Paul R. Raabe
09-10-2024
Abstract: The reader of the Scriptures often comes across passages where the faithful put questions to God. These are typically rhetorical questions, such as “why?” and “how long?” These rhetorical questions are not to be misunderstood as complaints about God but as part of God-pleasing prayer to God. The pray-er was protesting the silence, inaction, or delay of God and instead calling for God to act according to his self-revelation, his past saving actions, and his promises. The pray-er was holding on to God against God.
Keywords: rhetorical questions, prayer, faith
In this essay, the referent of the word “God” is the true God, the almighty Creator of the heavens and earth who made himself the God of ancient Israel, the God spoken of in the first 39 books of the Bible. In the fulness of time this God revealed himself and acted in Jesus of Nazareth, his incarnate Son and the Anointed One (the Christ) of Israel.
When reading the Bible, we encounter texts in which people put questions to God, more texts than one would expect. We certainly expect to read of God putting questions to human creatures. After all, he is the Creator and humans are his creatures and therefore accountable to him: the potter has the right to judge his pots. Hence, it is unsurprising that, in the Garden of Eden, God asked a hiding Adam, after Adam ate of the fruit which God had explicitly prohibited, “Adam, where are you?” (Gen. 3:9). With that question, God was not simply asking for intellectual information as if God in his omniscience did not know this. Rather, it was a question seeking a relationship with Adam, wanting Adam to “fess up.” Right there we see that questions in the Scriptures are often not simply seeking intellectual information.
Granted, God can direct questions to humans, and we expect that. But what comes as unexpected is to read of humans directing questions to God. Certainly not every question put to God is honorable or to be affirmed by the reader. When Cain replied to God’s question with a question of his own, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” the reader evaluates that question as cynical and intentionally trying to deceive God (Gen. 4:9). Cain just murdered Abel. Cain knew it, God knew it, and we the readers know it.
Not Complaining About God
But there are many biblical texts in which humans put questions to God and these questions are to be affirmed by the readers of the Sacred Scriptures. One well-known example is when Abraham interceded for Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 18:23-33). Here I want to focus your attention on two types of questions which are honorable: asking God “why?” and “how long?” These questions are not to be misunderstood as complaints about God. Complaining about God to others is always wrong and rejected by God. It reveals a lack of faith and trust in him. It puts the complainer in the position of judge and God in the position of defendant, as if the complainer could be a better god than the true God. The ancient Israelites in the wilderness were complaining about God when they asked, “Why is the LORD bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become a prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt” (Num. 14:3)1. Such complaining questions were displeasing to God.
But there are many places where the speaker would put questions to God which are affirmed and accepted by God. What is the difference? Such questions belong to prayers spoken to God, and they flow from faith. They express a God-pleasing faith in God and trust in his promises, spoken to God when the pray-er experienced God’s silence and hidden face. In the context they function as faith-driven protests against God’s strange action or inaction. Often these God-pleasing questions are the rhetorical questions of “why?” and “how long?” Their intent was not to elicit from God intellectual information. Instead, the question of “why” expressed the protest that God should stop his present strange way of dealing with his people and instead return to what he originally promised. The question of “how long” expressed the protest that God has delayed too long and instead should act now in a salvific way.
Moses in Exodus 32
In contrast to the Israelites in the wilderness complaining about God, Moses prayed to God with a protest. A famous example of “why” occurs at Mount Sinai. In reaction to the Israelites committing the golden calf apostasy, God said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you [i.e., Moses]” (Exod. 32:9-10). Moses responded to this threat by imploring Yahweh:
“O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever’” (Exod. 32:11-13).
