Metaphors and Biblical Theology

Kirsten Nielsen, Aarhus

Paper delivered to The Society for Old Testament Study [19th July 2005]

I am most grateful to Dr. Nielsen, for allowing me to make available here her excellent and well-illustrated lecture. PR

Introduction

It is both an honour and a pleasure to have the chance to present some of the reflections I have made in recent years on the relationship between the imagery of the Bible and biblical theology. Allow me to begin with a brief review of the path I have taken toward my interest in metaphors and biblical theology, and which partly reflects what I believe to be a general trend in the study of the Old Testament. It is therefore an attempt not to convince you of how original my research is, but rather to demonstrate the extent to which I am a product of the time through which you and I have lived.

The starting-point for my studies was form criticism. During the 1970s I worked for a time on the prophetic lawsuit (the so-called Rîb-Pattern).[1] In those days the debate was about how far it was the secular law-court, or cultic law or international law that was the Sitz im Leben for the Rîb-Pattern. I came to the conclusion that it is not possible to limit this pattern to a particular Sitz im Leben, so in a sense my work came up with a negative result. For me this meant a change of focus. Instead of imagining a series of concrete Sitze im Leben, that is, historical situations where such speeches were normally given, I began to look into what sort of images a specific Gattung produced in the consciousness of the audience when the prophet portrayed a lawsuit in which Yahweh acts as both prosecutor and judge. From here it was not far to my later studies in Old Testament imagery.

My next step was to write a book about the tree as a metaphor in Isaiah 1-39, There is Hope for a Tree.[2] In this I showed how a central image, the tree that is felled but which shoots again, is able to hold together the message of judgement and salvation which much previous scholarship had kept apart. According to the text, judgement is unavoidable. Yahweh must react when his people and their leaders fail him. Since he is both prosecutor and judge, he cannot just turn a blind eye. But the fact that he is judge does not automatically mean that the situation is hopeless. In Isaiah the message is that the concept of the remnant points forward. After the punishment there is a future: as there is with the tree. After it has been felled, it still has the power to shoot again. (cf. Isaiah 6:13; 10:33-11:1; 37:31).

In furtherance of my work on the tree and its ability to contain both judgment and salvation I returned to one of my earlier interests, the biblical representations of Satan. As a student I had written my thesis on representations of the devil in late Judaism and Parseeism, but not until the end of the 1980s did I have the opportunity to return to the subject. And where as a student I had been influenced by my teacher’s religious-historical approach to the material, I was now more interested in the texts as literature.

In my book, Satan - The Prodigal Son? A Family Problem in the Bible,[3] I offer a literary reading of The Book of Job and demonstrate how the frame narrative can be read with the story of Esau and Jacob as an intertext. Both stories deal with how brothers act when they are rivals for their father’s blessing. I therefore see the frame narrative as a drama in which God is shown in the image of a father with two sons: his favourite is Job, the other son is Satan. The envious elder brother, Satan, seeks to discredit his younger brother in order to gain his father’s love. This domestic triangle has proved a fruitful way of thinking for the biblical writers. For as with the image of a father and two sons, the relationship between good and evil may also be thought of as differing from the purely monistic or purely dualistic. There is also the possibility that from the same source two very different sons come to light. We can note this in The Book of Job, and also in the account of the temptation in the desert in Matthew 4:1-11, where two “sons”, the devil and Jesus, battle to become their father’s chosen son. So it is not a coincidence that the temptation is placed immediately after Jesus’ baptism, where he is designated as God’s beloved son. And similarly, there is good reason for the word ‘son’ to be repeated in the temptation, where not once but twice does Satan begin with the words, “If you are God’s son…”. Images we think and live with, that could be called the subject of my studies.

Reading texts within their intertextuality was a natural development of my fundamental interest in the use of imagery. For it is often the case that a central image serves as a marker for the intertexts that are to be included in the reading if we are to acquire the full meaning of a text. One of my attempts in this direction was a paper I gave at the IOSOT conference in Oslo in 1998 on intertextuality.[4] I dealt with 1 Kings 21, the story of Naboth’s vineyard, and showed how the vineyard, ~rk, serves as a marker for two other vineyard texts: the parable of the vineyard in Isaiah 5:1-7, and the portrayals of a woman as a vineyard in the Song of Songs 1:6 and 8:11-12. The conclusion was that the vineyard in the Naboth story can be understood as a metaphor for Israel. And in that case the story becomes much more part of the context that deals on the one hand with the prophets of Baal, King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, and on the other hand the prophet Elijah. The battle is for Israel; but in 1 Kings 21, the Deuteronomist’s version of the vineyard parable, there is not much hope for the vineyard. It is destroyed, and its owner Naboth perishes.

