God is Irresponsible
What do these verses have in common?
Isa 12:4 And in that day shall ye say, Praise the LORD, call upon his name, declare his doings among the people, make mention that his name is exalted.
Psa 141:4 Incline not my heart to any evil thing, to practise wicked works with men that work iniquity: and let me not eat of their dainties.
These verses seem to be very different. The first proclaims the Lord’s glorious acts, using a distinctive Hebrew word that is often used to describe his glorious doings. The second condemns men for their wicked behavior, again using a distinctive word that characterizes human wickedness. Remarkably, these two distinctive words are one and the same: עלילה! What does this word mean? What does it tell us about ourselves, and about God?
FRAMING THE QUESTION
The dictionary says that עלילה means “deed, action.” But it does not denote just any deed or action. It always implies a moral judgment about the deed in view. Remarkably, when the deed is performed by a human, the moral judgment is always negative, but when it is performed by God, it is always positive. Here are some instances where the word is applied to the Lord:
Psa 9:11 Sing praises to the LORD, which dwelleth in Zion: declare among the people his doings עלילה.
Psa 103:7 He made known his ways unto Moses, his acts עלילה unto the children of Israel.
1Ch 16:8 Give thanks unto the LORD, call upon his name, make known his deeds עלילה among the people.
God’s acts, described with this particular word, are always glorious, and always invite the praise of his people.
It’s very different when the word is applied to people.
Eze 20:43 And there shall ye remember your ways, and all your doings עלילה, wherein ye have been defiled; and ye shall lothe yourselves in your own sight for all your evils that ye have committed.
Zep 3:11 In that day shalt thou not be ashamed for all thy doings עלילה, wherein thou hast transgressed against me: for then I will take away out of the midst of thee them that rejoice in thy pride, and thou shalt no more be haughty because of my holy mountain.
Psa 99:8 Thou answeredst them, O LORD our God: thou wast a God that forgavest them, though thou tookest vengeance of their inventions עלילה.
Why is God praised for behavior that is condemned in people? Or conversely, why are people condemned for behaving like God? We can answer this question at two levels, one specific to this particular word, and one that is more general.
A SPECIFIC ANSWER
Specifically, this word is one of several related words, including the verb עלל and two other nouns עליליה and מעלל, that share this same usage: when applied to God, they are positive and inspire praise, but when applied to men, they describe behavior that merits shame and punishment. A clue to the meaning of the family of words is found in the noun עולל, which means “child.” This word is a participle from the verb עלל: a child is one who acts in the manner described by עלל. The verb thus refers to childish, irresponsible behavior. Balaam uses it to condemn his ass for talking back to him, a distinctively childish behavior:
Num 22:29 And Balaam said unto the ass, Because thou hast mocked עלל me: I would there were a sword in mine hand, for now would I kill thee.
Saul (1 Sam 31:4) and Zedekiah (Jer 38:19) use the word to describe the mocking, disrespectful treatment they expect at the hands of the victors:
1Sa 31:4 Then said Saul unto his armourbearer, Draw thy sword, and thrust me through therewith; lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through, and abuse עלל me.
Jer 38:19 And Zedekiah the king said unto Jeremiah, I am afraid of the Jews that are fallen to the Chaldeans, lest they deliver me into their hand, and they mock עלל me.
But the Lord does not hesitate to describe his actions in this way:
Exo 10:2 And that thou mayest tell in the ears of thy son, and of thy son’s son, what things I have wrought עלל in Egypt, and my signs which I have done among them; that ye may know how that I am the LORD.
The Lord mocked the gods of Egypt in the plagues that he sent upon them. He humbled them and treated them disrespectfully, to force them to release his people.
The heart of childish behavior is arrogance and irresponsibility. An undisciplined child refuses to recognize the importance of anybody else, but is centered on its own interests and insists on its own way. Most of us were blessed by parents who taught us that this kind of attitude is not acceptable. None of us is at the top of the heap. We all must answer to somebody: to our parents while we are children, to our employers and the rulers of the state in which we live when we are older. Even if we become very rich and rule our own kingdom, we still must answer to our Creator. Ultimately, childish behavior denies our place as creatures, subject to our Creator, and that attitude is an affront to him.
