Of God's Love and Jealousy

The love of God is a fundamental principle of Judaism. As such, it has consumed the thought of scholars and teachers, who in turn have fixed it firmly in the consciousness of anyone concerned with this religion. Yet such thinking centers on only one of the two possible meanings of the phrase “love of God.” Syntactically, God can function as either the object or the subject of the verb “love.” To use Latin grammatical terms, he can be either the genetivus obiectivus or the genetivus subiectivus, and of these two interpretations, religious consciousness overwhelmingly favors the first. ¹

In what follows, however, I shall attempt to demonstrate how fundamental and necessary the second interpretation is to Judaism, namely, how man’s love for God derives from God’s love for man. But if so, why has the loving God been marginalized in the believer’s mind? Why has God’s love become dull and faded, a mere poetic or literary expression bearing no theological or mythical significance whatsoever?

All this, however, could not completely rid the Israelite religion of the idea of a loving God. Preserved, most likely by the sheer force of its vitality, as the origin of the religious core of Judaism, this idea continues to reemerge in tradition—although it is sometimes barely recognizable through the many layers of disguises, euphemisms, and sublimations imposed on it in an attempt to make it more palatable to the masses. At times, the concept of a loving God is not only obscured, but significantly altered. Nevertheless, it has various stubborn elements—stemming, no doubt, from certain fixed patterns in the religious soul, and enhanced by literary and oral traditions—that refuse to die out, instead resurfacing time and again.

The different incarnations of this concept are intimately connected with the literary genre, philosophical context, and historical period in which they each appear. In general, Jewish thought and practice do not exist in a vacuum, but are part of the surrounding culture (and are not only influenced by it). One cannot, then, understand the idea of the love of God, either in its earlier or its later formations, without considering its expressions in the general culture. It is only through an examination of their common aspects that the particularities of each religion may be discovered.

 

What makes Judaism unique, I believe, is the intensity of the love of its God. It is a love that is both obsessive and possessive, unyielding and humorless, born of nothing and ending only in death; it is a love that consumes and obliterates itself in a fire of jealousy—and with it its object, and everyone else besides: “For love is as strong as death, jealousy as cruel as the grave. Its flames are flames of fire, a most vehement flame.”²

Those who saw monotheism as the main contribution of the Israelite religion to the world may have been right. Yet this monotheism is not, as some have defined it, “ethical monotheism,” nor is it ontological or philosophical monotheism (worldviews that originated in “pagan” religions such as Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy and Orphic mythology, and never had a strong hold on Judaism). Jewish monotheism is, at heart, distinctly mythical. It portrays God’s personality, the strength of his love and jealousy, and his categorical demand for human response: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.”³

The history of the People of Israel, as recorded by the canonical texts, is nothing but a chronicle of God’s love and jealousy. The biblical descriptions of love, intensified in the writings of the talmudic sages (as for example in the allegorical interpretation of Song of Songs), are very often accompanied by expressions of violent possessiveness and hatred. Following the sin of the golden calf, for example, the first of the adulteries of Israel (who is likened by the Talmud to a “bride who plays the harlot beneath her bridal canopy”⁷), God says to Moses, “Now therefore, let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them. And I will make of you a great nation.”⁸ And although he did not annihilate them at that time, there have been many occasions since when the People of Israel were diminished until only a small remnant remained. This remnant survived only because of the tension within God’s own soul, because of his passionate love, which engenders jealousy, which engenders hatred—and which, ultimately, reawakens love, because if Israel were to be completely obliterated, upon whom would God lavish his love? In the fierce words of the prophet Ezekiel: “What you have in your mind shall never be, when you say, ‘We will be like the Gentiles, like the families in other countries, serving wood and stone.’ As I live, says the Lord God, surely with a mighty hand, with an outstretched arm, and with fury poured out, I will rule over you.”⁹

 

