Biblical Theology Bulletin: A Journal of Bible

and Theology
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"Fear of God" and the World View of Wisdom

Michael L. Barré
Biblical Theology Bulletin: A Journal of Bible and Theology 1981; 11; 41
DOI: 10.1177/014610798101100203

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 "FEAR OF GOD" AND THE WORLD VIEW OF WISDOM
Michael L. Barré, S.S., St. Patrick’s
One of the keys to a proper understanding of the Old
Testament &dquo;wisdom&dquo; approach to life is an appreciation
of the ancient Near Eastern view of the world. The basic
premise on which wisdom operates is that the world is an
orderly universe. &dquo;Orderly&dquo; refers first of all to the
conviction that the world emerged from chaos. In fact the
terms &dquo;world&dquo; and &dquo;chaos&dquo; are contrary notions as far as
the ancients were concemed. One myth that recurs in
almost every culture of the ancient East is that of the
victory of Order over Chaos; this primordial event marks
the beginning of the &dquo;world&dquo; as such. In the Akkadian
creation epic Enuma Elish the chief Babylonian god
Marduk defeats the Sea-monster Tiamat, symbol of the
powers of chaos. From her carcass he constructs the
world (Pritchard:67; Heidel:42-43). The Ugaritic myth of
Baal’s defeat of the Sea-monster Yamm is similar
(Pritchard:l 31; Coogan:88-89). A wisdom text from
Egypt, the Instruction of Meri-ka-re, also ties creation with
the destruction of chaos: &dquo;...he (the god) made heaven
and earth...he repelled the water-monster&dquo; (Pritchard:417;
Lichtheim:106). Hebrew literature too occasionally uses
this mythological imagery. Psalms 74:12-17 and 89 :8-
12 associate Yahweh’s defeat of the Sea-monster
(Leviathan, Rahab) with the ensuing act of creation. Even
the comparatively &dquo;demythologized&dquo; creation account in
Genesis 1:l -2:4 (notice: no Sea-monsters!) speaks of
bringing order out of chaos rather than a creation out of
nothing. Increasingly, modern commentators on Genesis
point out that the first verse should be translated, &dquo;When
God set about to create heaven and earth...&dquo; (Speiser:3,
11-13). As B. Vawter has observed in his recent work On
Genesis, &dquo;At the beginning of all there is a vision simply of
unformed chaos, with no attempt made to account for its
presence&dquo; (Vawter:38). Other civilizations of the past
likewise viewed the world as an orderly creation. The
Romans called it mundum from murtdus, meaning
&dquo;neat&dquo; (i.e., well-ordered). The Greeks called it kosmo,
which properly means &dquo;order&dquo;; our word &dquo;cosmetic&dquo; is
derived from the same stem.
But from the viewpoint of antiquity the &dquo;order&dquo; of the
created world is not merely physical. The physical aspect
is only one manifestation of an all-pervasive orderliness
that lies at the heart of creation. Religious, social, moral
order-these too are simply facets of the fundamental
world-order. There is no aspect of human life or behavior
that is not affected by this given scheme of things.
Humanity finds itself in a world In which the structures of
meaning-and meaningfulness-have already been laid
down. Therefore if someone wants to find &dquo;life&dquo;, i.e..
meaning and fulfillment, he or she must do two things: ( 1 )
Each human being must accept the fact that the world is
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Seminary, Menlo Park, CA 94025
put together this way and must learn to live accordingly.
Not to perceive this most fundamenta I fact of existence is
supreme folly and dooms the individual to a life of
frustration and unhappiness. (2) Each person must
master the art of how to integrate his or her life into the
pre-established order of the world. Whoever does these
things is &dquo;wise&dquo;; whoever does not is &dquo;foolish&dquo;.
How did the ancients understand the integration of
one’s life into this cosmic order? For the people of the
Near East this had little to do with the modem notion of
&dquo;getting back to nature&dquo;. Rather integration meant
coming to terms with humanity’s place in the universe.
The &dquo;man-in-the-street&dquo; was bom into a world in which
certain basic relationships already existed. Above him
were the gods and the king; beside him were his fellow
human beings. At its most basic level &dquo;wisdom&dquo; meant
recognizing and dealing constructively with these
relationships that were built into the order of things.
On the uppermost level of the cosmic order were the
gods or, in the Israelite view, God. For this reason how a
person related to them was crucial in the quest for a
meaningful life. The gods created humankind, controlled
their destiny, alloted the span of life. To ignore the gods
and their place in the cosmos, to refuse or neglect to
worship them and observe their prescribed rites and
taboos, was in the truest sense something that only a
&dquo;fool&dquo; would do. It is precisely this fundamental
perception that is embodied in the often repeated maxim
of Old Testament wisdom literature: &dquo;The fear of Yahweh
is the beginning of wisdom&dquo; (Prov 9:1 U; Ps 11 l:10:cf.Prov
1:7; 15:33; Sir 1:24; 19:17).
Our thesis is that &dquo;fear of Yahweh&dquo; or, in a polytheistic
context, &dquo;fear of the gods&dquo; (Akkadian palah il7, cf. the
Aramaic epithet dhl ’thy&dquo; &dquo;fearing the gods&dquo;) is the first
step-&dquo;square one&dquo;-in the quest for a meaningful
existence according to the thought of the ancient Near
East. For the cultures of antiquity this conviction was
simply the inevitable result of an elemental observation on
the make-up of the world, something as self-evident as the
movement of the stars. It is therefore incorrect to see this
conviction as evidence of contact between wisdom and
the prophetic or priestly tradition (Anderson: 498) or the
product of a supposedly &dquo;religious&dquo; branch of wisdom. W.
McKane, on the other hand, distinguishes this type of
Israelite wisdom from another type that &dquo;does not admit
piety&dquo; (McKane: 48). R. B. Y. Scott looks upon expressions
of this type in Proverbs 1-9 as coming out of a late
&dquo;religious&dquo; movement within wisdom which modified the
essentially secular language of the older school
(Scott:1971. 129-30). However, R. E. Murphy rejects as a
constituent of ancient thought what he correctly labels the
41
 &dquo;modern conceptual distinction&dquo; between religious and
secular: &dquo;A distinction between religious and secular is not
applicable to Old Testament wisdom teaching...One
cannot deny that the Israelite distinguished between the
two but they are not separated as independent areas&dquo;
(Murphy:40; see also von Rad:1972, 68 n. 12). Going even
further, the late P. W. Skehan, noted Hebraist and authority
on Old Testament wisdom literature, recently asserted:
&dquo;...the suggestion that in Proverbs 1-9 two kinds of
wisdom writers are working at cross purposes I regard as,
the gods, to observe their feast-days, to offer sacrifices at
the prescribed times, etc. In other words, fear of the gods
translated concretely into cult
That this held true for Mesopotamia and other parts of
the ancient Near East is beyond dispute. Moreover, this
specific meaning of reverence for the gods can be most
clearly seen in wisdom literature from this area. For
example, in the Counsels of Wisdom, a Babylonian
collection of moral exhortations, we read:
Reuerence (palahu) begets favour, ’&dquo;

