The answer to all these questions has to do with the act of seeing itself. In numerous places in the Bible, the text seems to go out of its way to assert that there is a special kind of seeing associated with divine encounters. It is as if the normal faculty of sight is shut down, replaced by something else: at first, people think that their eyes are perceiving things, but this is just an optical illusion. That is why, in a divine vision, people often seem to be in some kind of fog (as Hagar apparently is here): the most obvious things seem to escape their attention. After a while, however, they catch on; suddenly they realize that this is a divine encounter, that their eyes are really not functioning normally, and what they think they are seeing they are not seeing at all. That is why God has to “open” Hagar’s eyes afterwards; He has to switch her vision from the special to the regular sort of seeing in order for her to perceive what was right in front of her all along.*
This special kind of seeing is often marked as such in the Bible. One day, sitting outside his tent, Abraham sees three men approaching. Notice, however, the Bible’s wording:
Now the LORD appeared to him by the terebinths of Mamre, while he was sitting at the door of his tent in the heat of the day. And he lifted up his eyes and he saw, and behold! Three men were standing near him and he saw; and he ran from the tent door toward them and bowed down low.” (Gen 18:1–2)
The first sentence describes to the reader what really happened: the LORD appeared to Abraham. But that isn’t what Abraham saw, so the text stresses the fact that he was seeing in a different mode: “He lifted up his eyes and he saw, and behold! . . . and he saw . . .”2 This vision carries on for a while: Abraham prepares an elaborate meal for his three guests, then watches them eat, or at least thinks that that is what he is seeing. (But every ancient Israelite knew that angels cannot eat.)3 “Where is your wife Sarah?” they ask—but how do these strangers know his wife’s name? The whole thing is like a dream, except that Abraham seems to be wide awake.
Then He said, “I will return in a year’s time, and your wife Sarah will have a son.” Sarah had been listening at the door of the tent, which was in back of him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, well advanced in years; Sarah had stopped having the periods that women have. So Sarah laughed to herself: “After I am all worn out, will I still have relations—not to mention that my husband is old too!” Then the LORD said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Can I really give birth, old as I am?’ Is anything too much for the LORD? In a year’s time I will be back, and Sarah will have a son.” (Gen 18:10–14)
It is important to pay close attention to the words. This whole section is being told to us from the point of view of the narrative: the text is saying that this is really God speaking to Abraham. But Abraham and Sarah don’t know this; they are still in a fog—as they will be until the end.
Beyond this specific observation, what is remarkable about the whole incident is what it seems to be saying about human encounters with God. They do take place. A person could just be sitting in front of his tent on a hot afternoon, and suddenly God might appear to him. But the person could never really be sure of what he was seeing, because his eyes seemed to be telling him that this was just an ordinary human being.4 (One might say this was his brain’s way of representing to itself something that was not visual at all.) Then God begins to speak, and in the present example, even though Abraham doesn’t know it is God speaking, the words enter his mind, “I will return to you in a year’s time, and Sarah will have a son” (verse 14). The words turn out to be true: Sarah does indeed give birth to Isaac. But the accompanying visual part, the things that Abraham’s eyes had been seeing, remain a kind of waking dream. Even after those true words coming from God had been spoken, the waking dream can continue, as is it does in this case. The passage thus ends: “Then the men set out from there and looked down toward Sodom, and Abraham went along with them to see them off.” He’s still in a fog.5
A much briefer, but similar, case is the appearance of an angel to Moses. Tending his father-in-law’s flocks, Moses arrives at Horeb, the site of the “mountain of God [or: the gods].”* Again, it is important to notice the wording:
And the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flaming fire from the midst of the bush, and he saw and behold! The bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not burnt up. Moses said, “I have to take a closer look at this sight: why isn’t that bush burning up?” Once the LORD saw that he had come to take a look, God called to him from the middle of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” He answered, “Here I am.” (Exod 3:2–4)
What is the text seeking to say? To us, the readers/listeners, it is saying that God appeared to Moses. But this is not what Moses saw. All he saw was a bush that somehow kept burning and burning, so much so that he was eventually persuaded to go off the beaten path to take a closer look. Was it a real bush? Real bushes don’t keep burning like that. But once this vision had drawn Moses close enough to where God was,** God could begin to speak to him, and the visual part could disappear. Thus, when the text describes what Moses saw in this narrative—the thing that he calls “this sight”6—it is speaking strictly from Moses’s point of view and talking about that other kind of seeing. As with Abraham, one might say that this was the brain’s way of processing a nonvisual encounter in visual terms. Later, however, Moses hears God’s voice and the “angel” disappears. Now Moses is out of the visionary mode of seeing. Actually, he sees nothing; all he is doing is listening to God speak.
