Rejection by God: The History and Significance of the Rejection Motif in the Hebrew Bible (review)

“All of human history as seen by the Bible is the history of God in search of [humanity],” wrote Abraham Heschel almost half a century ago in his influential study, The Prophets. In the face of humanity’s failures, God simply refuses to abandon humanity. Thus, “Israel’s faith is not the fruit of a quest for God. Israel did not discover God. Israel was discovered by God.”¹ Framed as election, as covenant, God’s “discovering” and choosing of this people echoes through Hebrew scripture. From the patriarchal narratives, describing God’s covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to the story of God’s deliverance from Egyptian bondage, to the utterance of prophets and savants, Israel is reminded that God has chosen this people, delivered them, defended them: “Although heaven and the heaven of heavens belong to the Lord your God, the earth with all that is in it, yet the Lord set his heart in love on your ancestors alone and chose you, their descendents after them, out of all the peoples, as it is today” (Deuteronomy 10: 14–15). “You only have I known of all the families of the earth” (Amos 3:2).

Monica J. Melanchthon argues, in her compelling new study, that it is specifically “the emphasis laid on the elected status of Israel” that has caused “the neglect of another aspect of this concept of ‘Choice/Election,’ namely ‘rejection’” (p. 1). Certainly it is God’s election that makes rejection appear inconceivable. How can that which cannot break be broken?

Beginning with a rehearsal of the contradiction of election/rejection, Melanchthon surveys quickly, but with careful attention to the distinctive contributions of each, the work of her predecessors, Th. C. Vriezen, B. Albrektson, M. Cogan, T. M. Raitt, S. E. Balentine, C.C. Broyles, D.I. Block, and S-T. Sohn, all of whom “dealt with certain aspects of the [rejection] motif” (p. 3). She then provides a crucial overview of the “semantic field,” noting the principal Hebrew terms used to express the nuances of God’s rejection: leaving, forsaking, despising, abhorring, loathing, abandoning, con demning, and spurning Israel. Her analysis of cognates in other Semitic languages is particularly interesting, as are her observations regarding the general employment of the divine abandonment motif in the ancient Near East to interpret “foreign invasion and military defeat” (p. 27).

Melanchthon’s scholarship is meticulous, and the care she brings to her work pays enormous dividends, first, as she accounts for the literary patterns expressing the rejection motif throughout the Hebrew Bible, then as she turns to the various literary units to delineate the distinctive elements of the motif in each. This is scholarship in the service of gaining deeper theological understanding. Her argument leads the reader to encounter more profoundly critical questions such as, “What were the intentions behind Yahweh’s rejection?” “What did Yahweh hope to achieve by rejecting?” (p. 80)

While the study begins with an apparent contradiction between election and rejection, it becomes clear as Melanchthon develops her thesis that rejection is not an abrogation of election but an expression of Yahweh’s continuing faithfulness to those he has chosen, even in their faithlessness. She writes: “It was Yahweh’s intent not just to demonstrate Yahweh’s power and sovereignty, but by doing so Yahweh seems to be encouraging the people to live a righteous life. The judgment has been actualized, and the community has experienced the rejection of Yahweh. The oracles of salvation . . . are delivered to give hope to the people” (p. 82). Even, perhaps especially, when Yahweh rejects his chosen people he is pursuing them.

Having worked through these fundamental aspects of the motif, Melanchthon tests “the outcome of the foregoing chapters” by exegeting five select passages: Psalm 22 (an individual psalm of lament); Psalm 44 (a communal lament of accusation); Lamen tations 3 (a lament text that...