God s Expansive Mercy: Moses Praise and Jonah s Fury

Transcription

1 God s Expansive Mercy: Moses Praise and Jonah s Fury Rabbi Shai Held Parashat Ki Tissa culminates in a stirring and enormously influential proclamation of God s mercy. The appropriate response to this rousing affirmation of God s grace and benevolence would seem to be praise and thanksgiving. But for one embittered biblical prophet, these words elicit pain, desperation, and indignation instead. To understand why is to learn a powerful lesson about the vastness of God s love and about our own dogged but ill-fated attempts to cut God down to size. Still reeling from the people s apostasy at the Golden Calf and afraid that God will abandon them, Moses beseeches God to let him know God s ways (Exodus 33:13). In response, God recites the divine attributes to Moses: The Lord passed before him and proclaimed: The For one embittered biblical prophet, these words elicit pain, desperation, and indignation. Lord! 1 the Lord! a God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, 1 Maimonides (Rambam, ) suggests that the first the Lord is actually the antecedent of the verb proclaimed. Thus, according to Rambam, the correct translation would read: The Lord passed before him and the Lord proclaimed, The Lord! a God compassionate (Teshuvot Ha-Rambam, ed. J. Blau, #267). Cf. also Numbers 14:17-18, where the first the Lord is missing. But cf. the comments of R. Abraham Ibn Ezra ( ) on our verse. In the text of the essay, I have followed the traditional understanding.. 1

2 transgression, and sin; yet by no means does [the Lord] wholly acquit, 2 but visits the iniquity of parents upon children, and children s children, upon the third and fourth generations (34:6-7). These verses, known in Jewish tradition as the thirteen attributes of God (shelosh esreh middot), 3 are recited on holidays when the ark is opened for the taking out of the Torah and are chanted aloud during the Torah reading on fast days. 4 This latter practice is rooted in a startling image evoked by the Talmudic Sage R. Yohanan: The Blessed Holy One drew his robe around Himself like the leader of a congregation and showed Moses the order of prayer. God said to him: Whenever Israel sins, let them carry out this service before Me, and I will forgive them (BT, Rosh HaShanah 17b). Our verses are anticipated in the Ten Commandments, where God, warning Israel not to bow down to or worship idols, declares, For I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the guilt of the parents upon the children, upon the third and fourth generations of those who reject Me (son ai), but showing kindness to the thousandth generation of those who love Me and keep my commandments (Exodus 20:5-6). Note the dramatic shift in emphasis: Whereas in laying down the law, God begins with the threat of punishment, in the wake of apostasy, God leads with the possibility of forgiveness. Emphasis and priority here are given to God s magnanimous qualities rather than [God s] judgmental actions. 5 Moreover, 2 By no means is an attempt to capture the emphasis on the infinitive absolute: nakeh lo yenakeh, hyper-literally acquit will not acquit. 3 For a variety of different approaches to the question of how the attributes invoked in these verses number thirteen, see the commentary of Samuel David Luzzatto (Shadal, ) to Exodus 34:6. 4 The thirteen attributes also form the basis on many penitential prayers (selihot). 5 Nahum M. Sarna, Exodus (1991), p

3 in stark contrast to the formulation in the Ten Commandments, the recitation here contains no reference at all to divine jealousy. But the two texts differ in an even more powerful way. In Exodus 20, God speaks of showing kindness (hesed) to those who love God and keep Nothing is beyond the reach of God s mercy. God s commandments; after the Golden Calf, however, God sets no limits on who may be the beneficiary of divine grace and compassion. The point, Bible scholar Walter Moberly notes, is that God s mercy towards Israel is independent of their responding in the right way. Even when Israel is disobedient it is still the recipient of the divine goodness. 6 God s love, it seems, is unconditional. But the text goes further in emphasizing God s radically forgiving nature: When speaking of God s forgiveness, [it] seems to search the Hebrew lexicon exhaustively to make sure to miss no sin family word God, we are told, forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin. Nothing is beyond the reach of God s mercy. 7 And yet the heavy emphasis on God s mercy should not blind us to the fact that although divine judgment takes the backseat in the enumeration of the thirteen attributes, it is still very much present. Focusing exclusively on divine mercy would run the risk of creating the insidious illusion that one can just get away with anything. So God reminds us that even in 6 R.W.L. Moberly, At the Mountain of God: Story and Theology in Exodus (1983), p Victor P. Hamilton, Exodus: An Exegetical Commentary (2011), p Bible scholar Richard Elliot Friedman reminds us that those who speak of the Old Testament God of wrath focus disproportionately on the episodes of anger in the Bible and somehow lose this crucial passage and the hundreds of times that the divine mercy functions in the Hebrew Bible. Richard Elliot Friedman, Commentary on the Torah: With a New English Translation of the Hebrew Text (2001), p

