Introduction
Scholars of rabbinic literature have often noted the widespread tendency to question and argue with God in the Talmud and midrash.Footnote 1 Of course, the phenomenon of theological protest is not an innovation of the rabbis. The motif already appears in a variety of contexts throughout the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple literature: in the pentateuchal narratives (with Abraham and Moses), the prophetic writings (with Jeremiah and Habakkuk), the wisdom literature (with Job and various Psalms), and in some apocalyptic texts (4 Ezra, 2 Baruch).Footnote 2 Yet, the vast majority of the rabbinic confrontations are distinctive in that they are set in an exegetical context; the rabbis confront God indirectly by placing protests into the mouths of biblical and mythic characters. While the rabbis usually do not express their opinions explicitly on the appropriateness or inappropriateness of the act, it is significant that they usually place a critique into the mouth of a well-established biblical hero, rather than a villain. While biblical heroes are often presented as flawed individuals, we have no reason to assume—unless otherwise stated—that these acts of protest reflect a moment of misconduct or impropriety. Tellingly, in the overwhelming majority of these exegetical dialogues, God does not admonish or punish the challenger, leading us to conclude that the rabbis who “report” many of these dialogues condone, if not valorize, the act.
In his work, Responses to Suffering in Classical Rabbinic Literature, David Kraemer convincingly shows that pro-protest rabbinic traditions, including nonexegetical ones, emerge in the amoraic texts of the Palestinian midrashim (Palestine, ca. fifth century), and reach their fullest expression in the writings of the Babylonian Talmud (ca. seventh century).Footnote 3 And, in a previous work, I noted that this motif also reaches its apex in the late Palestinian midrashim of Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu (Palestine, ca. seventh century).Footnote 4 There I showed that in many instances where Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu authors use the motif of protest, the midrashic parallels from earlier texts generally do not contain such confrontations.Footnote 5 For example, only in postamoraic texts do the rabbis have Moses critique God's punitive policy of intergenerational punishment. This theological doctrine, found in the Decalogue (Exodus 20:5), posits that God punishes children for the sins of the parents. Whereas earlier rabbinic texts solve the ethical problem of corporate punishment through various exegetical moves or nonconfrontational narratives, a number of late rabbinic texts associated with the Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu literature have Moses challenging God's doctrine of punishment on moral grounds.Footnote 6 And, in these narratives, rather than God critiquing Moses for irreverence, God praises Moses and concedes his mistake. In one of them, God strikingly tells Moses: “You have taught me something [למדתני]. I will nullify my words and establish your words.”Footnote 7 Moreover, in those cases where earlier rabbinic texts do contain such parallel confrontations, the Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu invariably dramatizes the imagery or radicalizes the language.Footnote 8
Oddly, however, with the exception of Arthur Marmorstein (1882–1946), scholars have largely passed over and ignored the unequivocal anti-protest traditions found in the Talmud and midrash.Footnote 9 Thus, there seems to be a scholarly penchant to engage the permissive voices over the prohibitive ones. Addressing this scholarly lacuna and building on Marmorstein's findings, this paper amends this imbalance by collecting anti-protest traditions and explicating their exegetical and conceptual basis. Moreover, the paper makes two central arguments. First, that the trajectory of anti-protest expressions in rabbinic literature mirrors that of the pro-protest expressions: in both cases, later rabbinic voices intensify or radicalize their particular point of view. In specific, unlike early anti-protest texts, which merely prohibit one from challenging God, later aggadot tend to attach harsh punishments to that prohibition. This parallel development of an “ideological intensification”—on both sides of the protest issue—is not coincidental. It rather reveals that the question over the legitimacy of challenging God played a central role within late rabbinic culture (fifth to seventh century).
Second, the paper also argues that the anti-protest sentiments of the rabbis diverge from similar sentiments found in early Christianity. While both rabbis and church fathers critique the act of protest on exegetical and (similar) conceptual grounds, they have different ways of harmonizing their restrictive attitudes with a biblical tradition that, problematically for them, seems to tolerate, if not valorize, confronting God. More specifically, whereas the prohibitive rabbinic position tends to retell the biblical confrontation by having God castigate or punish the protester, early Christian thinkers, by stark contrast, tend to reject the literal reading of Scripture altogether: any apparent protest by a biblical hero is deemed a misreading. This divergence further supports the contention that unlike the church fathers, who typically portray biblical heroes as paradigmatic followers of God, rabbinic Jews have less compunction about highlighting the sins and misconducts of their vaunted prophets and patriarchs.Footnote 10
Tannaitic Opposition: A New Theological Moment
Rabbinic texts from the tannaitic period generally evince an antipathy to the notion of challenging God. Indeed, many early rabbinic texts explicitly prohibit protesting God and God's justice system. Consider this anti-challenge midrash found in Sifrei Devarim, a third-century work:
The Rock [הצור] [Deuteronomy 32:4]—the Powerful One—His deeds are perfect [תמים פעלו] [ibid.]: His actions in regard to all creatures of the world are perfect; one should not murmur against his actions [ואין להרהר אחר מעשיו]. None of them can look at him and say: Why should the generation of the Flood have been swept away? Why should the people of the tower [of Babel] have been scattered from one end of the earth to the other? Why should the people of Sodom have been swept away by fire and brimstone? Why should Aaron have assumed the priesthood? Why should David have assumed the kingship? Why should Korah and his followers have been swallowed up by the earth? Therefore the verse goes on to say: Yea, all his ways are justice [כי כל דרכיו משפט] [ibid.]—He sits in judgment [בדין] on everyone and dispenses to each what is appropriate for him.Footnote 11
This tannaitic text links the prohibition against complaint to the first passage of Moses's poem at the end of Deuteronomy: “The Rock's [God's] deeds are perfect [תמים]; yea, all his ways are justice [משפט]” (Deuteronomy 32:4). While this biblical passage says nothing about criticizing God, the midrashic author assumes that questioning divine justice would be tantamount to denying the verse's theological principle that God's deeds are perfect. Sifrei Devarim posits that given God's perfect justice, it would not only be futile but inappropriate to challenge any of God's judicial decisions. For the act of critique, the midrash uses the term hirhur (הרהור), which literally means “conceiving” or “thinking,” but in many contexts such as this one refers to the act of critique.
