1. In one of the little known apocryphal writings, the Testament of
Abraham, a beautiful story is told of the patriarch. Shortly before his
death, the archangel Michael drove him along the sky in the heavenly
chariot. Looking down upon the earth, he saw companies of thieves and
murderers, adulterers, and other evil-doers pursuing their nefarious
practices, and in righteous indignation he cried out: “Oh would to God
that fire, destruction, and death should instantly befall these
criminals!” No sooner had he spoken these words than the doom he
pronounced came upon those wicked men. But then spoke the Lord God to the
heavenly charioteer Michael: “Stop at once, lest My righteous servant
Abraham in his just indignation bring death upon all My creatures, because
they are not as righteous as he. He has not learned to restrain his
anger.”(291) Thus, indeed, the wrath kindled at the sight of wrongdoing
would consume the sinner at once, were it not for another quality in God,
called in Scripture _long-suffering_. By this He restrains His anger and
gives the sinner time to improve his ways. Though every wicked deed
provokes Him to immediate punishment, yet He shows compassion upon the
feeble mortal. “Even in wrath He remembereth compassion.”(292) “He hath no
delight in the death of the sinner, but that he shall return from his ways
and live.”(293) The divine holiness does not merely overwhelm and consume;
its essential aim is the elevation of man, the effort to endow him with a
higher life.
2. It is perfectly true that a note of rigor and of profound earnestness
runs through the pages of Holy Writ. The prophets, law-givers, and
psalmists speak incessantly of how guilt brings doom upon the lands and
nations. As the father who is solicitous of the honor of his household
punishes unrelentingly every violation of morality within it, so the Holy
One of Israel watches zealously over His people’s loyalty to His covenant.
His glorious name, His holy majesty cannot be violated with immunity from
His dreaded wrath. There is nothing of the joyous abandon which was
predominant in the Greek nature and in the Olympian gods. The ideal of
holiness was presented by the God of Israel, and all the doings of men
appeared faulty beside it.
But its power of molding character is shown by Judaism at this very point,
in that it does not stop at the condemnation of the sinner. It holds forth
the promise of God’s forbearance to man in his shortcomings, due to His
compassion on the weakness of flesh and blood. He waits for man, erring
and stumbling, until by striving and struggling he shall attain a higher
state of purity. This is the bright, uplifting side of the Jewish idea of
the divine holiness. In this is the innermost nature of God disclosed. In
fear and awe of Him who is enthroned on high, “before whom even the angels
are not pure,” man, conscious of his sinfulness, sinks trembling into the
dust before the Judge of the whole earth. But the grace and mercy of the
long-suffering Ruler lift him up and imbue him with courage and strength
to acquire a new life and new energy. Thus the oppressive burden of guilt
is transformed into an uplifting power through the influence of the holy
God.
3. The predominance in God of mildness and mercy over punitive anger is
expressed most strikingly in the revelation to Moses, when he had
entreated God to let him see His ways. The people had provoked God’s anger
by their faithlessness in the worship of the golden calf, and He had
threatened to consume them, when Moses interceded in their behalf. Then
the Lord passed by him, and proclaimed: “The Lord, the Lord, God, merciful
and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping
mercy unto the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression
and sin; and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity
of the fathers upon the children and upon the children’s children, unto
the third and unto the fourth generation.”(294) Such a passage shows
clearly the progress in the knowledge of God’s nature. For Abraham and the
traditions of the patriarchs God was the righteous Judge, punishing the
transgressors. He is represented in the same way in the Decalogue on
Sinai.(295) Was this to be the final word? Was Israel chosen by God as His
covenant people, only to encounter the full measure of His just but
relentless anger and to be consumed at once for the violation of this
covenant? Therefore Moses wrestled with his God. Filled with compassionate
love for his people, he is willing to offer his life as their ransom. And
should God himself lack this fullness of love and pity, of which even a
human being is capable? Then, as from a dark cloud, there flashed suddenly
upon him the light of a new revelation; he became aware of the higher
truth, that above the austerity of God’s avenging anger prevails the
tender forgiveness of His mercy; that beyond the consuming zeal of His
punitive justice shines the sun-like splendor of His grace and love. The
rabbis find the expression of mercy especially in the name JHVH (_i.e._
“the One who shall ever be”) which is significantly placed here at the
head of the divine attributes. Indeed, only He who is the same from
everlasting to everlasting, and to whom to-morrow is like yesterday, can
show forbearance to erring man, because in whatsoever he has failed
yesterday he may make good to-morrow.