The love and jealousy of God do not begin with the Israelite nation, but date back to the time before creation. The Torah does not tell us why God chose to create the universe (the sages note that reverence for God prohibits one from inquiring into such matters¹⁰). Yet the reason may be deduced from God’s subsequent actions: God, it appears, created the world because of his solitude and need for love. The sages articulate this idea in the following Midrash: “What is meant by ‘the first day’? Since the first day God created the world, he desired to dwell with his creatures in the terrestrial world.”¹¹ In the Middle Ages, this notion was systematized, its psychological aspects softened, in explanations that maintained that God created the world because “there is no king without a people”¹² or “the nature of good is to do good.”¹³ It took the great sixteenth-century kabbalist Rabbi Moshe Cordovero to restore the sexual motif of love-jealousy to its former prominence. According to Cordovero, at first God engaged in sha’ashua (play), an autoerotic movement that resulted in the engraving of the Torah into God’s essence. Consequently, entities and worlds were engraved into God’s essence as well; they grew increasingly distant from their origin, until they were able to satisfy the divine love’s desire for the existence of an other. Once separate, the “other” must employ mystical techniques in order to merge again with the Godhead (largely by means of the Torah, engraved as it is in both God and man). This completes the purpose of creation, which is, in essence, a love that can be satisfied only by a dialectic process of ratzo vashov (back and forth), both creating its object and consuming it by turns.

Let us return to the biblical account of creation. Was God pleased with his world? Ostensibly he was. The description of the six days, after all, concludes with the verse “Then God saw everything that he had made, and indeed it was very good.”¹⁴ The sages, however, saw in this verse an allusion to the angel of death.¹⁵ Their ironic reading is confirmed, I believe, by the following passage describing the Sabbath, which conveys something of the arduous and excessive toil of the preceding six days: “Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it he rested from all his work that God had created and made.”¹⁶ Even more telling is the parallel verse: “And on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.”¹⁷ The expression “and was refreshed” (vayinafash) seems to imply that God sighed and exhaled (nashaf) in relief at having completed a difficult and burdensome task.

Of particular difficulty is the story of man. Presumably God created man for companionship and love, yet from the very first moment he constantly plagues humankind with his jealousy and hatred. This is the crux of the entire biblical narrative, both in its literal sense and according to the exegetical readings of the sages, which developed this theme even further. They go so far as to find jealousy and rivalry in the most benevolent of God’s deeds. When God creates woman, he says, “It is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helpmeet.”¹⁸ We might have thought God was concerned about man and sought to relieve him of the solitude he himself had felt prior to creation. Rashi, however, offers another interpretation: “So that they should not say that there are two authorities: God, who is unique in the higher realms and has no mate, and this one [man], who is unique in the lower realms and has no mate.”¹⁹ The helpmeet (ezer kenegdo), then, was created much more as an opponent to man (kenegdo) than as a helper (ezer). Rashi’s explanation is derived from the Midrash in which divine jealousy is roused by the possibility of man imitating God and creating an artificial creature (a golem).²⁰ The idea of rivalry between the creator of an artificial being and God can be found in several medieval sources concerning the golem.²¹ The fear of this rivalry often resulted in an absolute rejection, or at least significant restriction, of such practices: If man is to create a golem, he can never do so alone.

Either way, the biblical text itself informs us that it was jealousy that prompted God to impose the prohibition on eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge and the tree of life. So claims the serpent, when he tries to entice the woman into eating the fruit, “You will not surely die. For God knows that on the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”²² This seemingly irreverent statement is confirmed by God himself, who, seeing that his command has been violated, says, “Behold, the man has become like one of us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.”²³ According to the sages, the serpent was referring to the professional jealousy between artisans, since by his eating the forbidden fruit man also became capable of creating worlds.²⁴ This reading, too, suggests that the serpent could have been telling the truth, if not in the sense of the creation of a golem, then in the sense of the engendering of a flesh-and-blood child. Indeed, woman’s role of childbearing—“In pain you shall bring forth children”²⁵—is mentioned only as a consequence of eating the fruits of the tree of knowledge. In other words: Although with sorrow, you shall nevertheless bear children.²⁶

The expulsion from the Garden of Eden was only the beginning of the struggle between God and man. A mere few generations later, God declared, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.”²⁷ Still, God retained an object for his love, as is written in the following verse: “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.”²⁸ Shortly afterward, the strife was rekindled by the generation of the Tower of Babel, which aroused God’s jealousy by saying: “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens. Let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”²⁹ God explicitly stated his concern: “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do. Now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them.”³⁰ Hence, God foiled humanity’s plan in its early stages.

