When God Sleeps

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The God of the Bible both rests and sleeps. In this, he resembles other ancient Near Eastern deities. The Hebrew theologians shared a mythic vocabulary with neighboring cultures, but the Hebrew theologians used this vocabulary to elevate their theology to spiritual heights previously unknown.

Perhaps the most famous biblical instance of God resting occurs at the conclusion of creation. The passage from Genesis is still recited in Jewish homes on Sabbath eve as part of the kiddush, the prayer that sanctifies the Sabbath meal:

“Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, 018and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all his work which he had done in creation” (Genesis 2:1–3).

The Hebrew word translated as “rest” is sûaµbat, whose primary meaning is “to cease” or “to stop.” A strictly literal translation might read, as do the New English Bible and the New Jewish Publication Society translation,^a God “ceased from all his work.” Nevertheless, the connotation of rest cannot be eliminated from sûaµbat, as the larger biblical tradition shows. The Fifth Commandment, in Exodus 20:11, prescribes observance of the Sabbath because:

“ … in six days Yahweh made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them; but on the seventh day he rested [yanah]. Therefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath and hallowed it.”

This linking of Sabbath rest with the creation clearly reveals that the Israelites themselves understood God to have rested upon the completion of his work (see also Exodus 23:12 and Deuteronomy 5:12–15).

Divine rest following creation is also a common motif in ancient Near Eastern mythologies. The divine rest that follows creation is, as it were, a statement that the creative activity is complete and that the work of the creator is perfect.¹

In the Egyptian text known as “The Theology of Memphis,”² the Memphite god Ptah is portrayed as the real creator, prior in time and principle to all the other gods. After describing how Ptah brought forth the other gods and the world and everything that exists, the text states, “And so Ptah rested³ after he had made everything, as well as all the divine order.”⁴

In the ancient Near East, creation was thought of as bringing order out of chaos so as to make existence possible and life meaningful within the circumscribed boundaries of this ordered universe or cosmos. Because the human habitat, the solid land, is surrounded by its opposite, the formless ocean, the cosmos was frequently depicted as an “island” surrounded on all sides by the primeval sea. The tension between chaos and cosmos was felt so intensely that the primeval sea was often personified as a monster—Tiamat in Mesopotamian mythology, Yam in Canaanite and Nun in Egyptian tradition—or as some kind of watery dragon—Lotan (a biblical Leviathan) in Canaan or Apophis in Egypt. The creator deity first had to defeat this monster before the cosmos could come about. In the Babylonian story of Enuma Elish, the text explicitly concludes with the creator resting after his victory over chaos.⁵

In the creation story in Genesis 1:1–2:3, there is a deliberate muting of a conflict between the creator and the chaos monster. Anyone who reads Genesis 1:1–2:3 alongside Enuma Elish and other ancient Near Eastern mythological texts will be struck by the careful, circumscribed language of the Genesis author. He purposely avoids every hint of polytheism. He refers to the sun and the moon only in the most oblique manner, as the “two great lights” (Genesis 1:16–18), lest even the mention of their names might cause an association with false gods commonly personified by the sun and the moon. The author of Genesis knew very well that the sun and the moon were widely regarded, even by many in Israel, as gods—or at least as the visible manifestations of gods by those names. In 2 Kings 23:5, for example, we read of idolatrous priests who made offerings to the sun and moon (see also Deuteronomy 4:19 and Ezekiel 8:16). So the Genesis author calls them not sun and moon, but the “great light” and the “lesser light” (Genesis 1:16).

The Genesis account contains only the slightest vestige of the mythological sea monster: In Genesis 1:1, chaos is referred to as “the deep,” in Hebrew teûhoÆm, cognate to “Tiamat.” But chaos 019is portrayed not as a foe but as the raw material that the creator organized to provide an ordered cosmos. Despite this muting of the chaos battle itself, the attribution of rest to God in Genesis 2:1–3 is a remnant of that traditional story. However, its survival here likely stems from the fact that in Genesis the creator’s rest was understood less as the sleep of a victor than as the leisure appropriate to the divine craftsman satisfied with the perfection of his work.

