ר׳ אליעזר אומר שלש משמרות הוי הלילה ועל כל משמר ומשמר יושב הקב׳׳ה ושואג כארי שנאמר ה׳ ממרום ישאג ממעו קדשו יתן קולו שאוג ישאג על נוהו ׃
“Rabbi Eliezer says, The night has three watches, and at every watch, the Holy One, blessed be He, sits and roars like a lion, for it is said, ‘The Lord shall roar from on high, and utter his voice from his holy habitation: roaring he shall roar upon his habitation.’” (Jer. xxv. 30.) And again, a little lower down, the same assertion is made in the name of two other rabbies, and the cause of God’s roaring assigned:—
אמר רב יצחק בר שמואל משמיה דרב שלש משמרות הוי הלילה ועל כל משמר ומשמר יושב הקב׳׳ה ושואג כארי ואומר אוי שחרבתי את ביתי ושרפתי את היכלי והגליתי את בני לבין אומות העולם ׃
“Rabbi Isaac, the son of Samuel, says, in the name of Rav, The night has three watches, and at every watch, the Holy One, blessed be He, sits and roars like a lion, and says, Woe is me that I have laid desolate my house, and burned my sanctuary, and sent my children into captivity amongst the nations of the world.” (Berachoth, fol. iii., col. 1.) Now we ask every reasonable man whether this is a representation worthy of the Creator of heaven and earth? We are told here, first, that God is like a man in observing day and night—that he has set times for different employments, and a time for amusement. We are told, secondly, that instead of comprehending all things past, present, and to come, at all times, and instead of upholding all things by the continual fiat of his omnipotent rule, that he is obliged to consider each thing in succession; and that, like a poor frail child of man, He can do only one thing at a time. And thirdly, we are here informed, that the Divine Being sits all night, and mourns like a child, over an act which he rashly committed, but now wishes to have undone. Is this a fit representation of Deity, or is it awful blasphemy? How different is the description given by Moses—“Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night” (Ps. xc. 1-4); and again, that other beautiful passage of the Psalmist, “Of old thou hast laid the foundations of the earth; and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure; yea all of them shall wax old like a garment: and as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed; but thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end.” (Ps. cii. 25-27.) In both these passages, unchangeableness, entire freedom from all vicissitude and succession, is presented to our view as the prominent feature in the character of Deity. Whereas, the God whom the rabbies describe, is a being subject to the same alterations as ourselves, and liable to change, in its worst form, that is, to that change of will which ensues on disappointed expectations. They say, that their God destroyed his temple and sent his children into captivity, and that now he is very sorry for it, and vents the bitterness of his grief in lamentations compared to the roaring of a lion. Such a deity is no more like the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, than Jeroboam’s calves. He may not be a graven image, but he is nevertheless an idol, not indeed of gold or silver, but of the imagination. Nothing can be more different than the Being described by the rabbies, and that God declared in Moses and the Prophets. And yet on this very point, where the oral law errs so grievously, Christianity maintains the truth. The New Testament declares unto us the same Being revealed in the Old. It says, “Every good gift, and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” (James i. 17.)
But the rabbies falsely ascribe to God not only variableness, but imperfect knowledge also. They say, that He spends a fourth part of the day in the study of the law. Now either God knows the law, or he does not. If he does know the law, then study is useless; and if he does not, then his knowledge is imperfect, and either supposition is altogether unworthy of the Deity. Indeed it is very difficult to argue against a doctrine so monstrous, or to show the full absurdity where the subject is so grave and sacred. But we put it to the good sense of every Israelite, and ask him whether he can believe that the God of knowledge studies in his own law? Is not such an assertion a blasphemous falsehood, and does it not show that those who made it were themselves utterly devoid of all true knowledge of God? Some persons endeavour to excuse this blasphemy by saying that the words are not to be taken literally, and that the rabbies employed oriental figures. But this will not save the credit of the oral law; for if we admit the figure, we cannot excuse the blasphemy contained in the assertion, that God studies the law one fourth of every day. No man that has any reverence for his Creator would venture to use such language, not even in the way of a parable. It proves in every case that those rabbies were totally devoid of that reverence which is due to God, and therefore most unfit teachers of religion. But, further, if these passages be figurative, what is the real sense? What is meant by studying in the law, or playing with Leviathan, or uttering complaints at the beginning of every watch in the night; or what is intended by ascribing to God one sort of employment in the day and the other in the night? It is not enough to say that these are all figures conveying the most profound wisdom; this assertion must be proved by showing what this wisdom is. Let the Rabbinists explain these figures satisfactorily, and they will then have some chance of being believed, though even that would not amount to a proof, that the authors of these passages intended that they should be understood mystically. It is a certain fact that many of the rabbies have understood these and similar passages literally. In the commentary on the assertion, “That in the second three hours God sits and judges the world,” we are told, that some believed this so firmly as to think that on this very account the additional form of prayer, called מוסף, was prescribed:—
יש אומרים כי לכך תקנו בקדושת מודף לומר ממקומו הוא יפן כי סתם מוסף בשניות בא ואז הוא יושב ודן ואנו מתפללין שיפנה מכסא דין לשבת בכסא רחמים ׃
“Some say, that on this account the words ‘Let him turn from his place,’ have been appointed in the sanctification of the Musaph, for this part of the prayer generally occurs in the second three hours, when he is sitting in judgment, and that we pray that he may turn from the throne of judgment, and sit on the throne of mercy.” Those who held this opinion plainly thought, that the hours were literal hours, and that the distribution of the day into four different employments was not figurative, but real. These persons, therefore, believed that God studies in the law, that he plays with Leviathan, and observes the distinction of day and night. And it must be confessed that, if they believed in the Talmud, they had good reason for this literal interpretation, as the corresponding passage, respecting God’s roaring like a lion at every watch of the night, cannot be explained figuratively, if it be taken in connexion with its context. The context contains a discussion about real, not figurative night-watches. The question proposed by the Mishna is, Until what hour of the night is it lawful to perform the evening-reading of the Sh’mah Israel (Hear, O Israel)? R. Eliezer says, It is lawful until the end of the first watch. The Gemara then considers what the rabbi could mean by this definition—
מה קסבר ר׳ אליעזר אי קסבר ג׳ משמרות הוי הלילה לימא עד ארבע שעות ואי קסבר ארבע משמרות הוי הלִלה לימא עד שלש שעות , לעולם קסבר שלש משמרות הוי הלילה והא קא משמע לן איכא משמרות ברקיעא ואיכא משמרות בארעא דתניא וכו׳ ׃
“What did R. Eliezer mean? If he meant that the night had three watches, he ought to have said until the fourth hour: but if he meant that the night has four watches, he ought to have said until the third hour. There can be no doubt that he meant that the night has three watches, and intended to say, that there are watches in heaven and watches upon earth, for the Bareitha says, &c.”——And then follows the passage, saying, that in each watch God roars like a lion. It cannot, then, be pretended that the night-watches here are figurative or mystical. It is expressly said that there are the same watches in heaven and earth, and the whole question is about the real distribution of time. The following context is equally unequivocal. R. Eliezer, immediately after saying that in each watch God roars like a lion, goes on to give the signs whereby each watch may be recognised even in the dark:—
קסימן לדבר משמרה ראשונה חמור נוער , שנייה כלבים צועקים , שלישית תינוק יונק משדי אמו ואשה מספרת עם בעלה ׃