By contrast, God answers to no one. No higher god created him. He does not care about public opinion polls, and we cannot remove him from office by referendum. As Nebuchadnezzar was forced to confess,
Dan 4:35 he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?
God does what he wants. He answers to nobody, and doesn’t care what anybody says about him. He is, in the truest sense of the word, arrogant, which is exactly the point that the Bible makes in using words related to עלל to describe his conduct. You wouldn’t want to live next to a human who behaved this way. But you must confront your Creator, who behaves this way.
A GENERAL PRINCIPLE
The more general principle is that God is the creator, and we are only creatures. This fundamental asymmetry in the structure of the universe means that some aspects of his behavior are completely inappropriate for us. The same contrast that we have seen with עלל and its cognates can be observed with other terms, which I hope to explore in other posts. Such conduct is sinful for us, because it denies our place as creatures and challenges the Lord’s authority over us. But it is glorious for the Lord, because it emphasizes that he answers to nobody, and is sovereign over all.
When we realize this asymmetry, we must stand in awe and fear before our God. All the things that we find unpleasant in our fellow men—arbitrariness, irresponsibility, arrogance, anger, pride, self-promotion—are attributed to the Lord. If he were a man, we would not want to be anywhere near him. We would be terrified of him. And we ought to be terrified of God. The “fear of the Lord” is not just a respectful awe, but a recognition of his complete and unbridled power, and the wrath that he will pour out on those who oppose him. Notably, the Psalmist joins together his arrogance and his fearfulness.
Psa 66:5 Come and see the works of God: he is terrible [to be feared] in his doing עלילה toward the children of men.
THE SOLUTION IN CHRIST
Many modern evangelicals have an image of God as an omnipotent grandfather whose overwhelming characteristic is love. To them, the Bible’s presentation of him as irresponsible and proud is offensive and depressing. What can we do if this is the character of the God with whom we have to deal?
Well, basically, we can’t do anything. He is completely in control. He does what he pleases. We are only lumps of clay that he has formed and animated to amuse himself. We are worse than neutral. All our pretensions to importance and self-righteousness are affronts to his place as the creator and ruler of all things. Our only hope is that, for his own reasons, he decides to befriend us.
Marvel of marvels, that’s just what he has done. He has sent his own Son into the world to reveal himself (John 1:18), to bear our sin in his death and resurrection (Isaiah 53), and to be our mediator (1 Tim 2:5; Heb 7:25). For reasons that only he can understand, he has provided a way for rebellious sinners to find favor before him.
This view of things is indeed contrary to the the modern view of God, but lies at the heart of the Bible’s message. Realizing our helpless condition before such a God is what the Bible calls “repentance,” a fundamental change of mind. The Lord Jesus told his disciples to make that change of mind the first part of their preaching, when he commanded them (Luke 24:7) “that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.”
Our Lord’s own message during his earthly ministry was “repent, and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15). Paul characterized his ministry as a repetition of this basic message,
Act 20:21 Testifying both to the Jews, and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.
The repeated emphasis of the disciples throughout the book of Acts was a call first of all to repent (Acts 2:38; 3:19; 17:30; 26:20).
It is time for the church to stop making excuses for God, and to start presenting him as he presents himself in the Bible: absolutely autocratic, responsible to no one, doing what he pleases, for his own purposes, with no apology. Our message to a lost world must not be a sugar-coated picture of a kindly old man pining away for his rebellious children. We must confront them with an all-powerful tyrant against whom we have no defense, but who for his own reasons has provided a way of salvation for those who will recognize their vile condition and come to him in repentance and faith.
APPENDIX: SOME APPARENT EXCEPTIONS
Some passages might be brought forth as exceptions to the notion that עלל and its cognates consistently imply morally defective behavior when applied to people.
Ezek 14:22-23
The standard Hebrew dictionary HALOT classifies the use of עלילה in Ezek 14:22-23 as morally positive.
Eze 14:22-23 Yet, behold, therein shall be left a remnant that shall be brought forth, both sons and daughters: behold, they shall come forth unto you, and ye shall see their way and their doings עלילה: and ye shall be comforted concerning the evil that I have brought upon Jerusalem, even concerning all that I have brought upon it. 23 And they shall comfort you, when ye see their ways and their doings עלילה: and ye shall know that I have not done without cause all that I have done in it, saith the Lord GOD.
