The Babylonian poem ludlul bel nemeqi begins with a "hymn" to the god Marduk which includes puzzlingly discordant praises of his wrath and his mercy, giving him a somewhat "schizophrenic" character. We argue that, in fact, the hymn proclaims Marduk's true nature to be kind and good, and that this message is delivered and nuanced through elaborate structural arrangements and lexical usage. The hymn is, in its way, a work of systematic theology which explores relations between the problem of suffering and the character of the god responsible for it.