God’s Absence

A rabbi once came upon a child who was crying. He asked the child what was wrong, and the child answered: “I was hiding, and no one came to look for me.” The Rabbi ruefully responded, “God makes the same complaint.” — A Chasidic parable^[1]

In Deuteronomy, YHWH warns the Israelites that while they experienced constant divine manifestation in the wilderness, with pillars of fire and cloud and manna from heaven, it will not always be this way. In the future, they will sin, and then they will find that YHWH’s face will be hidden:

^{דברים לא:יז} וְחָרָה אַפִּי בוֹ בַיּוֹם הַהוּא וַעֲזַבְתִּים וְהִסְתַּרְתִּי פָנַי מֵהֶם וְהָיָה לֶאֱכֹל וּמְצָאֻהוּ רָעוֹת רַבּוֹת וְצָרוֹת וְאָמַר בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא הֲלֹא עַל כִּי אֵין אֱלֹהַי בְּקִרְבִּי מְצָאוּנִי הָרָעוֹת הָאֵלֶּה. ^לא:יח וְאָנֹכִי הַסְתֵּר אַסְתִּיר פָּנַי בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא עַל כָּל הָרָעָה אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה כִּי פָנָה אֶל אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים.

^{Deut 31:17} Then My anger will flare up against them, and I will abandon them and hide My face from them. They shall be ready prey; and many evils and troubles shall befall them. And they shall say on that day, “Surely it is because our God is not in our midst that these evils have befallen us.” ^31:18 Yet I will surely hide My face on that day, because of all the evil they have done in turning to other gods.^[2]

Rav Nachman of Breslov/Bratslav (1772–1810), founder of the Breslov Chasidic sect, interprets the phrase הַסְתֵּר אַסְתִּיר “I will surely hide,” which uses the same root for the verb twice (an infinitive absolute followed by an imperfect) as a reference to two levels of divine concealment,^[3] one that the person knows about and one of which the person is unaware:

^{ליקוטי מוהר"ן נו:ג} כִּי יֵשׁ שְׁנֵי הַסְתָּרוֹת, וּכְשֶׁהַשֵּׁם יִתְבָּרַךְ נִסְתָּר בְּהַסְתָּרָה אַחַת, גַּם כֵּן קָשֶׁה מְאֹד לְמָצְאוֹ, אַךְ אַף־עַל־פִּי־כֵן, כְּשֶׁהוּא נִסְתָּר בְּהַסְתָּרָה אַחַת, אֶפְשָׁר לִיגַע וְלַחֲתֹר עַד שֶׁיִּמְצָא אוֹתוֹ יִתְבָּרַךְ, מֵאַחַר שֶׁיּוֹדֵעַ שֶׁהַשֵּׁם יִתְבָּרַךְ נִסְתָּר מִמֶּנּוּ.

^{Likutei Moharan 56:3} For there are two levels of hiddenness. When the blessed God is hidden in one level of hiddenness, it is also hard to find Him. Even so, when He is hidden in one level of hiddenness, it is possible to work hard and dig until one finds Him, since the person knows that the blessed God is hidden from him.

אֲבָל כְּשֶׁהַשֵּׁם יִתְבָּרַךְ נִסְתָּר בְּהַסְתָּרָה תּוֹךְ הַסְתָּרָה, דְּהַיְנוּ שֶׁהַהַסְתָּרָה בְּעַצְמָהּ נִסְתֶּרֶת מִמֶּנּוּ, דְּהַיְנוּ שֶׁאֵינוֹ יוֹדֵעַ כְּלָל שֶׁהַשֵּׁם יִתְבָּרַךְ נִסְתָּר מִמֶּנּוּ – אֲזַי אִי אֶפְשָׁר כְּלָל לִמְצֹא אוֹתוֹ, מֵאַחַר שֶׁאֵינוֹ יוֹדֵעַ כְּלָל מֵהַשֵּׁם יִתְבָּרַךְ....

But when the blessed God is hidden in a concealment inside a concealment, meaning, that the concealment itself is hidden from the person, i.e., that he doesn’t even know that the blessed God is hidden from him, then it is impossible to find God at all, since the person doesn’t even know a thing about the blessed God…

Even so, Rav Nachman argues that it is still just concealment. God, of course, is always actually present:

אֲבָל בֶּאֱמֶת אֲפִלּוּ בְּכָל הַהַסְתָּרוֹת, וַאֲפִלּוּ בְּהַהַסְתָּרָה שֶׁבְּתוֹךְ הַסְתָּרָה, בְּוַדַּאי גַּם שָׁם מְלֻבָּשׁ הַשֵּׁם יִתְבָּרַךְ, כִּי בְּוַדַּאי אֵין שׁוּם דָּבָר שֶׁלֹּא יִהְיֶה בּוֹ חִיּוּת הַשֵּׁם יִתְבָּרַךְ, כִּי בִּלְעֲדֵי חִיּוּתוֹ לֹא הָיָה לוֹ קִיּוּם כְּלָל.

