Beauty

Beauty in the UPDV is a graded class. Bodies, faces, and figures carry it; so does a sky-dome, a restored wilderness, a herald's feet, the holy city descending as a bride. Yahweh himself bears it as an attribute the worshipper goes to the temple to see. Across the canon the same beauty that adorns Sarai, Rebekah, Rachel, Bathsheba, Esther, and the daughters of Job is also pronounced deceitful when it stands alone, vain when it stands without the fear of Yahweh, vulnerable when Yahweh corrects iniquity, and consumed in the end by Sheol. The arc of the topic moves from human comeliness through its judgment-side fragility to a beauty that is conferred — divine majesty laid on the bride, salvation given as adornment to the meek, the king seen in his beauty, the new Jerusalem made ready as a bride for her husband.

Bodily Comeliness in the Patriarchal and Royal Stories

The first beauty-predicates fall on the matriarchs. Abram knows it of Sarai at the Egyptian border: "I know that you are a beautiful woman to look at" (Gen 12:11). At the fountain Rebekah is "very fair to look at, a virgin, neither had any man had any sex with her" (Gen 24:16). Rachel, paired against Leah's tender eyes, has "a beautiful body and face" (Gen 29:17). The same body-and-face predicate is later laid on Joseph in Potiphar's house: "And Joseph had a handsome body and face" (Gen 39:6).

Moses is named beautiful at his birth. His mother saw he was "a goodly child" and hid him three months (Ex 2:2), and Hebrews echoes the predicate through faith: "they saw he was a goodly child" (Heb 11:23).

The Davidic court runs the predicate through three figures. David is "ruddy, and had handsome eyes, and was good-looking" at the Bethlehem-sacrifice (1Sa 16:12), and a young man at Saul's court reports him as "a comely person; and [the Speech of] Yahweh is with him" (1Sa 16:18). Bathsheba is seen from the roof, "very beautiful to look at" (2Sa 11:2). Absalom's beauty is staged as a head-to-foot national superlative: "in all Israel there was none to be so much praised as good-looking as Absalom: from the sole of his foot even to the top of his head there was no blemish in him" (2Sa 14:25). His sister Tamar is named "a beautiful sister" at the opening of her chapter (2Sa 13:1), and Abigail is given a paired predicate of mind and form — "the woman was of good understanding and beautiful" (1Sa 25:3).

The same scale carries into Solomon's court: Abishag is "very beautiful" (1Ki 1:4). Daniel and his three companions, after the ten-day pulse-and-water diet, come out with "fairer countenances" and fuller flesh than the king's-dainties cohort (Dan 1:15). At Shushan the Persian queens carry the predicate too: Vashti is summoned "to show the peoples and the princes her beauty; for she was fair to look at" (Es 1:11), and Esther at her introduction has "a beautiful body and face" (Es 2:7). At the close of Job's restoration, "no women were found so beautiful in all the land as the daughters of Job" — Jemimah, Keziah, and Keren-happuch (Job 42:15).

Beauty as Snare and Vanity

Beauty is also named as a thing that ruins the one who trusts in it or looks too long at it. The Proverbs father warns the son: "Don't lust after her beauty in your heart; Neither let her take you with her eyelids" (Pr 6:25). A beautiful woman without discretion is "a ring of gold in a swine's snout" (Pr 11:22) — the ornament is real but mounted on the wrong host. The acrostic-poem closes with the verdict that names the snare directly: "Grace is deceitful, and beauty is vain; [But] a woman who fears Yahweh, she will be praised" (Pr 31:30).

Sirach lays the snare-warning out at length. "Hide your eye from a graceful woman, And do not look at beauty that is not yours; On account of a woman many have been destroyed, And so she will burn her lovers with fire" (Sir 9:8). The simple form of the warning recurs at Sir 25:21: "Do not fall through the beauty of a woman." And at Sir 40:22 the eye-charming aesthetic is itself outranked by what feeds: "Grace and beauty charm your eye, But better than both are the products of the field."

The Wasting of Beauty under Judgment

Beauty in the UPDV is also fragile in a specifically judicial way. The psalmist names the wasting as Yahweh's own act: "When you with rebukes correct man for iniquity, You make his beauty to consume away like a moth: Surely everyone among man is vanity. Selah" (Ps 39:11). The trust-in-wealth class has its beauty taken into Sheol's mouth: "their beauty will be for Sheol to consume, Far away from their lofty home" (Ps 49:14).