Although the Genesis author studiously avoided describing creation as a battle between the creator and the chaos monster, other biblical writers were not so circumspect. Tucked away amidst various psalms, as well as in the Book of Job and elsewhere, are references to Yahweh’s battle with the chaos monster, depicted either as the primeval sea or as the sea dragon.⁶

Listen to the Psalmist:

“It was you [God] who shattered⁷ the sea by your might,

who smashed the heads of the dragon on the water.

It was you who crushed the heads of Leviathan,

who gave him to the sharks⁸ as food.

It was you who opened springs and brooks;

it was you who turned primordial rivers into dry land.

To you belongs the day and the night as well;

it was you who established the moon and the sun.

It was you who fixed the boundaries of the earth;

summer and winter, you created them.”

(Psalm 74:13–17)

And again:

“You rule the arrogant Sea;

when its swells surge, you still them.

You crushed Rahab with a mortal blow;

with your mighty arm you scattered your enemies.

The heavens are yours, yours also is the earth;

the world and all that is in it, you founded them.”

(Psalm 89:9–11)

Job too describes the defeat of the monsters that resulted in creation:

“The shades beneath writhe,

The waters and their inhabitants.

Naked is Sheol before him,

Perdition has no cover.

He stretches Zaphon over the void,

Suspends the earth on nothing.

He binds the waters in nimbus,

But the clouds burst not with the burden.

He obscures the face of the full moon,

Spreading his cloud over it.

He marks a circle on the face of the water

As the boundary of light and darkness.

The pillars of heaven tremble,

Stunned at his rebuke.

By his power he quelled the Sea;

By his cunning he smote Rahab.

By his wind he bagged the Sea,

His hand pierced the fleeting serpent.”⁹

(Job 26:5–13)

In none of these descriptions do we find God retiring or resting after his battle with the chaos monster, but in other descriptions the image is often implied. One of the most powerful passages, sometimes referred to as the Ode to Yahweh’s Arm, comes from Isaiah 51:9–11. If God is called to “awake,” as he is in this passage, he must have been resting or sleeping:

“Awake! Awake! Robe yourself in Power,

O arm of Yahweh

Awake as in primordial days,

(those) primeval generations.

Is it not you who cleaves Rahab in pieces,

who pierces the Sea-dragon?

Is it not you who dries up the Sea,

the waters of the great Abyss (teûhoÆm)?

The one who makes the depths of the Sea a road

for the redeemed to pass over?”

Both the image of the battle against the chaos monster and the image of the divine victor retiring to sleep lie behind the prophet’s appeal for help. Once again, however, this Israelite adaptation of the motif of the sleeping deity has been shaped by her unique theology: This ode is the work of so-called Deutero-Isaiah or Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40–55), who wrote in the sixth century B.C., after the destruction of both the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, at a time when Israel was in exile. The ode is part of a putative dialogue between the exiles and God.¹⁰ The community laments that God has no thought for his people’s plight in exile. This is followed by a series of divine assurances (Isaiah 51:12–16, 17–23, 52:1–3) that God has not forgotten his people but is even now in the process of returning them from Babylonia to their homeland.

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In their lament, the exilic community calls upon God to wake up and come to their rescue. They appeal to the tradition of his past saving acts as the reason why he should act in the present crisis. God’s salvific power was most manifest in his victory over the chaos monster at the creation of the world and in his splitting of the Red Sea in order to allow his people to escape from Egypt. This is not a case of myth in one instance and history in the other. Rather, as was the case with other biblical authors, Deutero-Isaiah understood the two incidents—creation and the splitting of the Red Sea—as essentially one and the same act of salvation. Egypt was viewed as a historical manifestation of the power of the chaos that preceded creation (compare Ezekiel 29:3 and Isaiah 27:1, 30:7); the Exodus from Egypt was regarded as an extension of God’s creative power. Just as God split the primeval sea to create dry land, so he split the sea again during the Exodus to create a special people for himself.¹¹

Deutero-Isaiah’s dependence on the old Semitic Chaoskampf myth is patent. To these Judahites sitting in exile in Babylonia, their Temple having been razed and Jerusalem reduced to ashes, it must have seemed that their world was rapidly reverting to chaos. Creation was being undone.