4 the context of divine mercy, there is still justice. 8 In other words, the Torah worries about what the Christian theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer refers to as cheap grace : Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance Grace alone does everything and so everything can remain as it was before. 9 The message of these verses in Exodus and of Jewish theology more broadly is that although compassion, mercy, and forgiveness are at the very heart of who God is in relation to the world, one may not simply assume that God will forgive. Faith is striving, and although forgiveness is available when we fail, judgment is real and striving remains obligatory. 10 A reliance on cheap grace both belittles God and demeans the worshipper, treating the sovereign Creator of all as an automatic forgiveness-dispenser. Strikingly, when the prophet Joel calls upon the people to turn back to God, for [God] is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in kindness, and renouncing punishment (Joel 2:13), he immediately adds, who knows perhaps [God] may Although compassion, mercy, and forgiveness are at the very heart of who God is in relation to the world, one may not simply assume that God will forgive. return and relent (2:14). Joel s uncertainty is instructive. God is indeed merciful and responsive, he asserts, but although this can be relied upon, it should not be presumed upon. God s mercy remains [God s] to give, and [God] interacts sovereignly and relationally but not 8 Friedman, Commentary on the Torah, p Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, trans. R.H. Fuller (1959) (originally published 1937), pp. 44, All of this said, it does seem that a tension remains in the text and in Jewish theology as a whole: God forgives sinners and God also punishes them, There is mercy, but there is also judgment. (Perhaps we can put this differently: Working out a perfect synthesis of judgment and mercy is so difficult that according to Jewish theology even God struggles with it.) 4

5 mechanically. 11 Not surprisingly, the language of the thirteen attributes, which is the fullest statement about the divine nature in the whole Bible, 12 In most cases these verses are invoked in praise of God. reappears in a variety of biblical texts. 13 Most of them quote only the first part, about God s mercy, and leave out the second part, about punishment. As we would expect, in most cases these verses are invoked in praise of God and/or in anticipation of divine mercy and forgiveness. But one case is different, even antithetical to the rest. The prophet Jonah has been summoned to call the Assyrian city of Nineveh to repentance and has resisted mightily; when he finally does do as he has been commanded, the people of Nineveh repent. Ordinarily, one would expect a prophet to rejoice at such a turn of events. Prophecy that generates a genuine change of heart is tragically rare; Jonah may just be the most successful prophet of all time. And yet when God renounces the punishment that God had intended to bring upon Nineveh, the prophet s reaction is not joy but indignation. Exasperatedly, he announces that his hesitations in fulfilling his mission have been vindicated: O Lord! Isn t this just what I said when I was still in my own country? That is why I fled beforehand For I know that You are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in kindness, renouncing punishment (Jonah 4:3). What so many biblical texts find wondrous and worthy of praise, the prophet Jonah finds contemptible. 11 R.W.L. Moberly, Old Testament Theology: Reading the Hebrew Bible as Christian Scripture (2013), p Moberly, Old Testament Theology, p Cf. Numbers 14:18; Nehemiah 9:17; Psalms 86:15, 103:8, and 145:8; Joel 2:13; and Nahum 1:3. 5

6 It is clear that Jonah is angry about God s mercy. What is less clear, however, is why God s mercy or perhaps better, God s mercy in this situation so upsets him. Some scholars condemn Jonah for his purported theological parochialism ; on their interpretation, Jonah consistently displays a shocking antipathy toward non-israelites and an aversion to seeing God s mercy extend to them. They find the alleged incongruity between Jonah s mission and his unchanging antipathy for displays of grace to non-israelites alarming and denounce the prophet for his xenophobia and the deviant nature of [his] attitudes and beliefs. 14 The book of Jonah, on their telling, is a tale of a stubborn and arrogant prophet who refuses to learn the lesson of God s universal love. The problem with such interpretations is that there is simply nothing in the text to support them. Jonah is indeed profoundly troubled by the mercy God extends to Nineveh, but the assumption that the Ninevites somehow represent all non-israelites is entirely unfounded. So why does Jonah grow so sullen at the thought of God forgiving the people of Nineveh? In order to understand Jonah, the reader must bear in mind that Nineveh or Assyria would one day destroy Jonah s homeland and carry its people off into exile. 15 Bible scholar Elizabeth Achtemeier notes that In biblical times, Nineveh was the symbol of the overwhelming and ruthless power of [the Assyrian] empire ; it was, in the words of the prophet Nahum, a city of blood (ir damim) (Nahum 3:1) and a bastion of endless cruelty (3:19). It was the Assyrian Empire that first carried out a systematic policy of deporting 14 Daniel C. Timmer, A Gracious and Compassionate God: Mission, Salvation, and Spirituality in the Book of Jonah (2011), pp. 119, 123, 124, Marvin A. Sweeney, The Twelve Prophets, Volume 1 (2000), p