without qualification, nonsense&dquo; (Skehan:373).

&dquo;

Sacrifice prolongs life,

’
And prayer atones for guilt.
.
He who fears the gods (pali(~ 17)
Wisdom and Cult
’

&dquo;’

If fear of the gods is an all-important constitutive
element of what it means to be &dquo;wise&dquo;, it would be worth
our while to look at this term more closely. It does not
convey the notion of enervating terror but rather of
overpowering awe in the presence of the wholly other
(Otto:13-23). Essentially it represents the basic and
proper stance of mortals before the divine. But since the
thought of the ancient Near East tended to be more
concrete than abstract. we can press the question further
and ask. How was this relational stance expressed? What
actions or behavior would have been recognized as fear of
the gods and what behavior would have been perceived as
contrary to this? Scott has defined or rather described this
phenomenon as consisting of the following elements:
&dquo;belief in God...to rely on him rather than on one’s own
unaided intelligence. to avoid wrongdoing and to accept
misfortune as a God-sent discipline&dquo; (Scott:1965. 37).
First of all, this kind of awesome respect of the gods
precludes any arrogant defiance of them or attempt to
disregard their prerogatives-an attitude the Greeks
called hybris. A classic example of this in Near Eastern
literature is found in the legend of the great king of Akkad.
Naram-Sin (2254-2218). ln the ancient East no king
dared take to the battlefield without first consulting the
gods to see if this course of action met with their approval
(cf. 1 Kings 22:5). Haram-Sin had repeatedly consulted
the gods by means of omens in order to secure their
approval for an attack on the Clmman-manda hordes
(Saggs:404-05). When the gods still refused, the king
defiantly exclaimed:
What lion ever practiced divination?
’
is not slighted by . ( .. )
He who fears the Anunnaki extends (his days)
(Lambert:105).
The fact that &dquo;reverence&dquo; occurs in the context of sacrifice
and prayer argues for the cultic nuance of the term. In
another wisdom text, The Babylonian Theodicy, the
word is also associated with cultic terminology:
He who waits on his god has a protecting angel,
The humble man who fears (p81ij ) his goddess
accumulates wealth (Lambert:71 )
In this text &dquo;he who fears his goddess&dquo; stands in
synonymous parallelism with &dquo;he who waits on his god&dquo;
(natil pan ilimma). The latter expression is literally
translated, &dquo;he who sees the face of (his) god&dquo;. In
Akkadian, to &dquo;see the face&dquo; of one’s god meant to stand in
his shrine or temple as a worshipper, just as in the OT to
&dquo;see the face of God&dquo; in some texts means to enter his
temple as a worshipper (cf. Ps 42:2).
The close connection between cult and fear of the gods
appears also in Egyptian wisdom literature. The
Instruction of Onchsheshonqy advises:
Make sacrifice and libation before God,
And let the fear of him be great in your heart
(Perdue:60)
religious texts as well fear of the gods is
In Hittite
paralleled by references to cultic activity. In a prayer of
Amuwanda I ( 1440-1420) and his queen Ashmu-Nikkal
we read:
Only (the Hittite capital) Hattusa is truly proper
territory for you. 0 gods; in Hittite territory alone we
unceasingly make...offerings to you. It is only in Hittite
territory that we do not cease to fear you. 0 gods
(Lebrun:l33-149).

