The Necessity of God’s Imperfect Justice in the Hebrew Bible

The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is

beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods.1

Whether we define justice according to axiomatic moral principles or according to God’s

will is a question with which Abrahamic religion and moral philosophy has long been grappling.

Believers who take the latter view subscribe to what is known as Divine Command Theory: they

claim that God, as the creator and almighty ruler of the universe, must also be the ultimate

determiner of what is just. According to this theory, an action is just precisely because God

commands it, or wrong precisely because God prohibits it. But while attributing to God the lofty

title of “Arbiter of Right and Wrong” might seem required for belief in God’s absolute

sovereignty—if God lacks the authority to decide what is and is not just, then there must be some

other authority making that decision, and if another authority exists, God’s sovereignty is not

absolute—nevertheless God’s sovereignty over the nature of right and wrong can only be gotten

at the expense of God’s justice. If it is God’s will alone, with no reference to any consistent,

external moral principles, that determines how we define “right” and “wrong”, then God’s

judgment may be arbitrary and God’s justice ultimately empty. It is a mere tautology to call what

is commanded by God “just” if by “just” we mean nothing more than “commanded by God”.

What’s more, we face the distressing question that Abraham faced when God commanded him to

slaughter Isaac: is it always wrong to kill one’s beloved son regardless of God’s commandment,

as human moral instinct emphatically declares, or is it right to faithfully obey God no matter how

our own moral sense may protest? According to Divine Command Theory (DCT), if God

commands Abraham to slaughter Isaac, it is right for Abraham to do just that—that is, until God

commands the opposite, at which point it becomes wrong to slaughter the lad. Parts of the

1 Plato, Euthyphro, trans. Benjamin Jowett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903), 10.

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Hebrew Bible can be interpreted as supporting DCT, but in other passages, God announces one

course of action and then changes course, usually in response to human plea. I will argue that

these passages are predicated on the view that justice exists independent of God’s will.

I. The Case for Divine Command Theory: Psalms 51 & 143 and Job 28 & 40

As J. Gericke points out in “Beyond Divine Command Theory”, there is a well-

established tradition of assuming that biblical morality begins and ends with defining the good

according to the word of God. Gericke writes, “…in their theological claims [biblical scholars]

seem to imply that in ancient Israelite religion the divine will was assumed to be the ultimate

foundation of morality, i.e., that human actions were considered morally good if and only if

YHWH willed or commanded them….”2 This tradition has good reason for persisting.

First, in Psalm 51:6 (or 51:4 in the English numbering system), the psalmist writes,

“Against You, You alone, have I sinned, and what is evil in your eyes have I done; that You will

be righteous in your speaking—You will be blameless in your judging.” In this psalm, David

feels consumed by guilt after his adultery with Batsheva, and he yearns for God to make him

clean again. One might read this verse as a simple acknowledgement that God’s moral standards

are more demanding than those of humans, but a proponent of DCT could read it as suggesting

that God is the sole source of moral law, and for that reason it is against God alone (rather than

against some independent moral principle) that David sinned. B. Johnson explains further:

Whenever [the] covenantal relationship between God and human beings is violated, God cannot be

the guilty party because right is inseparable from God. Indeed, God is both the origin and

guarantor of all righteousness; there is no righteousness apart from him. Hence if God is

[righteous], human beings are [wicked] as long as they are separated from God.3

2 Jaco W. Gericke, “Beyond Divine Command Theory: Moral Realism in the Hebrew Bible,” Theological Studies 65,

no. 1 (2009): 1-5. 3 G. Johannes Botterweck, Helmer Ringgren, and Heinz-Josef Fabry, eds., Theological Dictionary of the Old

Testament (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003), s.v. “Tzadak”, 260.

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Accordingly, it is by definition, not due to God’s moral excellence, that He is perfectly just.

Second, Psalm 143:2 reads, “Do not come judgmentally to your servant: because no

living creature shall be righteous before you.” Here David introduces his prayer for God to ease

his affliction by acknowledging his own moral inadequacy relative to God’s greatness. At the

same time, though, he seems to let himself off the hook, saying that he is just as immoral as

every other work of creation. But as with Ps 51:6, this verse can also be read to support DCT: if

God defines perfect justice, and if no creature is equal to God, then it is only logical that no

creature should be justified before God.