In context, these verses are the Lord’s justification for the judgments that he is bringing on Jerusalem for her sin. At the beginning of the paragraph, he says,
Eze 14:13 Son of man, when the land sinneth against me by trespassing grievously, then will I stretch out mine hand upon it, and will break the staff of the bread thereof, and will send famine upon it, and will cut off man and beast from it:
Some might think that treatment is extreme, but he will bring out a remnant whose “ways and doings” will be clear evidence that his judgment is entirely justified. So the word has the usual negative connotation in these verses, after all.
Prov 20:11
Another verse that might seem at least neutral is Prov 20:11,
Even a child is known by his doings מעלל, whether his work be pure, and whether it be right.
But we know what the writer of Proverbs thinks about children:
Pro 22:15 Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.
The context of Prov 20:11 is making the point that sin is ubiquitous:
Pro 20:9-11 9 Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?
10 Divers weights, and divers measures, both of them are alike abomination to the LORD.
11 Even a child is known by his doings, whether his work be pure, and whether it be right.
In that context, the verse teaches that children, like everybody else, are corrupt, and their wicked deeds מעלל bear testimony of their sinfulness. Not just an adult, but “even a child,” shows by his conduct that all have sinned.
Isa 3:10
Another verse that seems to use one of these words in a positive sense is Isa 3:10. Consider it in context.
Isa 3:8-11 For Jerusalem is ruined, and Judah is fallen: because their tongue and their doings are against the LORD, to provoke the eyes of his glory.
9 The shew of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto their soul! for they have rewarded evil unto themselves.
10 Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with him: for they shall eat the fruit of their doings מעלל.
11 Woe unto the wicked! it shall be ill with him: for the reward of his hands shall be given him.
At first glance, verse 10 verse appears to be just the opposite of verse 9, reassuring the righteous that they will be rewarded for their righteousness. But note the change in number between the two halves of the verse, reflecting a shift between two groups of people. The first half of the verse (singular) explicitly describes the righteous, suggesting that the plural refers to the wicked. And in fact, in v. 9, the wicked are described in the plural. The people are to assure the righteous individual that it will be well with him, for the judgment that is falling on the many is only what they deserve.
The righteous man does not deserve a reward. Any righteousness that we can do is only by the Lord’s grace. But the righteous are often oppressed by the wicked, and should take comfort in the coming judgment that will fall on the wicked. The sentiment is not just an OT position, but is echoed throughout the NT as well.
2 Thes 1:6-10 Seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you; 7 And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, 8 In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: 9 Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power; 10 When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe (because our testimony among you was believed) in that day.
Rev 6:9-11 And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: 10 And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? 11 And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.
April, 13th 2011 at 3:37 pm
Hello again, Van…I do hope you are well. I always appreciate your profoundly rigorous analyses.
As I’ve noted in a previous comment, I wholly agree with you that man is utterly unfit to judge God in any sense, and may not hold Him to any standard whatsoever. We can only accept, unconditionally, whatever reality He wishes to impose – about anything. But accepting this abstract “right” and “power” of God is one crucial step removed from completing the implicit syllogisms to conclude that God is in fact “terrible” or the like (in any contemporarily-meaningful sense, at least…I do suspect Calvin’s notion of “accommodative language” is probably applicable to such terms as used by God, but our inability to know for sure simply affirms my view below). Perhaps this issue is ensnarled in that of “secret things,” and/or one’s view of how limited we each are and thus how autonomously we were/weren’t meant to approach scripture…in fact, it reminds me a lot of your “elephant” analogy (well, it may not have been yours, but I learned it from you!).
As I’m sure you’re well aware, there is a famous lack of consensus throughout the history of Christian thought regarding how to reconcile the seeming tensions in how the Bible depicts God’s nature (among many other paradoxes which transcend human reason!). Both sides of the characterization (i.e. nice/mean) seem equally compelling depending on which aspects of scripture one is focusing on, while explanations abound for each as to how to make the “other” verses comply with the “right” ones. In fact, some Church Fathers were so baffled by this paradox that they actually wondered how the Old and New Testaments could possibly be referring to the same God (and as I recall, one of them even proposed omitting the OT from the canon). In any event, both the “Emergent Church” view that there must not really be a Hell, and your view that God is a tyrant, seem equally heterodox.
