ive the impression that "the Old
Testament God is a God of wrath and vengeance." As a matter of fact, these
attributes are merely emanations of His holiness, the guide and incentive
to moral action in man. The burning fire of the divine holiness aims to
awaken the dormant seeds of morality in the human soul and to ripen them
into full growth. Whenever we to-day would speak of pangs of conscience,
of bitter remorse, Scripture uses figurative language and describes how
God's wrath is kindled against the wrongdoing of the people, and how fire
blazes forth from His nostrils to consume them in His anger. The nearer
man stands to nature, the more tempestuous are the outbursts of his
passion, and the more violent is the reaction of his repentance. Yet this
very reaction impresses him as though wrought from outside or above by the
offended Deity. Thus the divine wrath becomes a means of moral education,
exactly as the parents' indignation at the child's offenses is part of his
training in morality.

2. Thus the first manifestation of God's holiness is His indignation at
falsehood and violence, His hatred of evil and wrongdoing. The longer men
persist in sin, the more does He manifest Himself as "the angry God," as a
"consuming fire" which destroys evil with holy zeal.(276) The husbandman
cannot expect the good harvest until he has weeded out the tares from the
field; so God, in educating man, begins by purging the soul from all its
evil inclinations, and this zeal is all the more unsparing as the good is
finally to triumph in His eternal plan of universal salvation. We must
bear in mind that Judaism does not personify evil as a power hostile to
God, hence the whole problem is only one of purifying the human soul.
Before the sun of God's grace and mercy is to shine, bearing life and
healing for all humanity, His wrath and punitive justice must ever burst
forth to cleanse the world of its sin. For as long as evil continues
unchecked, so long cannot the divine holiness pour forth its
all-forbearing goodness and love.

3. On this account the first revelation of God on Sinai was as "a jealous
God, who visiteth the sins of the fathers upon the children and the
children's children until the third and fourth generation." So the
prophets, from Moses to Malachi, speak ever of God's anger, which comes
with the fury of nature's unchained forces, to terrify and overwhelm all
living beings.(277) Thus Scripture considers all the great catastr