Divine retribution

*The End of the World*, commonly known as *The Great Day of His Wrath*, an 1851–1853 oil painting on canvas by the English painter John Martin. According to Frances Carey, the painting shows the "destruction of Babylon and the material world by natural cataclysm". This painting, Carey holds, is a response to the emerging industrial scene of London as a metropolis in the early nineteenth century, and the original growth of the Babylon civilisation and its final destruction. According to the Tate, the painting depicts a portion of Revelation 16, a chapter from the New Testament.

Divine retribution or divine punishment is the supernatural punishment of a single person, a group of people, or everyone, by a deity in response to the invocation of their anger. Myths and folklore detailing how a deity imposed punishment on previous inhabitants of a land, causing widespread death and misfortune, can be found across many cultures.

An example of divine retribution is the story, found in many religions, about a great flood that destroys all of humanity, as described in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Hindu Vedas, or the Hebrew Book of Genesis (6:9–8:22), but leaves one 'chosen' survivor. In the Tanakh, as well as the Old Testament and the Quran, a man named Nuh (Noah) was commanded by God to build an ark in order to survive a great flood; meanwhile, in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the survivor of this flood is Utnapishtim, and in the Hindu Vedas, it is Manu. This suggests that one man and his followers were saved in a great flood.

Other examples in biblical history include the dispersion of the builders of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1–9), the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18:20–21, 19:23–28) (Quran 7:80–84), and the Ten Plagues visited upon the ancient Egyptians for persecuting the Jewish children of Israel, and to get the Egyptians to free their Hebrew slaves (Exodus, Chapters 7–12). The Bible refers to divine retribution as, in most cases, being delayed or "treasured up" to a future time. Sight of God's supernatural works and retribution would militate against faith in God's Word.

In Greek mythology, the goddess Hera often became enraged when her husband, Zeus, would impregnate mortal women, and would exact divine retribution on the children born of such affairs. In Greek versions of the myth, Medusa was turned into her monstrous form as divine retribution for her vanity; in Roman myths it was a punishment from Minerva for being raped by Neptune in Minerva's temple, which Minerva saw as a violation of her sacred place.

Some religious positions have no concept of divine retribution, nor posit a deity being capable of (or willing to express) such human sentiments as jealousy, vengeance, or wrath. For example, in Deism and Pandeism, the creator deity does not intervene in the universe at all; not for good or for bad, and therefore exhibits no such behavior. In Pantheism (as reflected in Pandeism as well), God is the universe and encompasses everything within it, and has no need for retribution, as all things against which retribution might be taken are simply within God. This view is reflected in some pantheistic or pandeistic forms of Hinduism, as well.