God's Emotions Connect with Ours

Yahweh, translated as LORD in English Bibles, is the central character in the dramatic Flood story told in Genesis 6-9. The name of the Hebrew God was revealed to Moses and used by the compilers throughout the Hebrew Testament. As a proper name it could mean, “I am Who I Am,” or “He Causes to Be.” The latter would be of great relevance to the story.^[1]

The compilers describe Yahweh as the divine Protagonist. A Protagonist serves as the central character in any story. This character drives the plot forward toward a goal. The struggles and experiences of the protagonist usually dominate the unfolding tale. Katniss Everdeen of the Hunger Games, Luke Skywalker of Star Wars, and Sherlock Holmes are familiar protagonists, holding readers spell-bound until the final page. The Flood narrative follows the arc of development for Yahweh that will reveal divine character and the future of humanity.

The perspective of Process-Relational Theology (PRT) allows readers to know emotions of God are not just a metaphorical device but instead accurately depict the fullness of sacred life in dynamic relation to the entire universe. God truly loves, hates, suffers, and hopes as a living “being.” Creatures of Earth do the same, with the highest experience being in humankind, created in the image of God.

Richard Rice argues the emotions of God are crucial to fully understand the divine. “The Bible itself provides important reasons for taking many of its descriptions of God’s thought and feelings at face value. One is the frequency with which they appear… another is the strategic significance of the passages… they specifically indicate what it is that makes God God… [and] faithfully portray the inner life of God.”^[2]

Perhaps the most startling verse of the Noahic narrative is, “The Lord was sorry that he had made human beings on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.^[3]

The attribution of “sorry” or “regret” in the feelings of God opens profound insight for faith. It emerges as the first emotion attributed to Yahweh in the Flood story. The Hebrew root word naḥam is translated “sorry,” “repented,” and “regretted,” to convey both the emotion of grief that brings resolve to act in a different way. The further description is unique and powerful, “grieved him to his heart.” The Hebrew word  vayyit'atsev “is used to express the most intense form of human emotion, a mixture of rage and bitter anguish.”^[4] It describes the feelings of brothers after a sister is raped,^[5] and of a man who hears his best friend is under a death threat.^[6] The word connects God and humankind in the Genesis narrative. Walter Brueggemann captures the powerful link, “Tellingly, the pain [God] bequeathed to the woman in 3:16 is now felt by God. Ironically, the word for “grieve” (‘asaυ) is not only the same as the sentence on the woman (“pain” 3:16), but it is also used for the state of toil from which Noah will deliver humanity (5:29). The evil heart of humankind (v. 5) troubles the heart of God (v. 6). This is indeed “heart to heart” between humankind and God.”^[7]

Modern movie-goers may connect the story of William Wallace in Braveheart, whose wife’s savage murder is avenged with unrelenting rage, sparking a national uprising leading to Scottish freedom. Perhaps the original story-tellers intended just what modern readers experience: shock at a good God who is now filled with immeasurable sadness, anger, and anguish.   

The remarkable connection between the pain of God and the pain of a broken world brings a truth that should inspire the faith of every believer. God is the “empath” who lives every moment with each person, through each valley of shadows and across each mountaintop of joy. Sometimes we are not comfortable “revealing” our emotions in honest prayer. We edit them in the hopes that we will not offend! Of course, this is nonsense. God knows and feels with us every emotion that surges in our body. Even more astounding is the grace of God which has already accepted my struggle or success as a beloved child!

We can echo with amazement the song of the Psalmist, “You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways.”^[8]

[1] The Bible uses a male gender to refer to God, however, with an awareness of the universal nature of God as Spirit, I will refrain from describing God as male or using gender pronouns. 

[2] Richard Rice, “Biblical Support for a New Perspective,” in The Openness of God. Intervarsity Press, 1994. P. 35

[3] Genesis 6:6

[4] Wenham, Word Bible Commentary Genesis 1-8, p. 144

[5] Genesis 34:7

[6] 1 Samuel 20:34

[7] Walter Brueggemann, Genesis : Interpretation: a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, Westminster John Knox Press, 2010. P. 32

[8] Psalm 139:3