Isaiah inverts the daughters-of-Zion ornament-list into its judgment-counterpart: "instead of sweet spices there will be rottenness; and instead of a belt, a rope; and instead of well set hair, baldness; and instead of a robe, a girding of sackcloth; branding instead of beauty" (Isa 3:24). The Tyre oracle traces the ruin to a self-corrupting pride: "Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; you have corrupted your wisdom by reason of your brightness: I have cast you to the ground; I have laid you before kings, that they may look at you" (Eze 28:17). Of the Jerusalem-bride Yahweh says, "And your renown went forth among the nations for your beauty; for it was perfect, through my majesty which I had put on you" (Eze 16:14) — and the surrounding oracle is the prophet's account of how that conferred beauty was corrupted.

Beauty as Conferred by Yahweh

The other side of the wasting is the beauty Yahweh confers. Ezekiel's "through my majesty which I had put on you" already names beauty as imparted rather than self-generated. The same grammar runs through the Psalter: "He will beautify the meek with salvation" (Ps 149:4) — salvation itself is the adornment-substance the meek are given. Hosea names a comparable conferral on the restored people: "His branches will spread, and his grandeur will be as the olive tree, and his smell as Lebanon" (Hos 14:6).

The Preacher anchors the whole class theologically. "He has made everything beautiful in its time" (Ec 3:11). Beauty is named as God-stamped season-fitted comeliness, with eternity itself set in the heart that perceives it.

Yahweh's Own Beauty

Beauty in the UPDV is also predicated of Yahweh directly. The one-thing-asked of Psalm 27 is to "dwell in the house of Yahweh all the days of my life, To see the beauty of Yahweh, And to inquire in his temple" (Ps 27:4). The call-to-worship couplet — "Ascribe to Yahweh the glory due to his name … Worship Yahweh in holy array" — stands at both 1Ch 16:29 and Ps 29:2. Zechariah's exclamation joins beauty to goodness as paired Yahweh-attributes: "For how great is his goodness, and how great is his beauty!" (Zec 9:17). The royal wedding psalm turns the predicate on the bride who reverences her lord: "So will the king desire your beauty; For he is your lord; and you will reverence him" (Ps 45:11).

The King in His Beauty and the Herald's Feet

The royal beauty-figure is given an eschatological form. Isaiah promises the eyes that will see "the king in his beauty" (Isa 33:17), and the same prophet hangs the predicate on the messenger himself: "How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of good [things], who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, Your God reigns!" (Isa 52:7).

Beauty in Creation

The created order carries the beauty-predicate as a public exhibit. "The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows his handiwork" (Ps 19:1). Sirach ranks the stars under the same heading: "The beauty of heaven, and its glory [are] the stars, With their bright shining in the heights of God" (Sir 43:9). The wilderness itself can be moved across the line: "The wilderness and the dry land will be glad; And the desert will rejoice, and blossom as the rose" (Isa 35:1) — beauty given to the very ground that had been disfigured by drought.

The closing-line of Sirach's creation-hymn names beauty as un-satiable: "One thing surpasses another in its goodness, And who shall be satiated in beholding [their] beauty?" (Sir 42:25).

Beauty in the Household

Beauty in Sirach's wisdom takes a household register. The good wife's beauty is "in the ordering of her house": "[As] the sun rising in the highest places of the Lord, [So] also is the beauty of a good wife in the ordering of her house" (Sir 26:16). The face on the figure is the lamp on its proper stand: "[As] the lamp shining on the holy candlestick, [So] also is the beauty of a face upon a stately figure" (Sir 26:17). And the lower-body architecture closes the trio: "[As] the golden pillars upon the silver base, [So] also are beautiful feet upon firm heels" (Sir 26:18). The countenance-effect is summed at Sir 36:22: "The beauty of a woman makes the countenance bright, And excels every delight of the eye."

Beauty That Awes

The bride of the Song is praised in a four-fold cascade that grades comeliness up into awe: "Who is she who looks forth as the morning, Beautiful as the moon, Clear as the sun, Terrible as an army with banners?" (Song 6:10). The accumulation lifts the beauty-class out of the merely-pleasing and into the dread-bearing register.

The Hidden Adorning

The apostolic register relocates the beauty-class to the inner person. "Let it not be the outward adorning of braiding the hair, and of wearing jewels of gold, or of putting on apparel; but [let it be] the hidden man of the heart, in the incorruptible [apparel] of a meek and quiet spirit" (1Pe 3:3-4). The outward triad is set aside; the commended beauty is the hidden heart-man, and the qualifying apparel is "incorruptible."

The Bride Without Blemish

The eschatological resolution of the beauty-class falls on the church and the new Jerusalem. The presented bride-church is "a glorious [church], not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing" — "holy and without blemish" (Eph 5:27). The new-Jerusalem holy city descends "made ready as a bride adorned for her husband" (Re 21:2). Beauty in the UPDV ends as it began in the matriarchs — as a body-bride predicate — but here without spot, without wrinkle, and presented by Christ himself.