Non-personal metaphors for God

Intertextuality and biblical imagery are basic ingredients in my later work, and in both cases they have increased my interest in biblical theology, although I hasten to add as a theology on the terms laid down by the imagery. In recent years I have also engaged with the clear tendency in both the Bible itself and in Christian theology to limit the use of metaphors for God to include by and large only personal metaphors. Whereas the Old Testament uses many and various metaphors about Yahweh, the use of imagery in the New Testament is narrowed down; and this is not to mention what happens in common works on the Old Testament or in biblical theology.[5] It would seem that only the personal metaphors are regarded as significant, whereas the non-personal are seen merely as linguistic decoration, whose meaning is subordinated to the dominant personal image. How this comes about I wish to pursue in the following. I shall concentrate on two types of metaphor about which I have recently written: the image of Yahweh as a lion and as a rock, in other words an image from the animal world and an image from the mineral world.[6]

With Yahweh it is like a lion

It is characteristic of imagery, be it metaphor, simile or allegory, that an image claims that something is alike and yet it is different. To use I.A. Richard’s terminology of tenor for the idea content and and vehicle for its linguistic expression,[7] the vehicle and the tenor of an image have only a certain amount in common. If they were completely identical, we would be looking at a conjunctive literal use and not a disjunctive metaphorical use.[8] When speaking of God however, we are in the peculiar situation that everything that is said about him in the Bible is in images. So what we know about the tenor we know through the many and various vehicles. Yet there is no doubt that the person metaphor serves as the basic metaphor for God. The problem is that the person metaphor is precisely a metaphor, and it must therefore never be confused with a literal interpretation. Indeed, the many non-personal metaphors employed about Yahweh should actually serve to protect the person metaphor from being taken literally.

Moreover, if depictions of Yahweh as a person are to be understood metaphorically and not literally, we cannot just subordinate the non-personal images under the personal images and, for example, interpret the image of Yahweh as a lion in Hosea 5:14 as a poetic expression for Yahweh as a prodigiously strong person. For it is often the case that we regard the non-personal metaphors about Yahweh as adjectives of some kind, merely defining our view of Yahweh as a person. And in so doing we contribute to the idea that Yahweh is only like a person, perhaps even that Yahweh is a person.

Let us take an example. When Yahweh is portrayed as an eagle carrying its young on its wings, as in Deuteronomy 32:11, the majority of us regard this as a poetic expression of Yahweh as a caring parent who looks after his children. The fact that the image comes from the animal world is rarely allowed to influence our perception of God. The personal image becomes not just the central image for God, but the only one. And the next step down this path is that we completely forget that it is no more than an image, and we take it literally.

Animal images are used quite frequently in the Old Testament, but are usually applied to people, and not least to one’s enemies: for example, the strong ox, the Bashan buffalo and the rapacious, roaring lions of Psalm 22:13-14. Only occasionally is Yahweh spoken of in animal terms. In his Old Testament theology Walter Brueggemann has drawn attention to the danger that exists of reducing the number of images for Yahweh to a mere handful,[9] and yet he himself, like so many others,[10] limits his own presentation to metaphors and similes from the personal sphere.[11] And in so doing, he misses some of the significance of the texts. So instead let us see how the image of the lion, for instance, can be used to say something characteristic of Yahweh.

I take my example from Hosea 5, where in verse 14 Yahweh presents himself with the words, “For I will be like a lion to Ephraim”.  The statement is placed in a larger context in which the prophet is preaching that Yahweh’s anger will strike the people: “I will pour out my wrath on them like a flood of water,” he says in verse 10 and in verse 11 he names one of the reasons for his anger, namely that Ephraim “is intent on following lies”. In his doctorate Göran Eidevall has shown that the expression “follow”, rxa $lh, can be used either about pursuing idols, as in Deuteronomy 13:3 and Jeremiah 2:5, or about pursuing Yahweh, as in Deuteronomy 13:5 and Jeremiah 2:2. He interprets this “following” on the basis of the image of the flock that follows the shepherd.[12] In Hosea 5 therefore, the image is of Ephraim leaving Yahweh as his shepherd and instead choosing the lie, that is, the idols. And of course this has consequences. I shall not go into detail here, but merely point out that in the verses that follow, an image of sickness dominates. Yahweh himself is like a destructive disease, and Ephraim has made the mistake of choosing the wrong healer when he turned to Assyria. Who the true healer is we are not told directly, but we infer of course that it must be Yahweh.