Third, in Job 28:12, in the poetic interlude inserted into Job’s final speech to his friends,

Job asks “And wisdom—where shall it be found? And where is the place of understanding?” In

28:28, the final verse of the interlude, he answers, “God said to humanity: Now, they shall fear

God; that is wisdom. And fleeing from evil is understanding.’” Job may mean that wisdom and

understanding (both of which are partner-concepts to righteousness in wisdom literature)4

coincide with obedience to God because God only demands that we do what is wise, and what is

wise is to act in accordance with intrinsically valuable moral principles. However, the verses can

also be read to support the divine command theorist’s position that wisdom is precisely

equivalent to revering God. If that were true, it would support the theorist’s claim that

righteousness means doing whatever God may command.

Finally, in Job 40:8-9, in God’s long-awaited response to Job’s complaints, He says,

“Would you impugn My justice? Would you condemn Me that you may be right? Have you an

4 As Birch writes in Let Justice Roll Down, Job 28 :28 is an example of wisdom literature’s view that the fear of God

is “the foundation of wisdom and knowledge.” He continues, “…wisdom grows out of and attests to a reality founded in God….All the good things in life flow out of an order which God intended and established.” Bruce C. Birch, Let Justice Roll Down: The Old Testament, Ethics, and Christian Life (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991), 324-25. On this view, the height of wisdom coincides with the demands of justice: both point to maintaining and promoting God’s order.

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arm like God’s? Can you thunder with a voice like His?”5 God’s response is famously cryptic: it

may mean that Job is a fool to be so sure of his own righteousness that he will even contend with

the supreme justice of the Almighty, but another interpretation is available that supports DCT.

As J.D. Pleins writes, the problem with challenging God’s justice may have nothing to do with

God’s justice. “In using his innocence to make a case against God, Job ran the risk of closing

himself off from the only one who could bring him consolation.”6 Job’s problem is not that God

is right and Job is wrong; it is that God is God and Job is Job. Job is mad to challenge God, the

very source of cosmic power and consolation, no matter how God may ignore the principles of

justice that Job wishes He would use to govern the world.

These verses could be interpreted as simply emphasizing the dizzying heights of God’s

moral greatness compared to the fallible morality of humans. But as Katharine Dell explains in

her article on the book of Job, “Does God Behave Unethically,” “Job’s capitulation [to God, at

the end of the book]…may well be because he recognizes the awesome power of the Almighty,”

and not because he believes that he has disobeyed any basic moral imperative.7 The verses from

Psalms 51 and 143 discussed above may also be understood using the premise of Divine

Command Theory: God’s will alone determines the nature of justice, thus no one is just who is

not perfectly united with God.

II. God’s Imperfect Justice in Exodus 32

Yet in multiple biblical passages, God seems to be on the verge of unleashing harsh

punishment, only to be stopped by someone who convinces Him to take a wiser or more just

5 J. David Pleins, The Social Visions of the Hebrew Bible: A Theological Introduction. (Louisville: Westminster John

Knox Press, 2001), 498. 6 Ibid.

7 Katharine Dell, “Does God Behave Unethically?,” in Ethical and Unethical in the Old Testament: God and Humans

in Dialogue (New York: T & T Clark International, 2010), 173.

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course of action. Many of these passages use hara’ah (the evil) to describe what God had

planned to do and nicham (He repented) to mark God’s change of heart.

Perhaps the most prototypical example of this type of interaction appears in Exodus 32:9-

14. Furious at the Israelites for building and worshiping the golden calf after he brought them

miraculously out of slavery in Egypt, God is prepared to kill them all except Moses and his

family (32:9-10). But Moses pleads with God, reminding Him of His relationship with the

Israelites and the promises He made to their ancestors, and persuading Him to preserve them for

the sake of His public image (32:11-13). In 32:12 Moses asks God to “repent of this evil against

Your people” and in 32:14 we read that God “repented of the evil which He said He would do

against His people.” The language in the two verses is almost perfectly parallel: Moses calls

God’s plans for His people evil and asks God to repent of them, and two verses later the narrator

confirms Moses’ assessment: it was indeed an evil thing that God thought to do to the people,

and thanks to Moses, God decided not to do it.

