Vengeance is Mine: Wrestling with the Violence of God in the Old Testament (Part II)

In the previous article, I presented the problem of the divine sanction of violence in the Old Testament given the fact that Israel’s God repeatedly states that He hates violence. I then provided two arguments that serve to contextualize God’s commands or His seeming approval of violent acts committed by His people. First, violence occurs within a broader context and only following a period of Yahweh’s longsuffering mercy. Second, Yahweh often simply allows the violent in Scripture to simply reap the natural consequences of their own violence. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword. Yet we must now go further and consider the theological significance of divinely sanctioned violence of the Old Testament.

First, Yahweh uses violence to promote justice and righteousness. Yahweh does not only allow perpetrators of violence to fall into their own pits, He also actively commands the punishment of those who commit violence against innocents. The Biblical word for violence (chamas)^[1] refers to the sinful use of force as opposed to the just use of force. While Yahweh never commands chamas, he does command the civil magistrate to use the sword to execute justice. The fact that the civil magistrate would use force to punish wrongdoing according to God’s command should not be objectionable. The challenge of the modern reader is more likely to be that God should not command magistrates to use force to punish violations of His commands for worship. In the Old Testament Mosaic law, blasphemy, idolatry, witchcraft, adultery, sodomy, and rebellion against parents could all receive capital punishment. Perhaps Yahweh was much too harsh in the Old Testament and His extensive list of capital crimes for things people should be allowed to do “as long as they are not hurting anyone else” proves that He is a God who takes pleasure in violence. Lest we presume to be nicer and more tolerant than God and deem his punishments too severe, perhaps it is the modern critic that holds a too narrow view of what constitutes violence and should consider the possibility that the Scripture’s definition of violence is much broader than ours.^[2] Perhaps it is that we have become too accustomed to violence in the modern world such that we are blind to its perpetuation and our complicity in it. In Scripture, violence includes false testimony (Ex. 23:1), taking bribes (Is. 33:15), idolatry (Ezek. 8:16‒17), unjust weights and measures (Mic. 6:11‒12), crushing words (Job 19:1‒12), rulers’ failure to punish wickedness (Ps. 58:1‒2; Hab. 1:2), and failure to defend another against violence (Obad. 1:10‒11).^[3] When Yahweh says that he hates violence, his hatred encompasses a much broader array of activity than the typical modern mind can appreciate. Those who presume to judge the God of the Old Testament for his use of violence should be more concerned about God’s judgment of their complicity in violent activity.

It is in this hatred for violence that God’s love and justice are revealed. “For God to be angry is not out of character for him but an expression of his nature in relation to particular circumstances…if he did not care one way or the other, he might easily be indifferent to us and either do nothing or (more probably) destroy us without giving the matter a second thought.”^[4] In other words, a God whose character is love must hate those things that are contrary or do harm to the object of his love. A husband who is unmoved by the rape and murder of his bride and fails to act in her defense out of an equal love for the perpetrators does not love his bride. Likewise, a God who the poor and the oppressed call upon for justice cannot be just if he does not punish wickedness. The teacher who equally blames the wimpy kid receiving his weekly pummeling and the class bully delivering it to him, insisting they both “break up the fight,” is rightly recognized as having no sense of justice and loses the respect of the classroom. If pure religion is to visit the orphan and the widow in their affliction, it is violence to afflict the orphan and the widow. To protect the orphan and the widow from affliction or to punish those who afflict is not violence, but justice. Consider the story of Naboth’s Vineyard in I Kings 21. Does not the honest reader burn with indignation on behalf of this man, who not only had his property stripped from him, but was condemned and executed as a blasphemer by the very king and queen who reintroduced Baal worship in Israel and on the basis of the testimony of false witnesses? For this horrific act, Elijah delivers the word of the Lord, promising that dogs would eat the corpse of Jezebel and that Ahab’s line would be wiped out. A god that would look the other way in this moment and fail to condemn the actions of Ahab and Jezebel in the strongest terms, would be seen as a cruel and unloving God. Violence against Naboth necessitates violence against the house of Ahab, a punishment that would fit the crime.