In verse 14 Yahweh appears as a lion tearing its prey to pieces and carrying it off so that no one can rescue it. And verse 15 is also clearly linked to the image of the lion, which now returns to its place. But interpretation breaks through the image when the lion waits for the people to do penance and seek “my face”, that is, turn their backs on the idols and on their political alliances and instead seek Yahweh. Immediately afterwards, in Hosea 6:1, comes the call to return to Yahweh:

Let us return to the Lord;

he has torn us to pieces, but he will restore us to health,

he has struck, but he will heal us.

The verb “tear to pieces”, @rj, is a clear reference to the lion, but the question now is how the subsequent medical image of “restore us to health” and “heal us” link up with the shepherd/lion theme? There is, I believe, an obvious connection in the choice of images, since it is a function of the shepherd to heal sick animals. This is the case in Ezekiel 34:16,[13] where Yahweh is portrayed precisely as a good shepherd who binds up the injured. We are within the same area of imagery, where we meet shepherds, sheep and lions. But whereas the normal situation is that the sheep stay with their own shepherd, who guards them, heals them and binds up their wounds if they are savaged by wild animals, the text in Hosea speaks of Yahweh as a shepherd who suddenly acts like a savage lion (see also Isaiah 38:13; Lamentations 3:12 and Job 10:16) and himself inflicts the wounds that he will later bind up.

What I am trying to demonstrate is not merely the significance of a few selected verses but that there is a purpose in choosing not just the single metaphor but indeed the whole sphere in which the metaphor belongs. The lion image does not appear in isolation, it is part of an interplay with the statement concerning Yahweh, who is clearly depicted as a person. Thus it is not the individual statement that should be analysed but the narratives in which the animal and person metaphors appear.

The example from Hosea 5 can be expanded with examples from Jeremiah, where Yahweh again appears, among other images, as a lion. Pierre van Hecke has produced an illuminating analysis of the shepherd image in Jeremiah 50-51 in his article, “Metaphorical Shifts in the Oracle Against Babylon (Jeremiah 50-51)”.[14] Van Hecke shows how the shepherd metaphor is used partly in the argumentation and partly in order to structure these two chapters. He also shows how Yahweh actually changes roles as the two chapters progress. For in addition to being portrayed as his people’s true shepherd who brings erring people back to the pastures of Carmel, Bashan and the hills of  Ephraim and Gilead in Jeremiah 50:19, we also come across the statement that the Lord is “their true pasture” in verse 7. The unusual image of Yahweh as pasture shows that also here he is thought of within the framework of the shepherd image. The enemies eat the people; but Yahweh is their true food.

Furthermore, van Hecke argues that the parallel expression ~hytwba hwqm in Jeremiah 50:7 should not be translated as “their fathers’ hope” but as “their fathers’ spring”. He supports this interpretation with among others a reference to Jeremiah 17:13, where at first Yahweh is depicted as larfy hwqm and at the end is called “the spring of living water.” This suggests that Jeremiah 50:7 pictures Yahweh not only as the pasture where the sheep eat but also as the spring where their forefathers drank.

When we proceed to Jeremiah 50:44, we find Yahweh appearing as a lion picking out the best prey (cf. also Jeremiah 49:19-20). The image is then continued in verse 45, where we read, “Even the smallest of the flock will be dragged off, the pastures[15] will shake at the deed”. Again it is Yahweh the lion, this time dragging off even the smallest lambs of the flock.[16]

Yet again in Jeremiah 51:38-40 we meet the lion image. Only this time it is Babylon which is like a pride of young lions roaring and growling. But these lions do not get the chance to decide what to eat, for Yahweh is holding a feast for them at which he will make them so drunk, (cf. the cup of wrath) that they will fall into an eternal sleep. Then they will be like lambs, rams and goats, whom Yahweh will lead to the slaughter. So Yahweh can even be compared to a slaughterer of animals![17]

Metaphors and similes are clearly part of the narrative genre. A theology based on this fact must therefore also have a narrative element, and must be based on a variety of tales in which Yahweh appears partly as a person, and partly acting like an animal. A theology that includes animal and person imagery is of course unable to cover everything that is said about God. But if we take the animal imagery seriously, it should be possible to discuss its purpose, or at least the theological consequence of using non-personal images. Simultaneously it should become clear what is not being said if we merely accept the personal images at face value and reduce the biblical references to God to the image of the good and caring shepherd.

