The Fear of the Lord

The Hebrew yirah (יִרְאָה, fear, awe, reverence; from yare, to fear, to reverence, to be in awe of) spans a range from terror (Exodus 14:10, the Israelites saw Pharaoh's army and "were greatly afraid") to reverent awe (Exodus 14:31, after the sea crossing, "the people feared [yare] the LORD, and believed in the LORD"). The distinction is context and object: the same word covers both the panic of being chased and the reverent awe of the redeemed before their savior.

Yirat YHWH specifically describes the latter: the orientation of the created person toward the creator YHWH, shaped by knowledge of who he is. This is not the fear of a slave before a master who might punish; it is the reverence of a child before a father who is also the Holy One of Israel. The fear is not incompatible with love, Deuteronomy 10:12 lists them together: "And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear (yare) the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul."

1 John 4:18, "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear", addresses a specific fear: the fear of punishment (kolasin, torment, punishment). This is different from yirat YHWH. The love of God casts out slavish fear; it does not cast out reverent awe. The NT still calls for "working out your salvation with fear and trembling" (Philippians 2:12) and "if you call on him as Father, conduct yourselves with fear (phobos) throughout the time of your exile" (1 Peter 1:17).

"The fear of the LORD is the beginning (reshit, רֵאשִׁית, beginning, first-principle, chief part) of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding" (Proverbs 9:10). The reshit of wisdom is not a first step that you then leave behind; it is the constitutive foundation, the first principle from which all wisdom grows. Without the proper orientation to YHWH, what follows is not wisdom but cleverness, knowledge that serves the self rather than the creator.

Proverbs 1:7: "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction." The fool (nabal, the one who lacks orientation to YHWH) is not stupid; the fool is misdirected. Psalm 14:1: "The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God.'" The practical atheism, living as though YHWH does not set the terms, is the definition of folly.

Proverbs 3:7: "Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil." The self-wisdom is the opposite of yirat YHWH: the one who is wise in his own eyes has substituted his own judgment for YHWH's. The fear of the Lord produces moral life, "turn away from evil" follows from proper orientation to the Holy One. Ethics is grounded in theology: you can only know what to do if you first know the one who defines what is to be done.

"There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. And his delight shall be in the fear of the LORD" (Isaiah 11:1-3).

The seven-fold Spirit resting on the messianic figure (six named attributes in three couplets, with the seventh being the summary: "the Spirit of the LORD") includes "the fear of the LORD" as one of the Spirit's gifts. And the messianic figure's delight (reiach, literally: his smell, his pleasure, his scent) shall be in yirat YHWH. The Messiah delights in the fear of the LORD, not as a duty but as the very air he breathes.

This is the inversion of what we might expect: the greatest, most powerful figure in the Davidic line is not characterized by confidence in his own strength but by delight in proper orientation to YHWH. The Messiah models the fear of the LORD, which is why Hebrews 5:7 can speak of Jesus's prayers and supplications "with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence (eulabeias, careful devotion, godly fear)." The Son himself lived in the fear of YHWH.

"Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised" (Proverbs 31:30). The famous close of Proverbs ends not with a beauty standard or a productivity measure but with the fear of the LORD as the evaluative criterion. The alphabetic poem of the capable woman (Proverbs 31:10-31) comes to its climax at the fear of YHWH, which is the source of all her capable, generous, wise activity.

The practical shape of yirat YHWH in Proverbs: (1) it produces humility, the fear of YHWH keeps the person from thinking too highly of themselves (Proverbs 8:13: "The fear of the LORD is hatred of evil; pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate"); (2) it produces longevity, not merely long biological life but a life that is building toward the right end (10:27: "The fear of the LORD prolongs life, but the years of the wicked will be short"); (3) it is the content of the whole covenant life, Ecclesiastes 12:13: "Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man."

Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 is the book's conclusion after its long investigation of vanity under the sun: "The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil." The fear of the LORD is the conclusion of wisdom, not just its beginning.

The Sanctum holds yirat YHWH as the first principle, not a first step that the mature leave behind but the constitutive orientation from which everything else flows. The Sanctum's biblical studies, theological wiki, and encounter with the ancient text are all meant to cultivate this: the proper awe before the one who speaks from Sinai, who calls Isaiah in the throne room, who appears to Job from the whirlwind, and who raises Christ from the dead. Wisdom begins here.