of fatherly care in particular is taken over in what the OT has to say about God’s fatherly concern for Israel. The sexual definition of the father’s role plays no part. A mark of Israel’s faith from the very outset is that the God who elected the patriarchs, the God of the exodus and Sinai, has no female partner. To bring sexual differentiation into the understanding of God would mean polytheism; it was thus ruled out for the God of Israel. Perhaps this is why the idea of God as Father came only
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