Control

“Like their pagan neighbors, the Israelites were constantly trying to fit the divine into a box of their own making so that the divine could be understood and controlled. Clearly, they forgot what their own doctrine of creation taught them: God is the infinite Creator, who cannot be boxed in. Unlike the gods, who are the recurring system and thus are incapable of doing anything new, Yahweh is outside this system, its Maker, and he rejoices to do things that have never happened before. Will he be consistent? Absolutely! Will he be predictable on our terms? Never!...

“It is often said, 'The winners write history.' But that is exactly what Yahweh would not allow to happen. He told them what their history meant, and it was usually quite different from what the rich and powerful would like to have had said about it and about themselves. In the end, the idea that the God of these little Canaanite principalities called Israel and Judah was in fact using the mightiest powers of the world to discipline and refine his people was the last thing that anyone would have expected to emerge from Israel's historical experience. For in the end, Israel's history is tragedy compounded by tragedy.”—The Bible Among Other Myths, pages 135-136

<idle musing>
Not a whole lot has changed in the last 2000+ years, has it? We still try to fit God into our box. We still want to control him. We still want to be the ones who write the story...
</idle musing>