In reality, however, even in all these layers of concealment, and even in the concealment which is inside concealment, it is certain that the blessed God is enclothed. For certainly there is nothing that does not have the life of the blessed God inside it, for without God’s lifeforce, there would be no existence at all.

To translate this message into more modern terms: For the non-believer, saying that God is hiding or withdrawn is just a way of masking the hard-to-face possibility that God does not exist. Such a person is certainly not searching for God. For believers, however, the imagery of God’s face as hidden implies that a divine face is somewhere to be experienced if we can pierce the veil of hiddenness.

God’s Hidden Face in the Bible: A Punishment

In the Bible, seeing God’s face is an expression of support or endorsement. Thus, the Priestly blessing promises that God will turn God’s face to the Israelites, and they will prosper:

^{במדבר ו:כד} יְבָרֶכְךָ יְ־הוָה וְיִשְׁמְרֶךָ. ^ו:כה יָאֵר יְ־הוָה פָּנָיו אֵלֶיךָ וִיחֻנֶּךָּ. ^ו:כו יִשָּׂא יְ־הוָה פָּנָיו אֵלֶיךָ וְיָשֵׂם לְךָ שָׁלוֹם.

^{Num 6:24} YHWH bless you and protect you! ^6:25 YHWH deal kindly and graciously with you! ^6:26 YHWH bestow His favor upon you and grant you peace!

Moreover, revelation itself is a way of God showing his chosen ones the divine face. Indeed, God is always in a sense hidden in the lives of those who have yet to discover God’s presence, whether Jacob in a dream (Gen 28:10–22), Moses at the burning bush (Exod 3:1–4:17), or all of Israel at Mount Sinai (Exod 19:16–20:17).

In contrast, the book of Psalms places the phrase in the mouths of speakers complaining about their suffering.^[4] For example:

^{תהלים יג:ב} עַד אָנָה יְ־הוָה תִּשְׁכָּחֵנִי נֶצַח עַד אָנָה תַּסְתִּיר אֶת פָּנֶיךָ מִמֶּנִּי.

^{Ps 13:2} How long, O YHWH; will You ignore me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me?

^{תהלים כז:ט} אַל תַּסְתֵּר פָּנֶיךָ מִמֶּנִּי אַל תַּט בְּאַף עַבְדֶּךָ עֶזְרָתִי הָיִיתָ אַל תִּטְּשֵׁנִי וְאַל תַּעַזְבֵנִי אֱלֹהֵי יִשְׁעִי.

^{Ps 27:9} Do not hide Your face from me; do not thrust aside Your servant in anger; You have ever been my help. Do not forsake me, do not abandon me, O God, my deliverer.^[5]

Job also lodges this complaint against God on account of his suffering:

^{איוב יג:כד} לָמָּה פָנֶיךָ תַסְתִּיר וְתַחְשְׁבֵנִי לְאוֹיֵב לָךְ.

^{Job 13:24} Why do You hide Your face, and treat me like an enemy?^[6]

If taken as a simple metaphor for disfavor, God’s hidden face is a phrase capturing the feelings of the downtrodden, that God has abandoned them to their unfortunate fate. Deuteronomy takes this further, presenting God’s hidden face as a punishment.^[7] This is how it is presented in the Prophets as well. For example,

^{יחזקאל לט:כג} וְיָדְעוּ הַגּוֹיִם כִּי בַעֲו‍ֹנָם גָּלוּ בֵית יִשְׂרָאֵל עַל אֲשֶׁר מָעֲלוּ בִי וָאַסְתִּר פָּנַי מֵהֶם וָאֶתְּנֵם בְּיַד צָרֵיהֶם וַיִּפְּלוּ בַחֶרֶב כֻּלָּם. ^לט:כד כְּטֻמְאָתָם וּכְפִשְׁעֵיהֶם עָשִׂיתִי אֹתָם וָאַסְתִּר פָּנַי מֵהֶם.

^{Ezek 39:23} And the nations shall know that the House of Israel were exiled only for their iniquity, because they trespassed against Me, so that I hid My face from them and delivered them into the hands of their adversaries, and they all fell by the sword. ^39:24 When I hid My face from them, I dealt with them according to their uncleanness and their transgressions.^[8]

The hidden face of God as punishment plays a role in Christian theology, using the Latin term deus absconditus (“Hidden God”), and among Jews in discussion about God’s place in persecution, most recently the shoah (Holocaust).^[9] And yet, a major difficulty with this usage is that, in our world, God’s face is always hidden. Indeed, already in the Bible, God’s presence seemingly ebbs from the earliest stories to the latest.^[10]

When people suffer, our first impulse is often to ask, “where is God?” To answer this question by positing that the absence of God is a punishment is essentially to state that God has been and will always be angry with us. It is a reading without hope of salvation or divine connection. Naturally, we seek a phenomenological explanation of God’s absence, i.e., a rendering that captures our experience and allows us room for hope and divine connection.

