1. As justice forms the basis of human morality, with kindness and
benevolence as milder elements to mitigate its sternness, so, according to
the Jewish view, mercy and love represent the milder side of God, but by
no means a higher attribute counteracting His justice. Love can supplement
justice, but cannot replace it. The sages say:(329) “When the Creator saw
that man could not endure, if measured by the standard of strict justice,
He joined His attribute of mercy to that of justice, and created man by
the combined principle of both.” The divine compassion with human frailty,
felt by both Moses and Hosea, manifests itself in God’s mercy. Were it not
for the weakness of the flesh, justice would have sufficed. But the divine
plan of salvation demands redeeming love which wins humanity step by step
for higher moral ends. The educational value of this love lies in the fact
that it is a gift of grace, bestowed on man by the fatherly love of God to
ward off the severity of full retribution. His pardon must conduce to a
deeper moral earnestness.(330) “For with Thee there is forgiveness that
Thou mayest be feared.”(331) R. Akiba says: “The world is judged by the
divine attribute of goodness.”(332)
2. As a matter of course, in the Biblical view God’s mercy was realized at
first only with regard to Israel and was afterward extended gradually to
humanity at large. The generation of the flood and the inhabitants of
Sodom perished on account of their guilt, and only the righteous were
saved. This attitude holds throughout the Bible until the late book of
Jonah, with its lesson of God’s forgiveness even for the heathen city of
Nineveh after due repentance. In the later Psalms the divine attributes of
mercy are expanded and applied to all the creatures of God.(333) According
to the school of Hillel, whenever the good and evil actions of any man are
found equal in the scales of justice, God inclines the balances toward the
side of mercy.(334) Nay more, in the words of Samuel, the Babylonian
teacher, God judges the nations by the noblest types they produce.(335)
The ruling Sadducean priesthood insisted on the rigid enforcement of the
law. The party of the pious, the _Hasidim_, however,—according to the
liturgy, the apocryphal and the rabbinical literature,—appealed to the
mercy of God in song and prayer, acknowledging their failings in humility,
and made kindness and love their special objects in life. Therefore with
their ascendancy the divine attributes of mercy and compassion were
accentuated. God himself, we are told, was heard praying: “Oh that My
attribute of mercy may prevail over My attribute of justice, so that grace
alone may be bestowed upon My children on earth.”(336) And the second word
of the Decalogue was so interpreted that God’s mercy—which is said to
extend “to the thousandth generation”—is five hundred times as powerful as
His punitive justice,—which is applied “to the third and fourth
generation.”(337)
3. Divine mercy shows itself in the law, where compassion is enjoined on
all suffering creatures. Profound sympathy with the oppressed is echoed in
the ancient law of the poor who had to give up his garment as a pledge:
“When he crieth unto Me, I shall hear, for I am gracious.”(338) In the old
Babylonian code, might was the arbiter of right,(339) but the unique
genius of the Jew is shown in adapting this same legal material to its
impulse of compassion. The cry of the innocent sufferer, of the forsaken
and fatherless, rises up to God’s throne and secures there his right
against the oppressor. Thus in the Mosaic law and throughout Jewish
literature God calls himself “the Judge of the widow,” “the Father of the
fatherless,”(340) “a Stronghold to the needy.”(341) He calls the poor, “My
people,”(342) and, as the rabbis say, He loves the persecuted, not the
persecutors.(343)
4. Even to dumb beasts God extends His mercy. This Jewish tenderness is an
inheritance from the shepherd life of the patriarchs, who were eager to
quench the thirst of the animals in their care before they thought of
their own comfort.(344) This sense of sympathy appears in the Biblical
precepts as to the overburdened beast,(345) the ox treading the corn,(346)
and the mother-beast or mother-bird with her young,(347) as well as the
Talmudic rule first to feed the domestic animals and then sit down to the
meal.(348) This has remained a characteristic trait of Judaism. Thus, in
connection with the verse of the Psalm, “His tender mercies are over all
His works,”(349) it is related of Rabbi Judah the Saint, the redactor of
the Mishnah, that he was afflicted with pain for thirteen years, and gave
as reason that he once struck and kicked away a calf which had run to him
moaning for protection; he was finally relieved, after he had taught his
household to have pity even on the smallest of creatures.(350) In fact,
Rabban Gamaliel, his grandfather, had taught before him: “Whosoever has
compassion on his fellow-creatures, on him God will have compassion.”(351)
The sages often interpret the phrase “To walk in the way of the Lord”—that
is, “As the Holy One, blessed be He, is merciful, so be ye also
merciful.”(352)
5. Thus the rabbis came to regard _love_ as the innermost part of God’s
being. _God loves mankind_, is the highest stage of consciousness of God,
but this can be attained only by the closest relation of the human soul to
the Most High, after severe trials have softened and humanized the spirit.
