The Body of Yahweh

The Body of Yahweh

Ka-leung WONG

Recent studies on the body of the God in the Old Testament mostly focus on the question of whether God has a body and, if so, whether God's body is male or female; a related issue is how to understand human as being created in the image of God. The present paper examines a different issue relating to the body of God, namely, whether metaphors of body or any bodily part of God have been used for the people of Israel. By going through all the bodily parts that have been attributed to God in the Old Testament, it is found that this use is extremely rare. The people of Israel as a whole or in part are more often compared to things related to some bodily parts of God (mostly the hand); but even this is not common. This might have to do with the belief that the God of Israel is so radically different from humans that even though He communicates with and lives among the Israelites, no human could be compared to any bodily part of God.