For if we omit the animal imagery, we dissolve the tension that exists between the person aspect and the animal aspect. It is precisely this tension which shows partly that this is imagery and partly that the divinity transcends all the categories we operate with in the human world. In Egyptian religion this combination of animal and human is precisely a sign of divinity,[18] as can be seen from the many representations of gods with animal heads and human bodies. In Hosea 5 and in the Jeremiah texts just mentioned the combination of person metaphors and animal metaphors emphasises that we cannot define Yahweh by limiting him to the known, to the measurable, to the foreseeable. So when the shepherd and the lion are combined as metaphors for Yahweh, it is not only his care for his flock but also his untameable wildness that is being expressed. The human world’s separation into categories is abolished in the divine world.

As we have seen, metaphors and similes are part of storytelling; they may be stories that already exist or they may be ready to be told by the reader. Let me take an example. In the book of Amos, the first oracle in 1:2 reads:

The Lord roars from Zion

from Jerusalem he lifts his voice,

so shepherds’ pastures mourn,

and the top of Carmel withers.

The verb “roars” (root gav) is normally used about animals. The same verb is used in Amos 3:4, where we find the following question: “Does a lion roar in the woods, if it has no prey? Does a young lion growl in his den when he has caught nothing?” When Yahweh roars in Amos 1:2, the verb signals that Yahweh is like a lion that has captured its prey and is about to tear it to pieces and devour it. The image of Yahweh as a lion calls to mind other texts that add to the image of Yahweh as a wild animal creating horror when he roars. When we read the first lines of the book of Amos, we are therefore being warned that what is coming is not good news for Israel. The image that the shepherds’ pastures will “mourn” (as the Revised Standard Version puts it) or “dry up” (according to the New International Version), when Yahweh roars, helps the audience to understand what lies behind this image of “the roaring lion”. Yahweh, who as a shepherd should lead his people to green pastures and refreshing springs (as in Psalm 23), is doing the exact opposite here. He is bringing drought instead of water, and so there is no shepherd to rescue them. 

Images are not only incisive ways of formulating oneself in a specific situation. They can be re-employed and newly interpreted, for they have their own history. An example of such re-employment of the lion image is to be found in the New Testament, more precisely in chapter 5 of the Revelation of St. John, where we read that John sees a scroll with writing on both sides and sealed with seven seals. No one is able to open it, and John begins to cry. Then one of the elders comes up to him and says, “Do not cry! For the lion of Judah’s tribe, the root of David, has triumphed, so he is able to open the book and its seven seals.” And in verse 5-6 John sees (I quote) “a lamb standing between the throne and the four living creatures and the elders. It looked as if it had been slaughtered, and it had seven horns and seven eyes – they are the seven spirits of God sent out to all the earth.”

After this they praise the lamb which is worthy to open the seals, because it was slaughtered and with its blood purchased mankind for God. In this text the lion of Judah’s tribe is Christ. But Christ is called not only “the lion”, he is also described as a lamb that has been slaughtered and has given his blood for mankind. We know this lion of Judah’s tribe from Genesis 49:9, where we read:

Judah is a lion’s cub,

from the prey have you returned, my son;

like a lion he has lain down to rest,

like a lioness, who dare wake him?

But this strong lion, linked to the royal lineage, is also called a lamb in Revelations. If we supplement this with 1 Corinthians 5:7, we can add that Christ is like a paschal lamb which is sacrificed for mankind’s sake, just as Jesus calls himself “the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep” in John 10:11. Later, in Revelations 7:14-17, we hear that they are wearing white robes and that “they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb... For the Lamb at the centre of the throne will guard them and lead them to springs of living water.”[19]

The combination of the triumphing lion and the slaughtered lamb tells the following story: The lion of Judah’s tribe is king of the animals. No one can threaten the lion, and no one dares to waken it. Christ is like a triumphing lion, but he has chosen a new path to victory. Instead of insisting on his own power, he has accepted the role of a sacrificial lamb who gives his life for mankind. Through his blood the host in the white robes are cleansed of all sin and will now become his sheep, whom he will guard and lead to the refreshing spring. He is their shepherd and their king. And he sits on his throne surrounded by angels singing his praises.

With the help of the animal images the author of Revelations is able to tell the new story of God’s son who died for mankind. This story presents a new version of what was told in the Old Testament about lions, sheep and shepherds. It is worth noting that these animal images are employed in an interplay with the ideas of Christ as shepherd and king. If we omit one of these two types of image, we get a quite different story. We must therefore consider whether the same is true of a number of other stories and lines of thought: namely that the animals are essential for the story to be told with sufficient nuance. For instance, how would the story of the Fall of Man look without the snake? And how would the Book of Revelations look, if we removed not only the lion and lamb but also the dragon and the animals from land and sea that we find in Revelations12-13? Or is there a particular point in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity speaking not only of the father and the son, but also of the spirit? And why in Matthew 3:16 is the spirit linked to a dove?

