More on God

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More on God

• The nature of the divine

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Describing the Divine

• Terms from Hosea
• A husband (22)
• A father (111)
• A Physician (71)
• A fowler (712)
• A lion (514)
• A leopard (137)
• A she-bear (138)
• The dew (145)
• The dawn and rain (63)
• A cypress (148)
• A moth and dry rot(512)

• Metaphor and simile are the most common ways of
  describing God and Gods attributes
• The inexplicable and the unknowable is made more
  familiar
• Gives one glimpses, but not absolute knowledge

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A Mystery

• God is, at heart, a mystery
• The divine name itself is something we do not
  understand
• The nature and character of God is something the
  writers saw as beyond us

• Exodus 346-7
• The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious,
  slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love
  and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the
  thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and
  transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing
  the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the
  parents upon the children and the childrens
  children, to the third and the fourth generation

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Merciful

• ltwjr or merciful comes from the same root as
  womb.
• While the translation here is merciful, it is
  really more womb-compassion.
• It can have masculine overtones, Ps 10313, but
  it has a more normal association with women and
  the children they birth
  
  
  
  
  

• See Isaiah 4915
• Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show
  no compassion for the child of her womb? Even
  these may forget, but I will not forget you.

5
Gracious

• \/wnj or hanun is all about showing favor
  towards another.
• Isa 3019 Truly, O people in Zion, inhabitants
  of Jerusalem, you shall weep no more. He will
  surely be gracious to you at the sound of your
  cry when he hears it, he will answer you.

• Psalm 277-9 Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud, be
  gracious to me and answer me! Come, my heart
  says, seek his face! Your face, Lord, do I
  seek. Do not hide your face from me. Do not
  turn your servant away in anger, you who have
  been my help Do not cast me off, do not forsake
  me, O God of my salvation.

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Steadfast Love

• dsj or hesed. It is often translated goodness or
  kindness.
• It is about covenant love and fidelity and is an
  attitude or inner disposition much like the
  Confucian concept of jen.

• Psalm 1307 O Israel, hope in the Lord! For
  with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with
  him is great power to redeem.
• Isa 637 I will recount the gracious deeds of
  the Lord, the praiseworthy acts of the Lord,
  because of all that the Lord has done for us, and
  the great favor to the house of Israel that he
  has shown them according to his mercy, according
  to the abundance of his steadfast love.

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Jonah 42

• That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning
  for I knew that you are a gracious God and
  merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in
  steadfast love, and ready to relent from
  punishing.

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Jonah Sistine Chapel
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Jonah 410-11

• You are concerned about the bush, for which you
  did not labor and which you did not grow it came
  into being in a night and perished in a night.
  And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that
  great city, in which there are more than a
  hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not
  know their right hand from their left, and also
  many animals?