In context, the story seems to have two primary functions. First, it seems to be an attempt

to make the Israelites behave. Moses and God play Good Cop/Bad Cop in response to Israelite

idolatry, and their interaction magnifies both the fearsome power of God and the need for the

Israelites to follow Moses closely: only God’s prophet can keep God’s terrifying, barely-

controlled wrath in check. The story of Moses’ intercession with God may have been a useful

tool in efforts to inspire mass allegiance to Israelite religious leaders (through both love for the

leaders and fear of God). Second, the story seems to supply a necessary explanation for the fact

that the Israelites performed the grievous sin of idolatry without suffering immediate and

comparable punishment. Someone with Deuteronomist expectations about sinful action bringing

bad consequences and virtuous action bringing good ones might feel troubled by a lack of instant

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negative consequences for Israelite idolatry, so the story of Moses’ intercession would serve to

reassure such a person that the nexus of deed and consequence has not fallen apart.

But as useful as the story may have been, it is also likely to be deeply troubling to a

certain kind of believer. It presents a case in which God, whom we expect to behave with such

perfect justice that justice itself is defined according to God’s behavior, declared an intention to

do something “evil” to His people. As far as we know, God would have gone through with it had

it not been for the quick work of His faithful and smooth-tongued prophet. Not only does God’s

readiness to do evil to His people supply a counterexample to the theological claim that God is

perfectly just; it also shatters the premise that justice is always defined according to God’s will.

If it was God’s will, however briefly, that all Israelites but Moses’ family be destroyed, and God

subsequently recognized that intention as unjust and repented of it, then at least in that moment

when God would have done something unjust, justice was getting defined according to some

principle other than what God willed. Whatever that principle was, it seems God was not heeding

it at the time, but Moses was. This fact only exacerbates the problem: it is bad enough for God to

be briefly unjust, but for God to depart from standards of justice while God’s prophet remains in

touch with them is downright intolerable! What are we to make of Ps 143:2, which said no living

creature can be righteous before God? Did David not know about Moses? There seems to be

something basic about God’s character that makes Moses’ intercession in Exodus necessary, but

which Divine Command Theory fails to take into account.

III. God’s Decision to Spare the Israelites in Numbers 14

Exodus 32:9-14 is one instance of a biblical theme. Its closest parallel passage is

Numbers 14:11-24, when God is again furious at His people and prepared to wipe them out and

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start over with Moses and his family (14:11-12). This time, His fury comes in response to the

scouts’ report of the Promised Land’s fearsome inhabitants and the Israelites’ terrified reaction to

their report. While Moses does not call God’s planned punishment “evil” this time, Moses again

persuades God to stay His hand by referring to the opinions of the other nations. In this case,

Moses seems to be saying that the Israelites currently enjoy a formidable reputation among the

Canaanites—the Israelites’ reputed relationship with the Almighty inspires fear in the hearts of

their opponents–but if God destroys so many of the Israelites, the Egyptians will hear of it and

tell the Canaanites that the Israelite God lacks the power necessary to bring the Israelites into the

Promised Land successfully, and the Canaanites will think less of God. (14:13-16). Moses then

tells God that the way for Him to be truly powerful is by demonstrating patience with His

iniquitous people, and he begs God to pardon them (14:17-19). God does pardon them and

agrees not to destroy them at once, as He had planned, but announces a more moderate

punishment: the faithless Israelites will never enter the Promised Land; instead, Caleb will lead

the rising generation in after the older generation dies off (14:20-24).

Here, as in Exodus 32:9-14, God had planned to treat the Israelites harshly and Moses

drew upon his special relationship with God to persuade Him that it would be better to do

otherwise. While God comes out looking somewhat more reasonable and less hot-headed now

than He did before, He still unmistakably announces an intention to do something harsh and then

changes His mind after advice from Moses—advice that an all-wise god must have already been

able to consider on His own. If God’s initial plan, to kill all the other Israelites and start over

with Moses’ household, was perfectly just (as one would expect of every plan that a perfectly

just god formulates), then it is not clear how his ultimate decision can also be right. Can two

plans that are so wildly different from each other both be just? And conversely, if God’s ultimate

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decision, to spare the faithless Israelites and let them die of old age in the desert, was right, then

how can we defend His earlier plan to immediately kill them? Surely Justice has an opinion

about whether they deserved quick death or long life—it would be incoherent to say that one

moment it was right for them to die now and the next it was right for them to be preserved!

