God’s Monsters: Vengeful Spirits, Deadly Angels, Hybrid Creatures, and Divine Hitmen of the Bible

While in popular understanding God and his angels are wholly good, and Satan and his demons are entirely evil, an alternative reading of these biblical beings leaves room for interpreting them all as monstrous. In God’s Monsters: Vengeful Spirits, Deadly Angels, Hybrid Creatures, and Divine Hitmen of the Bible, Esther J. Hamori discusses the biblical presentation of these monsters and invites us to consider what their monstrous qualities are, how they impact the Bible as literature, and what all this says about the nature of God. Hamori’s writing is succinct, engaging, and witty, drawing on a wide range of cultural references in order to make the often arcane language and content of the Bible clearer and more accessible to the reader.God’s Monsters shows that the authors of the Bible’s books “wrote about monsters because they—like us—knew a world that was filled with ‘monsters’ of all kinds. These aren’t crude constructions, but poignant expressions of the dangers and afflictions of life” (11). Hamori reads biblical monsters as narrative expressions, resisting the temptation of purely metaphorical interpretation. Rather, she explores these monsters as narrative devices within biblical storytelling, asking what specific functions these monsters have. Hamori consciously avoids offering a clear definition of the term monsters in the book, instead taking our cultural ideas and assumptions, particularly those informed by horror narratives, as the starting point for the exploration. To that end, God’s Monsters is a master class in biblical interpretation through incisive textual analysis, approaching the depiction of biblical monsters as, ultimately, commentaries on the nature of God.Hamori divides the book into three parts after a clear introduction entitled “Monster Heaven.” Part 1, “God’s Entourage,” consists of the monsters immediately surrounding God. Chapter 1, “Seraphim,” speaks of these creatures, which appear in the story of the Israelites wandering the desert in the book of Numbers, as something like giant, winged, venomous snakes, though Hamori stresses that the Seraphims’ physical features change slightly across different accounts in other books of the Bible. Their function as instruments of God’s wrath—“to intimidate people into submission to God” (26)—and their unusual appearance provide the argument for their monstrosity.Chapter 2, “Cherubim,” begins by dispelling any misconceptions about what the Cherubim are. These fearsome creatures have the bodies and strength of lions, wings or talons like eagles, and human heads, although some later passages describe Cherubim as having four faces, only one of which is human (ox, lion, eagle, man). The Cherubim appear frequently throughout the Bible. Hamori focuses more upon the Old Testament stories to illustrate their monstrousness, showing that their form is unusual, their size and strength imposing, and the violence they can inflict is severe.Hamori moves to “The Adversary” in chapter 3. The Adversary is an early iteration of Satan, and this being originally acted as consultant to God. Hamori takes us through the complicated, troubling account of Job, noting that the Adversary’s role is not one of challenging God; rather, he responds to God’s own prompts in testing Job’s faith. The Adversary as a divine, nonhuman “torturer-in-chief” (73) is the essential basis for identifying him as a monster here, and the close alignment between the Adversary and God is well argued, while the implications of that alignment are troubling: If the Adversary is a close ally that does God’s will with God’s permission, then the Adversary’s torment is therefore God’s torment.Chapter 4, “The Destroyer and Other Angels,” covers several stories from the Bible, concentrating on the book of Revelation, though Hamori also draws on stories in 1 Chronicles and Exodus, focusing primarily on the angels who are sent to deliver divine destruction. While the angels often appear as human, their power and role in inflicting destruction and death constitute Hamori’s argument for monstrosity here, and we see that these angels are terrifying, dangerous, and again, following God’s orders—for example, when the angel of the Lord kills 185,000 people in an Assyrian camp in response to a prayer by King Hezekiah (2 Kings 18:29–35).In chapter 5, “Demons in God’s Ranks,” Hamori examines the presumption that demons are creatures in Satan’s employ, at war with the angels in God’s. However, she explains that God and Satan use both angels and demons. She discusses specific demons mentioned in the Bible such as Mavet, Abaddon, and Resheph, and how God uses them to enact his divine will. For example, Hamori shows that in Revelation, “Abaddon, angel of the abyss, king of the locust-monsters, isn’t God’s prisoner in that evil domain. He’s the warden” (149). Abaddon, then is charged with releasing the locust-monsters. Hamori usefully clarifies misperceptions around what demons are and who they work for within this chapter.Chapter 6, “Manipulative and Mind-Altering Spirits,” looks at creatures who work to mislead and deceive. Hamori discusses instances wherein God sends spirits to torment people, such as the “spirit” in 1 Kings (22:12–38) that sends a false message through the prophet Micaiah to King Ahab in order to lead Ahab to his own destruction. Hamori helpfully provides context for the word spirit: “The Hebrew word for ‘spirit,’ ruah, also means ‘wind’ and ‘breath.’ They’re wind, coming and going unseen” (170). Hamori ultimately brings us to Satan, who in the New Testament is called the “father of lies” (John 8:44). The torturous and obfuscatory nature of these supernatural beings here qualifies them as monsters within God’s orbit.Part 2, “The Monsters Beneath,” begins with chapter 7, “The Sea Monster,” which stands out as an especially vibrant piece of description and textual analysis. Here, Hamori writes about Leviathan, the fearsome sea creature of the Bible, arguing that this creature could be viewed not as opposing God, but rather as God’s own pet whom he loves very much. She demonstrates the striking extent of God’s love for it through both the words used and the writing style employed, quoting God’s description of Leviathan in Job 41:12–34, and comparing this to the descriptions of lovers in Song of Songs 4:1–5, 7 and 5:10–16. The language and structures used are strikingly similar, which Hamori ties to a well-known form of contemporary poetry called a wasf (Arabic for “description”) popular in Egypt. The loving description God gives of Leviathan is all the more shocking as God himself ultimately kills Leviathan.Chapter 8, “Shades, Ghosts, and Other Living Dead” is very unsettling, as Hamori not only shows examples of the spirits of the dead, but also explores what the Bible really says about our lives (as much as we have them) after death. She demonstrates that the Old Testament conception of the afterlife presents a largely painless existence, devoid of displeasure, but also of pleasure. Hamori uses familiar models of “the Living Dead” (ghosts, zombies, etc.) to explore this side of the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, within a discussion of biblical monsters. The horror here is that in Judaism, everyone—righteous and wicked alike—dies and ultimately becomes one of these monsters: separated from God, and largely forgotten by humanity. And if we find comfort in the New Testament reworking of the afterlife, we now are at risk of going somewhere where we will be cognizant of being tortured.The next chapter, “Giants,” represents a departure from previous chapters, finding a double meaning in the notion of monstrosity. Here, Hamori introduces us to the giants of the Bible, also known as the Nephilim. These creatures, the children created by heavenly beings forcing themselves onto human women (and Hamori emphasizes that this is rape), were inhabiting the land God promised to the Hebrews in the Bible. Indeed, God explicitly commands the Hebrews to expel the Nephilim. Hamori carefully considers the implications of God instructing his people to run these creatures off their land so that the Israelites could inhabit it—that is, the framing of non-Israelites as beasts who can be justifiably killed to make space for God’s chosen people. Hamori foregrounds the story of David and Goliath in 1 Samuel 17:4–47 to highlight the way Goliath, a descendent of the Nephilim, is portrayed as a monster that God kills through David. The suggestion here is that this is not just God’s will, but God’s own direct action, the killing of a giant to make way for the Israelites. This discussion concludes with a consideration of the way these stories of monsters work to dehumanize the other. Hamori connects the language used in the biblical narrative to recorded descriptions by European settlers of Native Americans, and even to the words of the police officer who killed Michael Brown in 2014, who described his altercation with Brown as being “‘like a five-year-old holding on to Hulk Hogan’” (258), echoing this battle with giants. Clearly, this sort of framing and monsterization can result in real harm and damage to marginalized people. Hamori’s takeaway here is that “(t)he biblical battles of conquest of a giant-filled land weren’t historical events, but the consequences of the types of beliefs the stories reflect are devastatingly real” (258).Part 3, “The God-Monster,” contains only the final chapter, “The Monster of Monsters, the Wonder of Wonders,” which functions as the book’s conclusion. Hamori expresses the almost inevitable conclusion that God himself, while often generous and forgiving, is also frequently monstrous. She presents this conclusion by suggesting that we can use the monsters with which God surrounds himself to understand God’s own nature. She argues that the relationship between God and monstrousness makes the Bible a much richer, more innovative, and more satisfying literary and spiritual experience than might be initially thought. Hamori concludes by showing that this is also a way for the writers of the Bible to truly grapple with the horror, devastation, and awfulness in the world.With God’s Monsters, Hamori keenly zeroes in on aspects of the Bible that have made it an enduring piece of literature. The ambiguities and discomfiting implications of stories that on the surface seem to be linear, causal, and ultimately moral contribute to the Bible’s persistent cultural presence. However, the morality is both less clear and less certain than some readers perhaps assume. Hamori’s book is compelling and shows why people continue to read the Bible, even when considered apart from the religious faiths it inspires. For those faiths, however, God’s Monsters presents the problems and puzzles inherent in the writing of the Bible and forces readers to consider in depth the real nature of God.