Francesca Stavrakopoulou: God’s Right Hand

Francesca Stavrakopoulou, God: An Anatomy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2022): 241

Like El of Ugarit, the God of the Bible was rooted in a culture in which the right hand was righteous. It was with his right hand that Yahweh rescues his people from slavery in Egypt; it is with his right hand and arm that he clears the Promised Land of its indigenous inhabitants to make space for the Israelites; it is with his right hand that he grasps his worshippers; it is at the right hand of God that Christ will sit in heaven. The hands of the divine body thus index a cosmic orientation of the world and its workings. But they also craft that world, and shape its workings. Theologically, God is understood to have a hand in the world precisely because he made that world. Biblical writers describe God using his hands to stretch out the heavenly skies like a tent; he moulds, landscapes, scoops out waterways, and plants forests and gardens. It is with his hands that he lays the foundations of the earth like brickwork, measures the pitch and height of mountains, weighs the winds and pours out rain. And it is with his hands, of course, that he also shapes the first human from clay.