“God’s Monsters” by Esther Hamori: A Book Analysis Series–Part 6: Leviathans, Shades, Giants, and God the Ultimate Monster

Welcome to Part 6 of my book analysis series of Esther Hamori’s new book, God’s Monsters. In this post, we are going to do a sprint through as much of the next few chapters in Hamori’s book as possible. To be honest, when I first read God’s Monsters, during the first half of the book I did a lot of eye-rolling, but I still thought it wasn’t as bad as, let’s say, Francesca Stavrakopolou’s God: An Anatomy. By the time I got to the end of God’s Monsters, though, let me just say it still came in second to God: An Anatomy, but it really had quite a kick in the last 100 yards to make it a tighter race to the bottom.

The last four chapters of God’s Monsters total 74 pages. I’m going to do my best to hit the lowlights and provide a clear bird’s-eye view of the outrageous claims Hamori makes. Let’s jump in.

Chapter 7: The Sea Monster
In chapter 7, Hamori draws our attention to the great sea monster in ANE mythology: Levithan. She begins with a quick jaunt through passages like Psalm 74, Isaiah 51, and Isaiah 27 to show that in these passages, Leviathan is God’s enemy. She also notes that Leviathan is presented as the great dragon in Revelation 12. At no point in any of these passages does she attempt to explain the context of these passages. She simply wants to show that yes, in these passages, Leviathan is the great enemy God slays.

After that, she takes a sharp left turn and proceeds to argue that in Psalm 104:25-28 Leviathan is presented as “the pinnacle of creation” (211), not human beings. She then moves on to YHWH’s speech to Job in Job 38-41, where YHWH gives a laundry list of things in nature and asks Job if he created them (obviously Job didn’t). When He gets to Leviathan, Hamori claims that GOD admits He cannot control Leviathan, just like Job can’t.

She then hones in on 41:3-4, when YHWH asks Job if he can “speak softly” with Leviathan and create a covenant with it. “A HA!” says Hamori. That means God “plays with Leviathan while the sea monster whispers sweet nothings in his ear” (214). Now, if you’re thinking, “Wait, she’s not suggesting God is romantically involved with Leviathan, is she?” well…she kinda is! She proceeds to compare God’s description of Leviathan throughout Job 41 to the description of the Beloved in Song of Songs 4:1-7! She claims that this passage in Song of Songs is a particular genre of poetry called a wasf that praises the body of a beloved one. Well…that’s what’s happening in Job 41 with Leviathan too! “God describes Leviathan’s body as if gazing slowly over each part. This is not a biology lesson. It’s a wasf…–it is positively an expression of intimate knowledge and passionate love” (221). “God’s poem is an expression of love, and he lingers over every detail” (222).

That’s right, according to Hamori, not only is God a lying, deceiving, blood-thirsty being worse than Satan, He also likes to light some candles, put on some Barry White, and make sweet love to Leviathan. Hamori thinks this is actually makes sense: “To be fair, Leviathan is a better match for God. People can be so…moral. God identifies with the monster, and with the monstrous” (223).

…I won’t share what I wrote in the margins of the book.

Chapter 8: Shades, Ghosts, and Other Living Dead
In chapter 8, Hamori focuses on the state of the dead in Sheol. She correctly notes that in the Old Testament, there wasn’t a concept of “fiery pits” that we often associate with hell. It was a place of shades, the long-forgotten dead. She then immediately castigates God for having the audacity to forget people who’ve died.

Then she comes to Isaiah 26:14-21. Now, Isaiah 26 is part of what scholars called Isaiah’s “Apocalypse” in chapters 24-27. The full context of Isaiah is that YHWH will punish and destroy the corrupt rulers of Jerusalem—their dead will not rise and will be forgotten. But that doesn’t mean YHWH is finished with His people Israel. Although they will suffer YHWH’s wrath for a bit, He will “add to the nation” and extend it to the ends of the earth.  “Your dead will live! Their corpses will rise up!” Isaiah then prophesises that the dwellers of the dust will awake and shout for joy, and that the land will give birth to those long dead (26:16-19). This is prophesying about some sort of future resurrection, indeed, a re-birth, of God’s people, not only the Jews, but of all nations.

