Deut 32:19-43; Jeremiah 1:10; Hosea 6:1-3;
Our last episode considered the luminous first eighteen verses of the second canticle of Moses, taken from Deuteronomy, with its many ways of picturing the Almighty. It ended, though, on a sober note, reminding us how easy it is to forget the LORD, who “gave us birth.” The second half of the canticle goes on to picture the LORD’s vigorous response to this human forgetfulness and infidelity:
The Lord saw it, and was jealous; He spurned His sons and daughters. He said:
“I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end will be; for they are a perverse generation, children in whom there is no faithfulness. They made me jealous with what is no god, provoked me with their idols. So I will make them jealous with what is no people, provoke them with a foolish nation. For a fire is kindled by my anger, and burns to the depths of Sheol; it devours the earth and its increase, and sets on fire the foundations of the mountains. I will heap disasters upon them, spend my arrows against them: wasting hunger, burning consumption, bitter pestilence. The teeth of beasts I will send against them, with venom of things crawling in the dust. In the street the sword shall bereave, and in the chambers terror, for young man and woman alike, nursing child and old gray head.”
“I thought to scatter them and blot out the memory of them from humankind; but I feared provocation by the enemy, for their adversaries might misunderstand and say, ‘Our hand is triumphant; it was not the Lord who did all this.’ They are a nation void of sense; there is no understanding in them. If they were wise, they would understand this; they would discern what the end would be. How could one have routed a thousand, and two put a myriad to flight, unless their Rock had sold them, the Lord had given them up? Indeed their rock is not like our Rock; our enemies are fools. Their vine comes from the vinestock of Sodom, from the vineyards of Gomorrah; their grapes are grapes of poison, their clusters are bitter; their wine is the poison of serpents, the cruel venom of asps. Is not this laid up in store with me, sealed up in my treasuries? Vengeance is mine, and recompense, for the time when their foot shall slip; because the day of their calamity is at hand, their doom comes swiftly.”
Indeed the Lord will vindicate his people, have compassion on his servants, when he sees that their power is gone, neither bond nor free remaining. Then He will say: “Where are their gods, the rock in which they took refuge, who ate the fat of their sacrifices, and drank the wine of their libations? Let them rise up and help you, let them be your protection!”
“See now that I, even I, am He; there is no god beside me. I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and no one can deliver from my hand. For I lift up my hand to heaven, and swear: As I live forever, when I whet my flashing sword, and my hand takes hold on judgment; I will take vengeance on my adversaries, and will repay those who hate me. I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh— with the blood of the slain and the captives, from the long-haired enemy.”
Praise, O heavens, His people, worship Him, all you gods! For He will avenge the blood of His children, and take vengeance on His adversaries; He will repay those who hate Him, and cleanse the land for His people.
This vigorous picture of a zealous and jealous God who exacts vengeance, yet who saves His people, is perhaps the most common one that casual readers take from the OT as a whole, when they erroneously contrast the angry God of the OT with the compassionate God of the NT. Certainly the fathers are right to remind us, in picturing God in this way, that we are using the pattern of a human being in order to speak of mysteries: God has no out-of-control passions such as we have, nor does He have to act to save His own honor. The final passage says it all: “see now that I, even I, am He; there is no god beside me.” Any picture that we use or receive to explain God’s motivation falls short of His mystery and being. Still, the poetic liveliness of this passage impresses upon our imaginations principles that will not fail us: God does not wink at sin or idolatry; God is just and righteous; God alone has the prerogative to proclaim a final judgement; God will ensure that His name is not dishonored among human beings; God will restore His people and cleanse them. And the song also establishes other truths about life in general: human beings tend towards faithlessness; anything that they turn to for ultimate strength, besides God alone, will fail them; human faithlessness often brings consequences not only for the sinner, but for those in that sinner’s company, since sin is not individual only; In the end, the only One who satisfies humankind and who can protect our cosmos is God Himself.