A second tannaitic text that prohibits challenging God appears in Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, a third-century commentary on Exodus.
He is one; who can dissuade him? [והוא באחד ומי ישיבנו] Whatever he desires, he does [ונפשו אותה ויעש] [Job 23:13]: … [Interpreting this verse, Rabbi Akiva] said: One should not challenge [אין להשיב] the words of him who spoke and the world came into being, for every word is in accordance with truth [אמת] and every decision in accordance with justice [בדין].Footnote 12
Rabbi Akiva (second century CE), arguably the most dominant figure in rabbinic Judaism, bases his teaching on a passage from Job 23:13: “He [God] is one; who can dissuade him? [והוא באחד ומי ישיבנו] Whatever he desires, he does [ונפשו אותה ויעש].” In the biblical context, Job critiques God, bemoaning the fact that God never changes his mind. Whatever God desires—no matter how just or unjust—he will do; and, given God's immense power, there is no one who can stop him. Indeed, the entire chapter in which this passage appears is replete with critiques of God.
R. Akiva, however, turns the verse upside down. Instead of Job challenging God, R. Akiva uses the verse to declare the very opposite: that one should “not challenge God [אין להשיב].” To accomplish this exegetical inversion, R. Akiva offers a new explanation for why one would not protest God. Instead of stating that any protest would be futile, as the verse seems to suggest, R. Akiva remarks on God's moral perfection. God rules with truth and justice, and it would be senseless, if not subversive, to challenge God's decisions. Remarkably, a biblical passage that critiques God becomes the very source of its prohibition! And ironically, it is Job, the paradigmatic biblical character of chutzpah, who becomes the spokesperson requiring Jews to express due reverence to the Creator.
These early rabbinic voices of opposition to confronting God stand in stark contrast to the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple literature, where theological protest is not foreclosed as a legitimate response to suffering or unethical divine behavior. Alongside moments of radical submission to the divine will, such as the ‘Akedah episode (Genesis 22), Scripture is replete with instances in which individuals protest God without any repercussions. After none of these challenges does God castigate or punish the challenger.Footnote 13 As Yochanan Muffs has posited, “biblical religion does not seem to require the man of faith to repress his doubts in silent resignation. Abraham, Jeremiah and Job, all men who question God's ways, are hardly numbered among the wicked. There is even some evidence that God demands such criticism, at least from His prophets (cf. Ezekiel 22:3).”Footnote 14 Echoing this view, some of the writings of the Second Temple period depict confronting God as a justified, if not virtuous, human act in response to a perceived divine injustice. For example, the Jewish Platonist Philo of Alexandria (ca. 20 BCE–40 CE) lauds Abraham and Moses for their “courageous” challenges to God.Footnote 15 And, in the immediate aftermath of the Second Temple's destruction, the apocryphal works 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra contain Pseudo-Baruch and Pseudo-Ezra's protests against God. In these narratives, the protagonists are not chastised for violating any theological principle.Footnote 16
Thus, the tannaitic texts of Sifrei Devarim and Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael signal a new moment in the history of Jewish theology. Their explicit and unequivocal opposition to an individual confronting God stands in sharp contrast to virtually everything we encounter in the Hebrew Bible.
Late Antique Critiques of YHWH
We now turn to the crucial historical question: why should such strong opposition to challenging God and his justice system emerge at this point in Jewish history? Why were the Tannaim unwilling to tolerate or embrace a theological motif that had deep roots in the Hebrew Bible? We find a plethora of confrontational material in later rabbinic texts, but nothing of this sort in early rabbinic literature. Arthur Marmorstein places the tannaitic prohibition in the context of the religious battles over the Hebrew Bible and its God in the second century.Footnote 17 Marmorstein concentrates on the second-century Christian dualist Marcion of Sinope (85–160) who critiqued the God of the Hebrew Bible for anger, hubris, a penchant for war, and other acts of injustice.Footnote 18 While Marcion's work, entitled Antithesis, is no longer extant, Adolf von Harnack, a nineteenth-century German theologian, reconstructed it from the citations of early Christian heresiologists.Footnote 19 In this work, Marcion contrasts the evil creator-God of the Hebrew Bible with the good Lord of the New Testament by placing thirty-one conflicting statements from the two testaments side by side (Marcion had his own New Testament canon).Footnote 20 Proto-Orthodox Christian theologians, devoted to a stricter monotheism and to the unity of the two testaments, sharply condemned Marcion's teachings.
While Marmorstein focuses on the Marcionite critiques, we should not forget that there were other vocal anti-YHWH groups. Indeed, proto-Orthodox Christians were also defending the sanctity of the Old Testament and the righteousness of the Old Testament God against attacks waged by select gnostics, as well as by pagan intellectuals who denied the divinity and authority of the Old Testament.Footnote 21 Marmorstein suggests that these types of theological debates concerning the justness of the Old Testament God must have reached the ancient rabbis. Like the proto-Orthodox Christian theologians, R. Akiva and other Tannaim responded to these heretical claims by proclaiming a morally perfect and just God. Any admission or hint of divine error would only bolster the audacious charges of these Marcionites, gnostics, and pagans. To be sure, Marmorstein's claim of a direct influence must be qualified, as in recent years scholars have problematized the notion of “influence”Footnote 22 and have stressed the difficulty in reconstructing the precise historical context in which rabbinic theology was produced.Footnote 23 Moreover, Marmorstein's claim that the examples cited in Sifrei Devarim correspond in detail to Marcion's critiques in his Antithesis is not exact. There is no one-to-one correspondence: not every example found in the Sifrei appears in Marcion's (reconstructed) work. Notwithstanding these methodological reservations, Marmorstein's hypothesis that anti-God sentiments emanating from various sectors in late antiquity played a role in igniting anti-confrontational passages in early rabbinic texts seems plausible, if not likely. Accordingly, the two tannaitic texts analyzed above (from Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael and Sifrei Devarim) should be seen as emerging from this religious and cultural context. Unlike these heretics, the early rabbis not only proclaimed that God judges with truth and justice, but because of this controversy, they also prohibited even challenging God.
Conceptual Basis: Error or Disrespect?
