What Is the Finger of God?
Just a handful of times, the Bible speaks of the “finger of God.” According to Scripture, the divine digit enacts a plague against Egypt, writes the Mosaic commandments, and aids in exorcism. While it would be easy to read the phrase as a mere metaphor for holy power or spiritual might, there is a commonality to the concept in each of its contexts that points to a physical reality: God’s finger is an incisive entity that can form dust, carve stone, and even surgically excise unclean spirits. God’s heavenly finger “cuts” into our earthly experience for the sake of human-divine solidarity and salvation.
The Hebrew phrase אֶצְבַּע אֱלֹהִים (etsbah elohim)—“the finger of God”—is rare in Israel’s Scriptures. The first instance comes after Moses strikes the ground with his staff and lice appear throughout Egypt. When Pharaoh’s “magicians” (חַרְטֻמִּים; hartummim)—really, a Hebraization of the Egyptian term for learned priests—are unable to replicate this plague, they exclaim, “It is the finger of God” (אֶצְבַּע אֱלֹהִים הִוא; etsbah elohim hi’; Exodus 8:19). Moses striking the “dust” (עָפָר; afar) conjures God forming the first human from “dust” (Genesis 2:7; cf. 3:14, 19). In Exodus, the sculpting “finger of God” once again shapes creatures from dust—this time, to punish Pharaoh rather than form humanity. The fact that ancient Egyptian priests were known to recommend cutting the hair and/or shaving the body to get rid of lice may support the notion that the divine finger makes incisions in the earth to bring these pests upon Pharaoh’s people. Exodus reinforces this imagery of a sharp heavenly finger when it says that the engraved commandments on “tablets of stone [were] written with the finger of God” (Exodus 31:18; cf. Deuteronomy 9:10).
The Gospel of Luke reuses the language of Exodus when Jesus exorcises unclean spirits. Yeshua tells his onlookers, “If it is by the finger of God (δακτύλῳ θεοῦ, daktūlo theou) that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Luke 11:20). Often in Luke, to “cast out” (ἐκβάλλω, ekbāllo) necessitates a physical pulling or pushing with one’s hands (and, by extension, fingers): some people in Jesus’ hometown “cast him out of the city” (4:29), Yeshua teaches about “casting” (or pulling) the sliver and plank out of one’s eye (6:42), and he “casts out” the sellers in the temple (19:45). Thus, there is reason to conclude when Jesus exorcises demons, God’s incisive finger severs scrounging spirits from the human body! Just as God had intervened to rescue the Israelites from Egypt and carve the letters of the Torah into stone, the Lord extends the divine finger in Jesus’ day to save people from demonic possession.
Due to the scriptural scarcity of the “finger of God,” readers can glide past the phrase without giving much thought to its implications. But a closer look at the Hebrew and Greek in their original contexts emphasizes the physicality of the ancient terminology. God’s very being bursts into human history and cuts into creation to liberate the world.
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