Moses objected to God’s threat. His “why” questions were protests, basically saying that God should not carry through with his threat of annihilating the people right there on the spot. Instead, God should spare them, and in favor of this conclusion, Moses offers three arguments: first, Israel is God’s people whom he redeemed from bondage; second, God should consider his own reputation among the Egyptians; and third, instead of making Moses a new patriarch God should fulfill the promise he made to the original patriarchs. All three arguments were theocentric, not anthropocentric. They were not based on the merits, worthiness or potential of Israel. In fact, rebellious Israel did deserve to be wiped out right then and there. They were to have no other gods nor worship graven images (Exod. 20:3-6), and God ratified his covenant with them (Exod. 24:1-11), and yet they turn their back on him. But against God’s just wrath Moses appealed to God’s past saving action, God’s name, and God’s promises. Moses was protesting this threat of wrath from God and instead calling for the mercy of God. Moses was holding onto God against God. And God responded by changing his course of action, sparing his people (Exod. 32:14).2
The Psalms
It is a good practice for Christians through Jesus the Messiah, God’s Son in human flesh, to pray the Psalms of ancient Israel. They are prayers inspired by the Holy Spirit. When you do this, you come upon some Psalms that put to God the rhetorical questions of “why?” and “how long?” We encounter this kind of cry already in Psalm 6, a prayer ascribed to David. He was in a situation where death was a near possibility, and he prayed:
O LORD, rebuke me not in your anger;
nor discipline me in your wrath.
Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am languishing;
heal me, O LORD, for my bones are troubled.
My soul also is greatly troubled.
But you, O LORD—how long?
Turn, O LORD, deliver my life;
save me for the sake of your steadfast love.
For in death there is no remembrance of you;
in Sheol who will give you praise?”
The urgent question “how long?” is meant to move God based on God’s steadfast love. God has been rebuking him and disciplining him, but David wants it to end now, lest he die (cf. Jer. 10:24). In the Scriptures physical death is seen as an enemy, “the last enemy” as the apostle Paul calls it (1 Cor. 15:26). It is something to be delivered from. Here David prays for deliverance from death, for he could not praise God openly and publicly from the grave. Then he ends the prayer with a statement of confidence: “The LORD has heard my plea; the LORD accepts my prayer.”
In Psalm 10 we encounter the use of the rhetorical question “why?” in the opening verse: “Why, O LORD, do you stand afar off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” Again, the questions are meant to move God to act now, to stop being so aloof and instead respond to the situation. The psalmist goes on to protest how the wicked pursue, exploit, and scheme against the innocent poor with impunity. The wicked “says in his heart, ‘God has forgotten, he has hidden his face, he will never see it’” To this seeming indifference of God the psalmist then prays, “Arise, O LORD; O God, lift up your hand; forget not the afflicted” (vv. 11-12). The singer ends on a note of confidence and hope:
O LORD, you hear the desire of the afflicted;
you will strengthen their heart;
you will incline your ear
to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed,
so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more.
The prayers for help in the Psalter typically follow this sequence of urgent prayer, sometimes with rhetorical questions addressed to God, followed by statements of confidence and praise.
In Psalm 30 David prayed to Yahweh with some rhetorical questions designed to convince God that David’s death would serve no good purpose, that it would remove a key voice from God’s choir, so to speak:
you hid your face;
I was dismayed.
To you, O LORD, I cry,
and to the Lord I plead for mercy:
“What profit is there in my death,
if I go down to the pit?
Will the dust praise you?
Will it tell of your faithfulness?
Hear, O LORD, and be merciful to me!
O LORD, be my helper!”
David was imploring God to intervene now before it is too late. And again, the psalm ends on a note of praise and thanksgiving.
A good example of a collective prayer that puts rhetorical questions to God appears in Psalm 44. God had rejected his faithful people, given them over to their enemies and made them a derisive taunt to others. Yet they confess, “All this has come upon us, though we have not forgotten you, and we have not been false to your covenant” (v. 17). They petition Yahweh with rhetorical questions and imperatives (vv. 23-26):
Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord?
Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever!
Why do you hide your face?
Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?
For our soul is bowed down to the dust;
our belly clings to the ground.
Rise up; come to our help!
Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love!
They were experiencing God’s wrath, rejection, and inaction, and yet it was all so inscrutable and, at this particular time, undeserved. So what do the faithful do in response? They did not go and find a different god. Instead, they took the contradiction to God himself in prayer, and called upon him to enact his steadfast love and commitment to the covenant by redeeming them. They called upon God to bring to an end his inaction and instead to act according to the way he had revealed himself.