Having investigated the religio-historical context for this new restrictive approach, we now turn to explore its conceptual basis. In both the Sifrei Devarim and Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael texts, the midrashic authors link the prohibition against critique or challenge to the theological assertion that God always judges with complete truth and fairness. For these midrashim, religious opposition to challenging God is intrinsically connected to their conception of God's nature. Because God is perfect, תמים (as in Deuteronomy 32:4), it would be entirely absurd to argue with him. Therefore, one who criticizes the divine must also hold an erroneous belief about God. Some early church thinkers highlight this dimension as well, such as Gregory the Great (540–604), who posits in the Moralia that “the acts of our Maker ought always to be reverenced without scrutiny [indiscussa], for they can never be unjust [iniusta].”Footnote 24
Related to the concern of falsehood and error is the notion that humans have limited knowledge and are thus in no position to judge the creator of the world. According to this view, human challenges reflect the height of arrogance because the challengers assume knowledge they do not have, in effect denying the reality of the deeply flawed human condition. Gregory the Great alludes to this idea too: “For to seek a reason for God's secret counsel is nothing else than to erect one's own pride against His counsel. So when the motive of God's acts cannot be discovered, in humility we should remain silent under those acts, for the senses of the flesh are not equal to the task of penetrating the secrets of God's majesty.”Footnote 25 This claim—that critiquing God reflects human hubris and a misguided sense of self—also appears in Midrash Tannaim, a third-century Ishmaelian commentary to Deuteronomy reconstructed by scholars:
You shall be perfect [תמים] before God [Deut 18:13]: Rabbi Eliezer the son of Jacob said: You shall not critique [God] [תהרהר] after [receiving] afflictions, and so did David say, “O Lord, my heart is not proud, nor do I have a haughty look. I do not have great aspirations, or concern myself with things that are beyond me” [Psalms 131:1]—for I did not critique [הרהרתי] my Maker.Footnote 26
Rather than reading the Psalms verse “my heart is not proud, nor do I have a haughty look” as a general statement by King David promoting humility and human inadequacy, as the simple reading suggests, R. Eliezer reads it as a verse explaining why one should never critique God [תהרהר]. By refraining from challenging God, a person reaffirms his limitations and inadequacy and through that inaction achieves the sought-after level of perfection [תמים]. Both of the aforementioned reasons—the perfect justness of God and human inadequacy—share a similar conceptual concern with confronting God: falsehood and error. But whereas R. Akiva (in the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael text) links this concern with divine perfection, R. Eliezer connects it with human imperfection.
By contrast, later rabbinic texts highlight not a cognitive or metaphysical problem with challenging God but a relational one. As creator of the world and giver of life, God should not be approached with irreverence and disrespect. Even if one assumes that God does at times judge incorrectly, the proper religious response should be submission rather than challenge. In rabbinic literature, this submissive approach is expressed by texts that compare one who protests God with one who protests a person of higher rank. For example, the Babylonian Talmud describes the sin of challenging God as akin to “disrespecting a teacher/master [כבוד הרב].”Footnote 27 Surely, the common link between the models of student/teacher and human/God is not the infallibility of the superior figure (as human teachers are fallible), but the hierarchical structure that must be protected. The “teacher” must remain in the superior position, the “student” in the inferior position. I note also that this text explicitly connects challenging God with a lack of respect (כבוד) rather than with falsehood or error.Footnote 28
Another example of this concern can be found in the following talmudic pericope: “Rava said: Dust should be put in the mouth of Job, because he makes himself the colleague of heaven [חברותא כלפי שמיא].… Rav [further] said: Dust should be placed in the mouth of Job: is there a slave who rebukes his master [כלום יש עבד שמוכיח את רבו]?”Footnote 29 In the Bible, God reprimands Job's critiques because they are spoken “without knowledge” (דעת) (as in Job 38:2, 4); Job's crime is due to cognitive error. By contrast, in this talmudic text, Job's crime is not cognitive but relational. Rava denounces Job for presumptuously and incorrectly viewing himself as a friend of God, rather than the slave that he truly is. While a friend has the right to casually engage his master with such frankness of speech, a slave does not: “is there a slave who can rebuke his master?”
In the Christian tradition, John Chrysostom (347–407) echoes this relational approach: “[W]e must not argue with God … [Since] when we are in the presence of a king, we do not dare argue with him [lit. speak back, antiphthenxasthai”] … even more so we must behave before God.”Footnote 30 As in the preceding talmudic text, opposition to confrontation is driven by notions of respect for a superior, and thus would apply to both a human and divine king, albeit to different degrees.Footnote 31 In another place, Chrysostom makes this point explicitly: “by prying into the person of God you are not honoring God.”Footnote 32 Like Rava in the Talmud, Chrysostom's opposition to confronting God is not related to harboring false notions about God, but to a lack of proper respect exhibited towards God. Along these lines, one of the Pseudo-Clementine works avers that “it is not suitable that one who is created judge the Creator, but that to judge the work of another belongs to him who is either of equal skill or equal power.”Footnote 33 In this view, only one who assumes a similar or greater place in the social hierarchical structure could critique another. This would naturally preclude a human critique of God.
The Moral-Exegetical Context
Rabbinic opposition to confronting God is not relegated to tannaitic texts; it also reverberates in subsequent rabbinic texts of the amoraic (fourth and fifth centuries) and postamoraic periods (sixth to eighth century). Like the tannaitic material, these passages express the restrictive view while often ignoring the explicit biblical context. For example, in Genesis 6:7, God announces that, because of the grievous sins of humanity, he will destroy the world with a flood: “I will blot out [אמחה] from the earth the men whom I created.” But rather than reading אמחה as meaning “I will blot out,” an anonymous teaching from Bereshit Rabbah (redacted ca. fifth century) anachronistically reads the term as an Aramaic appellation [מחי] meaning “protest.” The verse now reads: “I [God] can protest [ממחה] my creatures, but my creatures cannot protest me.”Footnote 34 Unlike the tannaitic texts discussed above, which had humans—Moses, Job, King David—express the prohibition on critique, this later midrash places the normative maxim into the mouth of God. In addition, unlike the tannaitic texts, which connect the prohibition to theological error, Bereshit Rabbah seems to associate it with the considerable hierarchical gap between God and humanity: “I can protest [ממחה] my creatures, but my creatures cannot protest me.”