Throughout all these generations, God seems to have been searching for a person on whom to bestow his love. First he singled out Enoch, who proved unable to live long under such love’s burden. Then God found a “lover” in Abraham.³¹ The trials and tribulations that God, in his love, conferred on Abraham were great. The sages enumerate ten ways in which God tested Abraham. Let us examine the last and greatest of these tests, the binding of Isaac. Why did God order Abraham to sacrifice his son? The answer seems to me to be implied by the divine command’s particular choice of words: “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering.”³² Why the repetitive “your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love?” Implicit in these words, I think, is the voice of a jealous lover. For a hundred years God was Abraham’s only beloved, and now that he has borne a son, God fears the rivalry. Thus he puts Abraham’s love to the ultimate test: the demand to sacrifice his child for the sake of God and his love.

 

Indeed, human sacrifice—and child sacrifice in particular—is the fitting response to such a fastidious love. We ought therefore to explore Judaism’s approach toward such rites. We have been taught to think of it as categorically negative, and a cursory reading of our texts would seem to concur. For example, when the Torah wants to illustrate the loathsome nature of the nations inhabiting the land before the Israelite conquest, it says, “You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way; for every abomination to the Lord which he hates they have done for their gods; for they burn even their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods.”³³ On closer inspection, however, this approach turns out to be far more ambivalent and complex (its precise nature is the subject of debate among numerous scholars, each offering a different interpretation). This complexity, in my opinion, stems from the above-mentioned duality between the personal, spontaneous religion and its public, institutionalized expressions.

According to more than one Midrash, Abraham did in fact sacrifice Isaac, who was then resurrected. This is not, of course, a literal reading of the original text. Yet there are many other biblical passages that indicate that the custom of sacrificing the firstborn was indeed practiced by the Israelites, just as it was by the neighboring nations. The kings of Judea, Ahaz and Manasseh, are reported to have “made [their] son[s] pass through the fire.”³⁴ This ritual, abolished by King Josiah, is also mentioned in the Torah³⁵ and in the Prophets³⁶; admittedly, these sources mention child sacrifice only to condemn it, but presumably other sources sanctioning this custom were upheld by those who actually practiced it. That such sources, now lost, once existed may be ascertained from the claims of their critics. Jeremiah, for instance, said: “And they built the high places of Baal which are in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire to Molech, which I did not command them, nor did it come into my mind.”³⁷ The emphasis “which I did not command them, nor did it come into my mind” sounds polemical; it contends, no doubt, with other versions of the Torah where such a commandment was stated. Nor should we be misled by the terms “Baal” and “Molech.” These names, as many scholars have suggested, probably do not designate other deities, but rather refer to none other than God: “Baal” was an appellation for the God of Israel (a title that the biblical authors sought to obliterate), and the term “Molech” is actually a type of sacrificial offering, as may be inferred from Phoenician inscriptions (the original Hebrew phrase lemolech bears the same grammatical form as another sacrificial offering, leolah).

The ancient legal status of this custom may be deduced from the words of the prophet Micah, “With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has shown you, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you? But to do it justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?”³⁸ Micah clearly belongs to the faction that was opposed to ritual in general and sacrificial offerings in particular (“For I did not speak to your fathers, or command them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices”³⁹). What is important for our purposes, however, is the fact that Micah puts the sacrifice of the firstborn on par with animal offering, indicating that the two were probably mentioned in the same source and derived from the same religious logic. Even more interesting is the position taken by Ezekiel. The prophet could not abolish the custom of firstborn sacrifice, which probably appeared in a text he deemed authoritative. He thus admits that it is indeed a divine command, but one that is bad and given as a punishment: “Therefore I also gave them up to statutes that were not good, and judgments by which they could not live. And I pronounced them unclean because of their ritual gifts, in that they caused all their firstborn to pass through the fire, that I might make them desolate.”⁴⁰ In fact, something of this law has survived in our own version of the Torah: “No person under the ban, who may become doomed to destruction among men, shall be redeemed, but shall surely be put to death.”⁴¹

Perhaps most important in the context of our discussion are the individual cases of child sacrifice. These reveal not only the existence of the human practice, but also the divine attitude toward it. For example, when the king of Moab saw that the battle was “too fierce for him” he then “took his eldest son who would have reigned in his place, and offered him as a burnt offering upon the wall, and there was great indignation against Israel. So they departed from him and returned to their own land.”⁴² While it is difficult to determine which God was angered by this sacrifice—the God of Israel or the Moabite deity Chemosh (the Bible appears to have intentionally used the obscure passive tense)—in the case of Jephthah’s daughter, no such ambiguity exists.