Theological Reflections
The Psalms give many examples of this kind of prayer. How are we to understand such rhetorical questions spoken to God in the context of biblical theology? They make a significant contribution to our understanding of God-pleasing prayer. Here we need to avoid two opposite ditches. On the one side, prayer is not manipulation of God. We cannot deceive or coerce God into doing something against his will as if God were subject to our wishes. God is God, and we’re not. On the other side, prayer is not empty speech. Prayer is not simply an exercise in self-psychology, aimed to make us feel better. On the one hand, we are not issuing commanding orders to God, but on the other hand, we are not simply talking to ourselves. Prayer is faith talking to God. We pray for two chief reasons. We pray because throughout the Scriptures God commands, exhorts, and invites his people to pray without ceasing. And we pray because God promises to hear our prayer. I like to put it this way: God in his grace and mercy for the sake of Jesus his Son stoops down to let our prayers and petitions and intercessions move him. It is a gift of his grace that he invites us to pray, and it is a gift of his grace that he hears our prayers and lets our prayers move him.
Within this proper framework, we can better understand what the faithful were doing when they directed rhetorical questions to their God. The rhetorical questions were intended to move and persuade God to change his course of action, and God in his mercy was willing to allow their prayers to move him. The change in God’s action they were calling for was not an arbitrary or trivial sort of change. They were imploring God to move from his silence and inaction to acting in conformity with his revealed character and promises, to move from his wrath to his mercy, to move from being a hidden and inscrutable God to the revealed God. They were saying in effect, to use a contemporary colloquialism: “O Lord, why are you so silent and aloof when all hell is breaking out around us?” “How long will you keep your anger and refrain from showing mercy?” The souls of the martyrs under the altar make a similar cry, “How long?” (Rev. 6:9-11).
The prayers in the Psalter were doing what the Canaanite woman did (Matt. 15:21-28; cf. Mk 7:24-30). She implored Jesus to have mercy on her. Jesus refused, saying “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs,” to which the woman responded, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Jesus did not scold her for her response but instead praised it, “O woman, great is your faith!” The woman was holding on to the mercy of Jesus against a strange sort of apathetic Jesus.
All kinds of intense suffering take place in the lives of faithful Christians, to which the Scriptures convey a rich and multifaceted theology.3 The biblical texts reveal different God-pleasing ways to respond to suffering. One way is to repent, and another way is to rejoice in your suffering. Many of the prayers found in the Psalms and elsewhere disclose a third way to respond: to hold on to God against God, to appeal to the revealed God against the inscrutable God.
Ingvar Fløysvik has written a perceptive study of the Psalms where God seems to be the major problem. He summarizes the dilemma of the psalmists in five points:
- What has happened to them is done by God.
- According to his self-revelation, God has done what he would do when provoked to anger.
- According to his self-revelation and covenant, he would be provoked to anger by sin and unfaithfulness.
- This time this reason does not apply.
- Yahweh is good, just, and rich in steadfast love and faithfulness.4
The psalmists do not sugar-coat their reality. Yes, God has handed his people over to their enemies and brought the faithful to the brink of death, the last enemy. But God is abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. These psalms do not resolve the tension but take it to the Lord in prayer. In the process they can put rhetorical questions to God. Fløysvik concludes his study this way: “Faith sticks to God’s self-revelation in the midst of conflicting evidence. That is the contribution of these psalms.5
1Translations come from the English Standard Version.
2For discussions of God changing his course of action, see Francis I Andersen and David Noel Freedman, Amos, Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1989), 638-679; Paul R. Raabe, “When Yahweh Repents,” Logia 16 (2007): 31-34.
3For a survey of biblical emphases, see Paul R. Raabe, “Human Suffering in Biblical Context,” Concordia Journal 45/4 (Fall 2019): 49-65.
4Ingvar Fløysvik, When God Becomes My Enemy: The Theology of the Complaint Psalms (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1997), 159.
5Ibid., 176.
Paul Raabe served as a professor at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis for many years in the area of Old Testament. He is now serving as a professor in Biblical studies at GCU in the College of Theology. He has published in the areas of the prophets, Hebrew poetry, and Biblical theology.