What might have driven this anonymous sage to counterintuitively reinterpret Genesis 6:7 as a statement criticizing those who protest God? There are no apparent biblical gaps or lacunae that demand resolution. It may be that the author planted this teaching specifically in a context where readers would be prone to protest. We know that God's decision to destroy the entire world during the generation of the Flood prompted many theological questions and critiques from the Second Temple period onward.Footnote 35 The “heretic” Marcion of Sinope (85–160) used the flood narrative to demonstrate the cruelty and injustice of the Old Testament God.Footnote 36 And some late midrashic texts expressed their moral anxieties about God's handling of the Flood by having biblical characters challenge God's actions.Footnote 37 In order to preempt these sorts of claims, the anonymous sage in Bereshit Rabbah 6:7 warns the reader of the narrative not to even consider such a response. As with the Job prooftext adduced by R. Akiva above (in Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael), this amoraic midrash justifies its anti-protest sentiment by rereading a biblical section that might seem to cast aspersions on God's moral character. Thus, a passage that introduces God's desire to commit virtual omnicide is now read as a statement condemning those who would protest that very divine act.
The rabbinic move to insert anti-protest teachings into ethically problematic scriptural verses also appears in postamoraic texts. A good example is Isaiah 26:20, where the prophet warns the Israelites: “Go, my people, enter your chambers [בחדריך] and lock your doors behind you. Hide but a little moment, until the indignation [זעם] [of God] passes. For lo! The Lord shall come forth from his place to punish the dwellers of the earth for their iniquity.” In this verse, Isaiah commands the Israelites to hide in their homes in preparation for God's punishing the wicked of the world's nations. The passage problematically implies that God's wrath will destroy all people, righteous and wicked alike, who are found outside of their houses. To escape God's destructive anger, the Israelites are warned to hide inside their homes.Footnote 38
On this Isaiah passage, Midrash Tanḥuma, a late rabbinic text (ca. seventh century) comments:
Go, my people, enter into your chambers: Look into the chambers of your heart, and see that it was not in proportion to your sins that I brought sufferings upon you,Footnote 39 for “your chambers” are nothing but kidney chambers. Thus it is stated [in Proverbs 20:27]: Searching all the chambers of the belly. But, if sufferings come upon you, do not open your mouth [לא תפתח פיך] and complain against the measure of justice [תקרא תגר אחר מדת הדין]. Rather and shut your doors behind you. Why? Hide for just a moment until the anger passes.Footnote 40
Instead of Isaiah's warning the Israelites to remain in their homes at the time of divine wrath, the Tanḥuma has Isaiah exhorting Israel to remain silent during moments of mass destruction by reinterpreting “chamber” (חדר) as a kidney chamber rather than as a house chamber. The charge is no longer to turn inside one's own house, but to turn even further inside one's own body.Footnote 41 This teaching transforms the prophet's concern about God's wrath for humanity to humanity's wrath for God. Moreover, the Tanḥuma extends the prohibition of complaint, applying it not only to the First Temple period (as the context suggests) but to any moment of suffering (יסורין): “But, if sufferings come upon you, do not open your mouth and complain against the measure of justice.” For this midrashic author, the appropriate theological response to pain is not to “open one's mouth” and complain, but to turn “into the chambers of your heart.” Finally, note how the Tanḥuma uses a different term to express its negative view of confrontation: not הרהור (as in Sifrei), להשיב (as in Mekhilta), or מחאה (as in Bereshit Rabbah) but קורא תגר, “to reproach” (lit. to call out “partial”).
In short, like Job 23 and Genesis 6, Isaiah 26:20 presents its readers with a morally problematic God who is prepared to strike the righteous along with the wicked. But interestingly, and I argue not coincidentally, it is in these very contexts that these rabbinic texts anchor their opposition to protest. Sensitive to the problematic biblical descriptions of God, the rabbinic authors warn their readers to ignore or bracket the problem, to refrain from judging God. Quite cleverly, they do so not by basing these sentiments on their own authority, but by reading these sentiments back into the problematic textual passages themselves. The words of Scripture that communicate the problem on a surface level also communicate its appropriate religious response.
From Prohibition to Punishment
Although R. Akiva and other Tannaim prohibit one from challenging God, they do not mention that any humanly or divinely imposed punishments might accompany the act. By contrast, in the post-tannaitic period, the act of critiquing or verbally disrespecting God is not only opposed but also met with harsh penalties. Indeed, one can say that some post-tannaitic texts intensify the opposition beyond that expressed in earlier texts. I argue that this radicalization of opposition emerges specifically in a cultural climate where, as David Kraemer has shown, challenging God has become a legitimate, if not valorized, rabbinic motif.Footnote 42 It is quite probable that those sages who opposed confrontation sought new ways to quash this emerging literary motif, and the adoption of harsh penalties might have been one of them. Some rabbinic texts associate this extreme view with the Amora Rav Elazar b. Pedat, who seems to have succeeded Rabbi Akiva in leading the conservative camp.Footnote 43 Consider this talmudic passage:
Levi ordained a fast but no rain fell. He thereupon exclaimed: “Master of the Universe, you did go up and take your seat on high, but you have no mercy upon your children.” Rain fell, but he became lame.
R. Elazar [the son of Pedat] said: Let a man never address himself in a reproachful manner towards God [lit. “hurl words heavenwards”] [אל יטיח אדם דברים כלפי מעלה], seeing that one great man did so and he became lame. And who was it? Levi.Footnote 44
R. Elazar interprets the aftermath of Levi's audacious and direct challenge to God in a time of famine as proof that one should never criticize God; after Levi boldly turned to God and proclaimed, “You have no mercy upon your children,” he becomes lame. R. Elazar sees Levi's horrible predicament as a sign that Levi has been directly punished for his brazenness. In contrast to the aforementioned texts, this talmudic pericope does not rely on a biblical passage to anchor its opposition, but on a contemporary story. Without scriptural backing, the story reveals the painful consequences that await a person who engages in this sort of scandalous behavior.
