ABSTRACT
The theme of the beauty or glory of God resonates through the whole of the Hebrew Bible, treated in various ways by the different authors but always taken as central to how the divine should be understood. ‘Glory’ is an evocative word, often used along with honour and majesty. Beauty is central to its meaning. The glory and beauty of God, and the consequent beauty of all that God makes, is a source of delight and hope to the biblical writers. Modern biblical commentators, however, whether writing from a Christian
perspective of ‘Old Testament Theology’ or from an effort to read the Bible as literature or as Hebrew scripture, pay only very brief attention to beauty in comparison with other themes like law, covenant, power or holiness.1
Perhaps nothing is more indicative of the displacement of beauty in the symbolic of Western modernity than the refusal of theologians and scholars of religion to enter into serious engagement with the biblical theme of beauty. I wish to suggest, however, that it is precisely to the marginalized theme of the beauty of the divine, and the resultant beauty of divine creation, that we must look for resources for the transformation of the ugly and sordid violence which takes up such a large part of the Bible itself, and which has so profoundly shaped modernity. Beauty, natality and creativity stand as alternatives to a symbolic obsessed with destruction and death. Although beauty is not a major theme either for biblical writers or for their modern commentators, I suggest that it is a theme of resistance which is always in the margins. When beauty is lifted up, other biblical themes can also be pondered otherwise. Through the divine beauty newness enters the world and makes it sing. Take for example Moses’ encounter with God when he received the ten
commandments: endless volumes have been written commenting on this story, and much so-called ‘covenant theology’ has been based upon it. Yet according to the book of Exodus, this was not how the story began. Earlier in the book there is an account of the people of Israel entering into a covenant with God, during which Moses and some companions are summoned by God.
