Authors: Bart D. Ehrman
Nowhere is the pathos more gripping or the plea more vitriolic than in Psalm 137, written at the time of the Babylonian exile by one who desperately longed to return to his homeland and who urged God to take vengeance on his enemies—even on their infant children.
By the rivers of Babylon—
there we sat down and there we
wept
when we remembered Zion.
On the willow there
we hung up our harps.
For there our captors
asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for
mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of
Zion!”
How could we sing the L
ORD’S
song
in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand wither!
Let my tongue cling to the roof of
my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy.
Remember O L
ORD
, against the
Edomites
the day of Jerusalem’s fall,
how they said, “Tear it down!
Tear it down!
Down to its foundations!”
O daughter Babylon, you
devastator!
Happy shall they be who pay
you back
what you have done to us!
Happy shall they be who take
your little ones
and dash them against the rock! (Ps. 137:1–9)
Most of the laments, however, are not related to the national catastrophe of exile but to personal (almost never specified) anguish caused by others. One of these psalms became particularly well known in Christian circles because it was regarded as a messianic prophecy of what would happen to Jesus at his crucifixion. As with Isaiah 53, however, it is important not only to see how later readers might have interpreted the psalm but also to think about what the text might have meant in its own context—in this case the context of an individual within Israel who felt forsaken by God and persecuted by others.
My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me?
Why are you so far from
helping me, from the
words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you
do not answer;
and by night, but find no rest….
…I am a worm, and not human;
scorned by others, and despised
by the people.
All who see me mock at me;
they make mouths at me, they
shake their heads;
“Commit your cause to the L
ORD
;
let him deliver—
let him rescue the one in whom
he delights!”…
Many bulls encircle me,
strong bulls of Bashan surround
me;
they open wide their mouths at
me,
like a ravening and roaring lion.
I am poured out like water,
and all my bones are out of
joint;
my heart is like wax;
it is melted within my breast;
my mouth is dried up like a
potsherd,
and my tongue sticks to my
jaws;
you lay me in the dust of death.
For dogs are all around me;
a company of evildoers encircles
me.
My hands and feet have
shriveled;
I can count all my bones.
They stare and gloat over me;
they divide my clothes among
themselves,
and for my clothing they cast
lots.
But you, O L
ORD
, do not be far
away!
O my help, come quickly to my
aid!
Deliver my soul from the sword,
my life from the power of the
dog!
Save me from the mouth of the
lion! (Ps. 22:1–21)
This notion that the hatreds, oppositions, and persecutions of others affect the faithful—so that suffering comes not only from God as a punishment, but also from human beings who violate his will—and the concomitant sense that God is the one who can save people from their suffering, is found not only throughout the pages of the Hebrew Bible, of course, but in the New Testament as well. As a concluding example I return to the writings of Paul, the apostle who suffered in order to be like his Lord, but who trusted in God to deliver him from his distress. As he tells his fellow Christians in the city of Corinth:
Brothers, we do not want you not to know about the affliction that happened to us in Asia. For we were overwhelmed beyond all that can be imagined, so that we despaired even of life itself. But we held within ourselves a death sentence, so that we might not trust in ourselves, but in God, the one who raises the dead. He who delivered us from so great a death will save us yet again; it is in him that we hope, that he will save us again. (2 Cor. 1:8–10)
The Consequences of Sin: An Assessment
While I’ve been writing this chapter, I’ve continually been thinking that it is all so obvious, and I’ve imagined my friends reading it and telling me that all these hours I’ve spent on it (there are only so
many hours allotted to us in this life, after all) have been a complete waste of time.
Of course
people suffer because other people behave badly toward them. Where’s the revelation in
that
?
At the same time, I know that there are lots of religious people in the world who think that everything that happens—the good and the bad—comes directly (or sometimes indirectly) from God. And on this some of the biblical authors would agree.
This latter view actually raises a rather paradoxical situation, well known to people who have wrestled with theological conundrums over the years: if people do bad things because God ordains them to do them, why are they held responsible? If Adam and Eve were foreordained to eat the fruit, why were they punished for it? If Judas betrayed Jesus and Pilate crucified him because that was God’s will, how can they be held accountable? If the enemies of David or the enemies of Paul did what they did because of the divine oversight—who really is to blame?
As it turns out, none of the biblical authors deals directly with this kind of paradox. God is typically portrayed as the all-powerful Sovereign of this world who foreknows all things, yet human beings are portrayed as responsible for their actions. Even though the coming of the Antichrist is a preordained event, the Lake of Fire is being stoked up to await his arrival.
The fact that people are held responsible for their actions—from Adam and Eve, to Cain and Abel, to David and Solomon, to Judas and Pilate, to the Antichrist and his minions—shows that the biblical authors had
some
notion of free will. That is, this understanding of suffering as the result of sinful human behavior is the closest thing in the Bible to what is known in philosophical circles dealing with the problem of theodicy as “the “free-will” defense.” In its simplest form, the philosophical argument goes something like this: If God had not given us free will, this would be a less-than-perfect world, but God wanted to create a perfect world, and so we have free will—both to obey and to disobey him, both to resolve suffering and to cause it. This is why there is suf
fering in a world controlled ultimately by a God who is both all powerful and all loving.
In discussions of theodicy, this free-will defense can be found as far back as there have been discussions of theodicy. It is the view, in fact, of the seventeenth-century polymath Leibniz, who coined the term
theodicy
in the first place. In modern discourse, the question of theodicy is, How can we possibly believe that an all-powerful and all-loving God exists given the state of the world? In ancient discourse, including the varieties of discourse found in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, that was never a question. Ancient Jews and Christians never questioned
whether
God existed. They knew he existed. What they wanted to know was how to
understand
God and how to
relate
to him, given the state of the world. The question of whether suffering impedes belief in the existence of God is completely modern, a product of the Enlightenment.