If ‘worship’ is the term we use
to describe the ways in which human beings engage with God,[1] then
one rather disturbing feature of the Old Testament witness is the way in which
it contains some blistering attacks on worship and worshippers. There is no
hallowing of the human religious spirit: false or corrupt or heartless worship
is as great an evil as the Old Testament writers can imagine. Here is Deuteronomy
29:16-20:
You
know how we lived in the land of Egypt, and how we came through the midst of
the nations through which you passed. You have seen their detestable things,
the filthy idols of wood and stone, of silver and gold, that were among them. It
may be that there is among you a man or woman, or a family or tribe, whose
heart is already turning away from the LORD our God to serve the gods of those
nations. It may be that there is among you a root sprouting poisonous and
bitter growth. All who hear the words of this oath and bless themselves,
thinking in their hearts, "We are safe even though we go our own stubborn
ways" (thus bringing disaster on moist and dry alike)-- the LORD will be
unwilling to pardon them, for the LORD's anger and passion will smoke against
them. All the curses written in this book will descend on them, and the LORD
will blot out their names from under heaven.
According to the Hebrew Bible, it is possible to worship a false god. ‘The
nations’ give the devotion to gods like Ba’al, or Asherah, or Dagon – gods who
did not create the heavens and the earth and are not worthy of worship. The
famous challenge between Elijah and the priests of Baal on Mt Carmel recorded in
1 Kings 18 is a pointed satire against the worship of a false god. The prophets
of Baal dance and sing and even cut themselves in order to get the attention of
Ba’al, but to no avail. Likewise, the statue of the Philistine deity Dagon falls
flat on its face in a gesture of worship before the Ark of the Covenant in 1
Sam 5. Worship of these deities is not simply wrong, it is foolish, since they
are so obviously powerless.
In particular, the Old Testament
reserves its hostility for the practice of idolatry. Idol worship is ludicrous
because the idol is impotent. In Isaiah 40-66, in amongst the great
declarations of the saving intentions of Yhwh, we read a savage indictment of
the practice of idolatry:
To
whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him? An idol?-- A
workman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold, and casts for it
silver chains. As a gift one chooses mulberry wood-- wood that will not rot--
then seeks out a skilled artisan to set up an image that will not topple. (Isa
40:18-20)
In Isaiah 44, there is an
extended passage in which the author heaps ridicule on those who would make an
idol with their own human hands and then in some way consider it divine.
All
who make idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit; their
witnesses neither see nor know. And so they will be put to shame. Who would
fashion a god or cast an image that can do no good? (Isa 44:9-10)
The idol can do no good: it is
simply dumb. Why would anyone do this? And yet, the habit is ingrained in human
behaviour. The idol-maker does not even seem to realize that the profane use he
makes of the wood leftover from his idol manufacture reveals the idiocy of his
practice:
Half
of it he burns in the fire; over this half he roasts meat, eats it and is
satisfied. He also warms himself and says, "Ah, I am warm, I can feel the
fire!" The rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, bows down to it and
worships it; he prays to it and says, "Save me, for you are my god!"
(Isa 44:16-17)
Israel herself was not guiltless
of this kind of worship. The most famous incident is of course the episode of
the golden calf, in Exodus 32, when Aaron after making the calf out of gold
makes the absurd claim that ‘"These are your gods, O Israel, who brought
you up out of the land of Egypt!" (Ex 32:4). Terrible consequences quickly
unfold. The Old Testament is by no means syncretistic.
If it is possible to worship an
entirely false god, it is also possible
to worship the true God falsely. Yhwh does not merely forbid worship of
other gods, he also demands that he be worshipped as he directs. He must be approached
on his terms, rather than through the whims of human beings. In the description
of the tabernacle cult with its elaborate construction and its provision for
sacrifice in Exodus 25f there is no doubt that the direction for its creation
comes from the Yhwh and not from the imaginations of the people. It is the
provision for a visible means of engagement with an invisible deity which at
the same time does not compromise his invisibility, or reduce his splendor.
