Marilynne Robinson is a widely acclaimed and award-winning American novelist, once included among Time magazine’s 100 most influential individuals. Robinson is, however, more than a gifted writer of fiction; she is also deeply engaged with broader philosophical and theological ideas, having authored, for example, a book-length defense of consciousness and inwardness against a materialist, reductionist understanding of science.

The personal motivation for this intense and refreshing engagement with foundational issues lies, at least in part, in her religious faith. For Marilynne Robinson is a committed Christian in a Calvinist mode (she has written and spoken about the need to recover the Protestant Reformer John Calvin from what she sees as popular misrepresentations). For Jews, it is particularly important to remember that among Christian groups, the Calvinist tradition has historically both placed greater emphasis on Scripture in general and also been much more focused on the set of books that Christians have long termed the “Old Testament.” In fact, in the 16th and 17th centuries, some Calvinists, including the English Puritans who settled New England, saw themselves as reenacting the history of biblical Israel (which is not the same thing as having a high estimation of contemporary Judaism) and placed emphasis on the study of Hebrew. No wonder the first two presidents of Harvard (founded 1636) were outstanding Hebraists, and no wonder that some of the most insightful scholars of the Hebrew Bible into our own time have been members of Calvinist communions (often Presbyterian).

Given these literary and religious commitments, Marilynne Robinson would seem to be an ideal person to provide a perceptive and theologically probing interpretation of the book of Genesis, and in places in Reading Genesis, she does exactly that.

The first two-thirds of her new book are a fairly fast-paced running commentary on selected episodes in Genesis itself, without indication of the chapters and verses under discussion. The last third consists of the King James translation of the book in the now antique, though stately and often beautiful, English of 1611. The most notable strength of Robinson’s discussion lies in her observations about human nature and the model of divine-human interaction exemplified in the narrative. About those scandalized by the notion that there are “‘writers’ of the books of Moses,” for example, she pointedly remarks, “whether or not these attributions reflect authorship as we understand it, the Bible itself indicates no anxiety about association with human minds, words, lives, and passions. This is a notable instance of our having a lower opinion of ourselves than the Bible justifies.” Regarding those scandalized by the similarity of the Hebrew Bible to some other ancient Near Eastern texts, she writes, “The fact that certain Westerners have believed that Scripture should bear no relation to other ancient literatures has made its having borrowed a famous tale, though adapted to its own uses, a scandal of the kind that electrifies both fundamentalists and religion’s cultured despisers.” One last example of many that might be cited: Speaking of the tense and painful interaction of Jacob and Laban in Genesis 30–31, Robinson observes, “If the strategy of the text were to make Jacob heroic in the classical style, shrewd and dominant, Laban would not have had his moment. The great figures of Scripture are not at all Homeric. They do not absorb the energies of the narrative into themselves.”

The principal reason that the human figures cannot absorb those energies is that the narrative, especially in Genesis, takes place under the supervision of divine providence. For God’s own involvement, while seldom transparent and undeniable, drives the story in mysterious ways. An emphasis on God’s irresistible will and the inevitable triumph of grace over a sadly defective—the conventional Christian term is “fallen”—human nature is also characteristic of Calvinism, and this theme, too, is in plentiful evidence throughout Reading Genesis. “Destiny will be fulfilled,” Robinson thus writes, speaking of Abram’s dream vision in chapter 15, “loyalty will be maintained, into a future unlike all the misery and happiness that must intervene between now and then.” Similarly, the Noahide covenant in Genesis 9 prompts her to observe that “God’s great constancy lies . . . in the unshakable will to be in covenant with willful, small-minded, homicidal humankind.”

The reader who is predisposed to think of Genesis as little more than primitive science, history, or anthropology, or as a collection of entertaining children’s fables or a set of elementary (if sometimes troubling) moral lessons will discover in Marilynne Robinson’s new book something very different, much more sophisticated, and much more challenging: a profound meditation on the understanding of God and man and their difficult interaction.

The challenge facing all interpreters—but especially those with a well-defined allegiance to the literature they are exegeting—is to hear those notes in the text that do not so easily conform to their own commitments. Fortunately, Robinson is aware of the problem. “I am confessing my own anxiety here,” she remarks. “I am as intent on magnifying the Lord as if I were a painter or composer, but my first obligation in commenting on the text is to be faithful to the text.”

