Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Rethinking Divine Hiddenness in the Hebrew Bible: The Hidden God as the Hostile God in Psalm 88

2021; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 114; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s0017816021000122

1475-4517

Olga Fabrikant-Burke,

Pentecostalism and Christianity Studies

Abstract Divine hiddenness in the Hebrew Bible is widely construed as the conceptual equivalent to divine absence. This article challenges this influential account in light of Psalm 88—where the hidden God is hostilely present, not absent—and reevaluates divine hiddenness. Divine hiddenness is not conterminous with divine absence. Rather, with its roots in the ancient Near Eastern idea of the royal and cultic audience, the meaning of “hide the face” (סתר + פנים) may be construed as a refusal of an audience with the divine king YHWH. Building on this insight, I argue that divine hiddenness possesses a petitionary logic and develop a distinction between the experiential and petitionary inaccessibility of salvific divine presence. Divine absence and hostile divine presence denote the former, while divine hiddenness the latter. I probe the relationships between divine hiddenness, divine absence, and hostile divine presence, concluding that the absent or hostilely present God is not ipso facto hidden.