The episode of Balaam in Numbers
23-4 is illustrative of a false worshipper of the true God. The non-Israelite Balaam
recognises Yhwh, but does not recognize or give due honour to his people. In 1
Samuel 13, Saul is condemned for his self-legislation with regards to
sacrifices to Yhwh. The mistreatment of the Ark of the Covenant in 1 Samuel 5-7
– attempting to use it as a talisman in battle – shows that simply identifying
the true God is not sufficient to worship him rightly, for Israel clearly does
not understand who Yhwh is, even if they can name him. But the supreme example
of this error is the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden, who do not seek to
worship some other god but who rather disobey the true God’s command to them.
These two forms of false worship
were frequently combined in Israel’s history as they mixed worship of the pagan
deities of the nations with worship of Yhwh. This was Solomon’s great flaw – he
allowed the gods of his many wives to ‘turn his heart’, and built shrines to
them alongside the extraordinary temple that made his name:
For
Solomon followed Astarte the goddess of the Sidonians, and Milcom the
abomination of the Ammonites. So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the
LORD, and did not completely follow the LORD, as his father David had done. Then
Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Molech
the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem. He did the
same for all his foreign wives, who offered incense and sacrificed to their
gods (1Ki 11:5-8)
The prophets expressed their
shock at Israel and Judah’s easy willingness to engage with a smorgasbord of
gods in clear disobedience of Yhwh to whom they owed their very existence. They
explain the historical disaster of the exile as a divine judgment on the
syncretism of the people of God:
I
will stretch out my hand against Judah, and against all the inhabitants of
Jerusalem; and I will cut off from this place every remnant of Baal and the
name of the idolatrous priests; those who bow down on the roofs to the host of
the heavens; those who bow down and swear to the LORD, but also swear by Milcom…
(Zep 1:4-5)
The divine jealousy (q’nah) is the lesson to be relearned
from Zephaniah. An apparently sophisticated blend of worship practices and
deities is, more than any other human activity, destined to provoke the ire of the
God of the Bible.
However, a third form of worship
is also subject to critique in the Old Testament: it is possible to worship the true God truly, but have that worship
rendered null by corrupt behaviour. The rituals and observances of the temple,
with its elaborate sacrifices and festivals, might all be observed in true
order. But if the hearts of the people are not rightly tuned, then the outward
observance of the cult is meaningless. The prophecy recorded in Ezekiel 34
against the ‘shepherds of Israel’ critiques them for their exploitation of the
people. Micah’s thunderous revelation against the people majors on the evil
behaviour of their leaders rather than their irreligion:
Listen,
you heads of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel! Should you not know
justice?--you who hate the good and love the evil, who tear the skin off my
people, and the flesh off their bones; who eat the flesh of my people, flay
their skin off them, break their bones in pieces, and chop them up like meat in
a kettle, like flesh in a caldron. Then they will cry to the LORD, but he will
not answer them; he will hide his face from them at that time, because they
have acted wickedly.
(Mic
3:1-4)
The punishment for the evil behaviour
is that the Lord will make himself absent – their worship, however earnest and
accurate, will be rendered empty.
Psalm 51, David’s famous Psalm of
confession, he notes that it is possible to worship the true God in the directed
way but without reality on account of a moral failing. As he writes:
For
you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would
not be pleased. The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken
and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise (Psa 51:16-17).
Sacrifice has no effect in the
context of David’s abuse of his power, his adultery and his murder of the
faithful Uriah the Hittite.
We shall turn to the New
Testament’s theology of worship in due course; suffice it to say here that the
Old Testament critique of false worship is the significant backdrop against
which Jesus’ identity must be established. How is worship of him not false
worship? How does the Hebrew theology of worship mesh with what follows in the
New Testament, if they are not be understood to be substantially in opposition
to one another?
But the critique of false worship
offered in the Old Testament is also a significant point to what true worship
must be, if it is to be worship of the true God. Worship is not simply good in
and of itself. It cannot be simply
the invention of human beings. It cannot be a description of a human movement
towards God. It cannot be shared, or blended across a portfolio of deities. It
cannot be a desperate plea for God’s attention from the human side. It cannot
presume to, by its own devices, overturn the divine judgment that stands
against us in our fallen state.
No comments:
Post a Comment