.. It is clear from this passage that &dquo;unceasingly

What wolf ever consulted diviners? I>, &dquo;
‘
make...offerings&dquo; is synonymous with &dquo;fear&dquo;
..

I will go of my own accord, (nabsarattan) of the gods.

..
~

just like a brigand (Grayson/Redford:88).
The disastrous consequences that followed upon this
manifestation of hybrids provided a memorable object-
lesson in fear of the gods: even the legendary hero-king
could not defy the gods and get away with it!
Although the story of Naram-Sin provides an example
of what fear of the gods was not , it does not tell us exactly
what this kind of reverence was either. It is certain from
Mesopotamian literature that palah ilfinvolved not only a
respectful and submissive attitude toward the divine world
but also an acceptance of man’s responsibility to worship
What about the OT evidence? Here too an objective
reading of the texts discloses that &dquo;fear of Yahweh/God&dquo;
cannot be separated from the realm of the cult. An
enlightening passage in this regard is 2 Kings 17:24-28.
This text relates that after the king of Assyria had deported
the native population and resettled the northern kingdom
with deportees from other areas of his kingdom the new
settlers were soon plagued with lions because &dquo;they did
not fear Yahweh&dquo;. The king realized that his unfortunate
state of affairs was due to the fact that the new population
did not know &dquo;the law of the god(s) of the land&dquo;. The word

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42
rendered &dquo;law&dquo; here (mishpatl means &dquo;ordinance&dquo; and than the world-view of wisdom. (2) The Israelite wise man
&dquo;

has a specifically cultic reference in this context (von Rad: was religious&dquo; in the full sense of the term. Since fear of
I 962. 242). That this is so is indicated by the action taken God, properly understood, was no mere &dquo;attitude&dquo;
by the Assyrian king. decided to let one of the deported
He (contrast Scott’s description, pp. 6-7 above) but involved
Israelite priests return to &dquo;teach them the law of the god(s) the full range of humanity’s response to the deity, the wise
of the land&dquo;. The next verse says that the priest went back man was surely no stranger to the cult in Israel.
and &dquo;taught them how they should fear Yahweh&dquo;. It is Arguments to the contrary are no more convincing than
obvious that in such a passage the phrase under the outmoded view that the OT prophets were inherently
consideration could not mean simply having a certain &dquo;anti-cultic&dquo; because they frequently criticized this aspect
&dquo;attitude&dquo; toward Yahweh. The colonists had to be shown of Israel’s religious existence (I‘Iapier:901-02).
in some detail how to carry out the proper worship of this What does such a picture of reality, a part of ourJudeo-
god in his own territory. Christian tradition, have to say to men and women of the
twentieth century? Certainly we cannot be expected to go
back to the world view of the first or second millennium B.
Conclusions and Implications C. Although we can still praise the work of God in creation
with wonder and awe in the words of the eighth psalm, we
cannot see the world as the psalmist did. But as believers
The foregoing survey establishes two points. ( 1 ) Fear of
in God we can and do share some fundamental aspects of
(the) god(s) concept common to all areas of the
was a

ancient Near East. a concept moreover which is regularly
encountered in the wisdom literature of this region. This
means that in the case of Israel one is ill-advised to explain
the presence of this idea in wisdom passages by resorting
to theories of prophetic influence, priestly tradition,
separate schools of wisdom, etc. One need look no further
that viewpoint. We believe that human existence is not
meaningless. purposeless. no matter how many
indications to the contrary. And we believe that to find and
experience life in its fullness it is important to be
&dquo;religious&dquo;-to acknowledge our relation to God, the
Creator of heaven and earth.

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43