The Lord is my rock

Let us leave the lion image and turn instead to the image of the rock. This is a well-known image for Yahweh. We know it from the Psalms, where it is used in Psalm 18 and Psalm 62 for instance. But I shall begin elsewhere, namely with the four elements. I have long been aware that fire, water and air can be used as images of Yahweh in the Old Testament. In Deuteronomy 4:24 Yahweh is called “a devouring fire”, and in Jeremiah 2:13 he is described as “a spring of living water”. The air too, in the form of wind, can be used to indicate Yahweh’s intervention, as we see in Genesis 1:2, where the storm whips over the waters, and again in Ezekiel 37 where the winds bring life to the dead bones. But it is different with the fourth element: earth. It is not so much the case that it cannot be used metaphorically; it is rather that it is characteristic that it is not applied to Yahweh. When it is used, it is applied to another being, as the following examples demonstrate.

In The Book of Job we hear about the righteous, god-fearing man who through no fault of his own loses everything he owns. It is Satan who with God’s permission sets out to test Job, but when Job is told that God’s fire has fallen down from heaven and devoured his cattle and his servants, and that the wind has blown away the house where his children were celebrating and killed them all, it does not work out the way Satan had hoped. For in chapter 1:21 Job does not curse God, but throws himself to the ground and reverentially exclaims:

Naked I came out of my mother’s womb,

naked I shall return to it!

The Lord gave, the Lord took,

the Lord’s name be praised.

Job hereby acknowledges Yahweh’s right both to give life and to take it back. And the way he expresses it is worth noting. For he knows he will return to the earth’s womb. The word hmv indicates a place, one which is parallel to his mother’s womb, though of course not the same. It can only be the earth to which he is referring, and we can conclude that behind this return must lie the idea that man is of the earth. Here therefore, Mother Earth is used as an image for the origin of man.

Mankind’s link to the earth is also clear when in chapter 10:8-9 Job appeals to Yahweh to stop tormenting him: 

Your hands formed and created me,

and now you change your mind and destroy me!

Remember that you moulded me like clay,

and now you make me earth again.

Here again we have the idea that man will return to the earth. But there is no reference this time to man being born from Mother Earth’s womb. Here it is God who has moulded man from earth. Like a potter God has created Job from clay, but now he is crushing him so that he ends as earth. The word I gloss as “earth” is rp[, which means loose soil, that is, dust.[20] The same thought appears in chapter 34:14-15, where we read that man will become earth again if God withdrew his life-giving spirit.

The element of earth in Genesis 2:7, where the word used is hamda, and defined by rp[, can be used in the Old Testament to describe the material that God used to form man, ~da. However, we also find the idea that earth is not the element but the place for the creation. Thus in Psalm 139:13-15 man has been formed not only in his mother’s womb but also in the depths of earth, here defined by the word #ra. 

It was you who formed my kidneys,

you wove me together in my mother’s womb.

I thank you for being wonderfully created,

wonderful are your works,

I know that full well!

My bones were not hidden from you,

when I was formed in the secret place,

was woven together in the depths of the earth.

The psalmist begins with the formation in the mother’s womb, but he ends with the concept of being woven together in the depths of the earth. Again earth is like a womb; but it is God who forms man. Also in Ecclesiasticus in chapter 40:1 we meet this parallel of the mother’s womb and the earth as mother:

Anxiety and toil are created for all people,

a heavy yoke lies on Adam’s children

from the day they leave their mother’s womb

to the day they return to the mother of all.

Characteristic of these quotations is the ease with which the formation in the mother’s womb and the earth as the place of birth are referred to, even indeed the earth itself as the womb that gives birth.

Lastly, this image of Mother Earth can be used to express the hope that the dead will return from the earth. In Isaiah 26:9, within the Isaiah apocalypse, we read:

Your dead will become alive, their corpses will rise up.

You who lie in the earth shall awake and rejoice.

For your dew is the dew of light,

and the earth brings corpses to life.

Behind the words about the earth, #ra, which brings alive, lies the idea of the earth as the giver of birth.[21] The verb that is used is hiphil of lpn and means “to let fall”, “to make fall”. The image is one of birth, with the mother in the squatting position, that is, letting the child fall (see also 1 Sam 4:19). The earth brings the dead back to life like a mother giving birth to her child.

