Who Is God? (Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology)

Key Moments of Biblical Revelation

Bauckham, Richard, Zacharias, H. Daniel

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781493423835
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Internationally respected scholar Richard Bauckham offers a brief, engaging study of divine revelation in Scripture. He probes the deep meaning of well-known moments in the biblical story in order to address the key question the Bible is designed to answer: Who is God? Accessible for laypeople and important to scholars, this volume begins by exploring three key events in the Bible in which God is revealed: Jacob's dream at Bethel (the revelation of the divine presence), Moses at the burning bush (the revelation of the divine Name), and Moses on Mount Sinai (the revelation of the divine character). In each case, Bauckham traces these themes through the rest of Scripture. He then shows how the New Testament builds on the Old by exploring three revelatory events in Mark's Gospel, events that reveal the Trinity: Jesus's baptism, transfiguration, and crucifixion. This book is based on the Frumentius Lectures for 2015 at the Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology in Addis Ababa and on the Hayward Lectures for 2018 at Acadia Divinity College, Nova Scotia.

1
The Revelation of the Divine Presence

The first key moment of revelation that we shall consider is the dream of the patriarch Jacob, ancestor of the people of Israel, at Bethel:

10Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran. 11He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place. 12And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13And the LORD stood beside him and said, “I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; 14and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring. 15Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” 16Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place—and I did not know it!” 17And he was afraid, and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”

18So Jacob rose early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. 19He called that place Bethel; but the name of the city was Luz at the first. 20Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, 21so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then the LORD shall be my God, 22and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house; and of all that you give me I will surely give one-tenth to you.” (Gen. 28:10–22)1

The story is well known, but it is not usually seen to have the pivotal role in the whole biblical story that I shall suggest in this chapter. Of course, God had appeared and spoken many times to Jacob’s grandfather Abraham and on occasion to his father, Isaac, also. God had promised to give the land to their descendants, that they would have innumerable descendants, and that through their descendants blessing would come to all the nations. But only to Isaac did God reveal that God was “with” him (Gen. 26:24, cf. 26:28).2 This promise of personal presence then comes to much fuller expression in Jacob’s dream at Bethel. On this occasion God repeats the promises made to Abraham and Isaac, personalizing them as promises to Jacob and his descendants (28:13–14), but the focus of both what Jacob sees and what he hears God say is the revelation of God’s presence with him. It is a revelation that, as we shall see, anticipates much that the rest of the Bible has to say about the presence of God with humans.

Figure 1. Jacob’s Ladder. Debre Sina Maryam Church, Gorgora, Ethiopia [Mark E. Smith / Bridgeman Images]

When Jacob arrived at Bethel, he was in flight from his family home and the anger of his brother, Esau. Jacob had tricked Isaac into giving his blessing to Jacob rather than to Esau, and his mother, Rebekah, had sent him away, for his own safety, on a very long journey to the home of her relatives, some five hundred miles away as the crow flies. It was a daunting journey to an unknown future, and Jacob was for the first time in his life truly on his own. It was a situation that required a change in his relationship with God, whom he had known hitherto as the family God, the God of Abraham and Isaac (Gen. 28:13). If Jacob is now to find himself apart from his family, if he is to find who he can be in this newly uncertain world in which he is alone, he must also now find God as his own God. Not that he thinks of this for himself. It is not Jacob who turns to God but God who turns to Jacob.

The image Jacob sees in his dream is probably not, as most of the translations have it, a ladder but a staircase (which the Hebrew word can equally well mean). Probably it is a broad stone staircase running up the stepped side of one of the artificial mountains—known as ziggurats—that the people of ancient Mesopotamia built. There was a famous ziggurat in the city of Ur, from which Jacob’s ancestors came. The gods were thought to live at the top of the cosmic mountain that touches heaven. So, in order to worship them, the Sumerians would build a great mound on which to place a temple, so that the gods could dwell there and the people could worship the gods by ascending the steps to the summit of the mountain.

What is remarkable about Jacob’s dream is that he sees God not, as one would expect, at the top of the stairway but at the bottom. This is the most likely meaning of the words that could be translated “the LORD stood above it” (i.e., the staircase) but most probably mean “the LORD stood beside him” (i.e., Jacob; Gen. 28:13). This is the translation that coheres with what the Lord says to Jacob: “I am with you” (28:15). Jacob does not have to make the arduous ascent up the staircase to meet with God at the top. Nor does God’s communication with Jacob have to be mediated by the angels who are passing up and down the staircase. They are the divine messengers (“angel” means “messenger”) who are sent from heaven to do God’s will on earth. They symbolize communication between heaven and earth. But in Jacob’s dream God has, as it were, bypassed them. He himself has come down the staircase and stands looking at Jacob sleeping beside him. He is not remote in heaven but down on earth “with” Jacob.