Practically every translation of this ode from Deutero-Isaiah renders the action in the past tense, “Was it not you who didst cut Rahab? … didst dry up the sea?” etc. However, the Hebrew poet used participles, not the grammatical perfect, thus revealing his belief that God’s saving actions continue into the present. The appeal to Yahweh to wake up is therefore also a statement that Yahweh’s supreme authority is at stake. How can Yahweh sleep when his arch foe is even now challenging his dominion?

Yahweh’s response, incidentally, artfully reverses the tables. As the ode continues, it is not Yahweh but Israel who is asleep and who needs to wake up. The exiles must awake and rise from their own stupor. To be sure, they have drunk heavily from the cup of Yahweh’s wrath; but that cup, drained to the dregs, is now finished (Isaiah 51:17–23). The reversal is explicit in Isaiah 52:1–3, which echoes, but reverses, the final line of the ode quoted above. It is Zion who must awake:

“Awake! Awake! Robe yourself in Power,

O Zion.

Array yourself in beautiful garments ….

Shake yourself from the dust, arise,

O captive Jerusalem;

loose the bonds from your neck,

O captive daughter of Zion.”

(Isaiah 52:1–2)

At the base of this dramatic dialogue lay Judah’s conviction that Yahweh’s creative power continued unabated into the present and that his absolute dominion has never been in doubt.

In the background of this Isaianic call for God to awake is another aspect of the resting or sleeping deity in ancient Near Eastern mythology, an aspect related to, yet distinct from, the rest the deity took following creation. Near Eastern gods are entitled to leisure, to rest, to sleep as perquisites of their godly status.

Before the creation of human beings, a Babylonian myth tells us, the lesser gods had to work for the higher gods. Humans were created for the purpose of relieving the lesser gods of their burden, so they too could enjoy their leisure, their rest. The opening lines of the Atrahasis epic¹² attest the situation before humans were created:

“When the gods like men¹³

Bore the labor, suffered the toil,

The toil of the gods was immense,

The work heavy, the distress severe.

The Seven great Anunnaki

Were making the Igigi suffer the labor.”

The higher gods had imposed virtual slavery upon the lesser gods. The lesser gods bore the whole burden of producing food for all the gods, while the higher gods lounged in comfort. The lesser gods were thus unable to participate in the divine prerogative of rest. Eventually, the lesser 021gods revolted against Enlil, their godly king.

Enlil hastily summoned a divine council to deal with the crisis. It was decided that the rebels’ ringleader would be killed and humankind would be fashioned from his blood mixed with clay. Henceforth, humans would bear the burden of providing food for the gods. Thus, all the gods could enjoy rest like Enlil and the other high gods.

This conception of divine status is encountered again in the epic of Enuma Elish. The young Marduk volunteers to kill Tiamat, the monster of chaos and the ultimate threat to existence and order. Marduk defeats Tiamat and splits her lifeless body in two to form the heavens and the earth. Then Marduk slays Tiamat’s king and, as in the Atrahasis epic, fashions humankind out of his body and blood. Humans are created, explicitly, to “bear the toil of the gods, so that [the gods] may rest.”¹⁴ The proper “posture” for a deity is to be at ease.

The motif of divine rest or leisure was closely connected with a second motif of the sleeping deity. Indeed, the two motifs overlap. Because rest was a divine prerogative, it was attributed to the head of the pantheon in a preeminent manner. The ability to sleep undisturbed was a symbol of his unchallenged authority as the supreme deity.

