Book Review: Voices from the Ruins: Theodicy and the Fall of Jerusalem in the Hebrew Bible

Voices from the Ruins: Theodicy and the Fall of Jerusalem in the Hebrew Bible. Dalit Rom-Shiloni. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2021) 562 + xvii pp.

If God is Israel’s king and ruler of the world, how could God allow in the early 6th century BCE the destruction of Jerusalem, including God’s house, and then the exile from the Land? Worse, what was God’s role in those catastrophes? These are but a few of the difficult questions on which Dalit Rom-Shiloni, full professor of Hebrew Bible at Tel Aviv University, focuses in her well-researched, compellingly argued work, Voices from the Ruins: Theodicy and the Fall of Jerusalem in the Hebrew Bible. Who “is ultimately responsible for the annulment of the covenant, the break that brought about the catastrophe – God or the people. Did God back away from his commitment as king? or did the people first default on their covenant obligations?” (p. 461). From the perspective of their lived 6th century BCE experience, people asked: What happens now? Is the covenant at an end, and if so, how can the relationship be reestablished? And is there hope for the future?

Although they approach those matters differently, Jeremiah and Ezekiel are the prophets who most directly address those questions. They “distinguish between the catastrophic present and the future to articulate hopes for the reinstitution of the covenant relationship” (p. 463). A continuing issue then for them — and now for us — is the matter of theodicy.

Rom-Shiloni suggests a theodical discourse — a dynamic dialog between different speakers, all motivated to justify God, but not all of them able to do that, and thus they (and we) are left with doubts and protests. She makes it clear that theodicy “is the constant struggle to defend God, that is, to justify God’s involvement in the human sphere (in both individual and national contexts), according to his roles as king, warrior, and judge . . . [it] embraces a wide spectrum of opinions on the talk to and about God, from justification of God to doubt and protest against him” (p. 38).

Pointing to an image offered by Robert M. Green, Rom-Shiloni writes of “a logical ‘trilemma’” (p. 13): imagine a triangle, with these three points — at the base on one point is God as good and compassionate, on the opposite side there is God as lord of history (omnipotent, omniscient), and at the apex is the Reality of Suffering (p. 13). As Green explains, “Theodicy may be thought of as the effort to resist the conclusion that such a logical trilemma exists. It aims to show that traditional claims about God’s power and goodness are compatible with the fact of suffering” (p. 13, emphasis added). Rom-Shiloni centers on Jeremiah and Ezekiel but also offers many other examples, such as Lamentations 2, which “dares to accuse God, not only of orchestrating events, but of direct participation in the destruction occurring within Jerusalem” (p. 24, emphasis in original).

There are two main divisions to the book: Questions of Method, and Theodicy as Discourse in the Face of Destruction. The first part, which largely considers previous scholarship, divides into four chapters: Justification, Doubt, and Protest in Sixth-Century Biblical Literature; Studying Religious Thought (wherein a subsection is “Creating a Distinctive Descriptive [Non-Christian and non-Jewish] Hebrew Bible Theology”); Multiplicity of Voices and Diversity of Thought; followed by Summary and a Proposal.

Part 2, Theodicy as Discourse in the Face of Destruction, presents and analyzes the biblical authors themselves. Chapters cover God as King; God as Warrior; God Is Called Upon to Fight for His People; God Summons the Enemy; God as the Enemy; God as Judge and Divine Justice; God Visits the Guilt of the Parents upon the Children, the Present Generation; God and the Attribute of Mercy; and finally, Summary and Conclusions. While Jeremiah and Ezekiel are the major voices from the ruins under discussion “that explicitly deal with the events of the destruction and dislocations,” more broadly Rom-Shiloni considers the Book of Kings, Lamentations, and also seventeen psalms (p. 95). Specifically, she considers sixteen psalms of lament, namely Psalms 9–10, 42–43, 44, 74, 77, 79, 80, 89, 90, 94, 102, 106, 123, and 137, providing a helpful chart of the Characteristics of the Lament Genre (p. 109). In addition, she considers Psalm 103, a psalm of praise (p. 102).

This is a sophisticated work, not something for beginners. The author features short biblical verse references in Hebrew, so a knowledge of biblical Hebrew will be helpful. The volume is enhanced by the following items: a Bibliography, an Index of Modern Authors, an Index of Subjects, and an Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Texts.

Reviewed by David J. Zucker.