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

In this edifying outing, Hamori (Women’s Divination in Biblical Literature), a professor at the Union Theological Seminary, diligently combs through the Bible for “monsters” and “monstrous acts” that have been hidden by time and forgiving interpreters. Hamori argues that, while popular culture has gradually “domesticated” the Bible’s “strange and frightening” creatures—cherubim defanged into chubby, winged babies; angels bestowed the “soft-edged glow of a Hallmark card”—the text itself reveals fierce beings who “commit violent acts,” generally on God’s orders. Cherubim, or “hybrid monsters who stand sentinel at sacred... sites,” serve as God’s “henchmen,” while angels can work on behalf of God or Satan, equally capable of “deliver[ing] a message or fatal blow.” Such violence is most associated with the Hebrew Bible, but is rife in the New Testament as well; Revelation’s apocalyptic backdrop finds angels “wounding, burning, poisoning, drowning, and otherwise massacring human beings” with “God’s signature inscribed across it all.” Through fine-grained textual analysis, Hamori wisely reminds readers that “grappling with the monstrous divine is in some ways at the heart of the Bible’s sense of what it means to be the people of God,” and suggests that God’s monstrosity ”gives room for our grief, anger, and protest.” Curious believers will find this eye-opening and mind-expanding. (Oct.)