As the people of Israel are driving the Canaanites out of the land, even foreign kings recognize the justice of Israel’s God in dispensing punishment against them. In Judges 1, the tribes of Judah and Simeon lead the conquest by killing ten thousand men of Bezek in battle. The king of Bezek, Adonai-Bezek, is captured by the Israelites and suffers a cruel punishment, having each of his thumbs and big toes cut off. Yet, Adonai-Bezek utters his last words, which recognize the principle of an eye for an eye and the just end to which Yahweh has brought him: “Seventy kings with their thumbs and big toes cut off used to gather scraps under my table; as I have done, so God has repaid me” (1:7, NKJV).

Second, Yahweh uses violence (shod) in the Old Testament to purge his people and their land from sin and wickedness. We now come to the most difficult passages in Scripture regarding Yahweh’s commands to destroy and show no mercy to the enemies of Israel. Such commands appear numerous times in the Old Testament and cannot be simply glossed over or explained away. Liberal apologists try to explain these passages by arguing that such commands could never be made by a loving God but were merely the projections of fallen Old Testament writers upon Yahweh.^[5] In other words, they draw a distinction between a god presented in the text by human authors and the real God that lies behind the text. The benefit to adopting this interpretive approach is that it provides an easy apologetic against secular or atheist critics who level the charge that the God of the Bible is a moral monster. However, the problem is that there is no limiting principle that would prevent this approach from being applied to any issue raised in Scripture that is at odds with our politically correct culture. Indeed, the liberals carry their interpretive principle through to the New Testament to strip away anything with which they disagree. The Apostle Paul, for example, becomes merely a product of his time and his views on marriage and gender roles tell us nothing more than what the ancients thought about such things rather than what God has commanded. In the end, the liberals use Scripture to create a god in their own image rather than reconciling themselves to God as presented in the text of Scripture.

In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses recounts the history of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt to a new generation and gives them instructions for what the people are to do when they are brought into the Promised Land. Moses instructs the Israelites that they are to make no peace with the nations that Yahweh drives out before them but are to destroy them completely (Deut. 7:1‒2). Later, in Deuteronomy 20, it is the cities of Canaan in particular where no one is to be left alive. The total devotion to destruction Yahweh commands is referred to in Hebrew as cherem^[6] warfare. Everything in a designated area was to be placed under the ban and offered up to Yahweh as a sacrifice. It was not to be taken to be used as profit, but all was to be consumed by fire. These texts and others like them create one of the most significant theological problems in the Old Testament concerning violence: did Yahweh command the genocide of the Canaanite people?

To answer this question, a few contextual points must be considered. We must first distinguish between a general rule and an exceptional command. Scholars Paul Copan and Matthew Flannagan point out the command in Deuteronomy 20 to put all the men to the sword and take the women, children, and livestock as plunder is contrary to Yahweh’s law for Israel concerning warfare against any other nation.

[T]he law of Moses prohibited Israel from conquering other neighboring nations such as Moab, Ammon, and Edom (Deuteronomy 2:4, 9, 19; 23:7); this is precisely because these nations did not live in the land God had given Israel and God had not given the land these people occupied to the nation of Israel for the sake of redemptive purposes.^[7]

Furthermore, speaking through the prophet Amos, Yahweh condemns Gentile nations for kidnapping and for killing innocent women and children in war. (1:6,9,13). This is further testament to the exceptional nature of the command to deliver the Canaanites up to destruction in taking the land. When the intellectually honest reader is confronted with the distinction between a general or occasional command, the next step would be to raise the question as to what the special purpose of the occasional command is.

Not only is the command exceptional, but the command to drive out the Canaanite tribes cannot be taken as a command to execute all the Canaanites. The context of Deuteronomy 7:1‒2 mentioned above is one in which it is clear that God is driving the Canaanites out of the land ahead of the Israelites.^[8] This is consistent with what Yahweh says in Exodus 23:27: “I will send my terror before you and will throw into confusion all the people against whom you shall come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you” (NKJV). The more prominent language used in the Torah describing the mission of the Hebrews was to dispossess the Canaanites, to drive them out (Num. 21:32, 3:51‒56) or to thrust them out (Deut. 6:18‒19). This perfectly parallels what would happen to the Israelites if they participated in practices characteristic of the Canaanites that preceded them: they would be “vomited out” of the land (Lev. 18:25; Deut. 12:29). We know that the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were both dispossessed of their land and driven into exile by Assyria and Babylon, respectively, and not wiped out. In the case of Judah, though God promised exile and destruction, he also provided an opportunity for them to thrive in a foreign land (Jer. 29:11). Thus, the conquest of the land of Canaan should be understood in the same terms rather than seen primarily as a genocide, though cities like Jericho in particular were indeed put under the ban and were slaughtered in their entirety.

