To be a man of God involves imagining oneself as a woman, at least when the divine-human relationship is considered analogous to a marriage, as it was in ancient Israel and as it continued to be in late antique Judaism. This process of feminization, which is partial and undeveloped in Scripture, was given greater articulation by the rabbis, the late antique interpreters of Judaism. The rabbis understood full well the fact that in the relationship with God, men must assume the position of wives. Consequently, their readings of Scripture emphasized the ways in which the patriarchs were portrayed as women with respect to God. But the sages also saw the implications of this feminization for themselves. They, too, were wives of God. At times they read Scripture as if they imagined themselves as women, looking to female models for how they should behave. And we shall see that for the sages, as for their predecessors, the thought of seeing God was a decidedly erotic experience.

–Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, God’s Phallus