When God Sleeps By Bernard F. Batto
The God of the Bible both rests and sleeps. In this, he resembles other ancient Near Eastern deities. The Hebrew theologians shared a mythic vocabulary with neighboring cultures, but the Hebrew theologians used this vocabulary to elevate their theology to spiritual heights previously unknown.
Divine rest following creation is also a common motif in ancient Near Eastern mythologies. The divine rest that follows creation is, as it were, a statement that the creative activity is complete and that the work of the creator is perfect.
In the Egyptian text known as “The Theology of Memphis,”2 the Memphite god Ptah is portrayed as the real creator, prior in time and principle to all the other gods. After describing how Ptah brought forth the other gods and the world and everything that exists, the text states, “And so Ptah rested3 after he had made everything, as well as all the divine order.”4
In the creation story in Genesis 1:1–2:3, there is a deliberate muting of a conflict between the creator and the chaos monster. Anyone who reads Genesis 1:1–2:3 alongside Enuma Elish and other ancient Near Eastern mythological texts will be struck by the careful, circumscribed language of the Genesis author. He purposely avoids every hint of polytheism. He refers to the sun and the moon only in the most oblique manner, as the “two great lights” (Genesis 1:16–18), lest even the mention of their names might cause an association with false gods commonly personified by the sun and the moon. The author of Genesis knew very well that the sun and the moon were widely regarded, even by many in Israel, as gods—or at least as the visible manifestations of gods by those names. In 2 Kings 23:5, for example, we read of idolatrous priests who made offerings to the sun and moon (see also Deuteronomy 4:19 and Ezekiel 8:16). So the Genesis author calls them not sun and moon, but the “great light” and the “lesser light” (Genesis 1:16).
The Genesis account contains only the slightest vestige of the mythological sea monster: In Genesis 1:1, chaos is referred to as “the deep,” in Hebrew teûhoÆm, cognate to “Tiamat.”
In none of these descriptions do we find God retiring or resting after his battle with the chaos monster, but in other descriptions the image is often implied. One of the most powerful passages, sometimes referred to as the Ode to Yahweh’s Arm, comes from Isaiah 51:9–11. If God is called to “awake,” as he is in this passage, he must have been resting or sleeping:…
This conception of divine status is encountered again in the epic of Enuma Elish.
A number of Psalms speak of God sleeping or arising from sleep (Psalms 7, 35, 44, 59, and 74). Psalm 44 must have been composed under circumstances nearly identical to those related to Deutero-Isaiah, when Israel was “scattered among the nations” (verse 11 [12 in Hebrew]). The world seems to be collapsing and reverting to chaos; the psalmist calls on God to awake:…
The final stage in the biblical adaptation of this motif comes in the New Testament story of Jesus calming the sea, found in all three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew 8:23–27; Mark 4:35–41; Luke 8:23–27). Jesus is in a boat on the Sea of Galilee with his disciples. After a long time, he falls asleep in the stern of the boat. A sudden storm arises and waves engulf the boat. In the words of the Gospel of Matthew: “And they went and woke him, saying, ‘Save [us] Lord; we are perishing’ ” (Matthew 8:25). Jesus awakes: “Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm” (Matthew 8:26b).
All extracts above: Batto, Bernard F. “When God Sleeps,” Bible Review 3.4 (1987): 16–23.