There is another related point here that comes from Leviticus 18. Verses 26‒30 of that chapter make clear that Yahweh’s driving of the Canaanites out of the land was based on their detestable practices that had defiled the land. The land is personified and depicted as vomiting them out as the people of Israel enter, as we saw above. Thus, this was no arbitrary whim of God, but the created order itself, which was designed in accord with God’s nature, spewing out its inhabitants because of the gross evils which they perpetuate. This recalls Genesis 4, which personifies the earth opening up to receive Abel’s blood and driving Cain out of the land, condemning him to be a wanderer on the earth. In Luke 19:40, Jesus responds to the Pharisees’ call to rebuke the crowds for worshiping Him as the Messiah upon his triumphal entry into Jerusalem by personifying the rocks, stating they would cry out from the ground if the people ceased to praise him. Psalm 19:1‒2 says that “the heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, And night unto night reveals knowledge.” If the created order reflects the glory of God, it follows naturally that it would vomit out those who commit detestable acts whether idolatry against God or the defacing of God’s image in man through acts of gross sexual immorality or violence.

Though the language of Scripture provides nuance and context for understanding Yahweh’s purging of the land of Canaan, it does not provide a complete explanation. God’s violent punishment of the Canaanites was unusually harsh. Indeed, to attempt to make God’s judgment sound reasonable to the modern ear is to fail to understand the central thrust of the text: Yahweh’s hatred for idolatry. When we examine the book of Joshua in detail, we do not get merely a record of battles. It is not a memoir of an invasion like Alexander the Great’s conquest of Persia or Caesar’s conquest of Gaul, but an account of a liturgical purge of the land. Israel’s battles look like worship services to which Yahweh grants the victory once his children have obeyed him and honored him.^[9] It is Jesus’ purging of the temple writ large. The land of Israel is to be the location of his holy seat on earth where he will tabernacle with his people. The purging of the land of idolatry and the abominable wickedness of the Canaanites is for the purpose of establishing his altar, that he might be worshiped rightly by his people. Yahweh is holy and the fact that he deals with sin and rebellion should not be a surprise. Rather it is his grace and mercy toward sinners who repent that requires greater explanation. Yahweh cannot compromise with idolatry. If he did, he would be demonstrating that he is not worthy of worship. In Exodus 34:14, Yahweh says, “for you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.” If Yahweh allowed his people to make peace with the Canaanites, and incorporate other gods into their worship, he would not be a tolerant and open-minded god; he would be no god at all. John Piper’s work on God’s desire for his own glory has been invaluable on this point.

God’s overwhelming passion is to exalt the value of his glory. To that end he seeks to display it, to oppose those who belittle it, and to vindicate it from all contempt. It is clearly the uppermost reality in his affections. He loves his glory infinitely…. A moment’s reflection reveals the inexorable justice of this fact. God would be unrighteous (just as we would) if he valued anything more than what is supremely valuable.^[10]

For God to allow the pervasive wickedness and idolatry of Canaan to persist, contrary to his design for the world, to defend his character against charges of vindictiveness and violence, he would only be violating the laws of logic. A supremely valuable God would eliminate his rivals in the land he was giving his people to establish his altar. God alone is the Creator and everything else is a creature, for St. Paul says that “all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist,” (Col. 1:16‒17). He is the potter with the right to mold his clay as he pleases. This does not mean that God gets an exception from the laws of morality that he has imposed on everyone else, but rather that the laws of morality should be understood in light of the purpose for which they exist. Specifically, God’s hatred for violence must be understood in light of God’s image in man and his desire for their good and his own glory. When man turns away from the one for whom he has been created, he forsakes his own good and God’s glory and pursues a course of violence and death. “All who hate me love death” (Prov. 8:36).