7 Jonah may be afraid that in showing mercy to the Ninevites, God is making a mistake. captured peoples and of replacing them with foreigners, a policy that led to the disappearance from history of the ten northern tribes of Israel when they were defeated by Assyria in 721 B.C.E. 16 Assyria was thus a place of unprecedented brutality and barbarism. On one level, Jonah may be afraid that in showing mercy to the Ninevites, God is making a mistake. As R. Isaac Abravanel ( ) writes, Jonah knew the evils and exiles that [Nineveh] would bring on the tribes of Israel in the future; hence he yearned for the nation of Assyria to be destroyed and Nineveh its capital to be utterly smitten. This is why he fled instead of going there (Commentary on Jonah, Introduction). The issue Abravanel raises is both important and difficult: Perhaps Jonah struggles with the recognition that the bestowal of mercy may be costly, even potentially or actually fatal, for the one who bestows it (or the one who is the agent of divine bestowal). For even a repentant recipient of mercy may only be repentant in the short term. What is to prevent that recipient from turning against the benefactor in the longer term? 17 And indeed, as we have seen, this is in fact what ends up happening. Still, I wonder whether something deeper and even more fundamental may also be at play. Jonah understandably finds Assyria detestable, and he desperately wants God to share his assessment. After all, is not an enemy of God s people also an enemy of God? But God will not play along with Jonah s script. Instead God constructs a living parable for the prophet. 16 Elizabeth Achtemeier, Minor Prophets I (1996), p Moberly, Old Testament Theology, p

8 God prepares a plant to provide Jonah with shade, and Jonah is delighted. But God soon sends a worm to attack the plant, which promptly withers. God then sends an east wind, and the sun beats down on Jonah s head, leaving him faint. Jonah is devastated and expresses a wish to die (4:5-9), whereupon God responds: You cared about the plant, which you did not work for and which you did not grow, which appeared overnight and perished overnight. And should I not care about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from the left, and many beasts as well? (4:10-11). There are many ways to understand what God does and says in this part of the story, but it seems that God wants Jonah to understand that he cannot have it both ways: He cannot be the recipient of God s mercy while adamantly begrudging it to others. Divine mercy cannot be hoarded; part of its very purpose is to be shared. And God may also be telling Jonah something else: You cared about a mere plant, which you had no hand in making, all the more so must I care about Nineveh, filled as it is with people Divine mercy cannot be hoarded; part of its very purpose is to be shared. and beasts that I Myself created. God s care and concern and God s openness to forgiving extend even to the whole sinful wicked world of violence and wrong. 18 The people of Nineveh are not angels, God effectively tells Jonah, but they are still My creations one is tempted to say My children 19 and because of that, when they repent, I will respond. 18 Achtemeier, Minor Prophets, p In a similar vein, Marvin Sweeney observes that at the end of the book of Jonah, God s role as creator and master of the world comes once more into play, as the Ninevites were understood to be a people that only a parent could love in biblical tradition Nevertheless, [God] is their creator and loves them. Sweeney, Minor Prophets, p

9 It is a very difficult lesson to learn: God may well love even people whom we cannot stand even people who have behaved wickedly and may one day do so again. God s love and mercy will not be constrained by our (human and therefore inherently limited) capacity for love and mercy. In other words, God s concern is not confined by the boundaries we all too often seek to set for it. A God whose mercy was determined by us would not be God at all, but simply a projection of ourselves. And so God tells Jonah and by extension, Jonah s readers that God s mercy is upon all God s works (Psalm 145:9). The question God implicitly asks Jonah and the rest of us is whether we can accept, and worship, and celebrate, a God whose love and mercy extend far beyond our comprehension. Shabbat Shalom. See Shai Held s other divrei Torah on parashat Ki Tissa: 5774 The Importance of Character, Or: Why Stubbornness is Worse Than Idolatry Sign up to receive Rabbi Shai Held s weekly divrei Torah direct to your inbox: 9