Why was this plausible? By this I do not mean to ask if Moses or Abraham really had such an encounter; there is no way to know that, or even to know if such a person as Moses or Abraham ever really existed. Rather, my question is: What did the first audience of these stories assume—about God, and about seeing—that made these accounts seem plausible and even realistic? If one considers as a whole the Bible’s various narrations of people’s encounters with the divine, a definite pattern emerges—not in every case, to be sure, but in quite a few.7 The people involved suddenly meet up with God, but this is not normal seeing. Indeed, the text sometimes enters into a kind of double narration, telling us that this was God while at the same time seeking to duplicate what the person involved saw, “three men” or “a bush that kept burning.” At the same time, the narrative makes sure we know that the people are in a kind of fog: what they think they see (often referred to as an “angel”) is not what they are really seeing, but the brain’s way of processing this encounter. Eventually, however, God starts to speak to them; at this point they may or may not realize that what they had been seeing was a vision, but in any case, what they hear is the voice of God. So this is the pattern in many biblical narratives: what they see is an illusion, but what God says is real. The question is: Why? A few further examples may clarify the point.
The Moment of Confusion
Gideon ended up as a chieftain of the Israelites, one of the “judges” (the word shofet really means “leader” in early Hebrew) in the book of Judges. His rise to leadership began at a low point in his tribe’s fortunes. The marauding Midianites keep attacking his kinsmen to seize their grain; in fact, the story opens with Gideon “beating out grains of wheat in the winepress to keep them safe from the Midianites.” But then:
The angel of the LORD appeared to him and said, “The LORD is with you, O mighty warrior.” Gideon said to him, “Excuse me, sir, but if the LORD is with us, why are we having all this trouble? Where are all the miracles that our ancestors recorded for us, saying, ‘Truly, the LORD took us up out of Egypt’? But now the LORD has abandoned us and left us in the power of the Midianites.” Then the LORD turned to him and said, “Go in this strength of yours and save Israel yourself from the Midianites—am I not the one who is sending you?” But he said, “Please, sir, how should I be the one to save Israel?” (Judg 6:12–15)
The text says that what Gideon sees is an “angel of the LORD” in order to tell us that this was a vision. But all that Gideon sees is an ordinary man, whose greeting
, “The LORD is with you,” was apparently just a kind of pious hello in those days.* If he had realized that this was a divine vision and that what his eyes were seeing was not seeing in the usual sense, he would no doubt have fallen to his knees in reverence. But he is in one of those moments of confusion that are the mark of a divine encounter. So instead he uses the stranger’s greeting to make his own, somewhat disrespectful retort: “Oh yeah? Well if God is with us, why are things so bad?” The visitor’s referring to him as a “mighty warrior” must likewise have rung hollow in Gideon’s ears: the mighty warrior was just now hiding his precious wheat grains in a winepress in case some Midianites should show up and take them from him by force!
Then “the LORD turned to him and said”—again, “the LORD” is what we readers are being told about Gideon’s interlocutor. But Gideon still thinks this is an ordinary human being; that is what he “sees.” Even when God says, “Go in this strength of yours and save Israel yourself from the Midianites—am I not the one who is sending you?”—Gideon somehow fails to catch the significance of these last words. Who would say such a thing if not God? But Gideon is in a fog; he thinks he is talking to a real person. “Please, sir,” he says, “how should I be the one to save Israel?” He is still utterly confused.
It might seem in such passages that the distinction between an angel and God Himself is altogether blurred, as many scholars (including me)8 have maintained. This is true, but it’s not quite the whole story. Rather, the visual part that constitutes the “angel” is altogether an illusion, a visual representation of something that is not visible; but what God says is quite real. So at first Gideon sees an angel (that is, the illusory vision), but then begins the true, audible part, “the LORD turned to him and said.” This was true as well of the passage cited earlier about Moses and the burning bush: at first “the angel of the LORD appeared to him,” but then “God called to him from the middle of the bush.” In reality, it is always God who is speaking, but the angel in these ancient narratives is best understood as “God unrecognized,” a visual representation of the nonvisual. (The Hebrew word mal’akh, translated as “angel,” is rather more noncommittal than the English word. It means someone or something that is sent, an envoy or messenger, like Jacob’s altogether human envoys in Gen 32:4.) In these visions, angels bear no external, physical signs of being anything other than human (because they are mirages in any case). They are nothing like the easily recognized angels of Renaissance painting, robed all in white, with a nice golden halo floating just above their heads. Rather, they look like ordinary people, at least to the person involved, because that person is always in a fog, as we have seen. It is only after a while that the person realizes the truth, and then his or her first reaction is fear: “I have actually encountered God Himself.”
In the case of Gideon, the fog now starts to lift, at least partially, in the continuation of this passage:
Then the LORD said, “But I will be with you, and you will defeat the Midianites to a man.” He said to him, “If you will, sir, please give me some sign that it is you who are speaking to me. Do not leave here until I come back to you with an offering of mine and set it down in front of you.” And he said: “I will stay here until you return.”