So when Jacob wakes in wonder, the dream still filling his consciousness, he says, “This is none other than the house of God” (Gen. 28:17). He means that where God is to be found is not only in heaven but on the very spot where he has been sleeping: “Surely the LORD is in this place—and I did not know it!” (28:16). So the stone on which his head had rested while he dreamed he stands upright as a pillar and consecrates it as a memorial of God’s presence there. He names the place Bethel, which means “the house of God.” But even this recognition of God’s presence there at Bethel does not reach the deepest meaning of Jacob’s dream. What he has discovered is not so much that God is in that particular place as that God is where Jacob is. God is with Jacob and will be with him wherever he goes: “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go” (28:15). God’s revelation to Jacob is not for a man who is going to settle down at Bethel with a temple close at hand in which to worship God. Rather it is for a man on a journey. From now on every place where Jacob sleeps will be a Bethel. The leitmotif of Jacob’s life will be God’s presence with him (see Gen. 31:3; 35:3; 46:4).

We can see this in the rest of Jacob’s story as Genesis tells it. When Jacob eventually returned to the land of promise, after fourteen years in the household of his uncle Laban, he reflected that God, as he had promised him at Bethel, truly “has been with me wherever I have gone” (Gen. 35:3). Jacob must have thought that that was the end of his travels outside the land of Canaan, but much later in his life he found he must make another long journey, this time to join his sons and their families in Egypt. For an old man such a journey would be more daunting than for a young man. Perhaps more importantly, it would be difficult for Jacob to understand how it could be part of God’s purposes for him and his descendants. God had promised them this land. How could it be right for the whole family to settle in another country? And so once more God spoke to him “in visions of the night,” assuring him that settling in Egypt really was a step on the way to God’s promised future (46:3), and adding: “I myself will go down with you to Egypt” (46:4).

Finally, at the end of his very long life, Jacob looked back on God’s unfailing and protective presence through all those years, speaking of “the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day” (Gen. 48:15). The image harks back to Jacob’s earlier life, when he had worked as a shepherd, looking after the flocks of his father-in-law, Laban (30:29–43). Jacob knew well what it meant to be a shepherd. The shepherd must lead his flock to pasture and water, but most fundamentally he must be with the flock at all times. He must be there with them in order to protect and care for them. Jacob’s comparison of God with a shepherd inevitably reminds us of Psalm 23. At the heart of this psalm and of its image of God the shepherd are the words “for you are with me” (Ps. 23:4). In fact, they are literally the central words of this exquisitely composed poem. In a life with God, his guidance, provision, and protection are important, as Jacob and the psalmist knew, but in all such experiences the center and source is God’s presence “with” us. The psalm helps make Jacob’s experience available to all who pray it, and this must be the reason it has proved the most popular of all the psalms. To discover that God is “with” us is probably the most important discovery anyone can make, for, once made, it colors all of life’s experiences.

So in the Bible, the little word “with,” when it links God and humans, is a powerful word. In the Hebrew Bible, individual persons God promises to be “with” include Isaac, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Saul, David, Solomon, Jeroboam, Asa, Jehoshaphat, and Jeremiah.3 God is also frequently said to be “with” the people of Israel when they are faithful to him.4 Moreover, it appears that “The LORD be with you!” was a standard greeting in use in Israel.5 It was how life should be, what one wished for oneself and for others. (This biblical usage has often been imitated in later history, not only in Christian liturgy but also in colloquial usage. Most English speakers who use the word “goodbye” as a signal of parting from someone are not aware that in its origins it meant “God be with you.” A recent variation on it is the well-known phrase from Star Wars, “May the Force be with you!”)

As the examples I have just listed will show, in the Old Testament God’s presence “with” people is never a neutral or inactive presence that makes no difference. Sometimes it refers to protection and success in war. Always it refers to God’s favor and care for those he chooses to be “with.” It makes all the difference to their lives.

Understanding the Presence of God

In the Christian theological tradition, God’s “omnipresence” has regularly featured as one of the metaphysical attributes of God, and it is not uncommon for Christians to say or to think “God is everywhere.” This is not untrue, but we must be careful how we think about it. Because God is the Creator and Sustainer of the whole creation, God is immediately present to all his creatures, upholding their existence, and intimately involved in every event, enabling it to occur. This is God’s universal presence as Creator. It does not mean that God is spatially extended throughout the world, as some people doubtless picture it. Nor is it merely a static “being there.” God’s presence is personal and active. He wills and acts to be present to every creature and at every moment. But this fundamental sense in which God is present to all creatures at all times in the same way is not the focus of concern in the Bible because, while it underlies our relationship with God, like everything else, we become conscious of it only when God engages with us as specific persons, whether individuals or groups. Even Psalm 139:7–10, which is often cited as biblical testimony to God’s “omnipresence,” is not concerned to affirm simply that “God is everywhere.” What matters to the psalmist is that wherever he may go—even to the furthest reaches of the cosmos—God will find him there:

Even there your hand shall lead me,

and your right hand shall hold me fast. (v. 10)

It is a matter of God’s fully personal and active presence to the psalmist in particular. The divine presence of which we can be aware is always particular.

The particularity of God’s presence means that God may be present in many different ways. He may be present “with” individuals in their ongoing life, as he was with Jacob. He may be present in the pillar of clo...