"Emmanuel: Glimpses of God Incarnate," November 29

Monday, November 29

Exodus 12:21-29

“God as Destroyer”

WE DON’T LIKE TO THINK ABOUT GOD AS A DESTROYER. There’s a reason for this: if we remember God as the destroyer, as impatient or angry, then this means that there is a possibility that God might get angry at us and that we or someone we love might become victims of God’s wrath. Yet oddly in one of the most formative founding myths in the Hebrew Scriptures, the story about the Passover and the final plague of the death of the firstborn in Exodus 12, it is precisely this form of God—God as destroyer—that is celebrated, remembered, and recalled.

In these current apocalyptic-seeming times, we might be tempted to think that all this suffering that we have endured, and still are enduring, is also the result of God’s anger—that these disasters we are living through are further evidence of God’s destructive streak. However, Exodus 12 warns against just blaming God for our problems and against pigeonholing this deity as simply a wrathful destroyer. Notice that in Exodus 12 God does not simply destroy and kill; rather, in preparation for the coming period of death and suffering, God gives the Israelites instructions so that God’s people have a way to save themselves—so that the destroyer will pass them by. Indeed, the Israelites, when they annually celebrate Passover, are told not just to remember God as the awesome destroyer, but also God as the merciful deliverer.

As we prepare for Advent this year, let us recall with somberness and awe both God the destroyer and God the merciful savior. Let us remember that our Scriptures tell us that in the midst of destruction, God has not abandoned us and therefore God will not simply leave us with no remedy or aid. Rather, let us in gratitude recall the various ways that God continues to provide for us in this period of death and suffering, be it in the form of miraculous vaccines or equally miraculous technology, as we all wait in eagerness for the destruction to pass by.

–Dr. Suzie Park, Associate Professor of Old Testament