R. Elazar's vociferous opposition to speaking imperiously to God also emerges in his reading of the famous first-century BCE legend, where a drought-stricken community called upon the miracle worker Ḥoni to use his powers to bring rain:
He [Ḥoni] drew a circle and stood within it and exclaimed, “Master of the Universe, Your children have turned to me [to request rain] because they believe me to be a member of your household [lit. “son in your house”] [בן בית]; I swear by your great name that I will not move from here [איני זז מכאן] until you have mercy upon your children [and bring rain].”Footnote 45
In response to this act, Shimon b. Shetaḥ, the brother of Queen Salome Alexandra, declared:
Were it not that you are Ḥoni, I would have placed you under a ban [נידוי], but what can I do unto you who nudges [מתחטא] God and he accedes to your request, as a son that nudges his father [כבן שהוא מתחטא על אביו] and he accedes to his request.Footnote 46
The Mishnah does not provide the specific reason as to why Shimon would have excommunicated Ḥoni. Scholars have put forward a number of theories, including: that Ḥoni's act consisted of magic; that Ḥoni was one of many charismatic miracle workers opposed by the rabbinic establishment; that Ḥoni's attempts to stop the rainfall violated Jewish law; that Ḥoni used an inappropriate vow; or that Honi used impudent and disrespectful language when leveling his threat (“I will not move from here [איני זז מכאן] until you have mercy upon your children”).Footnote 47 Not surprisingly, this last explanation was already offered in the Talmud by our R. Elazar.Footnote 48
We have seen how R. Elazar regards “hurling words” or “speaking presumptuously” towards God as irreverent acts that are not only prohibited, but also warrant punishment—either at the hands of the divine court (Levi becomes lame) or the human court (Ḥoni's theoretical excommunication). In both cases, R. Elazar derives the harsh penalty from a story or legend, rather than from a biblical prooftext. By contrast, other late midrashim place the concept of a confrontational penalty onto a scriptural verse, or use this form of penalty as a hermeneutical tool. Two late exegetical narratives illustrate this phenomenon. The first reframes the Binding of Isaac, perhaps the most famous and moving story in the Hebrew Bible. In Genesis 22, God “tests” (נסה) Abraham's faith by commanding him to sacrifice his most beloved son, Isaac, as a burnt offering. In the Bible, God's command is presented as a test of faith—one which Abraham courageously passes. This reading continues to be the dominant one in rabbinic literature.Footnote 49
However, a rabbinic passage from Midrash Tanḥuma rewrites the narrative and paints a very different picture:
You find that Abraham once criticized the Attribute of Justice [מהרהר אחר מדת הדין]. And what did he say? Rabbi Levi said: He said to himself: It appears to me as though I have already received my full reward in this world, inasmuch as the Holy One, blessed be he, has assisted me against the kings and has saved me from the furnace. Surely, I have received my full reward; there can be no additional reward awaiting me in the world to come. The Holy One, blessed be he, said to him: Since you dare criticize my actions [כיון שהרהרת אחר מעשי], you must bring a burnt offering to me. Therefore, he said: “Take your son, your favored one, Isaac whom you love, and go to the Land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering [‘olah] on one of the heights that I will point out to you” [Genesis 22:2].Footnote 50
This startling Tanḥuma teaching, attributed to R. Levi, regards the painful episode not as a test of faith but as a punishment for Abraham's critique of God's attribute of justice. Abraham does not challenge God because he has suffered too much—rather, because he has not suffered at all. God has always been Abraham's savior, rescuing him in times of distress. Showered by God's goodness in this world, Abraham is deeply concerned that he will have no more merit remaining to secure divine favor in the more important next world. Abraham's line of thinking anticipates the rabbinic tradition that God punishes the righteous for their minor transgressions in this world as a sign of love, protecting them from incurring a more painful punishment in the next world.Footnote 51 As a righteous person, Abraham questions God's fairness in bestowing upon him, a faithful devotee of God, such an easy life. According to the Tanḥuma, Abraham's critique of God constitutes a theological sin requiring atonement through a burnt offering. That burnt offering, the ‘olah, was fulfilled by bringing Isaac as a “sacrifice.” And to support its claim, the Tanḥuma notes that God describes the Binding of Isaac as a “burnt offering” in Genesis 22:2.Footnote 52
A second example in which the sages use the idea of a “confrontational penalty” as a hermeneutical tool surfaces in one rabbinic retelling of the narrative of the spies (Numbers 13). In the Bible, Moses dispatches twelve spies to gather information about the soon-to-be-conquered Land of Canaan and its inhabitants. To the dismay of Moses, upon the spies' return, ten of them advocate abandoning the idea of conquering Canaan altogether, for two reasons. First, they claim that the Israelites are militarily weaker than the natives, as the natives are “stronger than we” (חזק הוא ממנו) (Numbers 13:31); and, second, even if Israel were to emerge victorious in war, the Land of Canaan “devours its inhabitants” (ibid., v. 32). In response, God punishes them through a deadly plague because of the “evil words” spoken about the land (ibid., 14:37).
In this biblical episode, the spies refrain from disparaging God, reserving their negative assessments for either the Promised Land or the people of Israel. By contrast, Bamidbar Rabbah, a midrash associated with the late Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu group, preserves the following tradition:
Reish Lakish said: They hurled [insulting] words [הטיחו דברים] at the One above. Because of this transgression [עון] severe decrees were issued against them. What did the Holy One, blessed be he, say to Jeremiah? Go and tell them: You do not know what you have uttered with your mouth. With the noise of a great tumult [Jeremiah 11:16] which you uttered, what have you brought upon yourselves? He has kindled fire [ibid.] upon you; You shall bear your punishment [עונותיכם] for forty years, corresponding to the number of days—forty days—that you scouted the land [Numbers 14:34].Footnote 53
Here, the spies do not merely “speak words” to God, but now, more forcefully, “hurl words” (הטיחו דברים) to God. And, significantly, this post-amoraic reformulation of Reish Lakish's teaching explicitly labels the critique of God as a “sin” (עון).Footnote 54 Furthermore, the “sin” is a serious one as it propels God to issue “severe decrees” against Israel, including delaying Israelite entry into the Promised Land for forty years, and even bringing the destruction of the First Temple.Footnote 55
In these texts we see how rabbinic opposition to the protest trope turns from mere disapproval in the tannaitic strata into a sin that incurs a variety of punishments in the post-tannaitic strata.Footnote 56 This transformation serves as an interpretive tool to explain legendary stories (Levi's becoming lame), vague tannaitic formulations (Shimon's opposition to Ḥoni), as well as foundational biblical stories such as the Binding of Isaac (Genesis 18) and the spies narrative (Numbers 13). Rather than seeing this reality as evidence of a late rabbinic culture that loathes the confrontational motif, I propose that, on the contrary, it is a reaction to the dominant rabbinic ethos of its day, which sanctioned the daring gesture. Thus, both the sharpest formulations of opposition and their approval can be found in late aggadic texts, signaling that the question of the legitimacy of challenging and critiquing God played a central role within late rabbinic culture.
