by Bret Stalcup

Created on: February 18, 2007   Last Updated: May 11, 2007

The purpose of this essay is to examine differing views of God and divine justice in the Hebrew Bible. I will examine views from Proverbs, Qohelet, and Job, and then compare these to views found in Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Ezekiel.

The book of Proverbs provides a very equitable view of divine justice; good actions bring reward from God, and evil actions bring punishment. Proverbs 11:27-28 states that "Whoever diligently seeks good seeks favor, but evil comes to the one who searches for it. Those who trust in their riches will whither, but the righteous will flourish like green leaves." More succinctly, "No harm happens to the righteous, but the wicked are filled with trouble" (Prov. 22:16). Were this the case the world would be a very direct and easily intelligible place, and there would be much less writing in the field of ethics.

In response to the clearly defined system of cause-and-effect described in Proverbs, Qohelet/Ecclesiastes portrays divine justice in a more complex manner. Here the author considers divine justice to be beyond the capacity of humans to understand, as written in Eccl. 8:16: "When I applied my mind to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done on earth, how one's eyes can sleep neither day nor night, then I saw all the work of God, that no one can find out what is happening under the sun. However much they may toil in seeking, they will not find it; even though those who are wise claim to know, they cannot find it out." The author then continues with the (especially for the era) radical view that the concepts of justice and reward are ultimately insubstantial and meaningless, "since the same fate comes to all, to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to those who sacrifice and those who do not sacrifice. As are the good, so are the sinners; those who swear are like those who shun an oath. This is an evil in all that happens under the sun, that the same fate comes to anyone" (Eccl. 9:1-3). Here lies a contrast in value between Proverbs and Qohelet; in the first, justice is all-important; in the second, justice or the lack thereof pales in the shadow of death. This is a significant theological shiftfrom the direct relation between reaping and sowing to a proto-existentialist discourse on life's absurdity.

In Job we see a departure from the concept of divine justice altogether. In this book God cares not for justice, and instead displays a cosmic "might-is-right" attitude. After

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