Welcome to Part 2 of my book analysis series of Esther Hamori’s new book, God’s Monsters. But first, a shameless plug: The Blue-Collar Bible Scholar’s Reader’s Guide to the New Testament is a culmination of the past 25 years of my life in Biblical Studies. Back in 1995-1997, I went to Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia and got a master’s degree in New Testament Studies, and from 1997 to today I have been teaching Bible/Biblical Studies in some form or another at both the high school level (16 years), university level (8 years and counting), as well as a couple years at the graduate/seminary level (2 years). Hopefully, my Reader’s Guide to the Old Testament will be coming out next year. Check it out.
With that out of the way, let’s continue our journey through God’s Monsters. Today, we will look at her chapter on the Cherubim…and will encounter some rather poor biblical exegesis.
Chapter 2: Cherubim
In chapter 2, Hamori discuss the biblical portrayal of Cherubim. As she correctly points out, the actual Cherubim in the Bible are nothing like the cute, chubby, winged-baby-angels that occupy many Hallmark cards, Precious Moments paraphernalia, and refrigerators of overly sentimental grandmothers. In reality, biblical cherubim are depicted as mythological, bizarre hybrid creatures that stand at the gateways between the heavenly and earthly realms. Like the seraphim, they are not “cute and adorable.” They are intimidating and terrifying. (I think Hamori’s depiction of them as “monsters” is a bit prejudicial, but I understand the book has to have some kind of edgy angle).
Eden
Perhaps the most well-known cherub is the one YHWH places at the edge of the Garden of Eden to guard its entrance once Adam and Eve are banished from it. As Hamori correctly highlights, this cherub is sort of a gatekeeper. Of course, most of her section about the cherub of Eden isn’t about the cherub at all. Rather, Hamori, gives quite a twisted and bizarre retelling of Genesis 3 in which the main antagonist—the main villain—is none other than God Himself.
In Hamori’s retelling of Genesis 3, the Garden of Eden is a place of “divine danger,” the place where God has “a trap laid for them from the start” in order to “threaten humankind with supernatural violence” (45). According to Hamori, God lied to Adam and Eve because He said they’d die on the day they ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil…but they didn’t. And the snake actually was the one who told the truth, because he said they’d be like God, and God Himself acknowledged in 3:22 that they had become like God.
Yes, God lied, and the snake told the truth. On top of that, God is a gaslighting abuser. Hamori writes, “In a disturbingly typical abuser move, God shows just enough care to keep the people convinced of his love, making them clothing and even dressing them himself. This tender act is almost enough to make you forget that he just lied to them about thieves being in danger if they dared disobey him, then decreed suffering for them, and is about to throw them out of the garden, all while laying the blame solely at their feet. He even alters the story: he misquotes himself to Adam, telling him he’s cursed because he at from the tree ‘about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’’—and God ends his quotation there, omitting the false part, ‘for on the day you eat from it, you shall surely die.’ God has just gaslighted the first humans.” (46)
There are so many things wrong with Hamori’s interpretation of Genesis 3, I don’t know where to start. Not once does she discuss the role of myth, the context of the story, or the purpose of the story. Instead, she interprets it as some sort of morality tale in Bizarro World. If a Victorian moralist wrongly interprets Genesis 3 as nothing more than a lesson to children to obey their parents, Hamori wrongly interprets Genesis 3 to argue nothing more than mom and dad are bullies for punishing little Timmy for disobeying—and discipline is abuse! I’m sorry, there is simply no way to intelligently engage in a discussion or debate about a biblical passage with someone who insists on interpreting it in such a juvenile way.
Still, when it comes to Hamori’s claim that God “gaslighted” Adam and Eve by “omitting the false part” of His original warning to them, let me say this. It is shocking to me that she, a biblical scholar, seemingly is not aware of a very common feature in Hebrew narrative, where a portion of an earlier statement is given to refer back to the entire statement. Hence, this is not a case of God “gaslighting” anyone. It is a common narrative feature in the Old Testament.
At the end of her discussion about Eden, and how it really was God’s own hellish psychological torture house for human beings, Hamori notes that later on in Israelite history, the Temple itself was filled with Eden symbolism. But according to Hamori, this was not a good thing. No, it was reminder to the Israelites of “the place of ultimate danger to human beings. It’s where God lied to them, gaslighted them, and decreed for them misery and hardship all the days of their lives. He threw them out and slammed the door behind them, stationing the cherubim at the gate, and the future of humankind was altered forever, for the worse, and by God’s own doing. Reflections of Eden fill the Jerusalem temple, but Eden wasn’t a safe space for humankind. In the temple, this urban Paradise, the memory of Eden is engraved like a scar” (58).
That’s right, every time worshippers went to the Temple, it’s like they could almost hear YHWH, their very own divine Buffalo Bill (of The Silence of the Lambs fame) say, “It puts the lotion on its skin and then puts it in the basket!”
Ezekiel
There are also cherubim in Ezekiel. Hamori draws our attention to the four living creatures in Ezekiel 1 who are later described as cherubim in Ezekiel 10. In Ezekiel 10, Ezekiel has a vision in which he is taken to the Temple in Jerusalem and sees the people their engaging in idolatrous practices and worship in the Temple itself. As punishment for breaking the covenant with YHWH and worshipping foreign gods, Ezekiel witnesses YHWH’s judgment acted out on the Temple in the figure of a man dressed in linen who is given a glowing coal from one of the cherubim and then commences a slaughter in the Temple.