4. Like Moses, the master of the prophets, so the prophet Hosea also
learned in hard spiritual struggle to know the divine attribute of mercy
and lovingkindness. His own wife had proved faithless, and had broken the
marital covenant; still his love survived, so that he granted her
forgiveness when she was forsaken, and took her back to his home. Then, in
his distress at the God-forsaken state of Israel through her
faithlessness, he asked himself: “Will God reject forever the nation which
He espoused, because it broke the covenant? Will not He also grant
forgiveness and mercy?” The divine answer came to him out of the depths of
his own compassionate soul. Upon the crown of God’s majesty which Amos had
beheld all effulgent with justice and righteousness, he placed the most
precious gem, reflecting the highest quality of God—His gracious and
all-forgiving love.(296) Whether the priority in this great truth belongs
to Hosea or Moses is a question for historical Bible research to answer,
but it is of no consequence to Jewish theology.
5. Certainly Scripture represents God too much after human fashion, when
it ascribes to him changes of mood from anger to compassion, or speaks of
His repentance.(297) But we must bear in mind that the prophets obtained
their insight into the ways of God by this very process of transferring
their own experience to the Deity. And on the other hand, we are told that
“God is not a man that He should lie, neither the son of man that He
should repent.”(298) All these anthropomorphic pictures of God were later
avoided by the ancient Biblical translators by means of paraphrase, and by
the philosophers by means of allegory.(299)
6. According to the Midrashic interpretation of the passage from the
Pentateuch quoted above, Moses desired to ascertain whether God ruled the
world with His justice or with His mercy, and the answer was: “Behold, I
shall let My _goodness_ pass before thee. For I owe nothing to any of My
creatures, but My actions are prompted only by My grace and good will,
through which I give them all that they possess.”(300) According to
Judaism justice and mercy are intertwined in God’s government of the
world; the former is the pillar of the cosmic structure, and the latter
the measuring line. No mortal could stand before God, were justice the
only standard; but we subsist on His mercy, which lends us the boons of
life without our meriting them. That which is not good in us now is to
become good through our effort toward the best. God’s grace underlies this
possibility.
Accordingly, the divine holiness has two aspects, the overwhelming wrath
of His justice and the uplifting grace of His long-suffering. Without
justice there could be no fear of God, no moral earnestness; without mercy
only condemnation and perdition would remain. As the rabbis tell us, both
justice and mercy had their share in the creation of man, for in man both
good and bad appear and struggle for supremacy. All generations need the
divine grace that they may have time and opportunity for improvement.(301)
7. Thus this conception of grace is far deeper and worthier of God than is
that of Paulinian Christianity; for grace in Paul’s sense is arbitrary in
action and dependent upon the acceptance of a creed, therefore the very
reverse of impartial justice. In Judaism divine grace is not offered as a
bait to make men believe, but as an incentive to moral improvement. The
God of holiness, who inflicts wounds upon the guilty soul by bitter
remorse, offers also healing through His compassion. Justice and mercy are
not two separate powers or persons in the Deity, as with the doctrine of
the Church; they are the two sides of the same divine power. “I am the
Lord before sin was committed, and I am the Lord after sin is
committed”—so the rabbis explain the repetition of the name JHVH in the
revelation to Moses.(302)