The Life of God in the Hebrew Bible

This article re-engages the question of God's life in the Hebrew Bible. Much prior scholarship assumes a basic difference between the ways that God and creatures live. By contrast, this article begins from a working hypothesis of homology: that in the Hebrew Bible, there are qualities shared between the life of YHWH and the life of other beings, including the life of gods, humans, and animals; and it ventures that exploring these commonalities yields a fresh picture of the biblical God. It inspects three foci determined by their use of a common lemma, the Hebrew √ חיה , »to live«: the epithet אל חי , »living God,« and related forms; the oath formula חי יהוה , »(by) the life of YHWH«; and theophoric names built from the verb √ חיה .