This study approaches the Torah as the foundational source in the formation of the Abrahamic conception of God within the religious and historical structure of the Hebrew tradition.
Accordingly, the research is based on the principle of scholarly integrity in presenting the texts as they appear, without selective omission, reconstruction, or the imposition of later theological assumptions upon the original material.
The purpose of this section is not to construct a new image of God, nor to issue doctrinal judgments, but rather to trace the image presented by the Torah itself and to examine its internal structure, including both its stable theological foundations and the tensions that emerge within the textual portrayal.
This section begins by establishing the Ten Commandments as one of the central foundational texts for understanding the relationship between God and humanity within the Torah.
The commandments are not presented merely as legal instructions, but as a declaration of divine identity itself. The text begins with God identifying Himself as the one who brought the Israelites out of bondage, thereby connecting worship, covenant, obedience, morality, and law to the divine nature. In this sense, the Ten Commandments function as a primary theological framework for understanding the conception of God within the Torah.
Through a comprehensive reading of the Torah from beginning to end, God is presented as the one and unique deity without rival or partner, the creator of the heavens, the earth, humanity, and life itself.
The Torah portrays God as the origin of existence and the supreme authority over creation, nature, and history. Creation is linked directly to divine action, and the power of God is manifested through the formation, ordering, sustaining, and governing of the world.
The Torah further presents God as eternal, associated with the patriarchs and covenants, and continuous throughout generations. God appears not as a distant abstraction separated from history, but as an active and intervening presence within human events. The divine role is expressed through revelation, prophecy, legislation, judgment, salvation, covenant, and historical intervention.
Within the Torah, God is described as:
The Torah also presents God as the source of law and legislation. Divine commandments regulate not only ritual worship, but also moral and social life, including prohibitions against murder, injustice, adultery, falsehood, and oppression. As a result, the image of God within the Torah becomes deeply connected to ethical order and social justice alongside holiness and worship.
The texts further emphasize divine knowledge of human actions and intentions, as well as God’s continuous involvement in human affairs through revelation, prophetic speech, commandments, punishments, deliverance, and historical events. God is portrayed as the speaking deity who reveals His will to prophets, places words into the mouths of messengers, and guides the religious community through direct revelation or mediated communication.
The image of God in the Torah is also deeply connected to the concept of holiness. Divine presence appears in specific sacred settings such as Mount Sinai, the Tabernacle, the pillar of cloud and fire, and the Ark of the Covenant. Holiness is associated with fear, reverence, ritual purity, and strict boundaries governing worship and approach to the sacred. Approaching the holy sometimes appears as a dangerous act requiring precise conditions and limitations. This theme will be examined in greater detail in a later independent section due to the central role holiness plays in shaping the relationship between God and humanity within the Torah.
Within the framework of the divine-human relationship, the Torah presents God as the Lord of covenantal relationships, particularly with Noah, Abraham, and the Israelites. The covenant functions as a religious, moral, and legislative bond grounded in worship, obedience, commitment, promise, blessing, protection, and punishment simultaneously.
God also appears as the Deliverer and Savior, especially in the Exodus narrative, where divine identity is tied not merely to abstract theology but to historical action, liberation, and salvation. In addition, God is portrayed as the ruler of history and the director of nations and peoples, raising kingdoms and bringing them down according to the unfolding religious narrative.
Alongside these central and relatively stable descriptions, however, the Torah also contains passages that raise interpretive and theological questions concerning the nature of divine description itself. Certain texts employ anthropomorphic or sensory language in relation to God, including descriptions of walking, descending, hands, face, eyes, anger, direct speech, and localized appearances. Such descriptions open important discussions regarding the nature of religious language within the Torah and whether these expressions are intended literally or function as accommodative language intended to communicate divine realities through human perception.
Other passages speak of divine “regret” or describe changes in the course of punishment following prayer or repentance, raising questions concerning divine will, immutability, and narrative representation within the Torah. Tension also appears between texts emphasizing divine transcendence and incomparability and others that describe visible manifestations or experiences associated with the divine presence.
The Torah further contains narratives involving direct dialogue between God and human beings, such as Abraham’s intercession concerning Sodom, Moses’ objections and appeals, and Jacob’s wrestling encounter. These narratives raise broader questions regarding the nature of divine-human interaction and the limits of narrative representation of the divine presence.
An especially significant issue concerns the figure of the “Angel of the Lord,” where some passages present a fluid movement between the speech of the angel and the speech of God Himself. At times the narrative shifts between “the angel” and “the Lord” without a clear distinction, opening important avenues for studying mediation, revelation, and divine representation within ancient religious texts. This may indicate that certain forms of divine speech are presented through a mediating figure who speaks fully in the name of God.
The Torah also includes passages concerning collective punishment, religious warfare, destruction, curses, and divine testing of human beings. These texts require careful historical, linguistic, and theological examination in order to understand their relationship to the broader image of God presented within the Torahic narrative structure.
These passages are not presented here as material for rejecting the text, but rather as integral components of the overall structure through which the Torah constructs its conception of God. Accordingly, the study does not engage in selective citation, but seeks to gather the full textual image as presented, including its central attributes, religious functions, linguistic expressions, and theological tensions.
For this reason, the study of the definition of God in the Torah extends beyond merely collecting divine names and attributes. It also includes analyzing the relationship between divine transcendence and historical presence, holiness and mercy, justice and punishment, revelation and mediation, as well as stability and change within religious expression.
This section will later be accompanied by detailed tables concerning the names and attributes of God as they appear throughout the Torah, including their meanings, contexts, and theological functions within the narrative structure, before moving in later stages of the project toward the study of the definition of God in the Gospel and finally the Qur’an as part of a broader investigation into the conception of God across the Abrahamic traditions.