The motif of divine rest or leisure as a godly prerogative was thus conjoined to creation in two ways. One, already discussed, suggests that the creator himself enjoyed rest after completing his “work.” The other suggests that the purpose of creation was to afford the gods their rightful rest.

This rest, and specifically sleep, was in turn coupled with the deity’s function as the supreme ruler of heaven and earth. The ability to sleep undisturbed was the symbol of the deity’s absolute dominion over the heavens and the earth and the underworld. The most vivid image of this dominion was that of the creator-king subduing the chaos monster and then retiring to his chamber to sleep peacefully without fear of interruption.

All this lies in the background of the cry of the exiles in Deutero-Isaiah, asking their God to “Awake!” The act of God’s sleeping is in itself a reflection of his omnipotence.

A number of psalms speak of God sleeping or arising from sleep (Psalms 7, 35, 44, 59 and 74).

Psalm 44 must have been composed under circumstances nearly identical to those related to Deutero-Isaiah, when Israel was “scattered among the nations” (verse 11 [12 in Hebrew]). The world seems to be collapsing and reverting to chaos; the psalmist calls on God to awake:

“Wake up! Why do you sleep, O Lord?

Awake! Do not cast us off forever!

Why do you hide your face?

Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?

Get up! You must come to our rescue

And deliver us for the sake of your steadfast love.”

(Psalm 44:23–24, 26)

The motif of the sleeping deity is used to express Israel’s belief in Yahweh’s absolute kingship. Yahweh’s reign is supreme. He can be counted on to “awaken,” just as he can be counted on to maintain that right order he decrees as creator and sovereign of all.

We have already quoted from Psalm 74 in connection with God’s contest with the sea monsters in the act of creation. Here, too, the psalmist is recalling this act of creation in the context of the Babylonian Exile. We should not be surprised, therefore, that he then calls upon God to arise (i.e., get out of bed) and do something about the enemy who scoffs at him (Psalm 74:22).

Psalms 7, 35 and 59 are all laments of the individual, and it is difficult to date them or place them in a historical context. Though in dire straits, the psalmist in each case has confidence that God will vindicate him. Typically, he calls on God to arise, to wake up:

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“You have seen, O Yahweh; do not remain silent.

My Lord, be not far from me.

Arise! Wake up! for the sake of my justice,

My God and my lord, for the sake of my cause.”

(Psalm 35:22–23)

Behind such psalms lie vestiges of the ancient Near Eastern motif of the sleeping deity. Portraying Yahweh as asleep was a culturally conditioned theological statement to the effect that Yahweh is the creator and absolute king of heaven and earth. Within Israelite monotheism there are no other gods to challenge Yahweh’s supremacy. But primeval chaos could be translated as the power of evil. Human unrighteousness and injustice transgress God’s righteous decrees and so continue the attack upon his sovereignty. The appeal to Yahweh to “wake up,” far from being a slur on the effectiveness of divine rule, was actually an extension of Israel’s faith in Yahweh’s universal rule. God continuously suppresses every recrudescence of chaos or evil in the universe.

Of course, the motif of the sleeping deity can be—and was—turned around. The image of the divine king who does not sleep is a statement that God is eternally vigilant in maintaining the order he has ordained. Not even the slightest evil will be tolerated. This conviction is the source of Psalm 121.

“I lift my eyes to the hills, whence comes my help.

My help is from Yahweh, maker of heaven and earth.

He does not let your foot slip; your guardian does not slumber.

He never slumbers nor sleeps, the guardian of Israel.

Yahweh is your guardian, your shelter at your right hand.

The sun cannot harm you by day, nor the moon by night.

Yahweh guards you, body and soul, against every evil.

Yahweh guards your coming and going, now and forever.”

The image of God as never sleeping, like its opposite, functioned in Israel as an effective expression of her faith in Yahweh as the creator and king whose control over the universe is absolute and eternal.