Whenever a view is taken by only the “modern” church, I am indeed always suspect, for the same reason that whenever a resolution (or in the case of this issue, the persistent *lack* of stable resolution) represents the considered wisdom of the ages, I cannot help but feel I would be placing my faith in my own intellectual faculties if I dismiss such tradition. (Luther himself, a reverer of tradition, struggled with the paradox of using human reason to interpret an infallible Bible, commenting once that “reason is the handmaiden of the Devil.”) After all, if the Holy Sprit were truly enabling us to overcome our various biases and limitations in approaching scripture, there would of course be far more consensus about what it says/means. (Even if He only helps us sometimes, and not others, the inability to know with 100% certainty which times those are would seem to effectively negate the utility of any such guidance.) At the very least, the mere stipulatable existence of a good-faith non-consensus on any given matter would seem the very definition of “un-plain,” thus leaving me to choose between declaring all those who don’t share my impression to be proceeding in bad faith, or else humbling myself to accept that my own un-checked fallible mind and willful heart are far more likely to pervert scipture than the aggregate of all those before me. Indeed, the Bible is so vast and complex that even a lifetime of earnest study cannot guarantee 100% accuracy on countless matters that have confused so many. (This is not unlike the rationale for free-market economics over central planning, or your simile in agent-based optimization as to how “no one ant plans the group’s path,” etc.).
Ironically, the Catholic Church attempts to revere tradition while also placing undue faith in one man; but protestantism places undue faith in individual discernment – albeit with a range of degrees, with only the Anabaptists to my knowledge going “all the way” with the private-interpretation paradigm. But of course, a complete renouncement of any obligation to defer to tradition is essentially just a new and private religion…perhaps I’m making sort of an extension of a Majority Text type of argument, e.g. that God will on balance broadly preserve the essential understandings that He wants His church to have overall.
I don’t really know what the solution is – except perhaps a crudely probabilistic approach to the effect that “the stronger the consensus among good-faith believers, the more likely something is to be true.” I think law school taught me the same thing seminary taught you: that anybody can convince themselves that any text says anything they want. So, I need some limiting principle besides one man’s opinion – whether a Pope’s OR my own – and I guess accumulated tradition is the closest thing we seem to have. (Whether or not this is reconcilable with some version of Sola Scriptura is another issue…)
April, 16th 2011 at 4:20 pm
Hi, Ken. Thanks for taking the time to interact.
I think the key point to consider is that I am not the one calling God irresponsible. He is! He uses vocabulary that describes human responsibility to describe himself. This is not a theological judgment on my part. It’s the simple empirical data of the text. And there are other vocabulary items that do the same–if I can get some time together, I’ll blog on them.
I agree that this kind of language is offensive to many, which is perhaps why our translations (old and new!) uniformly try to hide it. But we do not encounter God as he wishes to present himself unless we take him at his word. And he presents himself in a character very well suited to induce in us the fear of the Lord, which he tells us elsewhere is the beginning of both wisdom and knowledge.
April, 19th 2011 at 11:07 am
Thank you, Van…it appears we simply differ on first principles. You seem to presuppose that human minds can in fact ever access “data” directly from natural language prose, wholly free from any filter of predisposition or bias, while I’m inductively convinced that any privately-formed “convictions” about what the Bible says are *predominantly* a function of our own personalities and finiteness. Hence, I feel compelled look outside my own (or anyone else’s) individual understanding…I’m just not exactly sure what to replace it with! 😉
I do enjoy your blog – as brilliantly analytical as your posts are, I’m rather surprised it doesn’t have a wider commenteriate.
April, 19th 2011 at 7:41 pm
Ken, I’ll bet we’re closer than you think! Your adverbs are a bit extreme: I wouldn’t claim to be wholly free of bias, which is why I welcome comments and discussion, and profit greatly from other commentators on Scripture. And if you really think that what one gets from a text is predominantly a function of the reader, then you don’t believe that anyone can really communicate with you! In fact, your comments suggest that you are able to understand what I’m saying. Whether you agree with it or not is another matter, but that’s fine. Prov 27:17! Thanks for your thoughts!
