e is His image, His
child. He cannot be deprived of His paternal love and favor. This truly
human emotion is nowhere expressed so clearly as in Judaism. "Ye are the
children of the Lord your God."(804) "Have we not all one Father? Hath not
one God created us?"(805) "Like as a father hath compassion on his
children, so hath the Lord compassion upon them that fear Him."(806)

2. Still, this simple idea of man's filial relation to God and God's
paternal love for man did not begin in its beautiful final form. For a
long time the Jew seems to have avoided the term "Father" for God, because
it was used by the heathen for their deities as physical progenitors, and
did not refer to the moral relation between the Deity and mankind. Thus
worshipers of wooden idols would, according to Scripture, "say to a stock,
Thou art my father."(807) Hosea was the first to call the people of Israel
"children of the living God,"(808) if they would but improve their ways
and enter into right relations with Him. Jeremiah also hopes for the time
when Israel would invoke the Lord, saying, "Thou art my Father," and in
return God would prove a true father to him.(809) However, Scripture calls
God a Father only in referring to the people as a whole.(810) The "pious
ones" established a closer relation between God and the individual by
means of prayer, so that through them the epithets, "Father," "Our
Father," and "Our Father in heaven" came into general use. Hence, the
liturgy frequently uses the invocation, "Our Father, Our King!" We owe to
Rabbi Akiba the significant saying, in opposition to the Paulinian dogma,
"Blessed are ye, O Israelites! Before whom do you purify yourselves (from
your sins)? And who is it that purifies you? Your Father in heaven."(811)
Previously Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanos dwelt on the moral degeneration of
his age, which betokened the end of time, and exclaimed: "In whom, then,
shall we find support? In our Father who is in heaven."(812) The
appellative "Father in heaven" was the stereotyped term used by the "pious
ones" during the century preceding and the one following the rise of
Christianity, as a glance at the literature of the period indicates.(813)

3. It is instructive to follow the history of this term. In Scripture God
is represented as speaking to David, "I will be to him for a father, and
he shall be to Me for a son,"(814) or "He shall call unto Me: Thou art my
Father, ... I also will appoint him first-born."(815) So