What is The Fear of the Lord?

When I hear from readers, I make a concerted effort to respond in a timely fashion. (So, if you don’t hear back from me, knock on my monitor screen again.) If the question is public, I’ll usually respond publicly. If it is private, I’ll almost always respond privately. But once in awhile, a reader will pose a question that I believe others would be interested in, so I’ll ponder it and respond publicly. This blog posting is one of those responses. The reader asked, specifically, how I understand “the fear of the Lord.”

The target question was asked in response to a blog posting I did three years ago wherein I argued that the bedrock of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, something the world does not have. So the world can be educated and intelligent, but not wise in the way you and I are wise. The concept is drawn from one of the better-known verses involving fear and wisdom.

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom,
and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.
– Proverbs 9:10, ESV

Human Limitations

As brilliant as we believe ourselves to be, the reality is that humans are limited well beyond what we are inclined to admit. In saying this, I’m referring to what I believe to be our inability to grasp the “godness” of God. We do not grasp his majesty, his power, his love, his holiness. When I do finally meet Jesus face-to-face, I expect I’ll be flabbergasted at just how little I understood him in this life.

There is an old Star Trek episode titled Is There in Truth No Beauty? involving a Medusan ambassador named Kollos who lived inside of what looks like a high-society, metal footlocker. Kollos had to live inside the metal chest because he was so ugly that any non-Medusan who viewed him would instantly go insane. I cannot fully grasp what could be so ugly as to induce insanity.

This is the same concept I’m driving at when I say I don’t believe we grasp the godness of God. We cannot see God in his pure essence and survive that encounter. When God met with Moses on Mount Sinai, God told him straight-up, “You cannot see my face for man shall not see me and live.”¹ Instead, Moses stood in the cleft of a rock, God covered Moses with his hand and had his glory pass by, and once done, God allowed Moses to see his back, only. Even so, when Moses came down from the mountain, his face radiated from that encounter to such an extent that it terrified the people of Israel!

That is power, and majesty, and potency that we simply have no capacity to understand. We are talking about an entity who created all that exists using nothing but his words. He blew life into Adam through his nostrils.

When Jesus was raised from the dead, the angel of the Lord descended to roll back the stone, not so Jesus could get out, but so that we could go in and see the tomb was empty. When the battle-hardened soldiers saw the angel they trembled and became like dead men,² and that was just an angel!

Fear of the Ungodly

Psalm 53 opens with the line, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.'” Shortly thereafter it reads:

There they are, in great terror,
where there is no terror!
For God scatters the bones of him who encamps against you;
you put them to shame, for God has rejected them.
– Psalm 53:5, ESV

The term for “great terror” is פַחַד (pakh’-ad) and it is exactly that. It is intense alarm, great dread, tremble-inducing terror. This is the terror that inspired the writer of Hebrews to say:

For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
– Hebrews 10:31, ESV

The Psalms passage above sounds very much like Proverbs 28:1 which tells us, “The wicked flee when no one is pursuing, but the righteous are bold as a lion.” Look at this description from Isaiah.

The arrogance of man will be brought low
    and the pride of man humbled;
the LORD alone will be exalted in that day,
    and the idols will totally disappear.
Men will flee to caves in the rocks
    and to holes in the ground
from the dread of the LORD
    and the splendor of his majesty,
    when he rises to shake the earth.
They will flee to caverns in the rocks
    and to the overhanging crags
from the dread of the LORD
    and the splendor of his majesty,
    when he rises to shake the earth.

– Isaiah 2:17-19; 21, NIV-1983

Later, Isaiah describes the fear of the ungodly like this:

You who are far away, hear what I have done;
    you who are near, acknowledge my power!
The sinners in Zion are terrified;
    trembling grips the godless:
“Who of us can dwell with the consuming fire?
    Who of us can dwell with everlasting burning?”
– Isaiah 33:13-14, NIV-1983

God will arise. He will be exalted. He will be lifted up.³

Fear of the Righteous

The narrative changes significantly for those who are righteous in God’s eyes.

Those who walk righteously
    and speak what is right,
who reject gain from extortion
    and keep their hands from accepting bribes,
who stop their ears against plots of murder
    and shut their eyes against contemplating evil—
they are the ones who will dwell on the heights,
    whose refuge will be the mountain fortress.
Their bread will be supplied,
    and water will not fail them.
Your eyes will see the king in his beauty
    and view a land that stretches afar.
– Isaiah 33:15-17, NIV-1983

In the opening quotation from Proverbs, stating that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, the term used for fear is יִרְאָה (yir-aw’) which is a term of fear, awe, or moral reverence. Yes, it makes our knees knock together, but it is not a fear that includes the dread of being harmed by the object of our fear.

The writer of Hebrews put this beautifully.

Our God is a consuming fire. But that does not induce terror within us. Rather, it inspires reverence and awe.
– Hebrews 12:28-29, ESV

I was fortunate, as a young boy, to grow up around horses. Every single horse, even the small pony, was much larger and more powerful than I was. Indeed, the pony was the only horse I was ever allowed to ride. Truly, any one of those horses could have easily killed me if it had a mind to do so. I approached them and handled them with respect, and a sense of awe, with just a bit of fear in that mix.

Take that respect, awe, and caution I held for those horses and multiply it exponentially, and we might have just a hint of what it means to “fear the Lord.” One of my favorite lines from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is spoken by Mister Beaver when Susan asked if the great lion, Aslan, is “quite safe.” “Safe?” said Mister Beaver. “Who said anything about safe? Of course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.” Our God is not safe. Not at all. But he’s good, and he loves us.

We sing, “Our God is an awesome God,” and I get the sense that we verbalize that in the same sense that as we would say, “Wow, that was an awesome ballgame.” No. Our God is an awe-inspiring God because of his vastness and his mighty power. And that awe-inspiring God delights in us.

Let all the earth fear the Lord;
let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him!
– Psalm 33:8, ESV

His delight is not in the strength of the horse,
nor his pleasure in the legs of a man,
but the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him,
in those who hope in his steadfast love.
– Isaiah 33:15-17, NIV-1983

And we have his solid promise that there is nothing in heaven or earth that can separate us from that love.⁴