Is God The Most Tragic Character In The Bible?

Hi everybody, I'm Dennis Prager, and we have been reviewing the horrors that were in the— again, I'm telling you, I think about God a lot, as you might imagine. I think about God in any given generation looking down at the human species and just seeing the, the tape rewound and the same thing happening again. A vast number of human beings are evil. A vast number are not evil. Few people confront the evil Vast numbers deny the evil, and then it happens again, and then it happens again. If God has emotions that we can relate to— and I've always been ambivalent about that question, does God have emotions? The Bible seems to suggest that he does, but it might just be speaking in human terms when it says, for example, that God looked on the earth and saw all the violence and he got saddened unto his heart. That's the Hebrew. Incidentally, the word for violence in the early chapters of, of the of Genesis, I think. What chapter is Noah in? 8? 10? 6? Okay, very— so very early on in Genesis. And the earth was filled with violence, and God decided to destroy it except for Noah and his family. Do you know what the word in Hebrew for that violence is? This will blow your minds. Chamas. That's the Hebrew word for the violence that prompted God to destroy the world. And the world was filled with chamas. Yeah. I will admit you're not going to hear that on most talk shows. Anyway, God, God sees this. So does he have an emotion? If he has an emotion, it's, it's got to be more sadness. A rabbi who has since passed away, he was, I would say, probably 30 years older than I was, but I, I knew him Canadian rabbi, German-born, Gunther Plaut. I even spoke at his synagogue in Toronto in my young days when I was invited to speak in many synagogues before they discovered I was conservative, and then most of those invitations dried up. And he— I was at a talk that he gave, and he asked the audience, so who do you think is the most tragic figure in the Bible? And people all gave intelligent answers. Adam and Eve. I was— that was a good guess. They're certainly tragic, starting out in, in an Eden-esque heaven and then ending up with the world as we have it. One of their sons kills the other one. I mean, it was not an easy life, and it was an easy life in the beginning. And then people— King David and King Saul and the matriarch Rachel— they were all— there are a lot of tragic figures in the Bible. Sorry, in the case of the question was about the Old Testament. And he said, no, no, no, the most tragic figure in the Bible by far is God. It's a very intelligent comment. After each day of creation, except number 2 because it doesn't have creation, it has separation, God said, and it was good. And it was the third day and it was good. The fourth day it was good. Fifth day it was good. Sixth day it was very good. Well, human beings were created on the sixth day, and it was very good. God had such optimism about this creature, the only one created in God's image, the human being. And then pretty rapidly, the world was filled with Hamas violence. Must have been eerie to be in an Israeli synagogue last Sabbath when they read that verse in Hebrew in the portion of the week that was read. Whoa, it's got to have been jolting. So God looks at this world And he's filled with sadness. He might also be bored because humans repeat the same errors. I mean, look at the people, the people that in many cases I so respect, who thinks that this is none of our business what's happening in the Middle East. 'cause we have our own problems. Yes, the desire to wipe out Israel, that's, you know, it's unfortunate but it's not our business. Hitler wants to wipe out the Jews but that's not our business. So how many tens of millions of non-Jews were slaughtered as a result of ignoring Hitler's Jew hatred. Jew hatred is the canary in the mine. Yeah, you should really read— I very rarely mention this book, my book Why the Jews. It's an eye-opener, and you will understand the present moment better. Understanding what is happening is a moral imperative. Tuning out is a sin. We'll be back. You're listening to The Dennis Prager Show.