The Lord Is a Man of War(?): How the Hebrew Bible Paves the Way for Christ’s Peaceful Kingdom. Part 2 of 3

This is part two of a three part series by guest blogger Brennan T. Hughes.

Brennan T. (“Bren”) Hughes, a former minister, is a musician, licensed attorney and criminal-law scholar.  He lives with his family in Kentucky Coal Country.  The author of the spiritual empowerment book, Heaven’s Muscle, Bren shares his writings, videos, and music at BrenHughes.com.  He holds a master’s degree in biblical languages from Freed-Hardeman University, a master of divinity from Lipscomb University, and a law degree from Vanderbilt University.

The Lord Is a Man of War(?): How the Hebrew Bible Paves the Way for Christ’s Peaceful Kingdom.    Part 2 of 3.

And now back to the human manifestation of violence in the biblical narrative.  Cain was the first to use violence to solve his problems.  The earth’s first human death was not natural, but a murder.  An envy-driven fratricide.  As machinations of murder condensed like inky dewdrops in his heart, God warned Cain that his anger was an existential threat he needed to conquer (Genesis 4:6-7).  And yet, after murdering the brother whom he was supposed to protect, Cain’s punishment was not the eye-for-an-eye one might anticipate.  His sentence was something greater than he could bear (Genesis 4:13).  Death would be preferable.  Cain’s banishment—his sentence to a life of loneliness and estrangement—is essentially equivalent to what people would later call “hell.”

From murder, humanity graduates to war.  War first appears in the biblical story in Genesis 14, where Abraham’s nephew Lot is seized as a hostage in a war between kings.  Somewhat ironically, Abraham ends up fighting alongside the rebel kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, whose cities will later be destroyed for their wickedness.  After the dust clears, the king-priest Melchizedek of Salem delivers a prophetic interpretation to Abram’s victory:  God Most High had delivered Abram’s enemies into his hand (Genesis 14: 19-20).  The biblical precedent is established that God is a participant in warfare.  He takes sides, and he can turn the tables.

Next, in Exodus 1, Pharaoh enslaves the Israelites because he fears that war might flare up and the descendants of Joseph would side with his enemies.  The threat of attack becomes an excuse for oppression.  The exodus occurs when YHWH decides to battle singlehandedly against Egypt and its gods through the terror of the ten plagues.  Pharaoh’s final defeat at the Red Sea prompts Moses to sing, “The Lord is a man of war” (Ex. 15:3).

Israel’s first battle takes place in Exodus 17, where God enables them to defeat Amalek so long as Moses’ arms are raised.  “I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven,” the Lord tells Moses, “the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.”

In Exodus 23:22, God promises to be an enemy to Israel’s enemies, an adversary to their adversaries.  He will send an angel before the conquering Israelites to soften up the Canaanites for their “blotting out.”  The chief concern in the rest of the chapter is that the Israelites must refuse to worship the gods of these condemned peoples.

The book of Numbers begins with an atmosphere of preparation for battle.  The purpose of the census for which the book is named is to determine the number of Israelites who “are able to go to war,” a refrain repeated twelve times in the first chapter.  Yet Israel’s next battle proves to be a failure because the armies went to war presumptuously (Numbers 15:40-45).  God was not fighting with them.  The remainder of Numbers is peppered with tales of Israelite military victories, with reference being made to a “Book of the Wars of the Lord” (21:14).  Here is how Balaam describes God’s people in his prophetic oracles:

Behold, a people!  As a lioness it rises up and as a lion it lifts itself; it does not lie down until it has devoured the prey and drunk the blood of the slain. . .  God brings him out of Egypt and is for him like the horns of the wild ox; he shall eat up the nations, his adversaries, and shall break their bones in pieces and pierce them through with his arrows (Numbers 23:24; 24:8).

Notice that the successful battles are called the “Wars of the Lord.”  Not the wars of Israel.  Rather, according to the editors of the Torah, God is fighting through Israel.  The cosmic/heavenly realm has declared a jihad against certain nations in the material/physical realm.  In this sense, the wars that continue through the Deuteronomistic History (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings) are sort of an eschatological event.  For the pagans of Canaan, Judgment Day has come early.  Yet it was a long time coming, for God had announced to Abraham generations before that he was waiting for the iniquity of the Amorites to become complete before he unleashed his destruction (Genesis 15:16).

One of the more disturbing aspects of this “YHWH-war” is the concept of herem, or “the ban.”  In the conquest of Canaan, sometimes God would order the complete destruction of a city’s inhabitants and culture—including women and children: “we captured all [Sihon’s] cities at that time and devoted to destruction every city, men, women, and children.  We left no survivors.  Only the livestock we took as spoil for ourselves, with the plunder of the cities that we captured” (Deuteronomy 2:34-35; cf. 3:6).

The text contains a metaphor.  The herem cities that are utterly destroyed under “the ban” are actually a sacrifice given over completely to the Lord.  Like that which is holy (qadosh), the herem is set apart for God.  Yet the herem is offensive to him, so its separation is for the purpose of destruction.  The verbal form of this word is applied to most of cities destroyed by Joshua (e.g., Jericho, Ai, Makkedah, Hazor).  The ban also extended beyond Pagan strongholds to encompass any Israelite cities that tolerated idolatry.  (Deuteronomy 13:12-15).

What is the theological value of such complete destruction of Canaanite culture?  In addition to the concept of judgment explored above, another reading is that God was trying to create a “sacred space,” a new sort of Eden where Israel could observe the Law without distraction and flourish as an example to the nations.  This seems to be God’s stated objective in Deuteronomy 4:5-8.  As he did with Noah, God is making a fresh start with his people.  But instead of wiping out the remainder of pagan humanity, YHWH plans to woo them using Israel as his city set on a hill.

Human violence is not the Hebrew Bible’s only divinely commanded bloodshed.  The religious system which Paul described as a “ministry of death” (2 Corinthians 3:7) also demanded the ritualistic slaughter of countless thousands of animals each year.  Much like its polytheistic ANE counterparts, ancient Judaism (as described in its foundational texts) was a religion dripping with blood.

Fast-forwarding to the days of the kingdom of Israel, we learn that David is a “man of war” from his youth (1 Samuel 16:18).  This history of violence is cited as the reason why David is not permitted to build God’s temple himself, but must pass the job on to his son (1 Chronicles 28:3).  At least in the later perspective of the chronicler, a true man of God must also be a man of peace.  David was God’s friend at a time when godliness entailed being a warrior.  But there is an expectation, even in the David story, that war, having served its purpose, should no longer be part of the life of God’s people.

— Brennan T. Hughes