In addition to his love for his own glory, Yahweh loves his children enough to forbid them any compromise with it that could come back to ensnare them. Moses warns in Deuteronomy 12:30, “take care that you be not ensnared to follow them, after they have been destroyed before you that you do not inquire about their gods.” Proverbs 5:22 says, “The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him, and he is held fast in the cords of his sin.” Yahweh desired that the people of Israel completely drive out the Canaanites so that they would not be exposed to their detestable practices that would only corrupt them. Drawing on recent archeological discovery as well Canaanite literature such as the Ras Shamra Tablets, Bible scholar Gleason Archer concludes “it was impossible for pure faith and worship to be maintained in Israel except by the complete elimination of the Canaanites themselves” given the indigenous, cultic worship practices of the Canaanites, including infant sacrifice and religious prostitution.^[11] By way of illustration, it is preferable to employ violence to prevent children from being exposed to sexual molestation or exploitation. We recognize that children exposed to such things are likely to suffer long-term effects and can become abusers themselves as they grow into adulthood. Likewise, allowing the sexual perversions and cultic rituals of the Canaanites to persist as well as the sacrifice of infants and gross idolatries would expose the Israelites to vile practices that would be a source of temptation. This is not merely a theoretical argument. The history of Israel bears this out as the worship of Baal and Ashtoreth was repeatedly incorporated into the worship of Yahweh (I Kings 11:4‒11) and children were offered up as sacrifices under Manasseh (2 Kings 21:6). Yet, despite the wretchedness of the Canaanites’ sin, even at the eleventh hour, the free offering of grace and forgiveness was available to all those who would believe and join the covenant people of God as Rahab did.

Once the true worship of God was established in the land, Yahweh would continue to use violence even against his own people in order to root out the sin and idolatry that ensnared them. In I Samuel 3, Yahweh speaks to Samuel at night, telling him of the impending fall of the house of Eli due to the corruption of the priesthood under his leadership. Hophni and Phineas, the sons of Eli, were guilty of nothing less than committing the “abomination of desolation” in the tabernacle of God.^[12] They robbed worshipers by pulling the sacrifice from the fire before it had been cooked so as to acquire a larger portion for themselves. More importantly, they also robbed from God by taking the fat portions instead of burning the fat to the Lord. This robbing of God is similar to the sin of Achan in stealing a portion of the spoils from Jericho, which had been dedicated to the Lord alone (Joshua 7). The story of the execution of Achan along with his entire family is a particularly horrifying story where it seems that punishment meted out is unusually cruel for the mere disobedience of taking some of the wealth of Jericho. Properly understood, however, Achan’s sin was a grave offense against Yahweh in that he was robbing Him of his tithe. Yahweh had delivered the city of Jericho to the people of Israel by supernatural means. The city was to be devoted to destruction as an offering to God (cherem). It was an act of thanksgiving for what God had done for them and an act of faith in trusting what God would do for them in giving them the fruits of the remainder of the land. Grasping for some of the wealth of the city of Jericho was simultaneously an act of theft, covetousness, unbelief, and sacrilege. By hiding the stolen treasure in his tent, he condemned his family also to destruction, which was not a typical practice of judgment according to Deuteronomy 24. Matthew Henry comments that Achan’s family likely acted as accessories after the fact in helping Achan to conceal his sin rather than exposing it.^[13] Thus, Achan’s death and the death of his family served as a grave reminder to the people of Israel that it was Yahweh who was giving them the land and it was by his blessing they would prosper in the land. Like Achan and his family, Hophni and Phineas, along with their father Eli who overlooked abuses in the days of the judges, would be brought down in God’s wrath.

Understanding the abomination of the sins of Achan’s and Eli’s families sheds light on another troublesome episode in which Yahweh commands the use of violence to utterly destroy a people. King Saul was commanded to devote the Amalekites to destruction in 1 Samuel 14. Saul failed to obey Yahweh’s command and instead thought it better to spare the herds of the Amalekites for sacrifices as well as their king, Agag. Saul claimed that his disobedience was motivated by a desire to use the spared animals for sacrifices. As pious as Saul’s excuse sounded, Peter Leithart explains that he was in effect committing the same sin as Achan and Eli’s sons: he was stealing from God.