Here is the picture, then, of a thoroughly practical God, One who made the cosmos and who understands human nature. Is there anything so disconcerting as the words, “The LORD saw it”? We cannot hide from Him, as our first parents discovered immediately after their fall. He will seek us out, even using what may seem violent in order to elicit our response. To the foolish, He gives a “foolish” answer, hoping to jolt us back into reality. There is no Rock, no Protector, except for Him! As Clement of Alexandria explains, “The Divinity is not angry, as some suppose, but when He makes so many threats He is only making an appeal and showing humankind the things that are to be accomplished. Such a procedure is surely good, for it instills fear to keep us away from sin” (my italics; Christ the Educator 1.8.68; FC 23.61). I remember as a young mother being at my wits’ end with a toddler who bit playmates hard enough to draw blood; finally, and reluctantly, I bit her, much to her surprise. “That hurt!” she said, recognition finally dawning. Today many would deplore such a lesson, thinking of it as sheer violence; but the biting stopped. God’s methods with us are infinitely more tender, and intended to educate us concerning justice, reality, and ourselves.
It would seem, too, that God’s responsive punishment is not something that is only rare, or done in extremis (as though God could be at His wits’ end!) but built into the fabric of our life. Consider St. Augustine’s description of Paul’s violent conversion, which involved his being blinded, and brought up short. The Western father reminds:
[Paul’s conversion] fulfilled in him what was written in the prophet, “I will strike, and I will heal.” What God strikes, you see, is that in people which lifts up itself against God. The surgeon isn’t being heartless when he lances the tumor, when he cuts or burns out the pus-producing sore. He’s causing pain; he certainly is, but in order to restore health. It’s a horrid business; but if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be any use. (Sermon 77.3; WSA 3.3. 318, alt.).
Jeremiah the prophet was given divine sanction to “destroy and to build up” (Jeremiah 1:10); St. Paul warns his congregation that he may have to come “with a stick.” Indeed, it looks as though the whole economy of salvation depends upon this dynamic of falling and being raised, as we see both in the Magnificat of the Theotokos, and the words of Symeon the elder: “this child is set for the falling and raising of many.” This falling and rising, indeed, is prefigured in the prophet Hosea, where God’s messenger encourages Israel based on God’s harsh but promising plans for them: “Come, and let us return to the Lord. For he hath taken us, and he will heal us: he will strike, and he will cure us. He will revive us after two days: on the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight” (Hosea 6:1-3). This promise became programmatic in the death of our LORD, who died for us, and who was raised for us on the third day.
Profiting from this second song of Moses, then, means understanding what it says and what it doesn’t say about God. We should continue to know that His character is mysterious beyond understanding, and that He is not simply like a human being. However, His justice is no mere disinterest, and He loves us too much to allow us to stray from Him into unreality, following gods that are no gods. Our times are in His hands, and this can sometimes mean harsh treatment—but all for our benefit, for He has no need to claim His own glory. Nothing is beyond His control, but He has given to us the supreme dignity of freedom, and even of joining Him (if we will) in the establishment of justice and mercy. St. Ambrose reminds us when we attribute to God alone the right to engage in final judgment, God can use us for forgiveness among our brothers and sisters. Here is his wisdom on the picture of God as judge, and our place in praying for the forgiveness of others:
Since God said in the Old Testament, “Vengeance is mine, I shall repay,” He says in the Gospel that we should pray for those who harm us, in order that He who promised vengeance might not seek revenge against them. For [God] wants to forgive by your will, which is fitting according to his promise. But if you seek revenge, you have it, since the unjust man is punished more by his thoughts than by judicial severity. (Ambrose, Letter 14. Extra Coll. (63).84; CSEL 82. 3. 280).
Let us, by the power of this canticle, turn back always to the LORD who seeks us, turn away from revenge, which will destroy us from within, leave our causes with God, and pray for soft hearts by which we can woo our friends who have turned away from the source of life, the only true Rock.
Edith M. Humphrey 