It is not accidental that Scripture speaks often of God’s goodness, mercy,
and grace, but seldom mentions His love. Possibly the term _ahabah_ was
used at first for sensuous love and therefore was not employed for God so
often as the more spiritual _hesed_, which denotes kind and loyal
affection.(353) However, Hosea used this term for his own love for his
faithless wife, and did not hesitate to apply it also to God’s love for
His faithless people, which he terms “a love of free will.”(354) His
example is followed by Jeremiah, most tender of the prophets, who gave the
classic expression to the everlasting love of God for Israel, His beloved
son.(355) This divine love, spiritually understood, forms the chief topic
of the Deuteronomic addresses.(356) In this book God’s love appears as
that of a father for his son, who lavishes gifts upon him, but also
chastises him for his own good.(357) The mind opened more and more to
regard the trials sent by God as means of ennobling the character,(358)
and the men of the Talmudic period often speak of the afflictions of the
saints as “visitations of the divine love.”(359)
6. The sufferings of Israel in particular were taken to be trials of the
divine love.(360) God’s love for Israel, “His first-born son,”(361) is not
partial, but from the outset aims to train him for his world mission. The
Song of Moses speaks of the love of the Father for His son “whom He found
in the wilderness”;(362) and this is requited by the bridal love of Israel
with which the people “went after God in the wilderness.”(363) It is this
love of God, according to Akiba’s interpretation of the Song of Songs,
which “all the waters could not quench,” “a love as strong as death.”(364)
This love raised up a nation of martyrs without parallel in history,
although the followers of the so-called Religion of Love fail to give it
the credit it deserves and seem to regard it as a kind of hatred for the
rest of mankind.(365) Whenever the paternal love of God is truly felt and
understood it must include all classes and all souls of men who enter into
the relation of children to God. Wherever emphasis is laid upon the
special love for Israel, it is based upon the love with which the chosen
people cling to the Torah, the word of God, upon the devotion with which
they surrender their lives in His cause.(366)
7. Still, Judaism does not proclaim love, absolute and unrestricted, as
the divine principle of life. That is left to the Church, whose history
almost to this day records ever so many acts of lovelessness. Love is
unworthy of God, unless it is guided by justice. Love of good must be
accompanied by hate of evil, or else it lacks the educative power which
alone makes it beneficial to man.
God’s love manifests itself in human life as an educative power. R. Akiba
says that it extends to all created in God’s image, although the knowledge
of it was vouchsafed to Israel alone.(367) This universal love of God is a
doctrine of the apocryphal literature as well. “Thou hast mercy upon all
... for Thou lovest all things that are, and hatest nothing which Thou
hast made.... But Thou sparest all, for they are Thine, O Lord, Lover of
souls,” says the Book of Wisdom;(368) and when Ezra the Seer laments the
calamity that has befallen the people, God replies, “Thinkest thou that
thou lovest My creatures more than I?”(369)
8. Among the mystics divine love was declared to be the highest creative
principle. They referred the words of the Song of Songs,—“The midst
thereof is paved with love,”(370) to the innermost palace of heaven, where
stands the throne of God.(371) Among the philosophers Crescas considered
love the active cosmic principle rather than intellect, the principle of
Aristotle, because it is love which is the impulse for creation.(372) This
conception of divine love received a peculiarly mystic color from Juda
Abravanel, a neo-Platonist of the sixteenth century, known as Leo
Hebraeus. He says: “God’s love must needs unfold His perfection and
beauty, and reveal itself in His creatures, and love for these creatures
must again elevate an imperfect world to His own perfection. Thus is
engendered in man that yearning for love with which he endeavors to
emulate the divine perfection.”(373) Both Crescas and Leo Hebraeus thus
gave the keynote for Spinoza’s “Intellectual love” as the cosmic
principle,(374) and this has been echoed even in such works as Schiller’s
dithyrambs on “Love and Friendship” in his “Philosophic Letters.”(375)
Still this neo-Platonic view has nothing in common with the theological
conception of love. In Judaism God is conceived as a loving Father, who
purposes to lead man to happiness and salvation. In other words, the
divine love is an essentially moral attribute of God, and not a
metaphysical one.
9. If we wish to speak of a power that permeates the cosmos and turns the
wheel of life, it is far more correct to speak of God’s creative
goodness.(376) According to Scripture, each day’s creation bears the
divine approval: “It is good.”(377) Even the evil which man experiences
serves a higher purpose, and that purpose makes for the good. Misfortune
and death, sorrow and sin, in the great economy of life are all turned
into final good. Accordingly, Judaism recognizes this divine goodness not
only in every enjoyment of nature’s gifts and the favors of fortune, but
also in sad and trying experiences, and for all of these it provides
special formulas of benediction.(378) The same divine goodness sends joy
and grief, even though shortsighted man fails to see the majestic Sun of
life which shines in unabated splendor above the clouds. Judaism was
optimistic through all its experiences just because of this implicit faith
in God’s goodness. Such faith transforms each woe into a higher welfare,
each curse into actual blessing; it leads men and nations from oppression
to ever greater freedom, from darkness to ever brighter light, and from
error to ever higher truth and righteousness. Divine love may have pity
upon human weakness, but it is divine goodness that inspires and quickens
human energy. After all, love cannot be the dominant principle of life.
Man cannot love all the time, nor can he love all the world; his sense of
justice demands that he hate wickedness and falsehood. We must apply the
same criterion to God. But, on the other hand, man can and should _do
good_ and _be good_ continually and to all men, even to the most unworthy.
Therefore God becomes the pattern and ideal of an all-encompassing
goodness, which is never exhausted and never reaches an end.