Tom Bombadil is God
If you only know the Lord of the Rings via the Peter Jackson films you will not know Tom Bombadil. A shame but an understandable one. He’s a weird character who doesn’t seem to do a great deal to progress the story of the journey of the Ring from the Shire to Rivendell.
Tom is one of Tolkien’s earliest creations, named after one of his children’s dolls and the subject of a 1934 poem. His cameo appearance in The Fellowship of the Ring is as a mysterious, somewhat ridiculous character, who aids Frodo and company in the Old Forest.
Except he’s not ridiculous at all. I believe that Tom represents an incarnation of God in what is a very Catholic story. In Tolkien’s legendarium, God is Eru, also known as Ilúvatar, the great creator of the world (see the Ainulindalë and Valaquenta chapters of the Silmarillion).
First, the obvious counter-arguments. Tolkien himself was not keen on the idea. This might seem to kill the whole fanciful notion dead except that I do not believe that Tolkien is the sole proprietor of the tale: he is but the sub-creator and like old Niggle, the tree even he paints is not the tree itself.
The second objection is that Tom is not very godly, with his yellow boots and silly rhymes. If you prefer the perfectly holy God of neo-Platonic Christianity — whose one Incarnation was similarly austere — then Tom is obviously not him. But I am fine with the Kierkegaardian notion of the infinite becoming finite, with all of the absurdity that entails.
Simply put, there is a huge space in the tale for Ilúvatar to fill as his interventions in the world are otherwise few and far between. Where has he been in the meantime? Wandering the Old Forest, of course.
In no particular order, here are the reasons why Tom is God:
- He is not concerned about the One Ring. The Silmarillion tells us that Ilúvatar is supremely confident that all the music — including the discordance of Melkor (Lucifer) — will redound to his will. Even the Ainur (demigods) would not be that confident. Tom has the air of someone with an eternal perspective. Gandalf worries that Tom would lose the Ring if given it, such is his disinterest. In fact, he does silly parlour tricks with the ring.
- Given that confidence (that good will prevail), where better for God to spend his time than in his creation, enjoying the simple pleasures of leaf and stream? Here Tom represents the hoary old trope of the King Incognito.
- Tom’s power is in his singing; Ilúvatar’s creation was one led by music.
- Tom describes himself as the “Eldest” and the “Master,” one who has been on Earth since the beginning. Note the name of God in the book of Daniel: the “Ancient of Days.” The Elves call him Iarwain Ben-Adar, meaning “Eldest and Fatherless.” In Rohan he is Orald, “really old.”
- Goldberry answers Frodo’s question, “who is Tom Bombadil?” with a simple “He is.” This sounds a lot like God’s revelation to Moses — ehyeh ʾašer ʾehyeh (“I AM that I AM”) — and its relationship to the Tetragrammaton. (By the way, did God have a wife? In ancient Israel he did.)
- When old man Willow attacks, Frodo cries out for help, “without any clear idea of why he did so” and Tom comes to the rescue. It seems that an idea of the grace of God (Tom) is implanted in the heart of every human (hobbit), whether they know it or not.
- Tom rhymes in alliterative verse. The first such example of this in English is Caedmon’s Hymn, an Old English poem written to praise God. Note the words (emphases added). Linguistics mattered to Tolkien and this is a remarkable connection:
Now [we] must honour the guardian of heaven / the might of the architect, and his purpose / the work of the father of glory / as he, the eternal lord, established the beginning of wonders / he first created for the children of men / heaven as a roof, the holy creator / Then the guardian of mankind / the eternal lord, afterwards appointed the middle earth / the lands for men, the Lord almighty.
So there it is, Tom is Eru-Ilúvatar, God incarnate on Earth.
People yearn to hear the voice of God. Here it is:
Hey dol! merry dol! ring a dong dillo! Ring a dong! hop along! fal lal the willow! Tom Bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo!
Isn’t it beautiful?
