prophet Hosea also
learned in hard spiritual struggle to know the divine attribute of mercy
and lovingkindness. His own wife had proved faithless, and had broken the
marital covenant; still his love survived, so that he granted her
forgiveness when she was forsaken, and took her back to his home. Then, in
his distress at the God-forsaken state of Israel through her
faithlessness, he asked himself: "Will God reject forever the nation which
He espoused, because it broke the covenant? Will not He also grant
forgiveness and mercy?" The divine answer came to him out of the depths of
his own compassionate soul. Upon the crown of God's majesty which Amos had
beheld all effulgent with justice and righteousness, he placed the most
precious gem, reflecting the highest quality of God--His gracious and
all-forgiving love.(296) Whether the priority in this great truth belongs
to Hosea or Moses is a question for historical Bible research to answer,
but it is of no consequence to Jewish theology.

5. Certainly Scripture represents God too much after human fashion, when
it ascribes to him changes of mood from anger to compassion, or speaks of
His repentance.(297) But we must bear in mind that the prophets obtained
their insight into the ways of God by this very process of transferring
their own experience to the Deity. And on the other hand, we are told that
"God is not a man that He should lie, neither the son of man that He
should repent."(298) All these anthropomorphic pictures of God were later
avoided by the ancient Biblical translators by means of paraphrase, and by
the philosophers by means of allegory.(299)

6. According to the Midrashic interpretation of the passage from the
Pentateuch quoted above, Moses desired to ascertain whether God ruled the
world with His justice or with His mercy, and the answer was: "Behold, I
shall let My _goodness_ pass before thee. For I owe nothing to any of My
creatures, but My actions are prompted only by My grace and good will,
through which I give them all that they possess."(300) According to
Judaism justice and mercy are intertwined in God's government of the
world; the former is the pillar of the cosmic structure, and the latter
the measuring line. No mortal could stand before God, were justice the
only standard; but we subsist on His mercy, which lends us the boons of
life without our meriting them. That which is not good in us now is to
become good through our effort toward the best. God'