I'm reading another Marva Dawn book, "Unfettered Hope: Living faithfully in an affluent society" and she quoted Abraham Joshua Heschel while talking about God's anger. It's a section I have highlighted in my copy of "The Prophets, Volume II, which Marv Wilson had us read back at Gordon College. It's from chapter 5, "The Meaning and Mystery of Wrath" and it's really good stuff. I love the last line:
"This is the mysterious paradox of Hebrew faith: The All-wise and Almighty may change a word that He proclaims. Man has the power to modify His design... The anger of the Lord is instrumental, hypothetical, conditional, and subject to His will. Let the people modify their line of conduct, and anger will disappear. Far from being an expression of "petulant vindictiveness," the message of anger includes a call to return and to be saved. The call of anger is a call to cancel anger. It is not the expression of irrational, sudden, and instinctive excitement, but a free and deliberate reaction of God's justice to what is wrong and evil. For all its intensity, it may be averted by prayer. There is no divine anger for anger's sake. It's meaning is, as already said, instrumental: to bring about repentance; its purpose and consummation is its own disappearance."
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