 

The story of Jephthah’s daughter warrants a closer reading:

I believe that Jephthah, when taking his vow, did not have animal sacrifice in mind. The phrase “whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me” suggests a person joyously greeting the victor upon his return. Jephthah most likely thought (whether consciously or unconsciously) of none other than his own daughter, who, we are told, “washis only child; besides her he had neither son nor daughter.” His surprise and grief upon seeing her before him, once the Ammonites were no longer a threat, are no evidence to the contrary. His victory, after all, was gained only by virtue of his vow, a fact that his daughter herself bravely acknowledges.

The validity of this interpretation is corroborated by many parallel narratives in other ancient religions. Analogous accounts may be found in the Canaanite mythology as described by Philoof Byblos, as well as in classical Greek literature, such as the tale of Iphigenia (in Aeschylus’ play), who was sacrificed by her father Agamemnon, commander of the Greek army, to ensure his troops’ safe passage back from Troy (Iphigenia’s words of acquiescence are remarkably similar to those of Jephthah’s daughter), or Heliodorus’ novel Aethiopica, in which the king of Ethiopia delivers a fervent speech in support of sacrificing his daughter. Another extremely similar story is that of Idomeneus, the Cretan hero and warrior who swore that, should he return safely from his sea voyage, he would sacrifice to Poseidon the first living being he met. Tragically, this turned out to be his only son.

Nevertheless, we must ask ourselves how the tale of Jephthah’s daughter was perceived by Jews of later generations. Here, too, one may discern both a personal and an institutional approach. The sages’ reading of this story clearly belongs to the latter. In a lengthy discussion on the subject in Genesis Rabba, the sages do not even allow for the possibility that Jephthah intended his daughter to be the object of his vow.⁴⁴ For them, Jephthah’s sin was in overlooking the risk that an impure animal—which cannot be sacrificed—may be the first creature to come out of his house. They also maintain that, even after he made his vow, Jephthah was under no obligation to keep it; the only debate among them is whether he was completely exempt or required to pay money in its stead. Like Micah, the Midrash presupposes a correspondence between human sacrifice and animal offering. Moreover, the sages claim that Jephthah ought to have asked Pinhas, the high priest, to absolve him of his vow, but was too proud to do so—a sin for which both he and the priest were punished. The sages, it seems, are loath even to consider the suspicion that God might have actually desired Jephthah’s daughter as a sacrificial offering.

Luckily, though, we have at our disposal another source dealing with the very same question: the Book of Biblical Antiquities (Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum). The work, written by a Jew probably toward the end of the first century c.e., was translated from Hebrew into Greek and from Greek into Latin. This third-hand translation is the only remaining version, yet we can still hear resonance of the original Hebrew throughout the text. The book was once believed to have been written by Philo of Alexandria, but today scholars reject this attribution: while Philo’s other writings feature sophisticated philosophical allegories, this narrative is infused with personal religious emotion, frank and heartfelt.

And sure enough, the story of Jephthah’s daughter is presented in the Book of Biblical Antiquities in an entirely different light.⁴⁵ Here, the maiden has been destined for sacrifice from birth, a destiny implied in her very name: Seila (from the Hebrew sheilah, “borrowing”). Jephthah himself concedes the inevitability of his daughter’s fate when he says to her: “Rightly is thy name called Seila, that thou shouldest be offered for a sacrifice.”⁴⁶ Indeed, the name Seila (whose original form might have been sheula, “borrowed”) is befitting of a young girl consecrated to God.⁴⁷

Upon learning of the vow, Seila delivers a passionate soliloquy, fortifying her father’s spirit and encouraging him to fulfill his obligation. She first expresses gratitude for the deliverance of the people. Such gratitude echoes the words of Jephthah’s daughter in the Bible, yet here it acquires a particularly enthusiastic tone: “And who is it that can be sorrowful in his death when he sees the people delivered?” This is not, however, the only justification offered by Seila, who goes on to praise the firstborn sacrifice and its inherent religious value: “Rememberest thou not that which was in the days of our fathers, when the father set his son for a burnt offering and he gainsaid him not, but consented unto him rejoicing? And he that was offered was ready, and he that offered was glad.”⁴⁸ The speech no doubt alludes to the binding of Isaac, but its generalizing statements suggest a widespread ancient custom of which the sacrifice demanded of Abraham is only one instance.