Either God’s earlier or his later plan must not have been perfectly just.

IV. God’s Choice to Spare Nineveh in Jonah 3-4 as a Parody of Exodus 32 & Numbers 14

By the time the book of Jonah was written, the passage from Numbers 14 must have been

well-known, because in writing Jonah, its author packs meaning into the brief text in part by

alluding to the pattern established by Numbers 14:9-24 and making a few notable changes.

Jonah, a sort of anti-Moses, is self-interested and has run out of patience for God and other

people, so when God tells him to warn the people of Nineveh that they are done for because of

their wickedness, He shows no interest in trying to save them, as Moses might. Instead, he flees

in the opposite direction to save himself the fruitless effort (and the potential capital

punishment—see Dt 18:20-22) of proclaiming a prophecy that will never come to pass. But in

spite of Jonah’s unwillingness, the people of Nineveh (who complement Jonah’s anti-Moses

character by representing anti-Israelites, being quick to repent instead of being inexcusably

faithless) optimistically throw themselves into wholehearted atonement as soon as they hear

Jonah’s message. In 3:9 they say, “Who knows? God may turn and repent…” and in 3:10, we

read that God, seeing their atonement, “repented of the evil which he said he would do to them.”

The book’s final chapter tells us that when God first commanded Jonah to go to Nineveh

to tell the city’s inhabitants that they would soon be destroyed, it was so obvious (and so

maddening) to Jonah that God would eventually change His mind and forgive them, he could not

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stand to discharge his assignment (4:1-2). His speech in 4:2 includes a parodic echo of Moses’

intercessory prayer in Numbers 14:18, but where Moses in Numbers 14:18 says that God “will

by no means clear the guilty,” Jonah 4:2 has the prophet implying the opposite, saying that God

“repents of evil”, referring to God’s decision to clear the guilty inhabitants of Nineveh. Jonah 4:2

thus mirrors the language of both Jonah 3:9-10 and Exodus 32:12 and 32:14 discussed above.

Even in Jonah, an all-knowing god announcing a definite course of action and then

changing His mind remains theologically questionable. If God were uncertain about destroying

Nineveh, we would have expected him to command Jonah to add “unless everyone here repents”

to his categorical warning in Jonah 3:4, “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” But

in light of their sincere repentance, the people of Nineveh actually do seem to deserve their

divine pardon. Perhaps we can reconcile God’s perfect justice with His describing his own plan

for Nineveh as “evil” by pointing to their total change: God’s initial plan for them might have

been appropriate had they held to their sinful ways, but it would have been evil to inflict it upon

them once they atoned. The contrast between the apparent stubborn apathy of the Israelites in

Exodus 32 and the wholehearted repentance at Nineveh throws the problem of the former

passage into even sharper relief: in Exodus, the Israelites demonstrate no such atonement

between God’s announcing their doom and His acquiescing to Moses’ plea, making God’s

repenting of the evil He thought to do to them even more difficult to justify.

V. God’s Abandoned Plans to Punish Israel in Amos 7

In Amos 7:1-6, Amos tells of how God showed him His plans to send punishment to the

Israelites for their iniquity, and how he interceded and begged God to have mercy on Israel:

Amos humbly warns God that Israel has such a small population that the punishment God plans

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might wipe Israel out entirely. As in Exodus 32 and Numbers 14, here God repents of His plans

(which in this case are not described as evil) not because Israel has demonstrated a change of

heart but simply because of Amos’ strategic pleading. Assuming God is all-knowing, it cannot be

that Amos provided God with any information not already accessible to Him, and yet twice in

this passage God announces a plan to punish the Israelites, Amos pleads for God not to do it, and

God repents of His plan. Just as Exodus 32 and Numbers 14 magnify Moses’ importance, Amos

7 draws attention to Amos’ importance to the well-being of the Israelites—if not for Amos’

intercession, God might get carried away in his zeal to punish. But if that is the intent of these

passages, they only achieve their purpose at the expense of God’s image: the plain sense is that

God’s wisdom and justice are sometimes overpowered by His rage. This reading’s theological

outcome is that rather than being an arbitrary determiner of the nature of justice, God is beholden

to rules which His prophets understand and can cite when God’s wrath waxes too hot.