Late Antique Reception of Biblical Confrontations
If indeed the rabbinic period marks a new theological moment and the beginnings of an anti-protest tradition, then how did these stringent voices come to terms with the fact that biblical heroes such as Moses, Jeremiah, Habakkuk, and Job protested God with seeming impunity, even at times with explicit divine approval? If challenging God is prohibited, why does Scripture fail to castigate these daring debaters? This question must have presented itself not only to the ancient Jewish rabbis such as R. Akiva and R. Elazar, but also to the church fathers. I argue that, broadly speaking, while early Jewish and Christian theologies converge in their opposition to challenging God, they diverge on how to read the confrontational narratives of Scripture. More specifically, whereas the conservative Jewish camp tends to retell the dialogue by having God castigate or punish the protester, early Christian thinkers tend to reject the literal reading of Scripture: any apparent protest is viewed as a misreading. To support this hypothesis and further illustrate these contrasting methods, in what follows, I trace early Jewish and Christian readings of memorable biblical protests, including those launched by Job, Moses, and Habakkuk.
Using courtroom imagery, the biblical Job launches the most dramatic and intense protests of God in the Hebrew Bible.Footnote 57 Job admonishes God both indirectly (in the third person) as well as directly (in the second person) for creating an unjust world in which he personally suffers. The author of Job does not have God immediately respond to these protests. Even when Job confronts God directly, there is a deafening silence from heaven.Footnote 58 Eventually, however, God does respond to Job's complaints, albeit with inconsistent responses. While initially rebuking Job with “Who is this who darkens counsel speaking without knowledge? … Speak [only] if you have understanding” (Job 38:2, 4), God praises Job's speeches at the book's close, declaring that, contrary to his friends, only Job “has spoken correctly” (ibid., 42:7). Moreover, God doubles Job's fortunes that he had lost (ibid., 42:10). As the book concludes with divine praise and reward, one gets the impression (ch. 38 notwithstanding) that Job's protests are not regarded by God as “sinful” or “rebellious.”
Because the overall sense of the book—if one judges from the conclusion—is that its author sanctions protest, the early rabbis who prohibited protesting God were forced to employ interpretive strategies to neutralize or account for the apparent divine endorsement.Footnote 59 According to a mishnah in ‘Eduyot, R. Akiva maintained that Job is punished in the afterlife, although Scripture does not mention this punishment.Footnote 60 R. Akiva likely regarded Job's remonstrations of the divine as the very opposite of the relational model that R. Akiva himself had championed. Rather than accepting suffering in silence or blessing God, Job, to quote R. Akiva, “remonstrated when punished” (לוקה ומבעט)Footnote 61 Clearly, the great rabbi's strong opposition to any critique of God—even in the face of immense pain—explains his startling antagonism towards Job, whom R. Akiva believes languished in Gehenna for twelve months, together with the likes of the generation of the Flood, the ancient Egyptians, and other wicked people.Footnote 62 Although R. Akiva does not make explicit why Job deserved such harsh punishment, Ephraim Urbach reasonably surmises that “this accords with [R. Akiva's] view of Job as a challenger [of God].”Footnote 63
The rabbis also sustain their anti-protest sensibilities by ignoring God's praise of Job in chapter 42, instead highlighting God's rebuke in chapter 38. This approach appears in the late midrash Pesikta Rabbati, which posits that Job inappropriately “raised a cry [קרא תגר] against the Attribute of Justice.”Footnote 64 Attributing the teaching to R. Ḥaninah b. Papa, the midrash avers that had Job refrained from protesting and accepted his suffering in silence, he would have achieved the same religious standing as the patriarchs. Jews in their daily prayers would have characterized God not only as “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” but also as “the God of Job.” But as Job failed to remain quiet, God's name would not be forever linked to his. In addition, Pesikta Rabbati has God berating Job directly, telling him that because of his myriad reproaches, he failed to attain the religious heights of Adam, Abraham, Isaac, and Moses, who did not challenge God when punished.Footnote 65
In short, to express their anti-protest sensibilities, some rabbis imagine God rebuking or even punishing Job for his chutzpah. By contrast, many of the church fathers employed a different exegetical strategy to voice their stringent view: they denied that Job ever challenged or critiqued God.Footnote 66 Through this rereading, Job is held up as a paragon of Christian virtue. For example, the Latin church father Tertullian (160–225 CE) avers:
By all [Job's] pains he was not drawn away from his reverence for God; but he has been set up as an example and testimony to us, for the thorough accomplishment of patience … What a bier for the devil God erected in the person of that hero! What a banner did he rear over the enemy of his glory, when, at every bitter message, that man uttered nothing out of his mouth but thanks to God.Footnote 67
According to this North African theologian, Job never lashes out at God; as in R. Akiva's legend, he only praises God during his afflictions. Following this reading, how would Tertullian read those biblical passages where Job explicitly protests the Creator? While Tertullian does not treat this question, later Christian theologians grappled with it.Footnote 68
In the fourth century, Didymus the Blind (313–398 CE), the Alexandrian biblical scholar, echoed Tertullian's view that Job was a “model of patience in the face of suffering.” Instead of disparaging others (oligoria), including God, he courageously accepted his fate (andreia). But Didymus goes further than Tertullian by explaining away Job's protests. As Richard Layton notes, “Didymus has a consistent strategy for handling the sharp-tongued complaints in Job's prayers. Although putatively directed at God, Didymus regards the prayers as speech intended to be overheard by Job's friends.”Footnote 69 In other words, rather than reading Job's protests as a rebuke of God, Didymus reads them as a rebuke of Job's friends. For Didymus, “the incendiary prayers are part of Job's pedagogical technique”; as such, they are merely a clever rhetorical method by which Job could teach his friends that God does not punish the innocent.Footnote 70 As a result, according to Layton, Didymus “flattened the emotional experience of his protagonist” and turned “Job's imprecations into the measured words of an instructor.”Footnote 71 A similar, yet different, explanation is found in the writings of Saint Ambrose (340–397 CE), who, according to Judith Baskin, regards Job's “disturbing words” as merely voicing the “devil's advocate.”Footnote 72 According to Ambrose, Job in effect declares: “I am going to say what I do not approve; but I shall utter wrong words to refute you.”Footnote 73
Following these Christian exegetes, Gregory the Great (540–604 CE), in his famous commentary on Job, the Moralia, rejects a literal reading of the book of Job, denying that Job ever protested the divine. Susan Schreiner formulates Gregory's point this way: “Gregory resolutely defends the reverence and piety of all Job's words … Job never murmured against divine justice…. He warns that we must understand Job's words according to their ‘interior meaning.’”Footnote 74 Moreover, Gregory argues that the reader who believes that Job argued with God, himself becomes the sinner: through this interpretive act, the reader makes God the loser in his wager with the devil. In the words of Gregory: “Whoever then maintains that the holy man [Job] … committed sin by his words, what else does he [the reader] do than reproach God, who had pledged Himself for him, with being the loser?”Footnote 75 Thus, not only does Gregory deny that Job rebuked God by rejecting the plain sense of Scripture, but he also asserts that those readers who affirm Job's rebuke are actually the real rebukers, as they are claiming that God lost the wager with Satan. For Gregory, the act of claiming that Job rebuked God is itself an act of blasphemous rebuke.