There are only a few places where birth and earth are so clearly linked as in these texts. Far more common are expressions speaking of a return to the earth, but which thereby imply that man comes from the earth, such as in Psalm104:29, “You take away their breath, they die, and return to their dust”, (see also Ecclesiastes 12:7).

Man is linked to the element of earth in various ways. But whether his creation is depicted as a moulding of clay or a birth from the earth’s womb, the main idea is that he ends where he began. On that there is agreement. The differences come with the division of roles. In the texts we have looked at so far, it is Yahweh who creates from earth (be it dust or clay) and in the earth; but it is Mother Earth who brings man into the world. For Yahweh, the God of Israel, is precisely not a Mother Earth figure; he is not a ctonic God, but a God who is linked to the divine. As Othmar Keel and Sylvia Schroer have pointed out in their book Schöpfung. Biblische Theologien im Kontext altorientalischer Religionen,[22] Yahweh’s field is rather the mountains, the hills and heaven. But given that, there is still more to be said about Yahweh in relation to my theme. For in the Old Testament a further image is used that is linked to the mountains, namely, the rock. 

Through the rock metaphor Yahweh is pictured primarily as a pillar of trust and support. In Isaiah 26:4 we meet the call:

Trust in the Lord always,

for the Lord is an eternal rock.

Or as we find in Psalm 62:2-3:

Only in God does my soul find rest,

from him comes my salvation.

He alone is my rock and my salvation,

my fortress, so I am not shaken.

What the rock connotes is the opposite of “dust”. Whereas dust signifies mortality, the rock stands for eternity, and as such it is well-suited as a metaphor for God himself.

Two separate words are used in Hebrew for Yahweh as a rock, rwc and [ls; for the sake of brevity let us deal only with the first of these here, rwc . It appears 75 times in the Old Testament, including 33 times as a metaphor for God and a single time for foreign gods – in Deuteronomy 32:31.[23] One of the texts in which the rock metaphor is particularly widespread is Deuteronomy 32, the Song of Moses.[24]  It begins with a call for heaven and earth to listen and thereby bear witness to Moses’ words. In verse 4 comes a portrayal of Yahweh:

He is the rock whose work is perfect,

all his ways are just,

a faithful God without deceit,

righteous and upright.

Here the rock metaphor depicts Yahweh as one who acts justly and faithfully. The combination of the impersonal metaphor, “rock”, and the personal metaphor of God as active agent underlines the fact that Yahweh cannot be encompassed solely by images from the personal world, whether it be God as a potter or as he who creates through his word. Nor is it enough to settle for images from the natural world. The two different types of image continually challenge each other, so that no one should get the idea that Israel’s God is a rock, or that Israel’s God is a great king. For just as God is like a rock, but is not a rock, so is God like a person but is not a person.

It may seem for us a matter of course that God cannot be identified with a rock. But the German scholar Georg Bertram[25] has shown that when the Septuagint translates the passages where the Hebraic text portrays Yahweh as a rock, the translators have not chosen to retain the rock metaphor but have rendered the Hebrew word for rock with words like “helper”, “protector”, “creator”, “lord” or simply with the word “God”. They were apparently worried that their readers would believe that the Jews worshipped a rock as their God, for example the temple rock in Jerusalem, Zion. In the Hebrew version of the Old Testament we do not sense this unease about using the rock image for Yahweh. Israel’s God is depicted not only in the image of a person, images from nature are also necessary if one is to speak adequately of Yahweh.

This combination of personal and non-personal language is repeated in Deuteronomy 32:15, where it is said of the people - here called Jeshurun -:

He rejected the God who had created him,

and showed contempt for the rock of his salvation.

Side by side here are two important aspects of Israel’s God: Yahweh who creates and Yahweh who saves. But characteristically the active interventionist element is linked to the rock metaphor, which normally connotes the immovable and lasting. Again we see the tension between the two images: for activity and immutability are both features of Yahweh. If Yahweh were only a rock, then God would be a static entity, on whom one could of course rely, but not expect any activity from.

In Deuteronomy 32:30 Yahweh is spoken of as a rock that has sold his own people – a further clash between the rock metaphor and God as an active agent. But the combination evokes new associations in the rock image. For just as the rock serves to deepen and challenge the personal image, so does the personal language challenge the rock, thereby expanding its meaning potential. A rock should be immovable; but here it is associated with power and vigour. The two types of metaphor are maintained, without infringing on God’s freedom to act.

The rock metaphor continues in verse 31, where the foreign gods are called rocks that are unlike our rock and in verse 37 Yahweh asks scornfully, “Where is their god, the rock they trusted in, which ate the fat of their sacrifices and drank the wine of their drink offerings?” Here the rock is associated with the place to which sacrifices are brought to be devoured by fire. But the rock is also a metaphor for the idols themselves, who are apparently lazy creatures who can barely budge, preferring to gorge on the sacrifices.