Absence as a Bid for Closeness

In a remarkable emotional inversion, the Talmud records that the first-generation Amora Rav (3^rd cent. C.E.) saw God’s hiddenness as a sign of divine favor:

^{בבלי חגיגה ה.} אמר רב ברדלא בר טביומי אמר רב: "כל שאינו בהסתר פנים אינו מהם..."

^{b. Chagiga 5a} Rav Bardela son of Tavyumi said in the name of Rav: “All who are not the object of ‘hidden of face’ are not of them (i.e. Israel)…”^[11]

What might be thought of as a purely negative action, God’s turning away, becomes instead an affirmation of relationship: If God does not trouble to ignore you, you are not close to God.^[12] This is a theological launch of a thousand ships. According to Rav, there is a systolic and diastolic movement to God’s relationship with Israel. Sometimes it is motivated by the dynamic of punishment, but not always. In Chasidic thought, this idea was taken further, with God’s absence reinterpreted as a divine bid for closeness.

Feeling God’s Distance: A Psychological Mechanism

R. Moshe Chaim Ephraim of Sudilkov (1748–1800), in his posthumously published glosses on the Torah, Degel Machaneh Ephraim, expresses astonishment at the idea of God being hidden from Israel:

^{דגל מחנה אפרים, וילך} והוא לכאורה תמוה גדולה: איך אפשר שהקב"ה יסתיר פניו מישראל, חלילה?! ואיך יהיה להם חיות ותקומה כי זה כל חיותם של ישראל עם קרובו שנקראו בנים למקום?!

^{Degel Machaneh Ephraim, Vayellech} This is at first a great wonder: How is it possible that the blessed Holy One would hide his face from Israel, God forbid?! And how could they survive and rebuild themselves, since the very lives of the Jewish people is to be the nation to which God is close, for they are called God’s children!^[13]

To answer this question, R. Ephraim, the grandson of R. Israel Baʿal Shem Tov, uses a parable in the style of his grandfather to paint a picture of what God intends when hiding from Israel:

^{דגל מחנה אפרים, וילך} אך דהנה המשל הוא למלך שעשה כמה מחיצות באחיזת עינים לפני היכלו שלא יוכלו ליכנס אליו ונסתתר שם ועשה חומות ואש ונהרות באחיזת עינים הכל לפני בניו

^{Degel Machaneh Ephraim, Vayellech} But here is a parable to a king that made many illusory barriers before his palace, to make it impossible to approach him, and he hid there. He made illusory barriers of fire and water, placing them all in his sons’ way.

והנה מי שהיה חכם נתן לב לדבר א[י]ך אפשר שאביו הרחמן לא יתרצה להראות פניו לבניו ידידיו אין זה כי אם אחיזת עינים והאב רוצה לנסות אם ישתדל הבן לבוא אליו ובאמת אין שום הסתרה והנה מיד כשמסר לנפשו לילך בנהר נסתר אחיזת עינים ועבר בו וכן בכל המחיצות עד שבא להיכל המלך.

And now, there was a smart son who thought about it, how is it possible that his kind father would not want to show himself to his beloved children. This must be illusory, and that their father merely wants to test whether his son will put in the effort to get to him. But really, there isn’t any hiding. So immediately, when the son decided to take the risk and approach, the illusory river disappeared and he passed through, and the same with all the other barriers, until he arrived at where the king was.

ויש טפש שירא להתחיל לעבור המחיצות ויש שעובר המים וחוזר מפני החומות ומפני האש והנמשל ידוע.

And there was a foolish son who was afraid to start crossing the barriers. And there was one who passed through the water, but returned because of other barriers, like that of the fire. And the meaning of this parable is clear.

והנה מי שמוסר נפשו ועובר בכל המחיצות ודוחק עצמו עד שבא אל המלך אז יבוא למעלה יותר גדול מקודם וזהו (בראשית מו:ד) אָנֹכִי אֵרֵד עִמְּךָ, היינו כשתתן לב ותבין שאפילו בירידה יש גם כן אנכי היינו ההסתרה שנסתתר עצמי ממך היא גם כן לטובתך אז (שם) וְאָנֹכִי אַעַלְךָ גַם עָלֹה היינו שתזכה למעלה יתירה וזהו גם עלה והבן.

