Why “Fear” the Lord? [RQ]

Anyone who has interacted with a Christian in America is familiar with the phrase “God-fearing Christian.” What exactly is meant by fear in this context? Does God want his devout followers to be afraid of him? The Bible frequently mentions fearing God. According to some, the Bible contains more than 300 instances of this. For the purposes of answering these questions, I limited myself to some fifty different cases from both the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and the New Testament. In pursuit of answers, I attempted to determine in every case whether the fear of God (or the Lord in some instances) mentioned in the verse came in the form of a command or simply as an idea within the author’s religious views. Additionally, I considered the Greek words that corresponded to the usage of “fear” in modern translations. For simplicity’s sake, I referenced the English Standard Version for the verse in its context and Strong’s Greek/Hebrew Concordances for its meaning.

The fifty verses I selected that mention fearing God were drawn from the books of Joshua, 2nd Kings, Deuteronomy, Ecclesiastes, Exodus, Genesis, Job, Leviticus, Proverbs, and the Psalms in the Hebrew Bible as well as 1st Peter, Acts, Ephesians, Luke, Matthew, and Revelation from the New Testament. Broadly speaking, from what I found in my research, the overwhelming majority of the uses of fearing God appeared in the Hebrew Bible, and this remained the case in the verses I randomly selected to review.

By the numbers:

All but three of the Hebrew Bible uses of fear held a connotation of reverence. To put this in terms that may be better understood by modern readers: imagine your favorite celebrity has unexpectedly arrived at your local hangout spot, say a coffee shop for example, and you eagerly approach them to get your picture taken with them. The fear of not knowing how they might respond coupled with your admiration of them is essentially the sort of reverential fear that the authors hoped to evoke in their readers. Likewise (and sticking with the coffee shop analogy), the other three instances in the Hebrew Bible use fear with a connotation of dread; in this scenario, you realize that your boss has also arrived at this café, but you are supposed to be at home on a sick day. Meanwhile, all eight of the New Testament uses of fear pertain to the typical meaning: to be afraid of something.

Researching the situations in which fear was used, I found that in six cases (all but one in Leviticus, the other in Revelation) God was directly commanding his followers to fear him. Similarly, Jesus commanded that God should be feared once in both Luke and Matthew. In twenty-seven instances, there was no command to fear given in the context of the verse. In the remaining fifteen verses, the respective authors issued a command to fear God.

So what about our question: does God want his devout followers to be afraid of him? The short answer is an emphatic yes. The big picture implied by the connotations of the Hebrew words used in the oldest manuscripts seems to indicate that God’s followers should have a reverential fear for their creator with a hint of dread at the Lord’s incredible power. The New Testament’s Greek words, however, suggest that God’s people should fear Him as they fear most things in their lives – sincerely and cautiously.

#bible #christianity #judaism #oldtestament #newtestament #readerquestion

Sources:

[1] Hebrew Concordance – https://biblehub.com/hebrew/ [2] Greek Concordance – https://biblehub.com/greek/

Eric B – BA History, Minor in Religious Studies
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