What “the LORD” says are indeed God’s words, but Gideon is still unsure who is speaking. True, asking for a sign is something one might request of God, but it could also be asked of a prophet of some kind.9 In any case, asking for a sign is always a way of asking for proof when one is in doubt. And certainly what Gideon says next undercuts any notion that he understands that his interlocutor is a divine vision: every ancient Israelite knew that real angels neither eat nor drink, so placing an offering in front of this stranger (it seems to be just an ordinary meal of meat and unleavened bread) seems to indicate that Gideon still takes him for an ordinary human, or is testing him to see. It is only when the angel touches this offering with his staff that the visionary nature of this encounter becomes clear:
A fire sprang up and engulfed the meat and the unleavened bread, and with that, the angel of the LORD disappeared from sight. When Gideon realized that it was indeed an angel of the LORD, he said, “Oh no! Oh Lord GOD—this means that I have seen the ‘angel’ of the LORD face to face.” And the LORD said to him: “It is all right, do not be afraid, you will not die.”
This is the final moment of recognition, ending in the appropriately panicky reverence. And it is certainly significant that while the optical illusion, the angel, has disappeared from sight, “the LORD” is still there talking to Gideon.
The “moment of confusion” seen in this brief encounter is duplicated in other biblical narratives as well. The famous account of Jacob’s fight with an angel fits the same pattern:
And Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until the break of day. When he saw that he could not overcome him, he wrenched Jacob’s hip in its socket, so that the socket of Jacob’s hip was strained in the fight with him. Then he said, “Let go of me, since it is getting to be dawn.” But Jacob said, “I will not let go of you unless you bless me.” He said, “Your name will not be Jacob any longer, but Israel, since you have struggled with God and with men and have prevailed.” Then Jacob said to him, “Please now, tell me your name.” He answered: “Why should you be asking for my name?” and blessed him there. Jacob named the place Peniel, saying, “I have seen God face to face and yet my life has been spared.” (Gen 32:24–30)
Jacob thinks he is wrestling with a “man.”10 The fight with this stranger goes on, or seems to, the whole night long. (But who wrestles for an entire night?) Jacob appears in the end to get the better of his opponent, who asks to be released because it is getting to be dawn. Jacob’s demand that his opponent bless him might seem to modern readers to indicate that Jacob is catching on, but in the Bible, the act of blessing is not as unusual as in modern times: human beings frequently bless each other. Here, in fact, Jacob seems to be asking for a blessing in the same sense that victorious schoolboys demand of their opponents, “Say ‘uncle’. ” The “blessing” that Jacob is demanding will be a sign of his fighting partner’s utter submission. In other words, after a whole night of supposed wrestling, Jacob is still in a fog. Even the unexpected content of this “blessing”—that Jacob’s name is to be exchanged for a new one, Israel—does not tip him off. The proof is that he then asks the “man” to tell him his name; any ancient Israelite knew that angels don’t have names.11
Another moment of confusion occurs when an angel appears to the wife of Manoah (otherwise unnamed), the future mother of the biblical hero Samson. The story begins when “the angel of the LORD appeared to the woman” and told her that her frustrating period of infertility was about to end. She thinks he is a prophet, although she isn’t sure: she later says that he looked “very frightening, like an angel/emissary of God.” The things that this apparition says are altogether true: he gives her instructions for making her future son a Nazirite* from birth. But Manoah’s wife hasn’t caught on yet. When the stranger comes back for a return visit, she and her husband continue to act as if he is a human being.
Manoah said to the angel of the LORD, “Permit us to detain you and kill a goat for you [for dinner].” The angel of the LORD said to Manoah, “Though you detain me I will not be able to eat your food; but if you wish to make a burnt offering to the LORD, then send it up”—because Manoah did not realize that he was an angel of the LORD. Then Manoah said to the angel of the LORD, “What is your name? For when what you said comes true, we will want to honor you.” The angel replied, “Why should you be asking about my name, since it cannot be known?” Then Manoah took the goat and the grain offering, and offered them up to the LORD on a rock, and something wondrous happened while Manoah and his wife were watching. As the flames were rising up from the altar toward the sky, the angel of the LORD rose up in the flames of the altar. And Manoah and his wife saw this and they fell on their faces to the ground. The angel of the LORD never again appeare
d to Manoah and his wife; thus, Manoah understood that it was an angel of the LORD. And Manoah said to his wife, “We will surely die, because we have seen God.” (Judg 13:15–22)
Here are most of the elements already seen.12 Manoah and his wife offer their visitor a meal (just as Gideon did)—proof that they don’t yet know that he is an angel. In fact, they are in such a fog that his weird answer, “Though you detain me I will not be able to eat your food,” doesn’t seem to strike them as weird at all. Then they make that other mistake (just seen in the case of Jacob and the angel) of asking an angel his name, when everyone knows that angels don’t have names. Again, the angel’s strange reply—“Why should you be asking about my name, since it cannot be known?”—doesn’t tip them off in the slightest. It is only when the angel suddenly disappears in the altar’s flames that they finally catch on and then, as in the previous instances, their words reveal that “angels” have no independent reality, even in a waking dream. Rather, as Manoah says, “We will surely die, because we have seen God.”
The Great Shift Page 2
