Challenging Emotion: Is Divine "Regret" (נחם) an Anthropopathism After All?
Scholars commonly regard God's "regret" (נחם) in the Hebrew Bible as an anthropopathism, that is, an emotion or feeling projected from the human sphere onto God. In this article, I make the case that this classification is highly problematic from a hermeneutical and semantic perspecti...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2025
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| In: |
Journal of Biblical literature
Year: 2025, Volume: 144, Issue: 2, Pages: 197-215 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Scholars commonly regard God's "regret" (נחם) in the Hebrew Bible as an anthropopathism, that is, an emotion or feeling projected from the human sphere onto God. In this article, I make the case that this classification is highly problematic from a hermeneutical and semantic perspective. First, I point out that נחם in the sense of "to regret" is more often attested with a divine subject than with a human subject. This allows us to regard נחם niphal/hithpael as a theological terminus technicus, making it rather unlikely that it denotes a concept projected from the human sphere onto God. After that, I examine three key texts that associate YHWH with נחם niphal/hithpael in order to illustrate the multidimensional semantics inherent in this root. From this it follows that what the Hebrew Bible understands by נחם niphal/hithpael is not limited to the emotional aspect. Semantically, it is thus not appropriate to classify divine regret as an anthropopathism, since it does not primarily denote an emotion or feeling. I conclude with some fundamental reflections on the appropriateness of the concept of anthropopathism. |
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| ISSN: | 1934-3876 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of Biblical literature
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