Unfortunately, this is an obligation that she more than occasionally fails to meet.

In some instances, these lapses result from simple error. To illustrate her (contestable) belief that “mercy is nearer than justice to Godliness,” for example, she tells us that God spares Cain’s life because of His foreknowledge of the latter’s descendants: “Murderous Lamech is one, and Noah, son of Lamech, is another.” The problem is simple: the homicidal Lamech to whom she refers is indeed a descendant of Cain (Genesis 4:17–24), but Noah’s father, also named Lamech, is a descendant of Adam and Eve’s third son, Seth, conceived, his mother announces, to replace the slain Abel (Genesis 4:25; 5:1–31). To be sure, the two genealogies exhibit so many parallels that those inclined to speculate about their prehistory can reasonably conjecture a common antecedent, whether literary or oral. But, as the text now stands, Cain’s descendants—and thus the whole lineage of the “murderous Lamech” whom Robinson takes as the recipient of divine mercy—are wiped out in the flood, and only Seth’s line survives. Maybe justice is sometimes as close to Godliness as mercy.

Another instance involves Joseph’s reorganization of the Egyptian economy during the great famine (Genesis 47:13–26), an act of which Marilynne Robinson holds an exceedingly negative opinion. Referring to various “irregularities in the history of Abraham’s family,” she writes, “They do not at all compare in terms of transgressiveness to Joseph’s opportunistic reduction of the whole population to poverty and dependence” and concludes that “Joseph is the servant or officer who grows rich as the populace is made poor.” To be sure, negative moral judgments on Joseph’s actions in Genesis 47 are very common (though, in my own opinion, shortsighted). But surely one whose “first obligation in commenting on the text is to be faithful to the text” should recognize that in this story it was not Joseph but the famine that reduced the populace to poverty and dependence and, moreover, that it was Joseph who saved the lives of his Egyptian petitioners, as they readily acknowledge (v. 25). Nor does the text support Robinson’s claim that he “grows rich as the populace is made poor.” As some of the classical medieval Jewish commentators point out, Joseph acquires the lands that change hands not for himself but for his sovereign and emancipator, the pharaoh. On this, too, the text is explicit (vv. 20, 23). Whatever moral judgment on Joseph’s actions in this narrative one may finally render, surely one must first recognize what those actions are and portray them accurately.

A somewhat similar point can be made about Robinson’s judgment on Abr(ah)am and Isaac for passing off their wives as their sisters to foreign kings (Genesis 12:10–20; 20; 26:6–11). “In all three recurrences of this story,” she concludes, “the patriarchs act badly and the pagans act well.” Of Abram as he approaches Egypt in a famine, she asks, “Would a man who believes he has a great destiny awaiting him fear for his life? Would a righteous man deceive Pharaoh and put his wife in a deeply compromising situation?” Here, unlike the previous two examples, the difficulty is not that Robinson has ignored something explicit in the passage. It lies, rather, with her underlying presupposition that the recipient of a divine promise betrays the latter if, in facing a moral conundrum, he chooses to take defensive action. One could argue, as the great Jewish commentator Moses Nahmanides (1194–1270) did, that Abram should neither have left the land God had promised him nor resorted to deception. But Robinson’s own quietism, oddly, is not so consistent. She recognizes that Abram “cannot stay [in Canaan] because of drought and famine” yet faults him for yielding to fear and engaging in deception when he arrives in Egypt. But what if in at least some instances the triumph of grace requires human cooperation, and quietistic reliance on the divine promise alone does not suffice? What if we are meant to accept the stereotype of Egyptians as sexually depraved attested elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible? Would Abram’s wife Sarai (later, Sarah) have been better off if he were murdered by an adulterous foreigner? The cryptic little tale in Genesis 12:10–20 implicitly poses but does not answer such questions. Marilynne Robinson’s simplistic verdict that Abram “act[s] badly” suggests she does not recognize them—or the dilemma Abram faces.

As for her conclusion that “the pagans act well,” in this version all the Egyptians do is to praise Sarai to Pharaoh with the result that she is taken into his house (Did they ask her or her “brother” for permission?), and Pharaoh arguably does nothing until God has stricken him with plagues. This is good behavior?

