Through four scriptural passages, biblical scholar Matthew Bowen explains how language and context shape the meaning of fear
Halloween gives fear an unusual place in public life. While people ordinarily try to avoid being frightened, during the season they willingly seek it through costumes, stories, and staged encounters with danger.
In the Bible, however, fear is not always portrayed negatively or even as a response to danger. It wears the face of guilt when Adam hides, panic when the Israelites feel trapped, awe when the disciples witness unexplained power, and reverence before the Divine. Distinguishing among these portrayals reveals how fear shapes the characters’ choices, their understanding of God, and their relationships with Him.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Guide to the Scriptures describes fear in two senses: devotion and profound respect toward God, and distress arising from a perceived threat. The American Psychological Association defines it more specifically as an emotional and physical response to a recognizable danger that prepares a person to react. It also distinguishes fear, which generally concerns an identifiable threat in the present, from anxiety about what may happen.
Dr. Matthew Bowen, a professor of religious education, examined how the meaning and function of fear shift across biblical passages. Understanding each face of fear requires looking beyond the word itself and to consider its source, its object, and the response it produces.
“Sometimes what we think of as fear is really awe or reverence, and not abject terror,” Bowen said.
The shame that causes Adam to hide
After Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit in Genesis 3, they hear God in the garden and hide. When God asks where he is, Adam answers, “I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.”
The scene initially appears to portray Adam as terrified of punishment. Bowen, however, said the Hebrew verb translated as “I was afraid” comes from the same root associated with the biblical phrase “fear of the Lord.” He explained the emotion portrayed in the passage is closer to shame and embarrassment than terror.
“They’re hiding out of embarrassment and guilt,” Bowen said. “They’re ashamed of the fact that they disobeyed someone so loving.”
Adam’s nakedness also should not automatically be interpreted as sinful, Bowen said. In this context, nakedness can signify exposure and vulnerability. Adam and Eve had disobeyed God, recognized their condition, and attempted to conceal themselves.
Their decision to hide represents more than a change of location. Bowen said it marks a change in their relationship with God. Before their disobedience, Adam and Eve enjoyed God’s immediate presence. Hiding placed distance between them and the one whose presence they had previously accepted.
“When Adam and Eve hide themselves, it represents a fundamental change in the relationship between them and God,” Bowen said.
Fear in this passage, therefore, does not wear the uncomplicated face of guilt. Shame, exposure, reverence, and the anticipation of consequences overlap. The emotion does not send Adam and Eve running from an immediate physical danger. Instead, it causes them to withdraw from a relationship.
The panic of a trapped people
Fear takes on a more recognizable form in Exodus 14. Having escaped enslavement in Egypt, the Israelites find themselves between Pharaoh’s approaching army and the Red Sea.
The King James Version says the Israelites were “sore afraid.” Bowen explained that the Hebrew wording indicates that they feared greatly or exceedingly. Their fear leads them to cry to God and accuse Moses of bringing them into the wilderness to die.
Unlike Adam’s response, the Israelites’ fear is prompted by an identifiable external threat. Pharaoh’s forces are approaching, and the sea appears to block their escape. Bowen described their panic as a natural and understandable response to the circumstances.
However, their fear is not portrayed merely as a physical reaction. It also affects how they understand their situation. Faced with the possibility of death, the Israelites begin to question their deliverance and imagine that remaining in Egypt would have been better.
Moses responds by telling them, “Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord.”
Bowen said the instruction “fear ye not” could be understood in this context as “do not panic.” Moses is not denying the danger before the Israelites. He is asking them to stand their ground and trust that God will act.
“The Lord will fight for you,” Bowen said, translating and discussing Moses’ reassurance in the following verse. He explained that Moses was asking the Israelites to place their trust in God while they were still surrounded by danger.
The Israelites’ fear also changes by the end of the chapter. After crossing the sea and witnessing what God does to the Egyptian forces, they “feared the Lord” and believed in Him and in Moses.
The same chapter consequently presents two faces of fear. The Israelites first experience panic before an approaching army. After their deliverance, fear becomes reverence and renewed trust in God.
The awe of unexplained power
The disciples encounter a similar change in Mark 4:35–41. While they cross the Sea of Galilee, a storm fills their boat with water. Jesus remains asleep until the disciples wake Him and ask, “Master, carest thou not that we perish?”