Hamori though, let’s just be honest, twists this passage to fit her argument. She claims this passage is about “the earth vomiting out their corpses. The final line might be the most disconcerting: it’s only corpses that rise, and they’re still shades when the earth pushes them out. What is walking around out there?” (233).

I am at a loss. “Bad exegesis” doesn’t begin to describe it. How in the world can any self-respecting biblical scholar read phrases like “Your dead will live!” “Their corpses will rise up!” “The dwellers of the dust will awake and shout for joy” and “the land will give birth to those long dead” and conclude that Isaiah is talking about some kind of zombie apocalypse from The Walking Dead? I’m sorry, it can’t be she is that incompetent. I’m sorry, this is purposeful deceit.

Chapter 9: Giants
In chapter 9, Hamori focuses on the offspring of the Nephilim (Genesis 6:1-4) that are mentioned in the accounts of the conquest, with names like Anakim, Emim, Zamzummim, Horim, Avvim, and Rephaim. She claims that the identifying the indigenous Canaanite population with these monstrous offspring of the Nephilim was a later invention by later scribes who wanted to portray the Israelites as monster-slayers and the indigenous Canaanite as monsters who deserved it. She event alludes to Goliath (of David and Goliath fame) and notes that Goliath asks David, “Am I a dog?” Why is that important? David put this human being down like an animal! That’s God for you! What David did to Goliath and what the Israelites did to the Canaanites was dehumanizing and cruel!

Can you guess where Hamori is going with this? That’s right! Colonialism! What we are seeing is the calling of human beings “monsters” to justify colonization and slaughter: “Far more often, the colonists described diverse Native peoples as ‘animals’ and ‘wild beasts’—directly related to the intention of displacing and killing countless people” (258). She then ends the chapter by connecting all this to Ferguson, Missouri, and the shooting of Michael Brown. She quotes the officer’s grand jury testimony: “I felt like a five-year-old holding on to Hulk Hogan,” and basically calls BS because both Brown and the officer were around 6’4.” The indication is that she believes the officer “othered” Brown, claiming he was like a monster, in order to justify shooting him.

Let’s be clear, despite the narrative that was championed in the press that Michael Brown was an innocent kid with his hands on his head and his back turned to the officer, pleading, “Don’t shoot!” the fact is that he had just robbed a store, had rushed the police car, had assaulted the officer and reached for his gun, then, after initially running off, turned around and rushed the officer again before the officer finally shot him. Therefore, what the officer was describing was when he was sitting in the police car and Brown was reaching in, punching him and grabbing for his gun. In that position, it doesn’t matter that both were 6’4.”

Regardless of your political leanings, your love or hate of BLM, or anything, those are the provable facts regarding what happened. They are indisputable. Given that, to continue to portray Michael Brown as an innocent victim is push a falsehood. Yet, that is what Hamori does. And to then claim that provable false narrative is what is going on in Numbers and Joshua is…I have no words. Whatever it is, it isn’t responsible exegesis and interpretation.

It is, though, par for the course in the book.

Chapter 10: The Monster of Monsters, the Wonder of Wonders
By now, you probably don’t have to guess who Hamori thinks is the biggest monster of all. Yep, God. She writes, “Every biblical monster torturing, gaslighting, bloodying, and slaughtering people on God’s orders is a neon sign pointing to its commander, the God-monster” (265).

This shouldn’t be surprising, Hamori says: “In the Bible’s ancient context, it makes sense that God is a monster. The divine and the monstrous are all intertwined in mythology from this region, like the god-monsters we met in the introduction, the giant, fire-breathing Marduk and the divine sea monster Tiamat. Monstrous behavior’s not a deal breaker either. Throughout the region, the defining traits of gods isn’t goodness—it’s power” (267).