The same propensity to substitute unnuanced moralizing for attentive analysis of a literarily and morally complex narrative can be seen in Robinson’s discussion of Simeon and Levi’s violence in response to the sexual violation of their sister in Genesis 34 by the Hivite prince, Shechem. To Robinson’s credit, she correctly notes the willingness of the ancient Israelite authors to acknowledge the full ugliness of their people’s foundational stories (actually, not all the biblical authors do so). And negative judgments on the brothers’ lethal raid on the Shechemites, disabled by the circumcision to which they had publicly consented, are, once again, far from rare or new. Indeed, Jacob himself condemns their violence (Genesis 34:30; cf. 49:5–7).

But Robinson’s unqualified condemnation of the brothers misses something crucial:

The vengeance of these sons of Jacob exceeds all proportion. Pride drives it: “Should he deal with our sister as with a harlot? [Genesis 34:31]” There is a special casuistry that means matters involving women can seldom be aligned with any standard of equity. And again, God prevents the punishment that might reasonably be exacted in response to flagrant guilt. When we benefit from or approve of His restraint we call it grace.

What she fails to mention is that it was precisely the brothers’ raid on Shechem that rescued Dinah from the foreign prince who raped her (Genesis 34:26). As the Israeli literary scholar Meir Sternberg put it in a brilliant analysis of this immensely subtle and sophisticated narrative, “The reader suddenly learns what the dramatis personae have known all along: that Dinah has been detained at Shechem’s house since the rape and, therefore, that the Hivite negotiation technique has included blackmail.” As for Marilynne Robinson, despite the note of feminism in her homiletical conclusion, she seems perfectly happy to leave the rape victim in the hands of her kidnappers.

Compare Robinson’s summary pronouncement that “[t]he vengeance of these sons of Jacob exceeds all proportion” and is driven by “pride” with Sternberg’s assessment of the situation they faced in the actual biblical story:

With Dinah in Shechem’s hands, the option of polite declining is closed to her guardians. And once the brothers refused to submit to the Hivite version of a shotgun wedding, they were left no avenue to the retrieval of their sister except force. Hence also the need for “deceit.” Considering the numerical superiority of the troops behind “the prince of the land” [Genesis 34:2]—“two of Jacob’s sons” [v. 25] faced a whole city—no wonder the brothers resorted to trickery to make odds more even.

My point is not that Meir Sternberg’s defense of Simeon and Levi is beyond critique. It is that Marilynne Robinson’s reading of the story misses not only the subtlety of its artistry but also the complexity of the predicament it describes. Although a highly accomplished literary person herself, she prefers hasty moralizing to careful textual explication and, in so doing, she fails in her self-professed “first obligation”—“to be faithful to the text.”

And what of her theological conclusion that in Genesis 34 “God prevents the punishment” and delivers “grace” instead? I take this to address the fact that Simeon and Levi are not punished for their supposed crime. But if Sternberg’s interpretation is correct, there is indeed punishment. The community that acted deceitfully in support of a rapist and kidnapper is given its due, and, in Sternberg’s mind, in an especially artful way: “Some poetic justice does attach to the discovery that Shechem’s punishment started exactly where his sexual crime did, and that the self-inflicted soreness made the rest easy.”

On the other hand, one could argue that Simeon and Levi were indeed punished—when their father on his deathbed condemned them to be scattered among the other tribes of Israel (Genesis 49:5–7). Either way, as in her interpretation of Cain’s fate, so in her treatment of this narrative, Robinson downplays justice and stresses grace in a way that the text itself does not support. Her instinct is to reduce these complex and often ambiguous stories to morality plays in which a gracious God demonstrates His “unshakable will to be in covenant with willful, small-minded, homicidal humankind.” It is hard to imagine this is unconnected to the character of her personal theological convictions.