Whoever puts in the effort and passes through the barriers, and pushes himself until he gets to the king, that person will reach a higher level than before. This is what God meant [when God said to Jacob] “I will go down with you [to Egypt].” Meaning, when you take note and realized that even when going down, I am still there, i.e., when I hide myself from you, it is also for your benefit, then (ibid.) “and I will also go up even up with you,” meaning, that you will merit to reach a higher level, and this is the meaning of “even up.”[14]

According to R. Ephraim, the descent into hiddenness results in a greater ascent into closeness. God’s distance is not real, but human insight or faith is required to recognize that the walls are a chimera. God hides as a sort of provocation to humans to seek God, for one seeks only that which is hidden.

The Eclipse of God

In the Torah, God takes responsibility for hiding. In contrast, Martin Buber’s The Eclipse of God (1952) apportions the responsibility not with humanity or with God, but in between:

Eclipse of the light of heaven, eclipse of God—such indeed is the character of the historic hour through which the world is passing. But it is not a process which can be adequately accounted for by instancing the changes that have taken place in man’s spirit. An eclipse of the sun is something that occurs between the sun and our eyes, not in the sun itself.^[15]

Here the responsibility is shared but in a different way. The vagaries of history, the insensitivity of human beings, perhaps the evil of other people, create a block that causes the Divine face to be hidden. Buber’s imagery captures the complexity of how many of us experience the absence of God in our world.

An Age of Divine Concealment

A Psalmist declares that God’s glory is clear from just looking at the wonders of the universe:

^{תהלים יט:ב} הַשָּׁמַיִם מְסַפְּרִים כְּבוֹד אֵל וּמַעֲשֵׂה יָדָיו מַגִּיד הָרָקִיעַ.

^{Ps 19:2} The heavens declare the glory of God, the firmament proclaims His handiwork.

This psalmist does not invoke revelation or a divine message, but assumes that just by looking that sky, the evidence of God should be clear to the eye of the beholder. It is one of the four principal domains of revelation, through nature, history, scripture, and direct experience. But this kind of revelation is less palpable to the modern eye as it once was.

Nature—As moderns, the world appears far more instrumental and depersonalized. What was once perceived as inexplicable divine will now is now subject to the more mundane analysis of mathematics, physics, and chemistry.

History—One’s attitude toward history is largely dependent upon whether one attributes triumphs and catastrophes to God’s hand or to the accidents of human behaviors.^[16]

Scripture—As readers of this site know well, scripture is a far more ambiguous testimony than once it seemed. The intrusion of the human element into the text has created a cornucopia of interpretive problems. The very fact of human authorship creates a crisis for those who hunt for God’s living presence in every word of Torah.

Direct experience—once a commonplace of prayer, of contemplation and of expectation, personal experience of the divine presence has waned in an age when focus on the self has supplanted yearning for the Divine.

Tzimtzim—The Withdrawal of God

Perhaps we can invoke the kabbalistic doctrine of tzimtzum, “withdrawal,” the idea that God created the world by shrinking the divine presence to make room for the physical manifestation of the universe. In this age, our age, we might imagine ourselves as living through multiple withdrawals.

Tzimtzum, of course, is primarily associated with creation,^[17] but we can extend the concept and see tzimtzum as a manifestation of God’s hiding. And yet, the hiding expresses God’s desire that people come find him, as R. Ephraim wrote, an image captured nicely in the title of Abraham Joshua Heschel’s central work of theology God in Search of Man.

Piercing the Veil

The Talmud records a debate about the phrase between two sages as to whether God, while in hiding, reaches out through dreams or shadows:

^{בבלי חגיגה ה:} אמר רבא: "אמר הקדוש ברוך הוא: 'אף על פי שהסתרתי פני מהם - בחלום אדבר בו.'" רב יוסף אמר: "ידו נטויה עלינו, שנאמר (ישעיה נא:טז) 'ובצל ידי כסיתיך.'"

^{b. Chagiga 5b} Ravah said: “The blessed Holy One said: “Even though I hid my face from them, I speak with them in a dream.’” Rav Joseph said: “His hand is reaching out to us, as it says (Isa 51:16): ‘with the shadow of my hand I cover you.’”

Both of these views deal with absence of God in our lives on one hand, but the subtle presence of God on the other—if only we read the signs. We live in an age when human expansion makes seeing God’s presence difficult. And yet, for those of us who share what the Spanish-American philosopher, Santayana (1873–1952), in his poem “O World” called “the soul’s invincible surmise,” hiding is a spur to seeking, and reinforced by moments of glimpsing the elusive face of God in moments which can be invited if not forcibly enacted.

While God warns Israel that in the future, the divine face will be hidden, even so, throughout history believers have held fast to the conviction that if we continue to hope for that hidden face to appear, we will catch glimpses of the divine through the interstices of existence, a bitachon, “trust” that brings a promise of both comfort and salvation.