Contemporary Bible readers familiar with ‘the three great monotheistic religions’ are ill prepared to understand the Hebrew Bible’s insistence upon YHWH’s incomparability. Casual encounters with Judaism, Christianity, and Islam mark the human race a bit too artificially into those who worship one god and those who serve a plurality.
Only rarely does the Bible trouble itself to sweep the heavens of all powers but one. More often it simply relegates the others to the margins, from which they do YHWH’s bidding in splendid isolation from the worship of men and women too enthralled with YHWH to have much energy left for lesser immortals.
Solomon’s long prayer follows this pattern by defining YHWH’s uniqueness in terms of character rather than number. That is, YHWH is incomparable regardless of whether or not he is alone.
O Yahweh, God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven or earth-you who keep your covenant of love with your servants who continue wholeheartedly in your way. You have kept your promise to your servant David my father; with your mouth you have promised and with you hand you have fulfilled it.
Who would have anticipated a cosmology that revolves around a deity who is unique because he does what he says he will do? In one somewhat top-heavy invocation, Solomon places the whole of Greek mythology and its cultivated offspring into the moral shadows.
Judaism, of the three great monotheisms, has arguably paid the most attention to this covenant-keeping uniqueness of its one Lord. Christians, perhaps because of the personalistic possibilities presented to their theologizing by the incarnation, have all the raw materials for a doxology of covenant keeping, but too often lurch off onto side roads. Islam’s monicity allows little space for divine promise-making and promise-keeping.
What would a religion anchored upon the alignment of celestial word and deed here on this earth, among human beings capable with some help of recognizing coherence amid the affairs of men and women, actually move people to do?
Solomon’s answer is perturbing in its simplicity and extensive in its implications: In their trouble, they would turn to such a god and pray.
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