More problematically, to Jewish ears this language of “vengeance” driven by “pride,” like the language of figures in the Hebrew Bible who “act badly [whereas] the pagans act well” and that of “grace” replacing “punishment,” will sound sadly familiar. For this all echoes, however unwittingly, a Christian anti-Jewish polemic as old as the New Testament itself, one in which forgiveness overcomes retaliation, Gentiles surpass Jews in spiritual alertness, righteousness comes through faith rather than deeds, and the Church replaces the Jewish people. To be sure, Robinson does not endorse the supersessionist theology underlying that polemic, but her eagerness to draw the conclusions she does when the texts of the Hebrew Bible suggest a different and more complicated picture remains worrisome. It evinces a lack of critical awareness about vulnerabilities lurking in her own religious instincts. Her attempts to minimize the theme of chosenness central to both the theology and the literary structure of Genesis exhibit the same bias.

Take, for instance, Robinson’s comments on Hagar, Sarai’s Egyptian slave who bears Abraham a son (Ishmael) by a kind of surrogate motherhood. Robinson prefaces her comments with a discussion of the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1, focusing on the appearance there of two Canaanite women (Tamar and Rahab) and one Moabite (Ruth) and the absence of the mothers of Israel, Sarah and Rebecca. “Perhaps the inclusion of these women,” she writes, “makes the point that the claim of descent from Abraham should not be understood too narrowly.” Given the intensely missionary character of early Christianity, this suggestion makes a great deal of sense. So does her further comment that the “appearance of their names . . . demonstrates that they and their stories are still well known in 1st-century Judaism,” though there is room to wonder when in the history of Judaism they have not “still” been well known.

The problem comes with Robinson’s observation that the covenant “has been carried on from time to time by foreigners, who are remembered and recognized as intrinsic to it. Hagar should be seen in light of this openness.” But how can Hagar be likened to ancestresses intrinsic to the covenant when Genesis explicitly excludes her son from it (but not from other aspects of the Abrahamic promise; 17:20–21)? This, not coincidentally, is a distinction that is explicit in the New Testament as well. There the apostle Paul distinguishes sharply between Hagar and Ishmael, on the one hand, and Sarah and Isaac, on the other, much to the discredit of the former pair and the credit of the latter (Galatians 4:21–5:1).

The same tension between Robinson’s own theological convictions and the biblical text appears in her interpretation of the Binding of Isaac (Genesis 22:1–19). “The plain statement of the tale,” she tells us, “is that the Lord does not want the sacrifice of a child, but that He is pleased to accept an animal, here a ram that He Himself has provided.” But can we extrapolate from God’s calling off Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac to a rejection of child sacrifice tout court? And even if we can do that, can we call such a move “the plain statement of the tale”? The plain statement, it seems to me, is that God richly rewards Abraham precisely for his willingness to sacrifice his beloved son (Gen 22:15–18). What, if anything, that means for the practice of child sacrifice more generally is simply not addressed.

Robinson’s interpretation of the Binding of Isaac conforms nicely to her own distaste for sacrifice (not unusual among Protestants). Unfortunately, she then projects her sensibilities onto the entire Bible. “The God of Scripture tolerates sacrifice,” she pronounces, “rather than requiring it.” That does not exactly seem to be the view in Numbers 28–29, among many other passages. Her statement about the “God of Scripture” is at best a dangerously misleading overgeneralization.

And, relatedly, should not a commentary faithful to the text of Genesis offer a sympathetic account of why Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all build altars and in sites that seemed to have retained their sanctity for generations? Apart from her difficulty with sacrifice, there seems to be another reason Robinson does not do so. In discussing the dream revelation to Jacob at one such place, Bethel (“House of God”), she faults the patriarch for thinking the site is holy. “The Lord tells Jacob that He will be with him wherever he goes. All places are the same.” Genesis 28:10–22 does indeed include the affirmation made in her first sentence (v. 15) but nothing remotely like the one made in her second. Whatever the problems Marilynne Robinson and Protestantism more generally may have with holy rites and holy places, Genesis does not share them.

To anyone accustomed to studying the Torah in a traditional Jewish framework, Reading Genesis will seem quite alien—too distant from the text itself, too generalized, too much inclined to preach and too little inclined to analyze and entertain divergent interpretations. Robinson’s book is also quite different from modern, critical scholarship—again too general but also too ahistorical, too unaware of the dangers of religious bias, too much inclined to smooth out telltale discordances, too little informed on the ancient Near Eastern cultures on which it occasionally comments nonetheless. This is not at all to deny that there may be contexts in which the sort of reading Marilynne Robinson provides is helpful and enlightening. But it is hard to shake the impression that this book could have been much better.