VI. God’s Decision to Spare Jerusalem in I Chronicles 21

In I Chronicles 21:1-18, thanks to Satan’s inspiration, King David commands each local

leader to number the people in his area. Each one does so, albeit some under protest (21:1-6).

God, displeased, smites Israel, and David admits his mistake and begs God’s forgiveness (21:7-

8). But instead of forgiving him outright, God tells David to choose one of three terrible

punishments (21:9-12). David opts for natural disaster, preferring to be at the mercy of God than

human enemies, and a pestilence kills 70,000 of his men (21:13-14). God then sends an angel to

finish off Jerusalem, but before the angel can strike, God looks upon the city, sees the destruction

it has already withstood, and “repents” of the further “evil” he had planned for it, telling the

angel to stay his hand. (21:15). Before the angel sheathes his sword, David and his elders see the

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angel and prostrate themselves. David begs God to punish him for his sin, but to spare his

innocent subjects (21:16-17), and God instructs David in his repentance process (21:18).

There is great emotional power in the picture of God being moved from wrath to pity by

the sight of a mostly-destroyed Jerusalem while David, terrified by the angel, begs God to take

him and spare his innocent subjects. Both God and David display an overwhelming desire to

protect the vulnerable: God is willing to forego inflicting punishment for the sake of preserving

the Israelites, and David offers to sacrifice himself (as is his duty as king) for the same purpose.

But the passage still contains an unresolved contradiction: given the sorry state of Jerusalem was

a fact available to God when He sent the angel to destroy the city in 21:15, either it was just for

the angel to destroy it or it was not just. If it was unjust, then God was right to repent of the evil

He had planned, but wrong to have planned to do it in the first place. If it was just, then God was

right to have planned it in the first place, but wrong to scrap the plan (and the text’s reason for

calling it “evil” remains unclear). Either way, God’s behavior is less than perfectly just. As a

corollary, we can say principles of justice exist which are unaffected by God’s behavior.

This passage is especially noteworthy because God has two reasons to repent of the evil

He planned for Jerusalem. God first repents out of divine protectiveness—in spite of the people’s

lack of merit, God remembers that He loves them and wants them to survive, as in Exodus 32

and Numbers 14 (where God is reminded of his love for the people) and in Amos 7 (where God

changes His plans so as not to wipe them out entirely). Immediately after God repents (and, it is

implied, before anyone on earth becomes aware of God’s change of heart), King David and the

elders sincerely atone, indicating that it is now retroactively appropriate for God to have shown

them mercy on the basis of divine justice8—they have turned from their wickedness, so God was

8 It may sound odd to modern ears to call mercy an outgrowth of justice because we commonly call justice and

mercy opposites. But M. Weinfeld explains that in certain biblical texts, “’justice and righteousness’ refer, in fact,

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right to have preserved them, just as God preserved the penitents of Nineveh in Jonah 3. The

double-justification for God’s change of heart—He was moved by pity and the people

repented—makes this passage appear more theologically sound than the others of its type, even

though it still shares the basic problem common to them all of them.

VII. God’s Extension of King Hezekiah’s Life in II Kings 20

In II Kings 20:1-6, King Hezekiah is “sick unto death,” and Isaiah comes to him and

prophecies that he will not recover, but will die soon (20:1). But as Isaiah leaves, Hezekiah prays

to God to recover, reminding Him of how virtuously he has lived (20:2-3). God, apparently

swayed by Hezekiah’s prayer, immediately instructs Isaiah (who has barely managed to leave the

inner court) to return to the king and tell him that he will recover from his illness and live

another fifteen years (20:4-6). This passage does not describe God as repenting of the evil that he

had planned to do; instead, in 20:5, God merely instructs Isaiah to tell the king that He has heard

his prayer and seen his tears, and He will heal him.