Their fear is understandable. Bowen said storms can arise rapidly on the Sea of Galilee, leaving those caught on its deep waters vulnerable. The disciples believe they are facing death, while the person they expect to help them appears unconcerned.
Jesus rises, rebukes the wind and commands the sea to be still. He then asks the disciples why they are so fearful and why they have no faith.
Bowen said the Greek adjective in Jesus’ question can describe someone who is timid, cowardly, or lacking confidence. Its placement beside the word for faith suggests that Jesus is questioning the disciples’ confidence in Him.
“The fact that He was in the ship should have given them all the confidence they needed that they were going to be OK,” Bowen said.
Yet the disciples’ fear does not disappear when the storm stops. Mark says they “feared exceedingly” and asked one another, “What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?”
Bowen said this second description uses the Greek root "phobos," from which the English word “phobia” is derived. But the disciples are no longer reacting to the storm. They are responding to the person who commanded it.
The solution may have exceeded anything they imagined Jesus could do, Bowen said. The disciples may have awakened Him simply because they believed the boat was sinking and wanted Him to respond to the emergency. Instead, they saw Him command the elements in a manner associated with divine power.
“In this episode in Mark, the disciples are seeing Jesus’ divinity,” Bowen said.
Their first fear arises from the possibility of death. Their second emerges from astonishment at a power they cannot fully explain. The danger has passed, but the disciples are left with a more unsettling question about who is in the boat with them.
The reverence that begins wisdom
Fear takes another form in Proverbs. Proverbs 1:7 says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,” and Proverbs 9:10 also associates that fear with the beginning of wisdom.
Bowen said neither passage describes terror or dread. In this context, fear means awe, reverence, and respect for God.
“Sometimes what we think of as fear, which is translated in English versions of the text as ‘fear,’ really is awe, reverence, or respect instead,” he said.
Bowen said respect alone does not fully convey the idea. Awe suggests recognition of the difference between humanity and God. It is not a relationship between equals, he explained, but one in which people look toward God with admiration, respect, and love.
The passages also illustrate the difficulty of translating the Bible. The same Hebrew root can appear in passages that communicate different experiences. Translators must decide whether to preserve the same English word consistently or choose a different word based on the surrounding context.
When you translate into any language, you have to pick a word. Context can sometimes guide you into using other words.
In Proverbs, fear is described as a continuing orientation toward God. Bowen said knowledge begins with recognizing God as its ultimate source. Awe and reverence make a person willing to look beyond personal understanding and seek truth from Him.
Fear and the distance it creates
Taken together, the four passages resist a simple judgment that fear is either good or bad. Its meaning depends on what causes it, what it is directed toward, and what it leads someone to do.
Fear causes Adam and Eve to hide after disobeying God. It sends the Israelites into panic when they believe they have no escape. It leaves the disciples astonished when Jesus demonstrates power over the sea. In Proverbs, it becomes an attitude of humility and reverence through which knowledge can begin.
The passages also show fear creating or closing distance. Shame leads Adam and Eve to withdraw from God. Panic makes the Israelites question their deliverance. Awe causes the disciples to reconsider who Jesus is. Reverence invites people to orient their lives toward God.
Bowen warned that religion can misuse fear when it relies on terror or shame to influence behavior. He said fear-based teaching may produce a desired response temporarily, but it can ultimately damage a person’s relationship with God and with others.
We never get the Lord’s results by using Satan’s methods. Satan would have us be ashamed. Satan would have us be in terror because he knows that those are things that can put distance between us and God.
For Bowen, the “fear of the Lord” should not mean believing that God wants his children to be terrified of Him. He compared it to the respect, admiration, and love that can develop between children and loving parents.
“God wouldn’t want us to be in terror of Him,” he said.
Halloween gives fear a plethora of faces. Biblical fear, on the other hand, is more difficult to contain. It can emerge from danger or shame, but it can also become wonder, confidence, and reverence. Understanding which face it wears requires readers to look beyond the English word and examine what the fear produces: distance or trust, paralysis or wisdom.
Quote backgrounds sourced from Nicolas Poussin "The Crossing of the Red Sea" (1632-1634) and Rembrandt van Rijn "The Storm on the Sea of Galilee" (1633).