Text Study
To What is God Similar?
Rabbinic parables explicitly compare God to a variety of human analogues,
reflecting the rabbis' subtle, complex, and diverse images of God.
By Jeffrey A. Spitzer
How did the classical rabbis imagine God? Rabbinic literature
and archaeological sources reflect a good amount of diversity. Rabbinic sources
occasionally restrict the use of graphic images of God and are occasionally
more permissive; archaeological sources sometimes include images, sometimes
avoid images, and sometimes the archaeological record shows the images
destroyed. Eventually, all physical representations of God were forbidden.
There was no such reticence, however, when using figurative
language. Indeed, the literature known as midrash--which interprets and re-uses
Scripture to express its own theological concepts--is replete with a wide range
of images of God. In particular, the rabbinic parable presents God in many
striking and complex ways.
God as King
Without question, the dominant image of God, especially in
the later rabbinic parables, is God as King. Many of the king parables
distinguish the Eternal King from mortal kings or create an unexpected
perspective on the relationship to the king. As if to create a justification
for their own use of human images for God, this early mashal (parable) sets the underlying theology of associating God
with a human character in God's own mouth.
"A parable to a king who took a walk with a
tenant farmer in an orchard, and the farmer tried to hide from him. The king
said to the farmer, 'Why are you hiding from me? I am just like you.' The Holy
Blessed One, seeing the righteous trembling before Him, says to them, 'I am
just like you.'" (Sifra
Behukotai 3:3).
"I am just like you," is, of course, hyperbole.
Average people are clearly not like kings, human or divine, and yet, the parable
affirms to the reader that people should be able to relate to God without
trembling.
Another early king parable presents God's role as king as
being subject to Israel's approval. God had to earn the title.
"Why are the Ten Commandments not recited at
the beginning of the Torah? It is like [the story of] a king who came into a
city and said, 'I will be king over you.' And they said to him, 'You haven't
done anything for us that [says to us] you should be king.' What did the king
do? He built walls and aqueducts and fought wars. He said 'I will be king over
you,' and they said 'Yes! Yes!' Similarly, the Omnipresent took Israel out of
Egypt, split the [Red] sea, provided the manna and the quail [to eat in the
desert], and fought the war with Amalek. He said 'I will be king over you,' and
they said 'Yes! Yes!'" (Mekhilta
Bahodesh 5).
God is not King as a result of being the Creator. God is
only King as a result of human acclamation.
God as the Knowing Creator
Of course, God is also the Creator, but the focus of this
image is not simply that the creator controls or owns the creation. Rather, God
is a knowing Creator, who has a deep understanding of creation.
"It is written, 'Woe unto them that seek deep
[places], to hide their counsel from the Lord' (Isaiah 29:15). R. Levi said:
This is like [the story of] a city planner who built a city with [secret]
chambers, canals, and caves. Later he became a tax-collector, and the
inhabitants of the country hid from him in those chambers and caves. Said he to
them, 'It is I who built all these chambers and caves; to what purpose then is
your hiding?' Similarly, 'Woe unto them that seek deep [places], to hide their
counsel from the Lord'..." (Genesis Rabbah 24:1).
This parable describes God's dual nature, both as Creator
and as the One who collects what is due. While Jews living under the Roman
Empire might be successful in hiding assets from confiscatory taxation, they
would not be able to hide their thoughts from God.
God as Master of Life and Death
Another image, common in the liturgy as well, is God as the
master of life and death. Strikingly, the images which refer to this aspect of
God do not reflect positive characteristics. A mashal of R.Hanina b. Papa
likens God to a hunter who holds a bird in his hand. The hunter met a man and
asked him: "Is this dead or alive?" "If you wish, it is alive;
and if you wish, it is dead," was the reply (Genesis Rabbah 19:11).
Imagining God as the capricious hunter who could, with a light squeeze, prove
the man's guess wrong, can be seen as a reproach.
God as Parent
Rather than maintaining simple, stereotypical images, like
many in the liturgy, the mashal recognizes the complexity of the human
relationship with God, transcending the stereotypical depiction by creating
complex characters who reflect a complex relationship. God is described as a
parent who cares for the children and also punishes them.
In a widely known parable, God goes to extreme lengths to
protect his son.
"It is like [the story of] a person who is
traveling. He had his son in front of him until brigands came, so he put him
behind him. A wolf came up from behind, and he put him in front. Brigands came
from in front and wolves from behind, so he carried him. The son was hot, so he
provided shade with his cloak. He was hungry; he fed him. He was thirsty; he
gave him drink" (Mekhilta
Beshallach 4).
An almost identical parable, however, appears in
Lamentations Rabbah 2:2, except when he puts the child on his shoulders, the
child poops on the father. The father casts the child to the ground. The image
of God as a frustrated and angry parent may not be comforting, but, in the
context of the mourning in the book of Lamentations, Israel's sins are seen as
the natural acts of a child, and God's punishment as an emotional overreaction.
In antiquity, the kohen
(levitical priest) was known among the people not for his role in the Temple
cult (which had been abandoned after the destruction of the Temple) but for his
avoidance of impurity. So when God is imagined as a kohen, a source of impurity
represents whatever God dislikes.
A simple application of this image imagines God as a kohen
who is very careful about purity law and who gives a loaf of bread (the soul)
to another kohen (a person). The second kohen must return the loaf in a state
of purity, or the careful kohen will "throw it away in front of [his]
face" (Leviticus Rabbah 18:1).
But in another example, despite God's distaste for that
which is impure, God tolerates exposure to impurity in order to prevent shame
to Moses.
"For whose sake did God reveal
God's self in Egypt? For the sake of Moses. R. Nissim compared this to a kohen
who had a fig orchard in which there was a ritually impure field. When he
wanted some of the figs, he told one of his men to go and get some from the
tenant farmer; but the tenant farmer refused. So the kohen said: 'I will go to
the orchard myself!' His men said: 'Will you go to an impure place?' He
responded, 'Even if there are a hundred different kinds of impurity, I will go,
so that my messenger may not be put to shame.'"
"So when Israel was in Egypt,
God said to Moses: 'Come now and I will send you to Pharaoh' (Exodus 3:10), so
Moses went. [But Pharoah] asked:
'Who is the Lord, that I should
obey him?…I don't know the Lord' (Exodus 5:2)…Then God said: 'I will go to
Egypt Myself.'…God's angels said: 'Will you go to an impure place?' God
replied, 'Yes, so that My messenger Moses may not be put to shame'" (Exodus Rabbah 15:19).
It is striking that this parable presents God as a kohen who
willingly encounters ritual impurity. This particular example is yet another
example in which the typical assumptions about the human image of God are
reversed or given a twist. Other parables present God as a teacher who does not
practice what he preaches or as a judge who breaks the rules of judicial
procedure.
By couching the image of God in familiar or predictable
characters, the rabbinic preachers who created these parables sought to draw
their audience in; by transcending the obvious and typical characterizations,
perhaps they sought to make their audience think about God a little more
carefully.
Jeffrey A. Spitzer
served as the founding editor of the Jewish Texts section of MyJewishLearning,
and now serves as a contributing editor. He is also the Senior Educator for
Jewish Family & Life and its JSkyway online professional development
program for educators in Jewish schools.