As opposed to the Bible and Midrash, the Book of Biblical Antiquities relates God’s response to the sacrifice, a response that, for our discussion, is of utmost importance:

And by night the Lord thought upon her, and said: Lo, now have I shut up the tongue of the wise among my people before this generation, that they could not answer the word of the daughter of Jephthah, that my word might be fulfilled, and my counsel not destroyed which I had devised: and I have seen that she is more wise than her father, and a maiden of understanding more than all the wise which are here.⁴⁹

God, it appears, did indeed desire to receive Jephthah’s daughter as a sacrificial offering, and at night he thought of it with pleasure. He was also pleased with her wisdom, through which he silenced the wise men of her generation who might have foiled his plan. Who are the wise men to whom God is referring, and what are the words he wishes to silence? The only feasible answer, I believe, is the sages of institutionalized religion—such as those quoted in the above-mentioned midrash—who opposed child sacrifice and contrived various halachic ploys by which Jephthah could (and should) have avoided it. Admittedly, the Book of Biblical Antiquities probably predated the Midrash in question, but similar views were apparently voiced in its day. It is such opinions that the textseeks to refute when it describes God’s delight at the prospect of receiving Jephthah’s daughter.

 

Abraham, as we know, did not offer his son in sacrifice, but ended up exchanging him for a ram that happened upon him. This became a paradigm for institutionalized religion, which has developed numerous ways in which to alter, substitute, and moderate child sacrifice (as many scholars have noted). Such changes have kept something of the original idea and sentiment, only without the actual act of sacrificing the child. Thus, one of the very first commandments in the Torah is “Consecrate to me all the firstborn, whatever opens the womb among the children of Israel, both of man and beast; it is mine.”⁵⁰ One may easily discern the parallel drawn between man and beast: Just as the latter must be offered up to God, so must the former. This analogy, however, is mitigated; instead of sacrificing the firstborn, he is dedicated to service in the House of God. In time, this practice, too, was altered: The firstborns were replaced by the Levites or redeemed by money.⁵¹ Nevertheless, it seems that killing and blood must still have their place. The slaying of the wicked in war, in this sense, may be seen as a substitute for the burnt offering. God, after all, gained his claim to all the firstborn sons of Israel by smiting the firstborn sons of Egypt, whose death, perhaps, redeemed their Hebrew counterparts from a similar fate.⁵² Nor did the consecration of the Levites occur without slaughter—the mass killing of sons (and siblings) who worshipped the golden calf: “Consecrate yourselves today to the Lord, that he may bestow on you a blessing this day, for every man has opposed his son and his brother.”⁵³ The covenant of priesthood was similarly given to Pinhas following an act of killing.⁵⁴ Interestingly, in this case institutional religion invested great efforts, not in modifying the phenomenon but in uprooting it altogether. Hence the diametrically opposite halacha: “A priest who has committed manslaughter should not lift up his hands [to say the priestly benediction].”⁵⁵

Even the well-known, ancient rite of inaugurating a new city by ceremoniously sacrificing the sons of the founder has left its imprint on the Bible, namely in Joshua’s damning words against the rebuilding of Jericho: “Cursed be the man before the Lord who rises up and builds this city Jericho; he shall lay its foundation with his firstborn, and with his youngest he shall set up its gates.”⁵⁶ When Joshua’s curse comes to pass, however, it is once again described as a sacrifice: “In [Ahab’s] days Hiel of Bethel built Jericho. He laid its foundation with Abiram his firstborn, and with his youngest son Segub he set up its gates, according to the word of the Lord, which he had spoken through Joshua the son of Nun.”⁵⁷ The Zohar also refers to this practice as a favorable offering.⁵⁸

This interpretation is supported by the previous verse, which prefaces the incident by intimating a rivalry between God and Moses, a rivalry that exacerbated God’s wrath over Moses’ lack of submission: “So I say to you, let my son go that he may serve me. But if you refuse to let him go, indeed I will kill your son, your firstborn.”⁶¹ This verse should be read as referring to Moses, who had just refused to accept his mission, rather than to Pharaoh, who had not yet refused God’s command. Indeed, Moses never relays this message to Pharaoh.

