:18); he makes use of the organs suited to these functions: he has eyes (Amos 9:4), hands (Ps 139:5), arms (Isa 51:9; 52:lO; Jer 27:5), ears (Isa 22:14), and feet (Nah 1:3; Isa 63:3) which he places on a footstool (Isa 66:l). His bearing is de- scribed with [I1401 the help of the most realistic anthropomorphisms: he treads the wine-press like a grape-gatherer (Isa 63:1-6)) he rides on the clouds (Deut 33:26; Hab 3:8), he comes down from heaven to see the tower of Babel and to scatter its builders with his own hands (Gen 11:7), and he himself shuts the door of the ark behind Noah (Gen 7:16). Figures of speech borrowed from military language are particularly frequent. Yah- weh is a gibber [‘mighty one’] and an ‘ish milchamah [ ‘warrior’] (Exod 15:3; Ps 24:8; Zech 9:13), because at the period which may coincide with the first age of settlement in Canaan war was the normal and even the only way for Yahweh to reveal himself.5 Sometimes it is even the activity of animals which provides the term of comparison; when it is a matter of showing a terrifying aspect, the lion, the bear and the panther illustrate it in turn (Lam 3:lO; Hos 5:14; 11:lO; 13:7), and also the moth, which de- stroys more subtily but quite as surely (Hos 5:12) ; yet the sacred character of animals in the majority of pagan religions was bound to hinder Israel from making too large a use of theriomorphism. Anthropomorphisms are accompanied by anthropopathisms.- God feels all the emotions of human beings-joy (Zeph 3:17), disgust (Lev 20:23), repentance (Gen 6:6) and above all jealousy (Exod 20:5; Deut 5:9).
There were mitigations of the anthropomorphism. Respect for divine transcendence led to the substituting for God of intermediaries for his communication with men, for example in the E editing of the J traditions, hut it must be noted that these attenuations are attributable to ethical
4. F. Michaeli, Dieu ci l’image de l’homme, p. 147.
5. CF. von Rad, Der Heilige Krieg im alten I.srael, 1951.
.
156 Redmond Jacob The Spirit and the Word 157
tendencies rather than to a spiritualizing for which the idea of a personal and present God was fundamentally unacceptable. Other limits to anthro- pomorphism are simply due to the fact that from the beginning Israel was aware that God was only partially the image of man. In the conception of God as a person Israel felt and expressed both the similarity and the sepa- ration, for such a person was felt not only as a different being but often indeed as a veritable obstacle; the “thou” who was God could say No! to the “I” of man, so that even while speaking of God in human terms ac- count must be taken of the fact that one realized that between the two there was no common measure. God is not subject, like men, or at least not to the same extent as men, to changes of humour or feeling: “God [r4111 is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should re- pent. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfil it?” (Num 23:19). “I am God and not man” ,(Hos 11:9); and then Isaiah summarizes the irreducible difference between God and man by the terms spirit and flesh (31:3), putting the opposition not between what is spiritual or corporeal, but between what is strong and what is feeble and ephemeral. Another limit to anthropomorphism is supplied by the very conception of man in Israel. According to the anthropology dominant in the Old Testament a man only exists as a member of a community, there is no isolated man, there are only bene ‘udam [‘sons of man’SI, that is, par- ticipators in that great collective personality which is constituted by hu- manity and, more especially, Israel. But that idea of collective personality could not be applied to God: to exist and manifest his sovereignty, God has no need of the assistance of other beings; biblical anthropomorphism thus differentiates itself clearly from ancient anthropomorphism in gen-
&al where the god is not only always associated with an attendant god- dess, but where he is also surrounded by an entire court of equal or inferior personages like a human family. The Old Testament is unaware of any feminine partner to Yahweh and Hebrew does not even possess any term for goddess and uses the ambiguous word ‘elohim [‘God’] (1 Kgs 11:5, 33, Astart. ‘elohe Sidonim IT ‘god of Sidonia’D ) . Certainly it happened that, under the influence of the contemporary world and because of a very natural tendency of the human mind, the attempt was made to give a consort to Yahweh: Maacah, the mother of king Asa, made an idol which might serve as a feminine counterpart to Yahweh (1 Kgs 15:13), and the Jews of the military colony of Elephantink did not hesitate to associate with Yahweh the great Canaanite goddess under the name of Anat Yahu;
