Anthropomorphisms
The UPDV regularly speaks of God using the vocabulary of human bodies, motions, and emotions: God walks, rests, looks, hears, remembers, repents, swears, laughs, grieves, is amazed. The text does not apologize for the language, but it also does not let it stand alone. Long stretches of the same canon are reserved for insisting that Yahweh is not weary, does not sleep in the way Israel sleeps, does not need what his worshippers bring, and is not contained by what eyes can see — so that the human-shaped vocabulary is functioning as accommodated speech, not as an account of the divine nature. The two registers run side by side throughout Torah, Psalms, Prophets, Sirach, Diognetus, and the New Testament.
Body Parts and Posture
The earliest narratives speak of Yahweh in the most concrete bodily terms. In Eden the first couple "heard the voice of [the Speech of] Yahweh God walking in the garden in the cool of the day" (Gen 3:8). At Babel, "Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower" (Gen 11:5), and the resolution is voiced as a corporate descent: "Come, let us go down, and there confound their language" (Gen 11:7). At Sodom, Yahweh deliberates in similar terms: "I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to its [Sodom's] cry, which has come to me; and if not, I will know" (Gen 18:21). When the visit is over, "Yahweh went his way" (Gen 18:33). At Bethel he is staged spatially: "Yahweh stood above it" (Gen 28:13), and after speaking with Jacob, "God went up from him in the place where he spoke with him" (Gen 35:13).
The wilderness narratives keep the same vocabulary. "Yahweh came down in the cloud" at the seventy elders (Num 11:25). At the Red Sea, "[the Speech of] Yahweh looked forth on the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of cloud, and discomfited the host of the Egyptians" (Ex 14:24). The Levitical promise reuses the Eden verb: "[my Speech] will walk among you⁺, and [my Speech] will be your⁺ God" (Lev 26:12), and Deuteronomy presses the same image into camp-purity legislation: "Yahweh your God walks in the midst of your camp, to deliver you, and to give up your enemies before you; therefore will your camp be holy, that [his Speech] may not see an unclean thing in you, and turn away from you" (Deut 23:14). Job's friends use the figure cosmically: "Thick clouds are a covering to him, so that he does not see; And he walks on the vault of heaven" (Job 22:14). Habakkuk presses it through war-poetry: "You trod the sea with your horses, The heap of mighty waters" (Hab 3:15).
Eyes, Ears, Hand, Arm, Face
Where the narratives place God in human postures, the Psalter and the prophets push the language onto specific organs. The eye is the most frequent. "He who planted the ear, will he not hear? He who formed the eye, will he not see?" (Ps 94:9) — the rhetorical force depends on conceding that the figure is a figure. Habakkuk applies the same image to moral vision: "You who are of purer eyes than to look at evil, and who cannot look at perverseness" (Hab 1:13). Isaiah's indictment of Jerusalem inverts it: "when you⁺ spread forth your⁺ hands, I will hide my eyes from you⁺; yes, when you⁺ make many prayers, I will not hear: your⁺ hands are full of blood" (Isa 1:15). Sirach extends the imagery: "The wisdom of Yahweh is sufficient; He is mighty in strength and looks at all things. The eyes of God see his works; And it is he who discerns all that a man does" (Sir 15:18-19); "Their eyes beheld his glorious majesty, And their ear heard his glorious voice" (Sir 17:13); "the eyes of the Lord Are ten thousand times brighter than the sun, Beholding all the ways of men, And looking into secret places" (Sir 23:19). Peter turns the same triad — eyes, ears, face — into a citation of Psalm 34: "the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, And his ears to their supplication: But the face of the Lord is on those who do evil" (1 Pet 3:12).
The hand and arm come up most often in connection with rescue and oath. Isaiah voices a salvation that nothing intervenes to assist: "his own arm brought salvation to him; and [by his Speech] his righteousness, it upheld him" (Isa 59:16); the same line is repeated in the first-person mouth of Yahweh: "my own arm brought salvation to me; and [my Speech], it upheld me" (Isa 63:5). The arm is the instrument of sworn promise: "Yahweh has sworn by his right hand, and by the arm of his strength, Surely I will no more give your grain to be food for your enemies" (Isa 62:8). The Maccabean prayer assumes the same posture: "Even so destroy this army in our sight today, and let the rest know that he has spoken ill against your sanctuary: and judge him according to his wickedness" (1Ma 7:42). David's prayer asks for a posture answer: "Bow down your ear to me; deliver me speedily: Be to me a strong rock, A house of defense to save me" (Ps 31:2). The Psalter even arms God: "Take hold of shield and buckler, And stand up for my help. Draw out also the spear, and stop the way against those who pursue me: Say to my soul, I am your salvation" (Ps 35:1-3). The chariot is given the same treatment: "The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands on thousands; The Lord is among them, [as in] Sinai, in the sanctuary" (Ps 68:17), and the wing image protects the supplicant: "How precious is your loving-kindness, O God! And the sons of man take refuge under the shadow of your wings" (Ps 36:7); "in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, Until [these] calamities have passed by" (Ps 57:1).