God, however, is not always content with the divine kiss of death. At times, he desires that the righteous man die in great torment—the ultimate gesture of love and devotion, and perhaps one better suited to the nature of divine eroticism. This desire is reflected not only in the description of Jesus’ passion, but also in midrashic literature, such as the idea of “chastisements of love.” The phrase is generally understood to mean suffering that man must receive with love, because it is, ultimately, for his own benefit (in atoning for his sins, for instance). Yet the concept of “chastisements of love” is actually far more profound:

This particular type of suffering, then, is not the result of any transgression, but an expression of God’s love. As the passage continues: “If the Holy One, blessed be he, is pleased with a man, he crushes him with painful sufferings.” The Talmud then goes on to make an explicit distinction between an “altar of atonement” and the “chastisements of love.”⁶⁷

 

Rabbi Akiva, who died while saying the Shema prayer, went down in history as the archetypical Jewish martyr, a role model for all those who laid down their lives in God’s name. Jews, indeed, did not always regard the persecutions against them as entirely negative, calamities in which they were merely passive victims. They sometimes saw them as tremendous opportunities to realize the human (and divine) destiny that is the love of God. Non-Jews were considered a means to this end, a convenient solution for the conflict between the personal religious desire for a loving death and the public religious commandment to uphold life and society.

According to the Zohar and subsequent Lurianic mysticism, the soul of a righteous man who dies such a death fulfills an important role in the erotic life of the divine. It becomes mayim nukvin (female waters), the feminine element, which together with the male seed enables the unification of God with the shechina (divine presence).⁷² This sexual imagery is typical of kabbalistic writings in the Middle Ages, yet the idea that the death of the righteous man plays a part in divine eroticism dates back to the Talmud. One particularly patent example is the evocative eulogy given for one of the sages: “For God his wrath upon the earth has hurled, our pious sage his voice has called away; and God is glad that from this sinful world his dearest servant has come home to stay.”⁷³ And there are those, I believe, who have interpreted the term kiddush Hashem (death for the sanctification of God) in the same vein as kiddushei isha (marriage).

 

While the death of the righteous man is primarily for the sake of God and his love, it also carries indirect benefits for those who remain alive. When God’s desire is met by the death of his beloved, his anger subsides and the world is redeemed. Hence the deliverance achieved by child sacrifice in the stories of the king of Moab, Jephthah’s daughter, and the tale mentioned by Philo of Byblos. In this third instance, it should be noted, the father who sacrificed his son was a deity himself (the god El). Such is also the case with the religion descending from Judaism: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”⁷⁴ This description of the sacrifice of Jesus turns God’s deadly love into divine benevolence.

That a righteous man should die to atone for his generation is an idea not unique to Christianity. The Talmud presents a remarkably similar statement: “The righteous are seized for the [sins of the] generation.”⁷⁵ In both cases, the logic is the same: God is prepared to tolerate the sins and infidelities of mankind if his love can be bestowed upon a single beloved, whose soul he will reclaim.

From here it is but a small step to identifying the love of God with messianic redemption. This association is common in talmudic literature⁷⁶ and in the Zohar.⁷⁷ The world cannot be delivered until God overcomes his internal uncertainties. The sages go so far as to suggest that God will forever remain in the throes of doubt, as a woman suffering the pains of birth—which are, in truth, the pangs of the messiah.⁷⁸

The end of redemption, according to the Kabbala, is the redemption of God himself, the realization of his love in peaceful, eternal harmony. But this goal cannot be reached without a fundamental change in God’s personality. Thus, according to the Idrot teachings of the Zohar, the redemption will see a transformation of the face of God from zeir anpin (lesser countenance), which is short-tempered and rages with desire, to arich anpin (greater countenance), which is patient and compassionate, loving and serene. We have but to wait and see.