One purpose of this passage may be to continue portraying King Hezekiah in a flattering

light—it makes him look humble and shows that God favors him—but what it says about God’s

character is puzzling. The Bible’s presentation of King Hezekiah is so full of praise that there is

no apparent reason why God would initially plan to send Hezekiah an early death,9 nor why

Hezekiah would have to remind God of his obvious virtue in order to convince God to change

to acts of kindness and mercy,” especially when describing a ruler’s treatment of the weak. See Moshe Weinfeld, Social Justice in Ancient Israel, 2nd ed. (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2000), 59. 9 The Talmudic speculation on this question further attests to how puzzling it is. The Babylonian Talmud postulates

that God struck Hezekiah with a malady to resolve a rift between him and the prophet Isaiah, and that Isaiah, while visiting the sick king, warned him that not only would he die but his soul would perish as well, because he had failed to marry and have children. In a classically neat Talmudic resolution, when Hezekiah recovers, he marries Isaiah’s daughter. See Marcus Jastrow and Isidore Singer, eds., Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1906), s.v. “Hezekiah,” accessed December 16, 2014, http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/7668-hezekiah.

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His mind. God’s motivation for afflicting Hezekiah is mysterious at best and unjust at worst, and

the idea that Hezekiah does not deserve his hardship is strongly supported by how quickly God

heals him in response to his sincere prayer. Hezekiah prays humbly, as though he had little merit,

but the passage suggests that it was God who was in the wrong for departing from true principles

of justice when he brought Hezekiah face to face with death before his time. In this passage we

again see the suggestion that it is possible for God to behave unjustly. By conceding God’s

goodness, we introduce the possibility of moral principles existing independent of God’s will.

VIII. God’s Protection of Cain in Genesis 4

Finally, in Gen. 4:13-15, God, having just discovered Cain’s murder of his brother Abel,

punishes Cain with a curse that leaves him homeless and vulnerable to others’ murderous

vengeance. When Cain protests that the curse is beyond what he can bear—that whoever finds

him will slay him—God responds by setting a sign for Cain (4:15) to protect him from murder.

On the surface, God seems to have meant for Cain to be homeless, but not murdered. Yet how

can we say that God did not have the foresight to see what Cain anticipated immediately? Even if

we do not say that God is all-knowing, it is hard to imagine that God was unaware of what was

so evident to Cain before he pointed it out to Him. One primary purpose of the passage may be to

make God look extraordinarily reasonable—He even considers the needs of a murderer and an

outcast!—but if so, it is not clear why God did not present Cain with the protective sign before

Cain protested. If God is willing to make his decree for Cain lighter in response to Cain’s protest,

and if we assume that a perfectly just decree would be made imperfect if it were harsher or

lighter, then either in its initial form or in its final form, God’s decree cannot have been perfectly

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just. Nevertheless the text offers a sort of reassurance: God’s decrees are not necessarily set in

stone. God is willing to change His mind if presented with a fair complaint.

IX. God Changes His Mind: The Danger and the Promise

Certain passages from the books of Job and Psalms can be read as supporting Divine

Command Theory, but even if that was their authors’ intent, it is not the only thing the Hebrew

Bible has to say on the subject. Stories of God’s interactions with Moses (Exodus 32 and

Numbers 14), the people of Nineveh (Jonah 3-4), Amos (Amos 7), David (I Chronicles 21),

Hezekiah (II Kings 20), and Cain (Genesis 4) show that God will sometimes change His plans,

apparently in order to make them better conform to a vision of justice which exists independently

of God’s evolving will. In Exodus 32, Jonah 3-4, Amos 7, and I Chronicles 21, the text explicitly

tells us that God repented of his plans, and it calls those plans evil in Exodus 32, Jonah 3-4, and I

Chronicles 21. While in Jonah 3, God seems to see his plan to destroy Nineveh as only becoming

undesirable as a result of the atonement of the city’s inhabitants, in the other six passages, the

reason given for God’s change of plans is that God’s attention is drawn to information that was

already available to Him before the plan was made, but which seems to have just had a new

emotional impact upon God, inspiring Him to be more merciful to the person or people who

would have received His punishment. In these six texts God seems to suddenly view his former

plans as having been a bad idea all along, and thus in need of improvement.