April, 20th 2011 at 10:56 am
Thanks, Van – please allow me to clarify: while I do stick with my use of “predominantly” in the case the *Bible*, I recognize that the phenomenon occurs to a range of degrees depending on the nature of the given text involved. The more ancient, idiomatic, literary, vast, and varied a given work is, the greater the inevitable role of subjectivity (if only subconscious, despite our best of intentions). By contrast, a subject I’m teaching these days is Technical Communication – a branch of rhetoric in which we can usually manage to achieve much better consensus of understanding among disparate readers (although still far from perfect, of course!).
October, 15th 2011 at 12:35 am
Van,
I’m enjoying reading your thoughts in these blog entries. Thank you for taking the time to do this careful analysis of the Scriptures. I do believe that your use of the word “irresponsible” has a different connotation in English that is only one of the many possible connotations of עלילה. I am no Hebrew scholar, but I know that there are also pitfalls to the grammatical analytical method of exegesis. It should be balanced by careful contextual synthetic study as well, and lots of meditation.
I believe that God is not saying that He is “irresponsible” in any sense that we would use that word to describe a person today. Rather, He is totally responsible, but only to Himself. He is completely bound to His nature and His word, just as He has revealed.
Now if a man should act as if he were responsible only to himself, he would be sadly mistaken, and God would rightly point out that men are also responsible to other authorities and ultimately to God Himself.
That said, your post is an excellent reminder that we serve a God who is much bigger than our little preconceptions. He is wonderful and terrible all at the same time. His word is His absolute bond, otherwise, He would have rightly blotted us out long ago. But because He predestined us to be His friends He had to provide a way for us. Since He chose to give us the freedom to do evil, He knew that He Himself would have to pay for it. That is why Jesus was a “lamb slain before the foundation of the world.” Our evil was allowed by God’s plan, and He has paid for it all precisely because He is totally responsible to his own immutable character.
Blessings,
Glenn
October, 15th 2011 at 9:38 am
Glenn,
Thank you for your careful thoughts.
You suggest, “I do believe that your use of the word “irresponsible” has a different connotation in English that is only one of the many possible connotations of עלילה.” This claim is actually an empirical one that can be tested. Collect all the OT uses of עלילה and its cognates (look up the references above in your favorite Bible SW package and find the Strongs numbers). Then collect all instances that refer to people, and see how the word is used when it describes their behavior. The result will be our best evidence for what the readers of the OT would have understood when the Lord used the word of himself.
It’s fundamental to the notion of revelation that God uses language in the same way that people do. Otherwise he wouldn’t be speaking their language, but another language, and actually hiding himself rather than revealing his mind. Perhaps, after doing this exercise, you can find a better word than “irresponsible.” I’d be grateful if you would share it. That was the best word I could think of to capture the kind of human behavior described: someone who is not responsible to anyone other than himself.
Which means that I completely agree with your emphasis that God IS responsible to himself. He keeps his promises; he carries out his sovereign intentions. This idea is, I think, at the heart of the word חסד, usually translated “lovingkindness” or “faithfulness,” but focused on covenant faithfulness. He does what he pleases, and he pleases to be consistent with himself. And how thankful we are for that faithfulness, that he who has begun a good work in us will unfailingly perform it until the day of Jesus Christ! To him be all the glory.
Van
October, 19th 2011 at 12:46 am
While I haven’t done the exercise you propose, I would suggest “autonomous” to describe the character of God as you are trying to in this article.
— Glenn
October, 19th 2011 at 6:35 am
If you think about the texts that use the עלל word family of people, I think you’ll agree that it has a moral “edge” that “autonomous” is lacking. By using the term of himself, God is emphasizing the difference between what he can do and what people are allowed to do. There is a sterility in “autonomous” that I don’t think fits the human contexts. It may be more comfortable to us theologically, but I suspect that part of what lies behind God’s choice here is precisely the desire for a shock effect, to wake us up to his distinctive nature.