Early Rabbinic texts
show clearly that such Biblical passages as those mentioned by Philo in which God
is spoken of as Ish (איש), required explanation and defence. In an earlier part
of this work the observation was made that איש was used for the designation of
God in early Rabbinic literature divine name was primarily based on Ex. xv. 3:
'The Lord is a man of War, the Lord is his name'. Such a Scriptural reference
could not be passed over in silence. Indeed in an early text the question was
raised: 'How can such a thing be said of God?' To many readers, who were not
used to poetic style, it appeared strange that God could be called a Man of
War. That such a teaching is quite out of accord with old Hebrew
conceptions of the divine is further demonstrated with the help of several
prophetic utterances to be found in the writings of Jeremiah, Isaiah, and
Ezekiel; some texts adding 2 Chron. vi. 16. Jer. xxiii. 24 says: 'Indeed, I
fill heaven and earth'; Is. vi. 3 says: 'And one calls to the other saying,
Holy, Holy, Holy, full is the earth of His glory'; and finally Ez. xliii. 2
says: 'And behold the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the East
and His voice was like the noise of many waters, and the earth was lit up with
His glory'. How can God therefore be called 'a Man of War'? The quotation
appended from Chronicles adds to the amazement of the questioners, for it says:
'Now, therefore, Lord, God of Israel, &c., behold the heavens and the
heaven of heavens contain thee.' The answer is such that it may have been given
by Philo himself. God is no man, yet owing to God's love and holiness, God
sanctifies his name among His children. The scribe confirmed this doctrine by a
word of the prophet, Hos. xi. 9: 'For I am God and not man yet in your midst
holy', which means to say that God reveals Himself as man for the sanctification
of Israel. This verse is put together in another place with that in Num. xxiii.
19, mentioned above in the quotation from Philo, to dispel the notion that God
could be called or considered a man. A remarkable dialogue, which is
supposed to take place in the last days of eschatological bliss, between the community
of Israel and God, discusses several problems bearing on and betraying more the
polemical tendencies of the age in which it was composed than those of
Messianic times.
Among the questions
raised in that dialogue there is one which has a close bearing on the subject
here discussed. The com- munity of Israel asks the following questions: 'It is
written in the book of the prophet Jeremiah (iii. I), " Behold, if a man
sent away his wife and she went and married someone else, can the former
husband take her back again?"' In this question God is paralleled to the איש
of the Hebrew text, and the divorced woman stands for the dispersed Jewish
nation. God replies : 'The law of the Pentateuch, forbidding the remarriage of
a divorced wife by her previous husband is in force only when she marries
someone else, meaning an איש (cf. Deut. xxiv. I-4), but not God, who is not an איש.'
In the text of the Sifre 14 there is a further Scriptural reference to Isaiah
l. I, which bears out that Israel was never divorced and never driven away by
God. 'Where is the bill of your mother's divorce which could prove that I sent
her away, or to which of my creditors have I sold you?'-asks the prophet in the
name of God. These words are repeated in several pamphlets and fill volumes
from the days of Isaiah up to the present day. Israel is forsaken by God,
rejected, and despised. Such views are proclaimed by pious and impious readers
of the Holy Scriptures, and defenders of religious thought against Judaism.
Early Christian and late pagan readers of the Bible were delighted to discover
in these anthropomorphisms some support for their ideologies. The rejection
of the literal usage of this name for God, as these two instances show, is
traced to the school of R. Ishmael. This school, as will be seen later, was
opposed to exegetical methods followed by R. Akiba and his school who took such
anthropmorphisms literally as the identification of the Hebrew איש with God.
(Arthur Marmorstein, The Old Rabbinic Doctrine of God, 2 vols. [Oxford:
Oxford University Press; London: Humphrey Milford, 1937], 2:7-9, emphasis in
bold added)
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