The Israelites\u00a0expressed their faith in Yahweh\u00a0by way of contrast to these other gods who were understandably assumed to exist, not by discounting their existence\u2014that would be asking too much of them.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\nImagine today a decree coming down from the top saying, \u201cYou may only do your banking in\u00a0one specific branch (Main Street)\u00a0of one local bank (Springfield Savings and Loan). You may not bank anywhere else, neither at Wells Fargo, nor Citizens Bank, nor even Bank of America. Nor may you do your banking at the various ATM\u2019s that dot every street and mall.\u201d<\/p>\n
To have told ancient Israelites that they were to worship only Yahweh\u00a0because, actually, no other gods existed<\/em> would have been as absurd as expecting us to believe that\u00a0these other banks, branches, and ATMs don\u2019t exist. \u201cWhat do\u00a0you mean they don\u2019t exist?! We see them all over the place!\u201d Same holds for the ancient Israelites: high places (altars), temples, and images\/idols were part of their landscape, an \u201cassumed reality.\u201d<\/p>\nAnd so we see (to name a few more examples) Psalm 95<\/strong>, a psalm that calls Israel to worship<\/em> Yahweh alone<\/em> and describes Yahweh as \u201ca great God, and a great king above all gods<\/strong>\u201d (v. 3). It\u2019s hard to interpret this as anything other than what it looks like: Yahweh is praised for being greater than<\/strong> the other gods.<\/p>\nOr look at the \u201cdivine council\u201d in Psalm 82.\u00a0<\/strong>Yahweh is the \u201cMost High,\u201d like the chairman of the board over the other gods and chiding them for not doing their job of ruling justly over the nations: \u201cHow long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked?\u201d (v. 2; see also Psalm 58:1-2).<\/p>\nNext, the gods find themselves out of work.<\/p>\n
I say, \u201cYou are gods,\u00a0children of the Most High<\/strong>, all of you;\u00a0\u00a0nevertheless, you shall die like mortals,\u00a0and fall like any prince.\u201d\u00a0Rise up, O God, judge the earth;\u00a0for all the nations belong to you!<\/strong> (vv. 6-8)<\/p>\nThis divine council shows up in Job 1-2<\/strong>, another \u201cheavenly board room\u201d scene.<\/p>\nOne more example is Exodus 12:12<\/strong>. On the first Passover, just before\u00a0the 10th and final plague, we read:<\/p>\nFor I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human beings and animals; on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments<\/strong>: I am Yahweh.<\/p>\nThe plagues are\u00a0judgments on Egypt\u2019s\u00a0gods. Turning the Nile to blood is an attack against the Nile deity; the plague of frogs is an attack on the Heqet, the goddess of fertility, depicted with the head of a frog; the plague of darkness is an attack on the sun god Ra, the high god of the Egyptian pantheon.<\/p>\n
To say that the Israelites were monolatrous is more than simply making an academic observation. It helps us make sense of some passages and pulls back the curtain to help us understand a bit more of Israel\u2019s\u00a0theology<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\nTo say that Yahweh was above all the other\u00a0gods and the only one worthy of worship may not mean much to us. It may even seem uncomfortably wrong for such a thing to be in the Bible.<\/p>\n
But for the ancient Israelites, such a claim was countercultural and odd-looking. It was a bold and theologically potent declaration.<\/p>\n
If we want to understand\u00a0Israel\u2019s theology, we need to take these and other passages at face value.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Did you know that the ancient Israelites believed in more than one god? I\u2019m sensing I should explain that. What I mean is that the Israelites, at least for part\/most of the biblical period,\u00a0assumed the existence of many gods. They were not monotheists (belief that only one god exists). That would come later in their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[]},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9799"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}