This terminology [sacrifice to Yahweh your God] normally refers to ‘peace offering,’ and that implies that Saul was planning to eat animals that were supposed to be devoted entirely to God. Saul apparently thought he was making a good excuse, but it only made things worse. He was admitting that he took some of the Lord’s goods for himself; he virtually admitted to being a Hophni.^[14]

The fierce judgment against Achan and his family, the house of Eli, and Saul should be understood for the acts of sacrilege they were. The loving God of the New Testament likewise swiftly punished Ananias and Saphira for a similar offense, demonstrating his consistency from age to age. Stealing from the Creator of heaven and earth and perverting his worship is no trifling matter.

Finally, the violence depicted in Scripture must be understood within its broader theological context. When reading a story from beginning to end, we do not judge characters based solely on their actions in one chapter or scene, but rather on the entirety of the story to understand why the characters acted as they did. As an illustration, in Victor Hugo’s classic Les Miserables, Jean Val Jean escapes from prison after being recaptured by Javert for breaking his parole years earlier. Considering this event on its own, we could deem Val Jean to be merely an escaped convict avoiding just punishment for his crime. However, the reader also learns that Val Jean has made a promise to Fantine, a dying and destitute prostitute, to care for her daughter, Cossette, as a father. Val Jean’s prison escape and attempt to evade the law is driven by a superior duty to do right in God’s eyes by keeping his promise to care for an orphan girl. Likewise, Scripture must be read as a complete story rather than a series of isolated episodes. This requires the reader to look to the theological purpose of the text within the broader narrative. The God who in the same text claims to be the prince of peace and to have breathed out every word of Scripture must have had a reason for including such troubling narratives of violence in the canon. How could the writers and redactors have failed to notice such inconsistency and allowed such embarrassing passages in the text? When seeking to understand the theological interpretation of a text, the reader must shift the line of questioning to such questions as “why was this text preserved in the canon? What does God reveal about himself and his will? And what does this message mean in the context of the whole Bible?”^[15] It is impossible to make sense of the particulars without an understanding of the whole. If God is the author of all of Scripture, the reader should be looking to ascertain the theological import of every passage across diverse genres. In the words of Sidney Greidanus, “theological interpretation seeks to hear God’s voice in the Scriptures; it seeks to probe beyond mere historical reconstruction and verbal meanings to a discernment of the message of God in the Scriptures.”^[16]

All of Scripture aims toward the fulfillment of the promise made in Genesis 3:15, that the seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent, and the implications of that fulfilled promise. While this promise is ultimately fulfilled on the cross, it is also progressively fulfilled in parts through types in the Old Testament.

Yahweh’s first act of violent destruction occurs in the flood narrative in which he condemns the whole earth in judgment because it was “filled with violence” (Gen. 6:11, 13). The violent act of Cain in murdering his brother had spread over the inhabited earth such that Yahweh’s verdict on all humanity was that it was “corrupt,” a word repeated three times in two verses (v.11, 12). The word for corrupt is shachath which means “to go to ruin” or “to be destroyed.”^[17] Taken together, Yahweh saw the world as already being destroyed by violence and that the end of man was near: “The end of all flesh has come before Me” (v.13). Left to itself, humanity would have ended its existence on the earth through violence. Yahweh’s regret and grief and verse 6 speak to Yahweh’s knowledge that his image bearers are destroying each other rather than reflecting his glory. Thus, Yahweh intervened with a flood, which was an act of judgment, but also was an act of mercy that ensured the human race would be preserved through Noah’s family. The violence employed by God in the flood serves to extend the life of humanity on the earth.

In the exodus, Yahweh plagues the Egyptians to the point of taking the life of the first-born son of all those in the land of Egypt who did not cover their door posts with blood. He then, reminiscent of the flood, drowned Pharoah and his armies after purposefully baiting them into the Red Sea. Yet the larger story of Scripture reveals that the purpose of these acts was to teach the children of Israel the nature of his salvation. Salvation from death came to those who acted in faith, painting the door post red. Israel was not only being rescued through the Red Sea, but being baptized in it, set apart as Yahweh’s covenant people. Rather than appreciating the magnitude of the miracle of the Red Sea waters parting in front of him, Pharaoh charged through, hoping to use Yahweh’s supernatural power against him. The fact that he parted the waters for some did not mean he had a duty to keep them parted for all. Violent destruction against God’s enemies is an act of mercy to rescue a people from slavery and to preserve a nation that was to be a blessing to the nations rather than an oppressor of the nations as Egypt was.

