BEAUTY. (In the OT the frequent words are הָדָר, H2077, honor or beauty and יֳפִי, H3642, fairness or beauty. Other words are from תִּפְאֶ֫רֶת, H9514, and נֹ֫עַם, H5840. In Gr. ὡραῖος, G6053, meaning opportune or fit, καλός, G2819, good, ἀστεῖος, G842, handsome, well pleasing, εὐπρεπεία, fine appearance and προσφιλής, G4713, lovely, all carry the idea of beauty as well.)
1. Natural. The Bible does not have an esthetic doctrine as such. The appreciation of beauty is everywhere in the Scriptures, but beauty for beauty’s sake is of no consequence to its writers. One area in which the Biblical appreciation of beauty is obvious is the natural. Genesis passes judgment on the created universe by declaring that God saw that it was good. The Psalms especially reveal an appreciation of the beauty of God’s handiwork in nature (Pss 8; 19:1-6; 29; 65:9-13; 104; 147:8-18). It was God who made the springs gush forth in the valleys, the grass to grow for the cattle, and the moon to make the seasons, who covers the heavens with clouds, determines the numbers of the stars, etc. The Heb. mind appreciated the beauty of the earth and all of nature. By way of contrast it can be observed that pagan minds, even influenced by Jewish thought, had some reservation about the beauty of nature. The Hermetic Corpus (writings originating in Egypt about the beginning of the Christian era) were notably influenced by Judaism, but could not fully appreciate the beauty of the natural creation. In the cosmogony of Poimandres (a part of the Hermetic Corpus) there is clearly an echo of Genesis 1 which declares repeatedly that when God looked upon that which He had made He saw that it was good. The Bible spoke of the visible, material creation as good, but Poimandres makes a deliberate correction. It was not for the Hermetist, the natural universe which was beautiful, but the archetypal universe of which the visible world was only a faint copy. Some of the Hermetists went so far as to declare that the world was a totality of evil, as God was a totality of good.
2. Jewish. The home land of the Jew was esp. beautiful. Jeremiah wrote that God had said “I thought how I would set you among my sons, and give you a pleasant land, a heritage most beauteous of all nations” (3:19). The city of God, Jerusalem, was likewise regarded as esp. beautiful: “Is this the city which was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?” (Lam 2:15). The nation was described as the “beautiful flock” (Jer 13:20). The Temple was God’s beautiful house (Ezra 7:27).
3. Foreign. The Pharaoh of Egypt was to be likened to the fair branches of the cedar of Lebanon, beautiful in its greatness (Ezek 31:3, 7, 9). The king of Tyre could be described as “the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty” (28:12). Isaiah described the doom of Samaria in terms of a fading flower of glorious beauty (28:1, 4), and Jeremiah Egypt as a beautiful heifer (46:20).
4. People. Human beings are spoken of in the Bible as being beautiful, and Isaiah and Ezekiel both disclose the use of cosmetics (Isa 3:18-24; Ezek 10:9-14), used to beautify the person. Certain women are described as beautiful: Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Abigail, Abishag, Bathsheba and Esther. The bride of the Song of Solomon is addressed as the writer’s beautiful love (Song of Solomon 4:1). Certain men likewise are referred to as exceedingly fair and handsome: Absalom, Daniel, David, Joseph, Jonathan, and Moses in his infancy could be described as a goodly child.
5. God. God is everywhere in the Bible not only the Creator of beauty, clothing the lilies of the field with a beauty beyond Solomon’s, but He is in His own person the God of glory. The Shekinah, or the glory of God, was a frequent description for the presence of God with His people (Exod 16:7, 10; 24:16, 17; 40:34; Lev 9:6, 23; Num 14:10, 21, 22; 16:19; 20:6; Deut 5:24; Josh 7:19; etc.). Isaiah described God as becoming a beautiful diadem for His people (28:5) and the Messiah as a beautiful king (33:17). At the same time Isaiah spoke of the coming servant of the Lord as having “no form or comeliness that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (53:2). The Book of Revelation avoids anthropomorphic representations of God, but there is an undeniable splendor about the description of all that pertains to God. He who sits upon the throne of the universe “appeared like jasper and carnelian, and round the throne was a rainbow that looked like an emerald” (Rev 4:3). The final estate that God has prepared for His people is likewise glorious. John wrote, “I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev 21:2).
Bibliography P. T. Forsyth, Christ on Parnassus (n.d.); G. A. Smith, “The Hebrew Genius,” The Legacy of Israel, ed. Bevan and Singer (1927); J. A. Montgomery, “Aesthetic in Hebrew Religion,” JBL, LVI (1937); C. H. Dodd, The Bible and the Greeks (1954).