The Saint 69
service—is surely more im por tant to them than the quest for glory
that Achilles undertakes. David—as beloved by the Lord as any
figure in the Hebrew Bible, perhaps more beloved even than
Moses— begins his ascendancy as a fi ghter. He is the champion who
brings Goliath to the ground in an instance of that ritual so esteemed
by the ancient Greeks, single combat. Throughout his life, David
fi ghts and wins, fi ghts and wins, loses, wins again. His many victo-
ries set him apart from his fellow Hebrew warriors who, despite the
assistance of Yahweh, are often unsuccessful on the battlefi eld. Yet
the ancient Jews aspire to be warriors. At least in the early phases
of the Hebrew Bible, Yahweh is a war god— though not always
an eff ective one. The archetype of the Hebrew warrior is perhaps
Sampson, who is victorious, then undone, and who fi nally ends his
life in self- destroying triumph. The Jews of the Old Testament fi ght
constantly. They fi ght for survival and they fi ght for victory. And
their God Yahweh is their god of battle.
Yahweh is more than that, of course. In his fi rst manifestation he
is a creator God. He is the generous bountiful deity who makes the
sun and the stars and the teeming earth. He creates man in his
own glorious image, by molding a piece of red clay and sending
his generous breath into it. When he fi nds his fi rst creature to be
lonely— despite his own grand eternal isolation, he quickly under-
stands Adam’s plight—he creates for him a helper and friend in Eve.
Yahweh is the maker of the heavenly garden, the creator of blissful
earthly perfection. (The lines that Milton off ers in Paradise Lost to
describe the creation are among the most memorable in the poem,
dramatizing God’s bounty and largess.) Yahweh creates, and he
creates out of love.
But Yahweh can be violent too. In a burst of rage he drowns the
entire earth, leaving only Noah, his wife, and his sons and daughters
alive, along with the animals, two by two. He destroys Sodom
and Gomorrah and everyone residing there, except Lot and his wife.