Jeremiah 11:17: “For the LORD of hosts, that planted thee, hath pronounced evil against thee, for the evil of the house of Israel and of the house of Judah, which they have done against themselves to provoke me to anger in offering incense unto Baal.”
Jeremiah 12:13: “They have sown wheat, but shall reap thorns: they have put themselves to pain, [but] shall not profit: and they shall be ashamed of your revenues because of the fierce anger of the LORD.”
I have a couple friends who spent many years in a church that taught God was an angry wrathful God who will demonstrate His anger in various unpleasant ways. They may very well be right but I still give them a hard time anyways as I am just not ready to accept the idea of a God who will fly off the handle for just burning incense to an idol. Of course what can I say when confronted with verses like Jeremiah 11:17 and 12:13 which clearly tells us that God can be provoked to such anger that He will pronounce evil upon us and that our livelihood will be disrupted (reaping thorns rather than wheat) because of his fierce anger.
I grew up with many a preacher waving his finger at me warning me to watch my step that I may really anger God and when that happens, boy oh boy there is nothing anyone can do for you. For many years as a child I was afraid to go into our dark basement because I thought God was down there. I knew some of the impure thoughts I harbored or some of the TV programs I watched had probably really angered God and He was waiting in our basement just to slap more over His knee. I used to stand in the hallway, back to the wall and reach around the corner to stick my hand into the stairwell of the basement to flip the light switch. At the worst I would just get a slap on the wrist.
So do we really have to fear that we my just do something to set God off where He will demonstrate His anger and wrath. Does God have certain buttons we can push like a little school child who knows just how far to push his teacher before she explodes?
Before I examine these key words in the Hebrew, let’s look at some pure logic. I John 4:18: “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.”
Is there such a thing as perfect love? The Bible says there is and surely God has obtained perfect love. Yet if He is perfect in love then He should cast out fear in us, not instill it? Just how far does the depth of God’s love extend for us. I have a theory, no Scripture to back it up – yet. Quantum Physics teaches that there could billions and billions of universes, each with their own timeline. Suppose each of us has our own timeline. God does not live in time therefore he can visit each timeline anytime He wants. In fact if we exist in our own time line and our interactions with others are merely the merging of our personal timelines then theoretically God can exist in our timeline, just Him and you alone. Nothing else exists to occupy God’s time while in your timeline. Just you and God. If a nuclear explosion takes place in Iran, God will not be bother by it, it is just another timeline he can move to anytime He wishes to deal with it. Suppose, and I say this only for illustrative purpose, Jesus had to die on a cross in every timeline. In other words He relives the story of His birth, life on earth, death and resurrection six billion times for each person on this earth. Hey if the evolutionists say that given enough time slime can turn into a human being, then why not God who knows no time repeat his sojourn on earth billions of times. Each time he would suffer and die for each person individually. I am not saying I am right about this only to make a point. If this were the case, would God’s love for each one of us individually extend that far that he would suffer and die on a cross six billion times? For you personally and no one else? If He would love us that much to die for us personally, which us evangelicals do teach only in a corporate sense, then if we reject Him would He respond in anger or something else?
First let’s look at that word evil which He will bring upon us. God will pronounce evil for the evil that is committed. In Hebrew there are two different words for evil used here. The evil that God will pronounce is ra’ah, but the evil that we commit is ra’ath. The evil or ra’ah that God will pronounce is a consuming passion. The evil that we commit is an evil of bringing distress and misery upon others.
“They provoked God to anger by offering incense to Baal.” Baal was a name given to a conglomerate of gods. The leader took the name Baal when rose to the leadership among these gods because of his ability to fertilize the land and bring rain. Offering a sweet smelling incense to the god Baal was done pretty much for the same reason a woman wears perfume or a man wears cologne you want to be pleasant and inviting to people and draw people to you in a favorable light. Baal would be attracted to the sweet smelling incense and be more incline to offer favors. The problem here is that of a husband who would put on his best cologne to attract some woman other than his wife. Such an action would make a wife angry? Jealous? Sad?, Heartbroken? It also would cause that wife, if she truly loves her husband to feel a burning desire to be intimate with Him to assure herself and him that he still loves her and feels passionate toward her. Such an unfaithful action by a husband would make the poor woman aneph. Our English Bible render’s aneph as anger. In fact Jeremiah tells of the fierce aneph of God. The word fierce is charah which in its Semitic root it comes from an Akkadian word meaning to have a burning sensation somewhere in your body. It has the idea of your body temperature rising. Ok, anger causes your body temperature to rise, but so does grief, heartbreak, sadness, jealousy, and yes, a rising passion for intimacy. The word that is just arbitrarily rendered as anger and listed in our lexicons as primarily meaning anger is based mainly upon tradition. However, that is only putting the word under a microscope clouded by tradition. If we put it under an electron microscope, so to speak, we find the word originates as the snort of a camel. Aneph even sounds like a camel snorting. A camel will snort when it is angry so we are correct to say anger, but a camel will snort when it is being force to do something it does not want to do, it will snort when grieving the loss of a mate or when in heat desiring an intimacy with its mate. Do we have to translate this as the fierce anger of God. Linguistically, no. We could say the burning passion of God to be intimate but because the incense is offered to another god He cannot be intimate. How about God burning with grief? In His grief and passion for intimacy the Lord could be pronouncing evil ra’ah or a consuming passion for His people who provoked Him into this sorrow. Just as a wife burns with desire to be the one to bring joy to her husband and he shuns it for another woman. The wife is heartbroken that she cannot share the joy of intimacy with her husband because he longs for another just as God is heartbroken because he cannot share the joy of intimacy with us because we offered ourselves to another god.
My earthly father never whipped me, spanked me or even raised his voice to me when I was doing something wrong, he would only express disappointment in me and grief that I would behave in such a way. I would have wished for a spanking more than having to see the sadness on my father’s face. That sadness alone was enough for me to walk the straight and narrow.
So as for me, I do not see an angry God who punishes with loss of livelihood but a God who punishes with a broken heart. The God who loves me, who would die for me if I were the only one on earth experiencing a broken heart over my misbehavior is a far great punishment than a loss of livelihood.
But that is me, you are free to agree with my two friends that God can get fiercely angry and you would not be wrong in your Hebraic rendering anymore than I am wrong in my rendering, it is between you and God to decide which rendering to use.
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