{"id":52329,"date":"2019-03-27T23:01:35","date_gmt":"2019-03-27T21:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=52329"},"modified":"2022-10-19T22:35:39","modified_gmt":"2022-10-19T19:35:39","slug":"god-the-father-and-not-the-father","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/god-the-father-and-not-the-father\/","title":{"rendered":"God The Father, And Not The Father"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Deuteronomy 32, \u201cthe Song of Moses,\u201d abounds with metaphors for God. In the span of just forty-three verses, God is referred to as a rock, a warrior, an eagle, a father, a mother, a provider, an executioner, and a healer.<\/span><\/p>\n

But metaphors cannot be taken (too) literally. According to Jewish theology, God is a father\u2014but God is also <\/span>not<\/em> <\/span>a father; God is a king, but God is also <\/span>not<\/em> <\/span>a king. God is other and therefore ultimately unknowable. Sometimes, we become attached to this metaphor or that, and begin to imagine\u2014consciously or not\u2014that we now know who or what God really is. <\/span><\/p>\n

How does theology work to keep us from getting too caught up in metaphor? The most obvious way is through explicit negation. But our chapter takes a very different tack in pointing to the limits of our metaphors: Instead of negating images for God, our chapter actively multiplies them. How does a proliferation of images draw attention to their limits?<\/span><\/p>\n

Think for a moment about two of Judaism\u2019s most fundamental ways of imaging God. \u201cYou are children of the Lord your God,\u201d says Deuteronomy (14:1), powerfully reminding us that God is our Parent; \u201cI will be your God and you will be My people,\u201d says Leviticus (26:12), explicitly invoking a marriage formula to describe God\u2019s covenant with Israel. Not only is God our Parent, in other words, God is also our Spouse. Taken on its own, each metaphor gives voice to critical aspects of our relationship with God. But God obviously cannot be both Parent and Spouse at the same time\u2014and the pairing of these two images, I\u2019d suggest, has the vital effect of reminding us that God is not literally either.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bible scholar Juliana Claassens explains that \u201cthis multitude of images is a great example of the biblical text\u2019s commitment to employ a wide variety of metaphors, male and female, animate and inanimate, to describe God, expressing the… conviction that no one image could capture or exhaust the meaning of God.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

A God we know too well, a God we can, as it were, take out and look at\u2014such a God is not God at all, but an idol, a figment of our own imagination. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Song of Moses reminds us that God\u2019s love for Israel notwithstanding, God is always also a judge; and it subtly prods us to recall that God is Holy, transcendent, and therefore far beyond all of the images and metaphors we regularly employ in talking to God, and about God.<\/span><\/p>\n

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