What is the fear of the Lord?
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| Cover of The Idea of the Holy |
C. S. Lewis called modern Christians to recovery of reverence for God—who, in the now-famous Chronicles of Narnia image of the lion Aslan, is depicted as good but not safe. Likewise, evangelical mystic A. W. Tozer complained in the early 1960s that “in the majority of our meetings, there is scarcely a trace of reverent thought … little sense of the divine Presence, no moment of stillness, no solemnity, no wonder, no holy fear. But always there is a dull or a breezy song leader full of awkward jokes.”
The first reference to “fear of God” in the OT is Genesis 20:11, where the Mesopotamian Abraham complains that there is no “fear of God” in Philistia.
It is against this backdrop that “fear of God” (yir’at ’elohim), “fear of the Lord” (yir’at yhwh/’adonay), and “fear of the Almighty” (yir’at shadday) are to be understood throughout the OT itself.
Indeed, yir’ah alone is sometimes used in the sense of “piety” (Job 4:6; 15:4; 22:4) or “reverence” (Neh. 5:15; Ps. 5:7). And as is well known, in the OT fearing God more often connoted “reverence/awe” (cf. Deut. 17:19) than “terror/dread.”
The double-edged nature of the fear of the Lord has been given classic expression by Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy (1917). He coined the term numinous, meaning “aware[ness] of the holy.” He referred to the mysterium tremendum, in which mysterium meant “that which is hidden,” “the Wholly Other”—and tremendum meant “shuddering; the daunting and repelling moment of the numinous.” He also spoke of the (mysterium) fascinans, meaning “fascinating; the attracting and alluring moment of the numinous.” Otto’s insights nicely combine these two aspects of the meaning of “fear” in “fear of God/the Lord.” In what follows, both nuances of yir’ah (and its verbal root yr’) may often be seen in the passages cited.
Youngblood, R. F., & Scorgie, G. G. (2011). Fear of the Lord. In (G. G. Scorgie, S. Chan, G. T. Smith, & J. D. Smith III, Eds.)Dictionary of Christian spirituality. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
