Objection: Scripture Says God Is Not a Man
Numbers 23:19 is a crowd favorite amongst some Unitarian objectors,
especially Muslims, because it says that God is not a man. There are several things
worth noting here. First, nobody thinks that God was a man in any sense at the
time that this passage (and others like it) was written. If one thinks that God
becomes a man after this statement, that will not render this statement
inaccurate. However, even during Jesus’s life it would still be accurate to affirm
statements such as what we see in Numbers 23:[19] . . . in passages such as
this, the speaker is contrasting YHWH with a mere man, with the idea being that
YHWH is not like us in being fickle or untrustworthy. Even if YHWH becomes
human, he would not be a man in the sense being used in this passage. (James
Agnew, The Lord Appeared: Jesus as YHWH in the Old Testament [2025], 193)
Further Reading:
Lynn
Wilder vs. Latter-day Saint (and Biblical) Theology on Divine Embodiment
