example, the fear of God first meant the powerful awe felt in the presence of the divine Other, but this has been turned into an “ethical” concept, in which the attitude is largely depleted of the emotion of fear and becomes an equivalent of our abstract concepts of “religion” and “piety” (Frömmigkeit) (Becker 1965: 75, 184–85; cf. TDOT VI: 298; similarly Plath 1963: 68; von Rad 1970: 92; and others). There is, however, no indication that the concept has become so bland in Proverbs or that it has