As previously discussed, the violence employed during Joshua’s invasion of the land of Canaan occurred after centuries in which Yahweh mercifully provided an opportunity to repent and displayed his purity and holiness in contrast to the vile practices of the Canaanites that would corrupt the children of Israel. However, the account in Joshua also provides another link in the Old Testament history of redemption. Joshua (Yehoshua) is the Hebrew name of Jesus the Messiah. He leads the people of Israel home in the land that they might establish a renewed sanctuary as existed in the Garden of Eden that might be extended to the rest of the world. Joshua is a warrior who typifies Christ’s victory over Satan and the powers of darkness. Israel’s conquest is presented as a symbolic deliverance for the rest of the world in Judges 1 where Adoni-Bezek, who had conquered seventy kings, is conquered by the tribe of Judah. “Israel is the savior of the ‘seventy nations of the world.’ The gentiles are delivered from Satan’s grasp by the actions of the priestly nation.”^[18] Joshua’s marriage to Rahab, wherein she becomes part of the lineage of Jesus Christ, points to the fact that there is redemption for the Gentiles as well as the Jews.

The book of Judges is replete with graphic scenes of violence as Yahweh raises up a series of deliverers to save his people who have fallen into captivity of one kind or another as judgment for their idolatry. Most of these judges engage in violence for self-defense or to end oppression. However, Samson’s actions are more questionable. Samson often provokes violence, easily resorts to violence when he is wronged, and is by far the most deadly. Furthermore, he is the only judge that acts when the Spirit of the Lord is upon him. Thus, his acts of slaughter against the Philistines are not merely descriptive but seem to have Yahweh’s blessing. Indeed, they do. At this point in Israel’s history, they have no fallen so far that they no longer cry out for deliverance as they had earlier times but have accommodated themselves to Philistine rule. Thus, the angel of the Lord appears to a barren woman and promises that her seed would begin to deliver Israel from the Philistines. But how does one deliver a lethargic people who are blind to their need for deliverance? Samson was used by Yahweh to pick a fight with the Philistines. It began with Samson marrying a Philistine woman. Though this was not a wise decision and likely motivated by Samson’s own lustful desires (14:3: “she is right in my eyes”), it would be used by Yahweh who sought an opportunity against the Philistines. In every episode of Samson’s life in Judges 14‒16, as the Philistines find a solution to the problem of Samson that would restore a peaceful status quo, Samson only intensifies the fight, and more Philistines are slaughtered.^[19] Samson’s fellow countrymen in Israel prefer the peace and respectability rather than giving offense to their foreign rulers and even offer to bind Samson and deliver him over to the Philistines. Commentator Dale Ralph Davis makes the following poignant conclusion:

It is always a dark day in the history of Yahweh’s people when they are content to allow his enemies to hold sway. Something is wrong with us when we no longer despise our true enemies. Such enmity is the gift of God. In the wake of our initial faithlessness Yahweh declared he was imposing enmity between the Serpent’s seed and the woman’s seed (Gen. 3:15). This divisiveness, this hostility came from Yahweh.^[20]

What a privilege to have a king who desires the salvation of his people even more than they do!

In the age of the kings that follows, each of Israel’s first three kings are presented in the text as a savior and redeemer of God’s people faced with a test reminiscent of Adam in the Garden of Eden, who failed to guard against the serpent. Once Saul was adopted by Samuel and designated to be his heir to rule Israel as their first king, he was faced with the threat of Nahash the Ammonite who threatened to conquer Jabesh-Gilead. The name “Nahash” means serpent.^[21] The author of the text sets up Saul as a new Adam who must succeed where the first Adam failed to drive the serpent from the garden. Saul ultimately failed in his calling as a second Adam to redeem Israel and God’s spirit departed from him.