There is one last verse where the rock is used as a metaphor in Moses’ song; again in verse 18 the personal and impersonal metaphors are employed, when Moses reproaches the people for the defection from Yahweh with the words:

The rock that gave you birth you have deserted,

you forgot the God who brought you into the world.

The verse can also be translated so that the first verb, the root dly, is rendered with “breed” instead of “give birth to”, thus depicting Yahweh both as a father who breeds and a mother who brings a child into the world. Whichever way it is translated, the combination of the rock metaphor with the verbs in question is striking. That something so “masculine” as a rock should breed and have labour pains is outside our normal expectation. Clearly it is not to be taken literally; rather, as we have seen, the two images set against one another strengthen the image of God as incomprehensible yet all-embracing. The charge against the Israelites is forcefully increased when they fail not only their father and mother but also the rock whose immutability they ought to have inherited. Children of a rock should not change their allegiance but on the contrary hold firm to their source of origin, just as children ought not to reject their parents.

Deuteronomy 32:18 supplements the previous assertion that Yahweh is not a chthonic God but rather he has the mountains and hills as his field of operations. For it seems as if the Mother Earth ideas that we meet sporadically in the Old Testament have their counterpart in the metaphor of the rock that can give birth. Yahweh is not Mother Earth, nor of course is he a rock; but the rock can be used as a metaphor to capture his strength and fidelity, his sublimity and his will to secure a refuge for his people. The rock can also be linked to the idea of a divine birth, where Israel is born by the rock in order to be like the rock.

My purpose in pointing out these combinations of metaphors has been to show the theological consequences they have for a text like the Song of Moses where we meet metaphors of both person and nature. Admittedly personal metaphors are clearly dominant in the Old Testament; but this does not mean that the non-personal metaphors can therefore be neglected and translated into another suitable epithet as quickly as possible. “You are my rock” cannot be fully rendered with the words, “You are faithful”. God transcends not just our ideas of a rock, but also our ideas of a person. As theologians we must therefore consider whether by cultivating the personal image as the true picture of God we are actually overlooking the evidence that this is not in fact the case in the Old Testament. For here the many metaphors are retained, and thus the image of Yahweh as a person is not allowed to dominate to such a degree that the reader ends up identifying God with man. Man is not God, and God is not man in the Old Testament. They are as dust is to a rock. In the Song of Moses we meet the idea of Israel as born of rock; but the context shows that precisely those who should have the prerequisites for living with trust in their God fail him. They were not themselves like a rock.

If we focus on the idea of man being created from the element of earth, the main emphasis comes to lie on his weakness and limitations. Yet even he who finds himself close to the dust, sitting in the ashpile, as a potsherd among potsherds, can find in The Book of Job words with which to attack his Maker, when his Maker is close to breaking the vessel that he himself has created. The means to influence God is the plea that man is God’s own creation. The potter is not indifferent to his vessel. Even the potsherd can call on the Almighty, as happens in The Book of Job, for the Creator’s love for his own work is also his sensitive point.

Brief look at the New Testament

The Old Testament has provided the language for talking about man and God; but that does not mean that it has set up invincible borders beyond which nothing more can be said. If I were to proceed with my theme, it would be natural to include the New Testament. Here we find the rock metaphor used about Christ himself in 1 Corinthians 10:4, where Paul interprets the rock that accompanied the people during their wandering in the wilderness and gave them water as being Christ himself. And the image is also used of course in Matthew 16:18 following Peter’s confession of faith: “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of death shall not overcome it.” Πέτρος is the rock, πέτρa.[26]

Thus there is more to be said than what we find in the Old Testament alone. For where the Old Testament must maintain that it is God who is the rock and not man, the New Testament can speak of a frail man becoming a rock, and of the God who in the Old Testament can be depicted as a rock, himself becoming a man in the New Testament.

And so we are back with the use of both personal and non-personal metaphors that we have seen before. They are woven into one another, and thereby characterise the biblical God as a being who may resemble man – and who in Philippians 2:6-7 even gave up his divine form to take on human form – but is also different from man.

Principal reflections on a biblical theology in terms of imagery

The subject of this paper is “Metaphors and Biblical Theology” and in closing I should like to gather my observations into more principled reflections on what I understand by a biblical theology.[27]

Let me begin with a definition: Biblical theology is a construction that is based on the premise that together the Old and the New Testament constitute a unity for the use of the Christian church.