Yes, that is true for the gods of the ANE. Yet anyone (scholar or competent reader alike) who has read the Bible, while being well-aware of the troubling passages and violent imagery, knows full well that throughout the entire Bible that God is constantly contrasted with the gods of the ANE—He is GOOD, HOLY, and UNLIKE other gods. He is portrayed as entering into history and binding Himself to a covenant with Israel and keeping that covenant because He is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness (Exo 34:6). That is at the bedrock of the biblical portrayal of God. Therefore, anyone who says the defining trait of God in the Bible isn’t goodness, but rather power, is either mind-numbingly ignorant or purposefully deceptive.

Since Hamori invoked “gaslighting” throughout her book, it ironic that she engages in a bit of gaslighting herself at the end of her book. After an entire book in which she claims the God of the Bible is a violent, bloodthirsty, deceitful, sadistic, narcistic, Leviathan-humping sexual freak, she has the audacity to then say, “God in the Bible is far more complex and multi-faceted than just being the monster king. He’s not plain old bad. He’s incredible, ineffable, glorious…and also very, very bad” (268). And later, “If we want to understand the Bible, we can’t take just the merciful portrayals and gloss over the monstrous ones” (268).

And later, “This complexity is part of what gives the Bible its depth and dimension. …Instead of discounting these difficult texts and settling for a simplistic, party-line Bible, we can embrace the rich diversity of perspectives within its pages” (269)

But neither should twist and distort the disturbing passages to make them worse than they are, and then say not a word about ANYTHING good in the Bible. Furthermore, has anything in Hamori’s book that I’ve covered in this blog series struck you as “in depth” or “complex”? Did it seem she was trying to push for a “diversity of perspectives”? I don’t think so. What she put forth is just as childish and simplistic and juvenile as any Precious Moments Bible Sunday School version around—just instead of God as a fluffy bunny, Hamori portrays God as Freddy Kreuger, Saw, Mike Myers, and Hannibal Lecter combined into one. It is just plain silly. It’s not shocking or offensive. It’s just silly.

Conclusion
As I’ve looked at the reception and endorsements for this book online, it is not in the least bit surprising that the most glowing endorsements comes from those (without naming names) who have come from a very conservative Evangelical background but who have now gotten famous for running to the opposite end of the political spectrum and trashing everything and anyone remotely associated with conservatism and/or Evangelicalism.

I grew up in a fairly conservative Evangelical culture in Wheaton, Illinois. My family, though, was not “right-wing crazy” and we were encouraged to ask questions and not deny some very clear black spots within Evangelicalism (I’m look at you, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker!). Because of that, when I later got screwed over by a few right-wing fundie YECist zealots, that bad experience didn’t cause me to be triggered and chuck everything from the Evangelical Christianity in which I was brought up. Heck, by the time all that happened, my spiritual journey had already led me to Orthodoxy. I wasn’t scarred or traumatized by my Evangelical upbringing—I just grew out of it. I still know plenty of great, solid Evangelical Christians, and I’m never going to broadbrush and childishly react against Evangelicalism, even though there are examples of fundie Evangelicals (ahem…Ken Ham) who broadbrush and childishly react against any and everyone who doesn’t endorse their extreme (and stupid) views.

Now, Hamori grew up in a Jewish household, I believe, and Francesca Stavrakopolou says she has always been an atheist. Both of their takes on the Bible are shockingly shallow and childish. But they have a very enthusiastic following of ex-Evangelicals and fundies who seem to mindlessly accept everything they (and scholars like Bart Ehrman) put out there. They’ve simply changed one extreme of blind belief for another. I want to say that saddens me, but in reality, it angers me.

The Bible is fascinating, disturbing in parts, and challenging. Honest wrestling with it will challenge and mature you. Books like God’s Monsters, God: An Anatomy, or anything written by Ken Ham, Kenneth Copeland, Tim LaHaye, and many others, on the other hand, will only produce simpletons and childish, immature thinking. Such books might tickle itching ears and succeed in book sales, but they’re the equivalent of a slider at White Castle—eat enough of them, and you’ll be spiritually crapping your pants.