How Fear Becomes Awe

This sheet on Deuteronomy 28 was written by Shai Held for 929 and can also be found here

After a relatively brief evocation of the good fortune that awaits Israel should it obey God’s laws, the chapter goes to great lengths to describe the disasters that will befall the people should they disobey. The text is so graphically brutal that one cannot help but wonder: Can it really be desirable for the Jewish people to worship God out of abject fear?

The word “yir’ah,” so central to biblical theology and spirituality, is conventionally translated as fear. But in fact it has a wide range of meanings: yir’ah can convey the sense of fear, on the one hand, or of awe, on the other.

If fear and awe are so different, why does the same Hebrew word (yir’ah) convey both? My teacher Bernard Steinberg once offered a powerful answer: “Awe is what happens to fear when it stops being about me.” When I fear God, in other words, I think about God’s might and the ways it could impact upon me, but when I hold God in awe, I think only of God’s might; thoughts of how it could affect me simply fall away. Fear becomes awe, then, when I forget about myself and focus only on God.

We can discern something similar, I think, in the biblical Hebrew word todah. In contrast to modern Hebrew, where todah means thanks, in biblical Hebrew the primary meaning of todah is praise, though it can convey a sense of thanksgiving as well. Indeed, in some biblical texts it is difficult to know whether to translate todah as thanks or praise. Why does the same biblical Hebrew word convey both “thanks” and “praise”? When I am thankful to God, I acknowledge God’s generosity and its impact on me. When I praise God, however, I acknowledge God’s generosity in and of itself. Thanks becomes praise when I forget about myself and focus only on God. In other words, fear is to awe as thanks is to praise: The former give way to the latter when I transcend myself and think only of God.

If one of the core goals of the religious life is to teach us that our interests and concerns ought not to be the exclusive center of our lives, then fear of punishment is something that must ultimately be minimized. As an alternative, Jewish tradition offers us awe, wherein we acknowledge Someone far greater than ourselves, and thus allow God—and not our own egos—to become the very center of our world.

Rabbi Shai Held is President, Dean, and Chair in Jewish Thought at Hadar