Alex Haley, the author of Roots, once commented: “Hate at its best will distort you; at its worst it will destroy you; but it will always immobilize you.” I don’t entirely agree with Haley’s view although there is some truth to it. But, you see, God hates. We’re going to study that this morning. God hates and He calls on us to hate as well. But God clearly is not distorted nor is He destroyed, nor is He immobilized.
So, if we are going to hate as God calls us to do and as our hearts call us to do, sometimes, and not become distorted, destroyed, or immobilized, then we need to understand how God hates, what He hates, and do the same to the best our our ability.
God hates the worship and behavior of those who worshiped false gods (Deut. 12:31; 16:22). There is a synonym to “hate” that is translated as “detest” or “abhor” and God called on Israel to detest idol worship (Deut. 7:26).
Israel was going through the motions of worship, even acts of worship that were originally commanded by God, but their lives were not lining up with what God had commanded them. That’s why God hated their worship (Isa. 1:14; Amos 5:21). At the end of Isaiah, God said, “I, the Lord, love justice, I hate robbery in the burnt offering” (61:8). The priests were extorting money through the worship, from their fellow Israelites, in essence “robbing” in the burnt offerings. God hated that behavior.
In fact, in the time of Jeremiah the prophet, maybe 130 years after Isaiah, Israel had sank so deep into sin and false worship, that God said, “My inheritance has become to Me like a lion in the forest; she has roared against Me; Therefore I have come to hate her” (12:8). At the end of Jeremiah’s writings, relative to their decision to engage in false worship practices and the immoral lifestyle that idolatry allows, God told Israel: “Yet I sent you all My servants the prophets, again and again, saying, “Oh, do not do this abominable thing which I hate” (44:4). False worship practices are as despicable in the eyes of God as immoral lives are because it all illustrates a disobedient heart.
Once again, through the prophet Amos, the Lord God “has sworn by Himself, the Lord God of hosts has declared: “I loathe the arrogance of Jacob, And detest [“hate”] his citadels; Therefore I will deliver up the city and all it contains” (6:8).
In the prophet Zechariah, God says not to devise evil in our hearts against others, or perjury (lying in the court of law), for “all these are what I hate” (8:17). Finally, as far as the prophets are concerned, in Malachi 2:16, the God in the Bible says very simply, “I hate divorce.” It has such a negative impact on those who are involved.
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Nearly half the uses of the verb “to hate” are found in the poetry books, Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes.
In Psalm 5:5, David recognizes that God hates those who do iniquity and he lists those who are boastful, those who speak falsehood, those who kill and those who deceive. In Psalm 11:5, the Lord hates those who love violence. God hates the assembling together of those who do evil and He will not sit among the wicked (Psa. 26:5).
The sons of Korah write in Psalm 45:7 that God has loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Those are two sides of the same coin. In Psalm 97:10, the psalmist calls on Israel to hate evil, if you love the Lord. In fact, if we understand the Lord’s precepts, if we truly understand, then we will hate every false way (Psa. 119:104, 113, 128, 163).
Observe what David writes in Psalm 139:21-22: “Do I not hate those who hate You, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against You? I hate them with the utmost hatred; They have become my enemies.” I’m not sure we have the same intensity of love for God and His Truth as David did. Do we?
The classic text, in the OT at least, of God’s hatred is Prov. 6:16-18. Let us be assured that these are that the holy God hates. Notice Proverbs 8:13: “The fear of the Lord is to hate evil; Pride and arrogance and the evil way and the perverted mouth, I hate.”
Paul Holland