David was then anointed by Samuel to be the next king. Following his anointing, David, like Saul, is called upon to pass a test whereby he must use violence to defeat a serpent-like creature, the Philistine champion, Goliath. The first thing the reader learns about Goliath is that he is a giant (“six cubits and a span”, I Sam. 17:4), a call back to the Anakim in the land of Canaan that Joshua had defeated. A lengthy description of Goliath’s weapons and armor follows, in which Goliath is said to be a coat of scales (qasqeseth) a word that is used elsewhere in Scripture only for animals.^[22] Thus, I Samuel 17 presents a new Joshua fighting against a creature covered in scales, recalling the experience of Adam in the Garden and indicating the spiritual nature of the battle that is to ensue. David is God’s representative, and the head of the serpent rises once again to kill Yahweh’s deliverer. David not only strikes Goliath’s forehead with a stone, but completely removes his head and takes it to Jerusalem, leaving no doubt as to his victory over God’s enemy.

Once the reader recognizes this pattern of anointing followed by a challenge from a serpent figure, he is then able to deal with Solomon’s more controversial use of violence to claim the crown. Unlike Saul defending Jabesh-Gilead by defeating Nahash and David defending Yahweh’s honor against the blasphemies of Goliath, Solomon conducts a purge of David’s enemies, which includes the execution of his older brother who is rival claimant to the throne. For this, Solomon is not condemned by God, but rather commended and rewarded. He is given unprecedented riches in addition to great wisdom as well as the privilege and honor of building God’s house. How can such violence in the pursuit of power be justified? The details surrounding these events strongly suggest that this is not a mere dynastic dispute between two brothers but is another attack by the serpent against God’s chosen one. It is another partial fulfillment of the seed of the woman crushing the head of the serpent as Bathsheba plays a prominent role in the narrative. Her seed, Solomon, is the next second-Adam figure who was to complete what David could not because he was a man of blood. Solomon, whose name is derived from shalom, was to be the King of Peace whose kingdom was to extend from the Euphrates to the ends of the earth (Ps. 72). Solomon was to establish the worship of God in the temple and spread the wisdom of God to the surrounding nations. In Solomon, the promises of Deuteronomy 4:6-8 was to be fulfilled as the nations would look to Israel and marvel at the wisdom of God’s law and his nearness to His people. On the other hand, Solomon’s rival is introduced to the text boasting the words, “I will be king!”, attempting to seize the throne behind King David’s back, reminiscent of Satan. Adonijah then offered sacrifices to God at the Stone of Zoheleth, meaning slithering, directing the reader to recall again the conflict in the Garden of Eden.^[23] Moreover, Adonijah allied himself with Joab, a man who had proven willing to kill repeatedly to advance his own ends. Solomon graciously forgave Adonijah and let him live until he learned that Adonijah had not ceased his grasping for the throne in attempting to marry Abishag, who was part of David’s household. Thus, Solomon is left with no choice but to eliminate the one who would threaten the line through whom Christ would come to redeem the world. Furthermore, he will not let the sins of his father’s regime carried out by Joab to carry over into his kingdom. Thus, again and again, violence and destruction is never employed for its own sake, but does play a role in preserving God’s plan of redemption and blessing for the whole world. The work that Yahweh does in Scripture is a work that is fully incarnated. The story advances by means of human deliverers who are under attack by the serpent, who must repeatedly have his head bruised until the Messiah would inflict the fatal blow by giving himself up to the violence of men on the cross.

