COMMANDER OF SEEN AND UNSEEN HOSTS -- Daily Images of God--Lent 2022 Day 35 April 6

 

Daily Images of God--Lent 2022

Day 35

April 6

 

COMMANDER OF SEEN AND UNSEEN HOSTS

 

Yahweh Tsabaoth is a name for God used commonly in the Hebrew Scriptures: it comes from צבאות‎ (tsabāʾōth), plural of צבא‎ (tsābāʾ, a group of armed soldiers). The name sees God as the real head of armies of human soldiers when they are at war for the right, as well as of the varied unseen forces that drive forward human affairs. It stresses the power of God, saying that God is mightier than any human general or warrior. It can be abused if we are saying that God is on our side rather than our enemy’s in an armed conflict, reducing the All-nurturer to a bit of war propaganda. But in one of its first appearances in Biblical narrative, the name is introduced is such a way as to suggest the heavenly hosts transcend and are indifferent to tribal or national warfare. Other passages point to the possibility that God will side with those whose intentions and actions are pure in human conflict. 

 

“Once when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing before him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went to him and said to him, ‘Are you one of us, or one of our adversaries?’ He replied, ‘Neither; but as commander of the army of Yahweh I have now come.’ And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped, and he said to him, ‘What do you command your servant, my Lord?’ The commander of the army of Yahweh said to Joshua, ‘Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy.’ And Joshua did so.” (Joshua 5:13-15)

 

“Then Hannah made a vow and said, ‘Yahweh of hosts, if You will indeed look on the affliction of Your maidservant and remember me, and not forget Your maidservant, but will give Your maidservant a male child, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall come upon his head’” (1 Samuel 1:11).

 

“Then David said to the Philistine, ‘You come to me with a sword, with a spear, and with a javelin. But I come to you in the name of Yahweh of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied’” (1 Samuel 17:45).

 

"In the year King Uzziah died, I saw Yahweh seated on a high and lofty throne, with the train of his garment filling the temple. Burning beings were stationed above; each of them had six wings: with two they covered their faces, with two they covered their genitals, and with two they hovered. One cried out to the other: “Holy, holy, holy is Yahweh of hosts! The fullness of the earth is Yahweh's glory!” At the sound of that cry, the frame of the door shook and the house was filled with smoke" (Isaiah 6:1-4).

 

Image: Pieter Bruegel I: Fall of the Rebel Angels.