Mouth and Breath
Creation itself is voiced as breath: "By the word of Yahweh were the heavens made, And all the host of them by the breath of his mouth" (Ps 33:6). Ezekiel's vision of the throne is built on the same kind of accommodated language: "I heard the noise of their wings like the noise of great waters, like the voice of [the Speech]" (Ezek 1:24); "above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone; and on the likeness of the throne was a likeness as the appearance of man on it above" (Ezek 1:26); "This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of Yahweh" (Ezek 1:28). The grammar — likeness, appearance, as it were — is itself the prophet's caveat.
Memory, Reason, Understanding, Will
Nave's index folds the cognitive faculties into the same category. Memory is the most common: "God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob" (Ex 2:24). The flood-bow is the visible token of the same act: "the bow will be in the cloud; and I will look at it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between [the Speech of] God and every living soul of all flesh that is on the earth" (Gen 9:16). Lot's deliverance turns on the verb: "when God destroyed the cities of the Plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow" (Gen 19:29). Isaiah personifies the rememberer: "Then he remembered the days of old, Moses [and] his people, [saying,] Where is he who brought them up out of the sea with the shepherds of his flock? Where is he who put his Holy Spirit in the midst of them?" (Isa 63:11), and uses the same verb in juridical staging: "Put me in remembrance; let us plead together: set you forth [your cause], that you may be justified" (Isa 43:26).
Reason is staged as a divine summons: "Come now, and let us reason together, says Yahweh: though your⁺ sins be as scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they will be as wool" (Isa 1:18). Understanding is named outright as a divine attribute: "Great is our Lord, and mighty in power; His understanding is infinite" (Ps 147:5). Will appears in Paul's diatribe: "You will say then to me, Why then does he still find fault? For who withstands his will?" (Rom 9:19). Across all four faculties the Bible borrows the human vocabulary because there is no other way to speak of an agent.
Resting, Sleeping, Not Fainting
The sabbath texts use the most human verb available — God rests. "On the seventh day [the Speech of] God finished his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And [the Speech of] God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it; because in it he rested" (Gen 2:2-3). The Decalogue grounds the command in the divine pattern: "for in six days [the Speech of] Yahweh made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day" (Ex 20:11). The covenant-sign formula intensifies: "in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed" (Ex 31:17). Deuteronomy's recapitulation extends the rest to the household (Deut 5:14). Hebrews lifts the figure into eschatology: "God rested on the seventh day from all his works" (Heb 4:4); "he who has entered into his rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from his" (Heb 4:10).
The Psalter is willing to address Yahweh as if he were sleeping — and to call him to wake: "Awake, why do you sleep, O Lord? Arise, don't cast [us] off forever" (Ps 44:23). Asaph reads the loss of the ark in similar terms: Yahweh "delivered his strength into captivity, And his glory into the adversary's hand" (Ps 78:61). Both lines stand under the limit Yahweh sets on the figure: "Look, he who keeps Israel Will neither slumber nor sleep" (Ps 121:4). The same limit is the substance of Isaiah's praise: "The everlasting God, Yahweh, the Creator of the ends of the earth, does not faint, neither is weary; there is no searching of his understanding" (Isa 40:28). The text uses the human vocabulary and then refuses the human conclusion.
Repenting, Grieving, Amazed
Several passages speak of Yahweh changing his mind, grieving, and even being amazed. Before the flood, "it repented Yahweh [by his Speech] that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart" (Gen 6:6). After the calf, Moses' intercession is answered in the same vocabulary: "Yahweh repented of the evil which he said he would do to his people" (Ex 32:14). The judges-cycle uses the verb structurally: "for it repented Yahweh because of their groaning by reason of those who oppressed them and vexed them" (Jdg 2:18). Saul's downfall closes with: "Yahweh repented [returned by his Speech] that he had made Saul king over Israel" (1 Sam 15:35). The plague of David is halted with the same word, in two parallel narratives: "Yahweh repented of the evil, and said to the angel who destroyed the people, It is enough; now let down your hand" (2 Sam 24:16; cp. 1 Chr 21:15).
