ABSTRACT
Erasmus takes great pains in his excursus on the second psalm to explain that God's laughter in the Old Testament is a metaphor but not an empty one. The implications of that laughter are terrifying. God the Father is indeed always calm and unmoved. The laughter of God in the Old Testament holds the promise of his dreadful retribution to be visited on the wicked. For Erasmus, even a profane poet such as Homer conveyed similar and valid warnings. Whoever would make the experiment, let John Calvin consider how God himself sometimes talks, and Jesus Christ too, that great Orator from Heaven, when reproving his disciples, the hypocrites and the reprobate. He counselled against dedicating the work to Messieurs de Berne, who held sway over Lausanne. He offered to write instead a prefatory letter certifying that the book's satirical laughter was not merely justifiable but actually praiseworthy.