but these are deviations which were never admitted within the framework of the orthodox faith which only knew a single consort of Yahweh, namely the people of Israel, but the union with the people is the result of an act of pure grace and in no way corresponds to a necessity of the natural
order. Transcendence of sex is also shown in the absence of a son of God:
the bene h&eZohim [[‘sons of God’] of Gen 6:2 and of the prologue to Job are divine beings, but not sons in the proper sense. Finally, a last limit to anthropomorphism and one which clearly shows that anthropomorphism was unsuitable for expressing the divine personality in its fulness, is the prohibition of making [42] a visual representation of Yahweh;’ consis- tent anthropomorphism necessarily ends in plastic representations. Even if in the course of history the people of Israel sometimes had difficulty in keeping to the Mosaic order (Exod 20:4, 22; Deut 4:12, 15-18), it must be recognized that the prohibition on the making of images of the deity and adoring them (for an image of the divine is made to be adored) repre- sents the main trend of Israelite religion. To make a representation of God means to desire to imprison him within certain limits and God was too great for anyone to be able for an instant to dream of setting a limit to what clearly never ceased, namely his life.
. . . . The Action of God According to the Old Testament The Spirit
IT 1210 The goal of divine action is to maintain and to create life; to achieve this aim Yahweh chiefly avails himself of two means which we encounter in varying intensities in all the realms of his manifestation: the Spirit and the Word. The striking resemblance between these two realities goes back to their common origin: the term ruach means originally and etymologically the air, which manifests itself in two forms-that of the wind in nature and of breath in living beings. Once it became the prerogative of God ruach threw off its material attachments though it never ceased to be an active power. Spirit and Word belong to anthropomorphic language; but since they continue to operate even apart from bodies they can be regarded as independent realities more easily than the hand or face of God.
Apart from some passages where it is the symbol of inconstancy and nothingness: Isa 26:18; 41:29; Mic 2:ll; Job 16:3; Jer 5:13, wind as a physical
6. As a God of nomadic origin and bound to a human society, Yahweh had no need like other gods of fashioned representations in animal or human form, though one must beware of equating nomadism with spirituality. But contact with the religion of Canaan, where the power of the image was very great, might have led the Israelites to use the same procedures sometimes to represent Yahweh, without there being necessarily in origin an act of infidelity.
‘I‘hc fashioned image of a bull was not always an adoration of Baal; and the ephod itself, a human 01‘ closely human representation of Yahweh (cf. 1 Sam. 19:1Off.), could appear perfectly legit- imate and even necessary for affirming the power of Yahweh. But as these attempts ultimately struck at the uniqueness of Yahweh and especially at his jealousy, a radical condemnation of all images and an insistent reminder of the Mosaic requirements was brought into operation.
158 Redmond Jacob
reality is always closely associated with God, it is one of his best servants (Ps 104:4) and is personified as the breath of his nostrils (Ps 18: 16). The Exo- dus, that liberating event which became the type of salvation, was due to the intervention of Yahweh in the form of a strong wind which dried up the sea and gave the Israelites passage (Exod 14:21; 15:8). The wind IT 1220 fulfils a double function exactly corresponding to that of God; it is the destructive power which dries up the springs (Hos 13:15), but at the same time and more importantly the force which by piling up the clouds brings fertilizing rain to the parched earth (cf. 1 Kgs 18:45). Another aspect of the wind, less spectacular but not less suggestive, connects it with God, namely its light and intangible nature; it knows no limits and is capable of bearing the deity on its wings to the extremities of the earth (Ps 68:4; 104:3) and no one can grasp its whence and whither. Power and mystery, such are the two char- acteristics of wind, and it is because the God of the Old Testament is both power and mystery that the wind is able to express so adequately the whole nature of the divine.