Paul says in I Corinthians 10:6 that the events in the Old Testament narratives “took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did,” and in II Timothy 3:16, he writes that all Scripture is God-breathed and “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” Thus, the violent commands and depictions in the Old Testament are instructive for the Christian to know and to emulate. Christians need not hide from nor be embarrassed by Yahweh’s use of destruction and violence. However, the application of these narrative texts for the Christian under the New Covenant is not a simple “go and do likewise.” We need not reduce the stories to mere myths or illustrations, denying their historicity, to affirm the value of story to illustrate or instruct us as to how to live. Understanding the wrath of God as depicted in the Old Testament historical books serves two purposes. First, it allows the Christian to pursue peace and forgiveness with the full confidence that vengeance is the Lord’s. The prayers of the Psalms that cry out for God’s justice to be done against David’s enemies should also be the prayers on the lips of saints today as they wait upon the Lord’s deliverance. It is precisely because Yahweh does not allow the guilty to go unpunished that the Christian can be relieved of the burden of revenge. Secondly, the stories of the Old Testament taken together teach us about our need for a savior. They present a savior that is fully incarnated and who enters into history with a family tree of flawed ancestors who serve as types of the one who would ultimately bring salvation. In the Incarnation, Christ does not merely take on human flesh and the DNA of a human being, he becomes the seed of a particular woman, the member of a particular family, with a particular family tree. The Old Testament narratives tell the story of how God protected that particular line of the human race, even with violence, so that the Redeemer of the world could be brought into it. They also show us how much Yahweh hates sin. The grace and peace that the birth of Christ brings is all the more remarkable in light of the holiness and jealousy for Yahweh has for his own glory. Jesus Christ as the ultimate fulfillment of God’s redemptive plan transforms the applications of these narratives into the fight of the Christian against sin. God’s war against the Canaanites becomes our violent war against idolatry in our own lives. The establishment of God’s altar in the land becomes our task to establish the worship of God in spirit and truth through the preaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments.

Notes

1. The word for violence here is shod and refers to destruction or ruin as distinct from chamas, which is a sinful use of force. This further supports the point that Yahweh does not act with chamas (see note 8), but destruction is brought about as a natural result of the violent actions of the wicked. Strong’s Hebrew: 2555. חָמָס (Chamas), accessed December 1, 2023, https://biblehub.com/hebrew/strongs_2555.htm. ↑
2. Peter J. Leithart, “Violence,” 2013 Wheaton Theology Conference – “Christian Political Witness” at Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois, April 19, 2013, accessed December 1, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BQ_b7cd1Is. ↑
3. Strong’s Hebrew: 2555. חָמָס (Chamas). ↑
4. Gerald Bray, God Is Love: A Biblical and Systematic Theology, 140‒141. ↑
5. See Peter Enns, “God Lets His Children Tell the Story”: An Angle on God’s Violence in the Old Testament, accessed December 1^st, 2023. https://thebiblefornormalpeople.com/god-lets-his-children-tell-the-story-an-angle-on-gods-violence-in-the-old-testament/. ↑
6. Strong’s Hebrew: 2764. חֵ֫רֶם (Cherem) — cursed, accessed December 1, 2023, https://biblehub.com/hebrew/2764.htm. ↑
7. Copan & Flanagan, 59‒60. ↑
8. Copan & Flannagan, 76‒82. ↑
9. Peter J. Leithart, A House for My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2000), 107‒109. “Joshua conquers the land through faithful worship.” ↑
10. John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist, (Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Books, 1996), 43. ↑
11. Gleason L. Archer, Jr., A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, (Chicago: Moody Press, 1974), 274. ↑
12. Peter J. Leithart, A Son to Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel, 51. ↑
13. Matthew Henry, Commentary on Joshua 8 Matthew Henry, Bible Gateway, accessed December 5, 2023, https://www.biblegateway.com/resources/matthew-henry/Josh.7.16‒Josh.7.26. ↑
14. Leithart, A Son to Me, 95. ↑
15. Sidney Greidanus, The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text: Interpreting and Preaching Biblical Literature (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 102. ↑
16. Ibid, 103. ↑
17. Strong’s Hebrew 7843. שָׁחַת (shachath) — perhaps to go to ruin, accessed December 1, 2023, https://biblehub.com/strongs/hebrew/7843.htm. ↑
18. Jordan, 5. Jordan connects the seventy kings conquered by Adoni-Bezek to the seventy nations listed in the table of nations in Genesis 10. Symbolically, the conquest of Canaan represents the deliverance of the nations under the new Joshua. ↑
19. See Dale Ralph Davis, Judges: Such a Great Salvation (Fearn, Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 2000), 175‒179. ↑
20. Ibid, 180 ↑
21. Leithart, A Son to Me, 81. ↑
22. Ibid, 106‒107. ↑
23. Peter J. Leithart, 1 & 2 Kings (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2016), 37. ↑

 

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