Some theologians argue that in spite of what the Bible appears to say, God does not really

change His mind. For example, Chisholm argues that God might announce an idea He is

considering, and He might later discard it, but once He’s sure, He is true to His word and never

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goes back on it.10

Chisholm’s grounding for this view comes as much from clues in the text as

from an unsupported premise that it would be unbecoming for God to change His mind, and

therefore God must not do it. Similarly, Halsted argues that since Christian hope positively hangs

upon God never going back on His word, it must be that the passages in the Bible where God

seems to do so are only figures of speech that anthropomorphize God to convey an important

message without being literally true.11

These arguments seem to be motivated by a deep

understanding of just how dangerous it is to view God as capable of changing His mind. Like a

loaded weapon, this view can be used to defend the disempowered as easily as it can be used to

hurt them. Thus, some consider the view so dangerous that they try to disarm it completely.

But it is far too valuable to disarm. If God can change His mind in response to human

prayer and reasonable protest, then perhaps conservative religious leaders need not teach that we

are bound to obey God’s commandments when doing so is beyond what we can tolerate. As

Rabbi Steven Greenberg says in his documentary on Orthodox Judaism and homosexuality,

Trembling Before G-d,

“The demonstration that human beings can influence even God is all over the Torah. Moses

influences God, Abraham influences God. God, Blessed Be He, wishes to learn from his

conversations with human beings….God engages human beings, says what God thinks, and they

say back…and God says Oh, you know what, that’s right. You know what, let’s do it this way

instead. It’s not Judaism if it’s not responsive to the human condition.”12

If we are not religiously required to damage ourselves or endanger our survival for the sake of

doing as God says—and if, as we have shown, what God says is not necessarily the absolute

definition of what is just—then we can negotiate with God’s laws just as Moses, Amos,

Hezekiah, and even Cain negotiated with God Himself. Humanity and Divinity can thus work

together toward a shared vision of perfect justice.

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Robert B. Chisholm Jr., “Does God 'Change His Mind'?,” Bibliotheca Sacra 152 (October-December 1995): 387-99. 11

Matthew Halsted, “Does God Repent?,” Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry, accessed December 17, 2014, http://carm.org/does-god-repent-an-examination-of-exodus-32-14-and-genesis-6-6. 12

Trembling Before G-d, directed by Sandi Simcha Dubowski (Cinephil, 2001).

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Selected Bibliography

Birch, Bruce C. Let Justice Roll Down: The Old Testament, Ethics, and Christian Life.

Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991.

Botterweck, G. Johannes, Helmer Ringgren, and Heinz-Josef Fabry, eds. Theological Dictionary

of the Old Testament. Translated by Douglas W. Stott and David E. Green. Grand Rapids:

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003.

Chisholm Jr., Robert B. “Does God 'Change His Mind'?” Bibliotheca Sacra 152 (October-

December 1995): 387-99.

Dell, Katharine, “Does God Behave Unethically?” In Ethical and Unethical in the Old

Testament: God and Humans in Dialogue, 170-186. New York: T & T Clark

International, 2010.

Fretheim, Terence E. “The Repentance of God: A Key to Evaluating Old Testament God-Talk.”

Horizons in Biblical Theology 10, no. 1 (1988): 47-70.

Gericke, Jaco W. “Beyond Divine Command Theory: Moral Realism in the Hebrew Bible.

Theological Studies 65, no. 1 (2009): 1-5.

Halsted, Matthew “Does God Repent?” Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry. Accessed

December 17, 2014.

http://carm.org/does-god-repent-an-examination-of-exodus-32-14-and-genesis-6-6.

Jastrow, Marcus, Isidore Singer, et. al., eds. Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk and

Wagnalls, 1906. Accessed December 16, 2014.

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/7668-hezekiah.

Plato. Euthyphro. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903.

Pleins, J. David. The Social Visions of the Hebrew Bible: A Theological Introduction. Louisville:

Westminster John Knox Press, 2001.

Trembling Before G-d. Directed by Sandi Simcha Dubowski. Cinephil, 2001.

Weinfeld, Moshe. Social Justice in Ancient Israel. 2nd ed. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University

Magnes Press, 2000.

Willis, John T. “The 'Repentance' of God in the Books of Samuel, Jeremiah, and Jonah.”

Horizons in Biblical Theology 16, no. 1 (1994): 156-75.