Of course, the image of God sleeping and awaking, and that of its opposite—never sleeping—reflect the language and metaphor of poetry. In times of peace and prosperity, the psalmist praises God for his wakeful vigilance in having warded off evil. In times of trouble and distress, the psalmist may feel abandoned by God, as if God were asleep and unconcerned about the crises that his faithful face.

The metaphors are natural enough, and the reader easily accepts them, despite the fact that a deity who sleeps, on the one hand, and who is ever-vigilant, on the other, seems contradictory. A certain poetic license is involved.

But I have tried to show that poetic license is not the whole story. The image of the deity who sleeps—and vice versa—is a frequent motif in ancient Near Eastern culture and myth.

The history of this myth lies behind and enriches the biblical images. In appropriating this motif, the biblical authors found a powerful and effective vehicle for making theological statements about God both as creator and redeemer.

The final stage in the biblical adaptation of this motif comes in the New Testament story of Jesus calming the sea, found in all three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew 8:23–27; Mark 4:35–41; Luke 8:23–27). Jesus is in a boat on the Sea of Galilee with his disciples. After a long time, he falls asleep in the stern of the boat. A sudden storm arises and waves engulf the boat. In the words of the Gospel of Matthew: “And they went and woke him, saying, ‘Save [us] Lord; we are perishing’ ” (Matthew 8:25). Jesus awakes: “Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a 023great calm” (Matthew 8:26b).

In a related story, Jesus not only calms the water and stops the wind, but also walks on the water (Matthew 14:22–23; Mark 6:45–52; John 6:15–21).

For the evangelists, the special significance of these stories was revelatory, revealing who Jesus is. It is evident that they regarded the stories as epiphanic, that is, as manifesting the divine presence.¹⁵ To reflect this affirmation of divine presence, the evangelists used traditional biblical language and images of divine activity in shaping these stories.

Just as Yahweh walks on the high places (or “back”) of the sea (Job 9:8), so does Jesus. Just as Yahweh awakes and calms the raging sea, so does Jesus. Whether Jesus’ stilling of the sea retained the age-old connotations of a battle against the chaos monster (as in Job 26:11–12; Psalm 89:9–10 [10–11 in Hebrew]) or only the power of the creator to control his creatures (as in Psalm 107:29), Jesus is clearly depicted as exercising divine control: “Who is this that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mark 4:41; Matthew 8:27; Luke 8:25).

Previous commentators have missed the point entirely when they interpret Jesus’ sleep as an indication of his humanness, because he is fatigued by the demands the crowd has made upon him and is forced to seek refuge in the boat, where he promptly falls asleep.¹⁶ Closer, but still wide of the mark, are those¹⁷ who interpret Jesus’ ability to sleep peacefully and undisturbed as a sign of his perfect trust in the protective power of God.

It is not the faith of Jesus but of his disciples that is on trial here.

This is only passage in New Testament in which Jesus sleeps. Obviously, the evangelists attached special significance to it. The image of the sleeping Jesus is modeled after the sleeping divine king, the sleeping god taking his divine rest. His sleeping indicates not powerlessness but the fullness of absolute rule. The power of the demonic kingdom is only apparent, not real, as is evident when Jesus awakes and stills the raging sea, just as ancient tradition required of one possessing divine authority.

(For further details, see the author’s forthcoming article “The Sleeping God: An Ancient Near Eastern Motif of Divine Sovereignty” in Biblica 68 [1987], pp. 153–177.)

The God of the Bible both rests and sleeps. In this, he resembles other ancient Near Eastern deities. The Hebrew theologians shared a mythic vocabulary with neighboring cultures, but the Hebrew theologians used this vocabulary to elevate their theology to spiritual heights previously unknown. Perhaps the most famous biblical instance of God resting occurs at the conclusion of creation. The passage from Genesis is still recited in Jewish homes on Sabbath eve as part of the kiddush, the prayer that sanctifies the Sabbath meal: “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, 018and all the host of them. And […]