Miracles in the Hebrew Bible

Abstract

If one is to make some progress towards understanding ‘miracle’ in the Hebrew Bible (HB), then certain initial cautionary notes need to be sounded. First, there is arguably no Hebrew word for ‘miracle’; which is arguable because sometimes HB translations do render particular Hebrew words as ‘miracle’. The issue here is a recurrent problem in biblical interpretation, for many of the common terms that interpreters use – ‘conversion’ or ‘history’ or ‘theology’ – cannot be straightforwardly translated into biblical Hebrew (or septuagintal Greek). This does not make such terms unusable, but it does necessitate that they be used with care. For although there may be continuity between what we mean by these terms and what is going on in the biblical text, there may also be difference; and that difference may be partly or wholly obscured if we are insufficiently self-critical in use of a familiar and apparently convenient interpretative category. So, for example, there is a danger that in using the familiar English word ‘miracle’ with reference to the HB one may import familiar implications and overtones from historic debates – such as Hume’s famous definition of a miracle as ‘a violation of the laws of nature’, although the notion of an autonomous natural world was unknown to the writers of the HB. Second, and related, an interest in ‘miracle’ may well introduce distinctions in relation to divine action within the HB which are absent within the biblical text. For within the HB there is a wide spectrum and continuum of divine actions, which happen in both ordinary and extraordinary ways, sometimes with human or other agency and sometimes without. The fact that God does something may indeed make that action or event extraordinary; but the extraordinary as such is not seen as the particular locus of divine action.