Divine Wrath and Divine Mercy in the World of Antiquity. Ed. by Reinhard G. Kratz and Hermann Spieckermann 2008. 279 pages. FAT II 33
Any savvy reader of the Bible will know that God is a complex figure. At times he rages against violations of his law, while at others he lavishes goodness on the very people who have offended him. Each contribution in this collection of essays is a honed piece of research related to the intersection of God’s wrath and his mercy.
An introduction by Hermann Spieckermann explains the importance of ‘Wrath and Mercy as Crucial Terms of Theological Hermenuetics’. Looking first at Mesopotamian gods Enlil and Marduk and then at Yahweh, the god of Israel, Spieckermann argues that divine wrath and mercy ‘interpret human experiences of suffering and affliction as well as those of protection and welfare’ (p. 3).
Five essays engage the topic within the wider world of the ancient Near Eastern deities. Louise Gestermann looks at the anger and grace of Egyptian gods (‘Zorn und Gnade ägyptischer Götter’). Manfred Krebernik’s essay ‘“Wo einer in Wut ist, kann kein anderer ihm raten”: Zum göttlichen Zorn im Alten Orient’ offers a brisk overview of the topic before narrowing to an analysis of the Mesopotamian ‘Myth of Erra’. Billie Jean Collins considers the topic of ‘Divine Wrath and Divine Mercy of the Hittite and Hurrian Deities’. P. Kyle McCarter, ‘When Gods Lose Their Temper’, examines how the Ugaritic myths present divine wrath as a volatile part of the gods’ personas. He correlates this to Yahweh’s anger, as in the account of the golden calf in Exodus 32. Reinhard Kratz also links Yahweh with extra-biblical divine wrath in ‘Chemosh’s Wrath and Yahweh’s “No”’. Accordingly, he examines the Mesha Inscription and the related account in 2Kings 3.
One essay focuses solely on the Hebrew Bible, Karl William Weyde’s ‘Has God Forgotten Mercy, in Anger Withheld Compassion?’. Weyde assesses the so-called Elohistic Psalter of Psalms 42-83 offering a wide-ranging analysis of date, provenance, and function of these psalms. And another relates the Old Testament presentation to the book of Ben Sirach—Markus Witte, ‘“Barmherzigkeit und Zorn Gottes” im Alten Testament am Beispiel des Buchs Jesus Sirach’.
The sole NT representative, Jörg Frey reexamines a basic tenet of Christian theology: ‘“God is Love”: On the Textual Tradition and Semantics of a Core Expression of the Christian Notion of God’. The focus here is primarily 1John and the expression of love as ‘agape’.
Two essays explore post-biblical Christian and Jewish expressions of divine anger and love—Aharon Shemesh, ‘An Offer God can’t Refuse: The Punishment of Flagellation in Rabbinic Theology’ and Gunnar af Hällström, ‘The Wrath of God and His Followers: Early Christian Considerations’.
Todd Lawson concludes the book with ‘Divine Wrath and divine Mercy in Islam: Their Reflection in the Qur’an and Quranic Images of Water’.
For all students of the ancient world, Divine Wrath and Divine Mercy offers fascinating sketches and important analyses. For those particularly interested in the title’s topic, this book is an indispensable introduction.