Hamori’s point is that in the Bible, cherubim most often “emanate divine danger” (67). She’s right. The problem with her treatment of Ezekiel 10, though, is that she never gives the context and meaning of Ezekiel’s vision. To the point, Ezekiel’s vision is that of Jerusalem and the Temple’s immanent destruction, which came at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon in 587 BC. Ezekiel prophesied that because Israel broke covenant with YHWH, because they went off after foreign gods (which, by extension, led to a highly unjust and corrupt society that oppressed the poor and needy), YHWH was going to allow Babylon to come and conquer them. The slaughter Ezekiel sees in the Temple is thus symbolic of the coming destruction by Babylon.
It is like if someone saw the atrocities in Nazi Germany and prophesied that God was going to judge Hitler and the Nazis and destroy them. Yes, He ultimately did, but in history, that destruction came at the hands of the United States. God Himself didn’t literally slaughter Nazis, and even if He did, no one in their right mind would say destroying Nazis is immoral. In any case, we can acknowledge that ultimately, Germany’s destruction in WWII was both God’s judgment, but also came about because of the corruption and evil of the Nazis. This is what Ezekiel’s vision and prophecy of judgment of Jerusalem is like. That’s the context. But there’s not a hint of that in Hamori’s book. Instead, she paints it in a childishly simplistic way that amounts to, “Look! cherubim are monsters who slaughter people for God! God is a big meanie!”
Why anyone would be impressed with this characterization is beyond me.
Revelation
There are cherubim in Revelation too. Well, the actual word isn’t there (because the New Testament is in Greek) but the vision John has of God’s throne is clearly taken from Ezekiel’s vision of God’s throne. Thus, the four living creatures John sees are (logically) the four living creatures/cherubim from Ezekiel. Now, she correctly points out that, once again, cherubim are associated with divine danger and violence. (Granted, she doesn’t take the time to point out that this divine danger and violence is directed toward evildoers, and instead wrongly claims God just indiscriminately mows down His own innocent people, but hey, let’s not split hairs).
What Hamori focuses on is the four horsemen in Revelation 6. Now, it is true that in Revelation 6, it is the four living creatures who say, “Come!” and then each of the for horsemen come in succession, with the result being ¼ of the earth is destroyed. But apparently, Hamori doesn’t really get what the vision John is seeing is about. She claims that the cherubim are sending the four horsemen “through the cosmic gate, letting them loose on humankind” (72), implying that these four horsemen are sent by God to slaughter innocent people.
Again, there is no attempt to explain what apocalyptic literature is and how the symbolism in apocalyptic literature functions. On top of that, Hamori simply gets Revelation 6 wrong. The four horsemen don’t “come from heaven” to earth. They symbolize the destruction that the Roman Empire inflicted on the known world: (A) The White Horse = Roman Imperialism set out to conquer; (B) The Red Horse = The wars Rome waged; (C) The Black Horse = The economic devastation that the conquered peoples experienced at the hands of Rome; and (D) The Pale Horse = The death that Roman aggression brought about.
There is more to the entire Book of Revelation (let me recommend my new book, The Blue-Collar Bible Scholar’s Reader’s Guide to the New Testament), but for our purposes here, that should be enough to show how uninterested Hamori seems to be when it comes to basic exegesis and responsible reading. Yes, cherubim are often associated with divine danger and violence, but that divine violence in the Bible isn’t arbitrary—it is directed toward evildoers who abused and exercise violence on the poor and needy. Therefore, when later on in Revelation, seven angels pour out the seven bowls of God’s wrath, that is a response to the corruption, death, and destruction that Rome had wrought upon innocent people, most notably the martyrs. Simply put, Revelation shows that God’s wrath comes upon those who abuse and destroy humanity. Hamori literally flips that clear message upside down.
And so, we should just shake our heads in disbelief at “analysis” like this: “We now recognize the m.o. How many times has God shown just enough tenderness to reassure his people, before flipping the switch? After gaslighting and cursing his first human creations, he clothes them with care before evicting them from their home and posting cherubim at their door. He blesses the Israelites with the ark and then slaughters them through its presence. He provides them with the sanctity of the temple and then rains down fiery coals upon it. From the divine tragedy of Eden to the destruction of humanity, the cherubim stand as a reminder that humankind is at God’s mercy. This is not reassuring” (72).
I don’t know how any biblical scholar worth his/her salt can get to such a ridiculous take on the Bible. Yes, the Bible is disturbing and challenging. It forces us to seriously wrestle with what is being presented. This is not what we see in these first two chapters.
It is always so strange to me that people will grant that the early chapters in Genesis are written as mythology, but then refuse to believe that there is a difference between these myths being descriptive or prescriptive. I think these early chapters (and the the rest of the Bible too) have been so profound to people because there are so many layers of understanding to them. One of those layers is possibly that a lot of the psychology of humanity is being described in those first chapters of Genesis, and that’s something far more interesting to write about than bastardizing any semblance of the original meaning of the text just to make a few bucks or something.