Akiva’s Solution
“Who is like You among the gods, O Lord? Who is like You, majestic in holiness, awesome in praises, working wonders?” Exodus 15:11 NASB
Who is like You – I’m sure you noticed that Moses’ question implies multiple gods. “Who is like You among the gods?” isn’t the way we would ask. We live in a “one God” universe. Yes, there are claims about Allah and other divine figures, but in the Christian world, all these others are considered mere idols, false gods, not really real. That’s not Moses’ world. Egypt had more than 2,000 deities. Israel left a world teeming with divinity. When Moses declares, “Who is like You?” he’s lauding YHVH as the supreme deity. The plagues validated that claim. Culture and context help us resolve the potential theological conflict in Moses’ statement.
But culture and context don’t help us with another implication. You see, if what Moses says in true, that there is no god like YHVH in holiness and power, then a much more difficult problem arises. David Hume, the eighteenth-century English philosopher, succinctly articulated the problem:
“Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?”[1]
If there is no other god like YHVH, and if He is all-powerful yet full of grace, then why is there evil in the world? Abraham Heschel put it like this:
Stormy eras filled with human agony also harbor troubling thoughts; even the pillars of heaven shudder. And a nation that has been belittled by the nations of the world is likely to verge on belittling the great presumptions: that God is merciful and compassionate and that God is great and powerful. If there is mercy, there surely is no power; and if there is power, there surely is no mercy. For one could maintain that the Holy and Blessed One empathizes well but does not carry through.[2]
Rabbi Akiva proposed a novel but radical solution. “‘Ani va-ho hoshi’a na’—we are both in need of salvation. Is it not, ultimately, praise to say of God ‘He was chained in fetters’ rather than to blaspheme in the manner of Elisha ben Abuyah and say: ‘Where is the good coming to this child? Where is the longevity coming to this child?’ Rabbi Akiva saw the world through the lens of the divine pathos.”[3]
What Akiva suggested is that God Himself was not only in exile in Egypt but also in fetters. His power was restrained by the unwillingness of His people (considered the Golden Calf). He was willing but was also in need of salvation. He could have acted unilaterally, but that would mean judgment on His own. Mercy trumped judgment. God suffered as His people suffered in the throes of rescue. For this reason, Akiva exhorted his followers to embrace the pain and suffering of the world as a sign of compassion for God, as human empathy for divine pathos. We must ask if the disciple of Yeshua didn’t embrace the same kind of idea; suffering on behalf of the Messiah as a mark of affiliation. Akiva’s view enlists God as a partner in the suffering of Mankind. God compressed “His Shekhinah into the history of Israel so that He might be revealed to His chosen nation as they went into exile together. Between mercy and power, mercy takes precedence—and to the mercy of Heaven there is no limit!”[4]
“Certainly, this doctrine was no song of joy. But then the times were not made for song. God’s creatures were drowning in sorrows—do you expect a song? This doctrine is one of lament and woe, but it is a lament that contains great comfort.”[5]
We need such a doctrine. “Who is like You?” must be a question that elicits praise of God’s mercy, His total identification with our plight. And if Heaven knows no limit to mercy, then God needs to be redeemed as well. No wonder the world is a nightmare.
“God forcibly removes His people, torpid, assimilated to the fetal condition, from the deathly hold of the Egyptian mother-body. . . Both God and Israel would emerge from the redemptive moment bearing the marks of trauma.”[6]
Topical Index: evil, mercy, power, Exodus 15:11
[1] David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. Nelson Pike (Bobbs-Merrill, 1970), part 10, p. 88.
[2] Abraham Heschel, Heavenly Torah as Refracted through the Generations, p. 118.
[3] Ibid., p. 119
[4] Ibid., p. 121.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus (Schocken Books, New York: 2001), pp. 84-85.