What drove these early Christian exegetes, in contrast to the rabbis, to neutralize Job's strident and irreverent language? Why did they not resolve the problem of Job's harsh speeches in the same manner as many rabbis had—by depicting him as a sinner? Part of the answer is that the image of Job in the Christian tradition was not primarily shaped by the Hebrew Bible's Job, but rather by the Septuagint's Job, which downplays the stinging critiques of God. As Lawrence Besserman has noted: “One finds that the Greek translator [of the Septuagint] consistently introduced changes designed to tone down Job's presumptuousness and eliminate his most impious remarks from the Hebrew … the changes in the Septuagint are relatively slight, but they are far from insignificant.”Footnote 76 Moreover, unlike the ancient rabbis, the church fathers were aware of and affected by two other canonical texts that omit any trace of Job's impatience or protest: the first-century CE apocryphal Testament of Job, which “emphasizes Job's perfect patience and endurance” as a “wrestler for God” rather than as a “rebel against God,”Footnote 77 and the New Testament's Epistle of James, which lauds the “patience of Job.”Footnote 78
While the image of Job in the Septuagint, the Testament of Job, and the Epistle of James significantly contributed to the church fathers' decision to remove any real protest from the mouth of Job, it was by no means the sole factor. The church fathers took a similar approach with other biblical figures of protest such as Moses and Habakkuk. As with their interpretations of Job's challenges, early Christian and rabbinic readings of these human-divine dialogues often diverge. Whereas Christian interpretations tend to deny any real challenge, conservative Jewish voices tend to affirm the reality of the scriptural protest, but they then construct a new narrative conclusion that reflects their opposition to that protest.
We begin with Moses, a well-known figure to have challenged God. In the early part of the Exodus narrative, Moses complains about God's earlier recommendation that he and Aaron should confront Pharaoh to free the Israelite slaves; after the confrontation, Israel's workload had increased. Moses uses strident language in Exodus 5:22 when he questions God: “Why did you bring harm [למה הרעתה] to this people?” In the Bible, God ignores Moses's critique and merely reasserts his promise that he will redeem Israel with “great might” (6:1). This divine response supports the assertion that the biblical God tolerates, if not welcomes, critiques from his prophets.
However, unlike a simple reading of this biblical section, the Midrash Tanḥuma crafts a new narrative ending whereby God does indeed punish Moses for his aggressive and irreverent posture. In this midrashic reworking, God accuses Moses of hirhur, of criticizing God's attributes, a crime that, according to Sifrei Devarim, Moses himself would prohibit in Deuteronomy 32:4.Footnote 79 Unlike the patriarchs, Moses fails to remain silent in the face of adversity and instead lashes out at God. According to the Tanḥuma, for this act, God punishes Moses with banishment from the Promised Land. This explanation is startling: according to Numbers 20, God only denies Moses entry to the land after the incident at the waters of Meribah, forty years after the Exodus. Furthermore, as is standard with midrashic elaborations, the new elements to the narrative are not only posited but written into the scriptural narrative via exegesis. The divine claim of “You shall soon see what I will do to Pharaoh” (Exodus 6:1) is now understood as a limiting phrase: you, Moses, will only see God's war with the Egyptians, but you will not see God's war with the native population of Canaan.
Unlike the Tanḥuma, which expresses its opposition to protest by having Moses punished, Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE) voices his antagonism to the confrontational motif, inversely, by softening the tone of Moses's challenge: “The words that Moses speaks to the Lord are not words of contumacy or indignation but of inquiry and prayer. This fact is clear from the way the Lord answered him. For he did not accuse him of infidelity but revealed what he was about to do.”Footnote 80 According to Augustine, Moses could not have spoken inappropriate words to God because God would have scolded or punished him had he in fact done so. Because Scripture does not record any such divine reprimand, Moses's words must be understood as a moderate question rather than as a serious critique or protest. For the Tanḥuma, by contrast, the Bible does contain a divine rebuke of Moses, albeit one that must be unearthed from the words of Scripture; while the real divine response is not readily apparent on the text's surface, it can be midrashically decoded.
These two types of conservative responses—constructing a new ending that portrays protest as sin (Jewish) or denying a protest altogether (Christian)—are also found in Jewish and Christian readings of Habakkuk, labeled the “prophetic Job” by Yehezkel Kaufmann.Footnote 81 The seventh-century BCE Judean prophet begins his book by confronting God about his own personal suffering: he sees a gap between God's essential nature and the reality of human suffering. For Habakkuk, while God theoretically cannot countenance wrongdoing, we live in a world in which God does “countenance treachery.” This disjunction bewilders the prophet, and in response he calls upon God to maintain and implement his just nature. Like Job, Habakkuk calls these challenges towards God a rebuke (תוכחה): “I will take stand on my watch, take up my station at the post, and wait to see what he will say to me, what he will reply to my rebuke [תוכחתי]” (Habakkuk 2:1).
