Why I Think God is Angry, Part 2

[andyfox]

In part 1, I tried to show why I think the environment of the ancient Near East encouraged a view of nature, and of its gods, as violent.

The Sumerians were the founders of the high civilization of the ancient Near East. They had once been wanderers. Once they stopped wandering, and built cities, they had plenty of reason, both psychological and military, to fear the appearance of any group of wanderers. Their successors felt the same way and took the same defensive posture against all wanderers who approached their walls. The city was a barricaded, fortified place. What was outside of it was unimproved and it was probably unimprovable. What was within the walls was nature subdued and controlled and put to proper use. What was beyond the walls, whether it was land, or people, or spirits, was savage and unpredictable and evil.

So the typical evolution of a people in the ancient Near East was from a wandering existence in the deserts or in the mountains, to a semi-settled existence on the outskirts of the territories of agriculturists, to invasion or infiltration of those territories, and finally to a settled lifestyle in a city. And when a new group appeared on their horizons they met it with suspicion and hostility, just as they had been met.

So in Numbers 20-2 we find the terror of the Edomites and Moabites, themselves ex-wanderers, when Moses asks for a right-of way for his people to pass through their cultivated lands, promising not to go through the fields or through the vineyards, and not to drink the water from their wells, not to turn to the right or to the left until he and his people have passed their borders.

Moses’s people, of course, were the Israelites, who wandered in the wilderness for forty years:

”And Moab was sore afraid of the people, because they were many : and Moab was distressed because of the children of Israel

“And Moab said unto the elders of Midian, Now shall this company lick up all that are round about us, as the ox licketh up the grass of the field.”

Abraham came from this type of environment, and the history of the ancient Near East comes down to us through the history that his people lived and recorded. His God reflects the situation in the ancient Near East:

“Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”

This vision of life is so different from the way, for example, aboriginal peoples in America viewed their place in the world. And it creates a view of a God who will speak to humans in the terrible syllables of natural disasters. He is in may ways a war god whose weapons are those of natural disasters. His words are volcanic eruptions and thunderstorms and earthquakes. The effect of this is that it emphasizes the destructive aspects of nature and the adversary attitude towards the natural world, and especially those people who live in it, that was first announced in the story of Eden.

Eden became the place of God’s first punishment when Adam and Eve ate fruit from the forbidden tree:

“I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

"And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;

"Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field

"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread"


The next great punishment in Genesis happen in the time of Noah:

"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

"And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

"And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

"And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.

"And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

"I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.

"And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man

"All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.

"And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth"

These are the words, then, of the God that emerged from that environment: "sorrow," "cursed," "sweat," "wickedness," "evil," "destroy," "corrupt," "end of all flesh," "violence," "flood." I don't think we should be surprised.