Although the wind accounts for life in nature and can be regarded without difficulty as the breath which gives life, the life of living beings should not be considered as an effect of the wind. The term ruach denotes the breath of life which is an effect of the breath of God. J. Hehn’ has shown with numerous examples that this idea was to be found amongst the Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Canaanites, Phoenicians and He- brews. It must have offered itself spontaneously to different peoples through the simple observation that life and breath ceased together, and because of the anthropomorphic picture of the deity the origin of this breath was attributed to his breath. Numerous texts in the Old Testament affirm that the breath of God is life-giving: Gen 6: 17; 7:15; Num 16:22;
Judg 15:19; Ps 104:29; Eccl 3:l; 9:21; 12:7; Isa 37:6, 8; Zech 12:l. Not only the origin of human life but its span is conditioned by the breath of Yah- weh: “Thou hast granted me life and thy care has watched over my ruach”
Job cries (10:12). This breath rarely, and only as a result of the systemati- zation of language, becomes a merely anthropological reality; on the whole it always remains the property of God who is free at any instant to take it back to himself.
For the ancient Israelites the mystery which fills the world was not lim- ited to certain natural happenings; even before the unique God Yahweh had assumed all aspects of power and mystery there was belief in the exis- tence of powers more or less invisible, for the most part maleficent, and
1. “Zum Problem des Geistes im Alten Orient und im Alten Testament,” ZAW, 1925, p. 210.
The Spirit and the Word 159
they were spoken of by the same term [r 1231 ruuch2 in order to indicate their violent and mysterious character. In the present state of the texts, these evil spirits appear as subject to Yahweh, but their aspect as originally independent powers is shown by certain verbs which are used of their mode of action. Thus it is said of ruach that it clothes itself (labash), Judg 6:34; 1 Chr 12:18; that it falls upon an individual (naphal), Ezek 11:5; that it comes forth mightily (tsuluch), Judg 14:6; 1 Sam 10:6, 10; 18:16; that it passes or traverses (‘u&r), Num 5: 14. If in these passages the term used had from the beginning referred to the spirit of Yahweh one cannot see why these early texts, which do not give ground before the most daring anthropomorphisms, did not simply say: Yahweh falls, Yahweh bursts in upon. Account must be taken of this sense of ruuch. To get out of the diffi- culty by saying that the spirit is only the vivid personification of an evil power or passion,3 is to by-pass the problem; in fact there is a notable difference between passages like Num 5:14, 30; Hos 4:12; 5:4; Zech 13:2, where we have a rhetorical style, and the very concrete description of spir- its in 1 Kings 224 where they play the part of individuals subordinate to Yahweh but acting independently of him.5
Physical, biological and demonic reality, the spirit is yet primarily in the Old Testament the prerogative KCR’ k~oxi~v [‘according to election’]
of God and his instrument of revelation and action par excellence. It is probable that this identification of Yahweh with the ruuch was not made at the outset.6 The quite frequent combination of the term with ‘eelohim [‘God’] might suggest that the divine spirit was thought of as a force able to act without Yahweh and even to escape his control; thus the transmis- sion of Elijah’s spirit to his successor seems to imply no participation by Yahweh (2 Kgs 2:9-15). However, from K124] the first traces of theologi- cal reflection about ruuch as a divine power it was connected with Yahweh;
a celebrated passage in the book of Isaiah shows that in the eighth century
2. P. Volz in his work Der G&t Cotta im A. T. und im Sp&judentum has insisted on this as- pect of ruacfi. Cf. the same author: “Der Heilige Geist in den Gathas des Sarathuschtra”, in Eucharista’on (Gunkel Festschrift), 1925, p. 323.
3. R. Koch, Cottesgeist und Mess&s; otherwise this work gives an excellent summary of the subject of the spirit in the 0. T.
4. The spirit (hancach) which comes before Yahweh in 1 Kgs 22:21 plays a part compar- able to that of Satan in the prologue of Job; Kittel, Bibliu h&r&u (3rd ed.) even proposes to alter ruuch into Satan, a purely gratuitous emendation.
5. In 1 Kgs 22:21 spirit is masculine, which indicates a more definite individualizing, though examination of all the texts does not allow any conclusions to be drawn from varia- tions in gender of the word ruuch.
6. According to Ed. Koenig, Hebr.-umm. Wb-terbuch zum A. T., the primitive sense may have been that of spirit, and the material sense of wind and breath derivative; that seems diffi- cult to reconcile with Hebrew semantic principles about the priority of concrete meanings.