This formulation could very well stand as the foundation statement on which we build biblical theology. But we must also ask ourselves: Is the Bible truly a unity? Or rather, what are the consequences of reading the two parts of the Bible as a unity? Does it mean, for instance, that we award them equal status? The following two possibilities present themselves:

1) that the relationship between the Old and the New Testament is historically defined, in the sense that the Old Testament provides the religious-historical background that is essential for an understanding of the New Testament. Quite simply, the Old Testament is necessary to understand the New.

2) that the relationship between the Old and the New Testament is theologically defined, meaning that the New Testament provides the ultimate exegesis of the Old Testament. In simple terms: the New Testament is necessary to understand the Old.

Both the first possibility, pointing to the historical origin of the two testaments and the necessity of knowing the Old to understand the New, and the second possibility, which sees the New Testament as the ultimate interpretation of the Old, shed light on important elements in the relationship between the two testaments. And it would therefore be unreasonable to play them off against each other. Whereas the first option underlines the origin of the text as a process that culminates in the New Testament, the second demonstrates that the end result involves a return to the first part of the work and this in turn requires a reinterpretation of the Old Testament. And it is precisely this circular movement which fascinates when one is involved in the exegesis of the work we call the Bible. For it then becomes possible to maintain both the cohesion and the difference between the two testaments.

A purely historical approach would not allow for a movement back from the later text to the earlier. Historically the Old Testament is the religious-historical background for the New Testament, and the movement then is only one-way, and that is forward. Whereas the approach of systematic theology is synchronic, and the texts are compared, whatever the time differences between them.

The model that I prefer to use when I am working with biblical theology must therefore allow for the complete circular movement. And it is my claim that such a model must take as its starting-point the Bible as a work of literature, where all the parts combine in an interplay; where not only the beginning sheds light on the end, but where the end also illuminates the beginning. To read the Bible as a literary work also means that we can distinguish between major themes and minor themes, and that by the concept of literary unity we do not mean a unity of viewpoints. When we speak of the Bible as a literary work, there is room for many voices to speak and there is reason to expect that the beginning and end of the work form a framework for an understanding of the whole.

A major contributory factor to the texts as literature is the reader’s role in the ongoing interpretation of the text. Biblical theology is a process, a conversation, not a finished, demarcated result. Not only must each generation write its biblical theology; each one of us must contribute to the dialogue.

The demand from biblical theology for an openness to new interpretation is inseparable from the character of the texts as literature. Biblical theology is not simply at one’s disposal in a finished form in the biblical texts. It is the effort of one or of many scholars to create a persuasive presentation of what the biblical writings collectively say about God. And by persuasive presentation I mean a biblical theology for our time, based on the biblical writings but read not merely through our knowledge of the ideas of the ancients but in the light of contemporary knowledge and experience. A biblical theology is therefore influenced by the times in which it is conceived; it is a project we are never finished with.

Applying such a definition of biblical theology I must of course remain sceptical about the attempts to point out one or more central concepts in the biblical texts and make them the content of the theology. Walther Eichrodt chose the concept of ‘covenant’ as the “Mitte” of the Old Testament, while Walther Zimmerli found his “Mitte” in the redeeming God who led his people out of Egypt. I shall refrain from choosing my own “Mitte”, but admit to an interest in the main character, Yahweh, and his many and varied relations. I am therefore in many ways on the same wavelength as Claus Westermann, who in his Old Testament theology emphasises the event-nature of the relationship between Yahweh and the world.[28] I am even more sympathetic towards Walter Brueggemann’s major theological work from 1997, in which the use of metaphors about God plays a very significant role.[29]

In line with Brueggemann  I would underline that when it comes to God, we can only speak in images. My point of origin is therefore the images of God in the Bible, and I emphasis the plural: images. These also include the non-personal images, not just the rock and the fortress, but also the fire and water, the thunderstorm and pasture, the lion and the eagle. And we must also take note that images have a history, they can be reapplied with the possibility for new meaning. For an image does not contain a priori a fixed meaning. Finally, as a matter of form, I should add that when I speak of images, I presume that the biblical images of God refer to something beyond themselves, to something other than, and more than, a linguistic statement. The images of God are referential.

Closing remarks

What I have presented is no more than groundwork.  I myself have yet to begin the writing of such a biblical theology. What I have attempted here is to take seriously the many and various biblical images of God by not subjecting them all beforehand to a personal image and by showing that the central images of God have a history from the Old Testament and are taken up again in the New Testament. I am far from finished with my own reflections, and I am open to your contributions to the discussion of our subject for today: Metaphors and Biblical Theology.

End