Religious Metaphors in Psalm 89:

God as Ruler and Parent

Kevin Vail

B 501

Dr. Marti Steussy, Instructor

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Religions are full of metaphors and imagery. Christianity images God as

“father” and Jesus as “the son of God”; Jesus is the “bridegroom” and the church

is his bride (Eph 5); Jesus is the “true vine” and believers are “the branches”

(John 15). Nearly all of the parables contained in the New Testament include

some kind of metaphor. For example, Jesus says, “in my Father’s house there are

many rooms” (John 14:2). The reader knows that God does not live in a “house”

and heaven is not made up of “many rooms”, but this image portrays a place of

spaciousness and hospitality.

Metaphors express the inexpressible and make the mysterious accessible.

Thorkild Jacobsen, in his survey of Mesopotamian religion, writes

they (metaphors) form a bridge between direct and mediate experience, between the religious founders and leaders and their followers; and they furnish a common bond of understanding between worshippers, and are the means by which religious content and forms are hand down from one generation to the next (1976, p. 3).

The metaphors of religion express the experience of a mysterium tremendum et

facinosum. Jacobsen identifies three dominant metaphors present during the first

three millennia B.C. Jacobsen calls these three the metaphors the provider

metaphor, the ruler metaphor, and the parent metaphor. In this paper I will explore

the presence of two of Jacobsen’s three metaphors in Psalm 89 of the Hebrew

bible.

The earliest appearing of these metaphors Jacobsen identifies is that of

God as provider. This metaphor tends to portray the god as the intransitive

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“energy” of a phenomenon. Jacobsen writes, “the gods are still shown largely in

non-human forms, forms linking them closely with the specific phenomenon of

which they are the indwelling power” (p. 20). The worship of this image of the

divine is more akin to magic than what we would today recognize as worship. The

goal of the rituals is to invoke or call forth the god so that the people will have

food to eat, water to drink and so on. The god has little or no “personality” at this

point. Absent from this metaphor are the familiar (to the modern reader) notions

of God’s will or wrath. These beings simply are and can be manipulated or

controlled by a proper application of words and actions that make up the rituals.

There are a few examples of this image in the Bible, the Ark of the Covenant in 2

Samuel 6, for example. However, it does not appear in Psalm 89.

The second metaphor, appearing chronologically in the third millennium

B.C., is that of God as ruler or king. Jacobsen thinks this metaphor for the divine

grew out of the necessity of peoples banding together and selecting the strongest

as a king for the purposes of defense against their neighbors. The concerns of this

sort of god are the concerns of a people for whom life could be “solitary, poor,

nasty, brutish, and short” (Hobbes, 1839, p. 72). Jacobsen writes, “this new

concept of the ruler… actually provided an approach to central aspects of the

numinous which had not been readily suggestible before: the aspects of

tremendum as ‘majesty’ and ‘energy’… [W]ith the concentration of power in the

person of the king, the experience of awe and majesty entered everyday

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existence” (p. 79). Jabobsen further argues, “the trend toward absolutism in

kingship on earth which became dominant already in the third millennium, is

likely in time to have colored the concept of king and ruler and so to have lent its

peculiar emphasis to its use in the metaphor” (p. 234). This metaphor and some of

the Mesopotamian tendency towards absolutism is present in Psalm 89.

Psalm 89 is a psalm that both celebrates the Davidic monarchy and

laments the unhappy events that have befallen the peoples of Judah and Israel in

the exilic period. The sacred author proclaims, “For our shield belongs to the

Lord, our king to the Holy One of Israel” (v 18, ESV). Furthermore, it is God who

chose David and He who anointed him with holy oil (cf. v. 20). The author places

the power of God behind David’s throne. God promises that the enemies of David

“shall not outwit him… shall not humble him” and that God will “crush his foes

before him and strike down those who hate him” (vv. 22-23, ESV). It is God who

will cause the throne of David to endure “as long as the sun before me” (v 36),

ESV. The author of this psalm entwines the laws of God and the laws of David

when he threatens “If his children forsake my law and do no walk according to

my rules, if they violate my statutes and do not keep my commandments, then I

will punish their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes” (vv 30-

32, ESV).

God is not only the ruler of men but also is the ruler of the elements and

forces of the natural world. Verse 9 of Psalm 89 proclaims, “You rule the raging

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of the sea, when its waves rise, you still them” (ESV). The sacred writers declares

that God’s ability to still the waves of the sea is given over to David when he

writes “I will set his hand on the sea and his right hand on the rivers” (v. 25,

ESV). Placed in the context of the history of Israel, as revealed in the historical

books of the Bible, David marks the end of the period of temporary kingship that

characterized the period of the judges and the beginning of the permanent

institution of the monarchy. These themes here are remarkably parallel to themes

of kingship present in the Sumerian creation epic Enuma elish. In this epic

Marduk is elevated by the other gods to supreme kingship after his victory over

Tiamat. The code of Hammurabi stated, “(Anu and Enlil) made him great among

the Igrigi, called Babylon’s lofty name, made it supreme in the four regions and

established permanently in its midst a lasting kingship” (quoted in Jacobsen,

1976, p.188). The development of a sense of nationhood and divine destiny and

protection is reflected in both the Sumerian myth and the royal Psalm.

The third metaphor Jacobsen identifies is that of god as parent. According

to Jacobsen this metaphor begins to appear in the Mesopotamian literature of the

second millennium B.C. Jacobsen believes this image of God as parent is unique

to Mesopotamian religious thought. He identifies four “strands” of this image

The physical aspect – the father as engenderer of the child and the mother as giving birth to it

The provider aspect – the father as provider for his family The protector and intercessor aspect

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The claim parents have upon their children for honor and obedience (p. 158).

These aspects of God as parent are also present in Psalm 89. The sacred author is

quite clear about the fatherhood of God when he writes, “He shall cry to me, ‘You

are my Father, my God and the rock of my salvation’” (v 26, ESV) It is God who

will “establish his (David’s) offspring forever” (v 29, ESV). God as the father of

David is “full of wrath against your anointed” and He is beseeched to

“Remember, O’ Lord, how your servants are mocked, and how I bear in my heart

the insults of all the many nations,” (v 50, ESV). David, as the divinely appointed

representative of Israel is also the one who is punished if his people disobey the

decrees of God. The sacred author of the psalm declares, “But now you have cast

off and rejected; you are full of wrath against your anointed. You have renounced

the covenant with your servant; you have defiled his crown in the dust” (vv 38-39,

ESV).

The God of the Bible, YHWH, is portrayed in the scriptures, as provider,

ruler and parent. These metaphors communicate to the reader the author’s

encounter with the incommunicable. Luther wrote that the Christian God was both

the Deus absconditus and the Deus revelatus. God has revealed Himself truly but

not exhaustively. Metaphors help to bridge the gap. They tell us what God has

meant to those whom have communed with Him and what He can mean to us.

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Bible quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV), copyright 2001 by Crossways Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

References

Hobbes, T. (1839). Leviathan in William Molesworth (Ed.), The English Works of

Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Vol. III. Bohn:London. (Original work

published in 1651).

Jacobsen, T. (1976). The Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian

Religion. Yale University Press: New Haven.