Does G-d Hate? G-d is Not a Zip File!
Does G-d Hate? G-d is Not a Zip File!
ascribing a human emotion like hate to G-d is emotionally immature
Saying that G-d hates is like saying that we can compress G-d into a zip file.
Why do we ascribe a negative human emotion like hatred to the Divine? If G-d exists outside time and space and is not created, simply Is which Is, then why would we ascribe hatred to Her?
Above I have provided screenshots of lines 5 and 6 from 2 translations of Psalm 11. You can find the source text with translation and commentary at the Sefaria Online Library, here. You can find Strong’s Hebrew index here. Sefaria also provides a collection of linguistic/dictionary references, here.1
G-d hates the wicked … or the wicked and him that loveth violence [G-d’s] soul hateth. Rasha is the Hebrew word used in Psalm 11. Rasha is Strong’s #7563 and it means morally wrong, a person condemned of a crime, hostile toward G-d or humans, the opposite of Tzaddik, Strong’s #6662. Chamas is Strong’s #2555 and means violence, cruelty, injustice. Sinah is Strong’s #8135 and means hatred, derived from Sane (pronounced san-eh), Strong’s #8130. Note that the 1917 translation says that G-d’s soul hates, nefesh being the word used. Nefesh, Strong’s #5315, refers to the level of the soul that cleaves to and animates the physical body, a living being whose life resides in the blood. G-d has no physical form, G-d’s “life” does not reside inside “the blood” — to speak of G-d’s nefesh would seem like an anthropomorphising of the Divine, wouldn’t it?
The “wicked” in this verse is the word “rasha’.” This is a word used for merchants who have false balances. The wicked here are crooked and corrupt merchants. The one’s justifying the “wicked” for a reward are the religious leaders. — Chaim + Laura Bentorah
… [Bereshit] Rabbah 55:2 … points out that the reason such people, the rasha’ and the hamas, are such an irritant to God is that they refuse to change. That is such an irritation to God because he can make them better. Sure, like the potter, you have to crush the vessel a few times to get rid of the flaws, but in the end you have a beautiful vessel. The thing is that the clay has not choice. It is going to be made into a beautiful vessel whether it likes it or not. However, we do have a choice, we have a free will and it is very irritating to God that He stands there with the wherewithal to make us into something beautiful but because we are rasha’ or hamas with a free will, he can’t do it. — Chaim + Laura Bentorah
Okay wait. Becuz I’m confused. I need clarification. Didn’t G-d give us free will to choose or not choose Her? So why would She hate her free-to-choose creation for their choice to rejected Her? This reminds of that abusive man who said to me “you’re free as a bird to leave anytime” and then tried to smite severely me when I did choose to leave. It also reminds me of those stories of fanatical parents who abuse their daughter in an honour style ritual because she chose to live an independent life that defied their wishes for her. So, G-d’s an abusive spouse or fanatical parent? This G-d sounds like Norma Bates, Norman Bates’ mother in the prequel TV show. You think G-d is like Norma Bates. Um, how about nah? Are you all okay?
So apparently, G-d hates all those who turn away from her. Why? Because she’s G-d rejection sensitive? Is G-d dishonest? How can She love us unconditionally and then hate us when we commit an offense? She crafted us this way, imperfectly, fuelled by Her breath and also powered by an eternal struggle between yetzer hara and yetzer hatov. G-d made us this way, and She still hates us for it apparently—so what’s up with that? Why would anyone worship such a deity?
I deeply disliked and even resented when my kids committed any wrong act or an offense against others, themselves, or me. I didn’t care for the behaviour. I loved them as humans. Even in the most intense moments, I never hated any of my children. How can you hate what you mother? I cannot. Anger is not hatred. Similarly with my mother and myself and the rest of my siblings. She may not have liked us and she never stopped loving us. In anger my mother once told myself and two of my sisters I don’t love you or you or you, and in my heart I knew that was not her speaking, rather I knew from the inside of myself it was a terrible emotionally purulent wound that got poked too hard in some unintended way and then began oozing everywhere.
Parenting provides a powerful conundrum and primal human lesson, it strips bare the human condition, reveals our truest nature. So, why wouldn’t G-d be like this since we are made in Her image?
Is intense anger hatred? I don’t think it is. Anger and hatred aren’t equivalent and we ought to resist the urge to equivocate them. Where intense love exists would not intense anger live close by? Of course, because in the created cosmos things have mirror images. So intense love will have a mirror image and it will feel horrible. And yet, we need anger. It’s natural and transformative. Remember hatred can look like how we think love should look—saccharine and agreeable and feel-good. Appearances are deceiving. Our perceptions can be tricked.
So, does G-d hate? Does She have rejection sensitivity and get hateful when people reject Her? Why do we need a Divine that exhibits such poor character + emotional weakness? What’s being conveyed by this claim that G-d hates those who turn away from Her? How could such weakness create anything? What if the true power of Divine might lies in its restraint upon us wretch dust bunnies?
Facts about the Divine:
G-d is all knowing and all powerful.
G-d loved us into existence.
G-d’s breath powers us.
G-d is unconditional love, Shaddai, cosmic womb and mother.
And after all that, the religious people are gonna try to tell me G-d hates us when we turn away from Her? Why? Why do so many religious people need to say G-d hates the wicked? Perhaps for such individuals G-d has become an ego defence mechanism,, a projection. So, G-d hates [insert name of human group here] really means I hate [insert name of human group here] and I don’t have the gonads to say it out loud so I will use G-d as cover to hate those of Her creation I do not like or outright hate. Okay, that sounds like telling your sibling whom you hate a lot mum hates you and never wanted you. I think that’s psychologically abusive, you know like Joseph being thrown into a pit and sold to the Ishmaelites for slavery by his brothers. Do you think Jacob wanted his sons to abuse their brother and sell him into slavery? If you know the story, you know the answer to my question.
So, why do you think this story even appears in the Torah? Perhaps to teach us something? How often do we see people using religion as a kind of harmful mind altering substance? How often do we see people crafting this Manichean Marvel World of G-d V. the Devil and calling it religion or a faith journey, and then using the world they built to project the most challenging unpleasant bits of themselves they cannot accept onto others around them? This reminds of the behaviour of the addicted.
I think those who make “G-d Hates …” statements have the emotional sobriety of a raging cocaine fiend — not a whole lot.
G-d does not hate, however we do hate and our hatred becomes strong enough to kill en masse when we have invoked G-d’s Divine name, and therefore Her power, in the throes of our own human hatred. G-d is limitless being, Hatred is contraction. How on earth can limitless being be shrunk and then stuffed into a dense point of space, ie black hole? G-d is not a zip file.
When you click on a Hebrew word of the text in Sefaria, it will show you the meaning and concordance per Jastrows and BDB dictionaries.