Grief follows the same line. Of Israel under foreign gods: "his soul was grieved for the misery of Israel" (Jdg 10:16). The wilderness generation provokes the same response: "Forty years long I was grieved with [that] generation, And said, It is a people who errs in their heart, And they have not known my ways" (Ps 95:10). Hebrews quotes that verse as the Spirit's word and presses it: "Therefore, for forty years I was displeased with this generation, And said, They always err in their heart" (Heb 3:10); "And with whom was he displeased forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness?" (Heb 3:17).
The figure of amazement is mostly Isaianic: "And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore his own arm brought salvation to him" (Isa 59:16); "I looked, and there was none to help; and I wondered that there was none to uphold" (Isa 63:5). The same language is used of Christ's reaction to Nazareth: "And he marveled because of their unbelief. And he went around the surrounding villages teaching" (Mr 6:6). At the Aqedah, Yahweh's voice records what looks like a discovery: "now I know that you fear God, seeing you haven't withheld your son, your only son, from me" (Gen 22:12) — even though the same Bible insists his understanding is infinite (Ps 147:5). The figure is doing pastoral work, not metaphysical.
Laughing
A small cluster of texts uses the most uncomfortable figure of all: God laughs. "He who sits in the heavens will laugh: [The Speech of] the Lord will have them in derision" (Ps 2:4). "The Lord will laugh at him; For he sees that his day is coming" (Ps 37:13). "But you, O Yahweh, will laugh at them; You will have all the nations in derision" (Ps 59:8). Personified Wisdom uses the same vocabulary: "I also will laugh in [the day of] your⁺ calamity; I will mock when your⁺ fear comes" (Pr 1:26). The figure is reserved for the specific moment when human strength has overreached, and Yahweh's response is a sovereign one. It is not flattering language, and it is not softened.
Oaths
When Yahweh wishes to confirm a promise, the text says he swears, and the apostolic writers explicitly note that there is no greater for him to swear by. "Yahweh has sworn by his right hand, and by the arm of his strength, Surely I will no more give your grain to be food for your enemies; and foreigners will not drink your new wine, for which you have labored" (Isa 62:8). Hebrews thematizes it: "when God made promise to Abraham, since he could swear by none greater, he swore by himself, saying, Surely blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply you" (Heb 6:13-14). The conclusion turns the figure into pastoral assurance: "by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have a strong encouragement, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us" (Heb 6:18). The figure of swearing — a creaturely act — is borrowed precisely so that it can be deployed with a divine immutability the creature does not have.
Jealousy
The Decalogue takes one of the most personal anthropomorphisms — jealousy — and turns it into the formal ground of the second commandment: "for I Yahweh your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the sons, on the third and on the fourth generation of those who hate me" (Ex 20:5). The image is borrowed from marriage, and from there it flows into the prophets' covenant-as-marriage language. It belongs to the same accommodated vocabulary as eyes, hand, and face.
What the Figures Are Doing
Two texts in the UPDV's wider canon speak directly to what this language is for. Isaiah refuses the categories under which the people imagine they can constrain Yahweh: "The everlasting God, Yahweh, the Creator of the ends of the earth, does not faint, neither is weary; there is no searching of his understanding" (Isa 40:28). The Epistle to the Greeks turns the same point against the assumption that sacrifice fills a divine need: "those who think to offer him sacrifices of blood and fat and whole burnt-offerings, and to honor him with such honors, seem to me no different from those who show the same devotion to the deaf [objects]. The [Greeks] offer to things unable to partake of the honor; the [Jews] think they give to the one who needs nothing" (Gr 3:5). The author has already named the principle: "he who made the heaven and the earth and all things in them, and supplies us all with whatever we need, himself needs none of those things — the very things he supplies to the ones who think they are giving to him" (Gr 3:4). The anthropomorphic vocabulary is the language by which Scripture talks about a personal God who speaks, hears, swears, and saves; it is not the vocabulary by which Scripture lets him be confused with a creature. Related verbs of divine response are gathered in the Anger of God page; the oath material is treated more fully in the topic on swearing and vows.