In the Bible, God does not admonish Habakkuk for any of his challenges; rather, in response, he prophesies a brighter future (understood in the Jewish tradition as the coming of the Messiah). In a late midrashic rereading of the book, however, God does admonish Habakkuk for questioning divine justice: “Thereupon, God revealed himself to Habakkuk, and said: Will you raise a cry against me [קורא תגר]? Is it not written: ‘[The Rock!—His deeds are perfect, Yea, all his ways are just (משפט)]; A faithful God, never false, true and upright is he’ [Deuteronomy 32:4]”?Footnote 82 The midrash here has God rebuke Habakkuk for his claims of divine injustice because they contradict Moses's dictum from Deuteronomy 32:4: “God's ways are perfectly just.” God admonishes Habakkuk for rejecting this metaphysical truth. Strikingly, “at that moment,” according to the midrash, Habakkuk admits his error, announcing: “I spoke in error, as is said: ‘A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet: Upon words spoken in error’ [Habakkuk 3:1].” Of course, Habakkuk's concession of wrongdoing is found nowhere in Scripture, but it is a creative and noncontextual rereading of the strange Hebrew word shigyonot (שגיונות) appearing at the end of Habakkuk 3:1, a term that has baffled ancient and modern scholars alike.Footnote 83
In contradistinction, as we have seen in the early Christian reception of Job's and Moses's protest, the church fathers oppose the seeming sanction of biblical protests by rejecting the very premise that the prophet ever spoke words of critique or complaint. With regard to Habakkuk's protests, the church father Bishop Theodore of Mopsuestia (c. 350–428 CE) remarks:
It is not as though bringing a censure against God that the prophet [Habakkuk] says this [Habakkuk 1:2–4]. Rather, [Habakkuk] speaks this way as it is the custom with people who are in some sort of trouble or who are righteously indignant with those responsible to present the injustice of what is being done under the guise of censure. Blessed David also says in like manner, “Why, O Lord, do you keep your distance? Why do you look down on us in good times and in bad? When the godless act disdainfully, the poor person is inflamed,” and so on, saying this not to censure God but to express indignation with those responsible for it and at a loss as to how they are not quickly called to account.Footnote 84
Instead of understanding Habakkuk as leveling a charge of injustice against God, as a surface reading would suggest, Theodore interprets it as a censure against those within the community who generate and perpetuate that injustice. This is a common type of exegesis within the Christian tradition: interpreters redirect a prophet's words from a vertical axis (God) towards a horizontal one (other humans). Challenges and critiques of God are thus understood to be rhetorical devices through which prophets motivate society to produce a more moral and just world. More importantly, this ethical hermeneutic allows the church fathers to view the prophets as protesting human injustice, rather than divine injustice.
To be clear, I do not claim that these divergent paradigms of anti-protest readings apply for every early Jewish and Christian interpretation—yet they do tend to be the norms. We now must ask: what could account for these contrasting stringent approaches? While each biblical protest may have its own factors that influence the split (such as the differences in the Hebrew and Greek texts of Job), I would speculate that, in general, the divergence has more to do with the differing early Christian and rabbinic attitudes towards biblical prophets. Whereas the church fathers typically portray biblical heroes as paradigmatic followers of God (unless Scripture says otherwise), rabbinic Jews, on the other hand, have less compunction to highlight the sins and misconducts of their vaunted prophets and patriarchs.
* * * * *
The Oxford textbook World Religions Today, studied by thousands of undergraduates across the country, regards “debates with God” as a distinctively Jewish means to “achieve harmony with the will of God … where peace and justice will reign.”Footnote 85 To reinforce this typical scholarly assumption, Anson Laytner has collected hundreds of Jewish protest expressions from rabbinic literature, early medieval Jewish poetry, the Hebrew Chronicles of the Crusades, eastern European hasidic thought, and, finally, post-Holocaust theology.Footnote 86 However, such records of theological struggle are potentially distortive, as they present only one side of the picture; they ignore the fierce anti-protest traditions of Judaism. Indeed, these traditions of anti-protest were alive and well in the twentieth century. Consider this statement from Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Undsdorfer (1888–1944) of Bratislava, a victim of Auschwitz:
[A]ll justice is with [God], and there is no injustice to the just and the righteous.… Lord of the Universe, heaven forbid that we should question Your attributes and the justice of Your judgments.… We also need to conduct ourselves like children toward Him and not question His ways, heaven forbid. For justice is with Him. “Righteous are You, O Lord, and upright are Your judgments.”Footnote 87
Or take the pious demurral of anti-Zionist Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Ehrenreich (1863–1944) of Romania, also a victim of Nazi brutality:
[T]he reckless among us will open their mouths, asking questions and doubting God, “Why did God do this to pious and good Jews?” … [However] each person should be … very careful not to speak or to think, heaven forbid, against the Holy One. Though we do not understand, the Holy One knows. Justice is with Him, and He knows how He needs to behave.Footnote 88
This essay has shown that these pious sentiments are not a product of the twentieth century, but echo, and are nurtured by many rabbinic passages.
Indeed, the early rabbinic antagonism towards challenging God reflects a new moment in the history of Jewish theology. As a consequence of their submissive posture, early sages criticized biblical characters who protested God, even though no such criticism appears in Scripture. By contrast, early Christian exegetes, who similarly opposed theological protest but were hesitant to critique biblical heroes, creatively maintained their opposition (in the face of biblical evidence to the contrary) by denying that protests against God ever took place.
Finally, this essay traced how later rabbinic texts tend to radicalize their opposition to protest: they not only prohibit confrontation, but they also deem the irreverent act as incurring harsh penalties, such as bodily infirmity, excommunication, banishment from the Promised Land, or destruction of the temple. This intensified opposition should be seen as occurring in parallel with the emerging celebration of protest in the late rabbinic period, and further underscores how questions surrounding theological protest were of central importance to late rabbinic culture.
