Tag Archives: war

The Bible & War: Old Testament Prophets

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It should be obvious to anyone and everyone by now that I’ve bitten off more than I can chew in this whole endeavor of walking through the Bible gathering insights about war and violence. Nowhere will that be so apparent as in my analysis of the prophets.

The Old Testament prophets lived during the time of the divided kingdom. War was a constant reality for God’s people, usually an ugly reality. Because of their lack of trust in Him, God punished the descendants of Israel through foreign invaders. The prophets make it clear time and again that it is God’s will that these foreigners oppress His people (Isaiah 10:5-6, 22:1-8, 28:1-22, 29:1-4, 30:8-17, Amos 3:1-2, 5:18-20). The prophets don’t call for the Israelites to arm themselves and throw off these invaders; they call for the Israelites to return to God. Would they then be called to take up arms in defense of their people? That question goes unanswered. The key is that they get God to fight for them.

God is seen at times as a warrior God, leading the hosts of heaven against His enemies. (Joel 3:9-11, for example) The understanding is that one day He will march against His enemies. For now He uses earthly armies, both human and insect (see the imagery in Joel of the locust invasion).

The prophets foresee a day when war will be no more (Isaiah 2:2-4; Micah 4:1-3; Hosea 2:18; Zechariah 9:10). God will destroy all weapons and declare peace throughout the world.

What other themes relative to our discussion can you think of that come out in the Old Testament prophets?

The Bible & War: The time of the judges

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Continuing our look at what the Bible has to say about war, we come to the time of the judges.

As we mentioned, the Conquest had been incomplete. As horrified as we may be at the instructions God gave the Israelites, we should be just as horrified at the cost of their not following those instructions. The Promised Land did not become what it was meant to be, because the Israelites spared some of the people that were living there and because they failed to destroy the idols of those people.

During most of the period of the judges, Israel was a nation only in the loosest sense of the word. The best description is “the twelve tribes of Israel,” for this was basically a loose confederation of tribes. The Law established no government, and, as the writer of Judges describes it, “there was king over Israel and each man did what was right in his own eyes.” It wasn’t meant to be that way, of course. As Gideon rightly recognized, God was intended to be the ruler of Israel, and each man should have done what was right in God’s eyes. But that didn’t happen.

They were basically polytheistic, with brief moments of revival and turning to God. During most of this time, they were oppressed by other peoples. God would raise up judges, deliverers of his people who would fight the enemy and free Israel from this foreign domination. At times the judges basically acted alone, like Samson. At other times, they led the entire nation, like Ehud. Most of the time, they directed a few of the twelve tribes, leading them to military victories.

Most of the fighting in the book of Judges is defensive, trying to expel foreign invaders. Some of it, particularly at the beginning of the book, is a continuation of the Conquest. That can be said for almost all of the fighting we see in the Old Testament.

The Bible & War: The Conquest

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The Conquest of the Promised Land is, for many people, a troubling time in Israel’s history. I’ve talked before about God’s ordering the destruction of the peoples of Canaan; I won’t spend time on it now. What I want to focus on is the role of God in the Conquest.

He had promised the Israelites that He would drive out the peoples of this land, little by little. He told them that the battles would not depend on the strength of Israel’s army, but on the strength of Israel’s God.

So, what happened? Why were the Israelites unable to complete the Conquest? The Bible points to their unfaithfulness, beginning with the foolishness of the treaty with the Gibeonites. Later passages suggest that they failed to destroy the idols of the nations of Canaan, and that this failure was the biggest contributor to their failings.

In the end, we need to see that the Conquest was the fulfillment of a promise made to Abraham and repeated to his descendants. These battles were fought to secure the land of their inheritance. God was also using them to punish the people of Canaan. Israel was, in this specific instance, the tool of God for punishing the nations, just as were Assyria, Babylon, etc. in later times. This case is unique in that God used His people for this task, but I think that had to do with the Promise.

To some degree, many of the battles fought by Saul and David would have to be included in the Conquest, for they were securing land which had been promised to the Israelites. By my calculations, the Conquest ended with David’s wars, but I’m open to correction on that.

The Bible & War: What the Law of Moses says

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Now we turn our attention to the Law. To a good Jew, of course, all of what we’ve been discussing so far is part of the Torah, what we call the Law. But I’m speaking specifically of the legal code found in Exodus through Deuteronomy.

A commenter the other day suggested that arguments for pacifism are based on “Thou shalt not kill” from the Ten Commandments. I’ve yet to read a pacifist who presented that as a main argument, nor have I seen it in the discussion on this blog. It doesn’t take much reading to realize that the very next chapter in Exodus lays out situations in which the death penalty is to be applied! No, those four words from the Ten Commandments lend little to the discussion.

A better insight into the Law’s views toward war are found in Deuteronomy 20. Some interesting things in that chapter:

  • Priests play a major role in the army’s activities
  • Broad exceptions are granted to those who choose not to fight
  • Differences are made between battles within the Promised Land and battles outside the Promised Land
  • Tactics avoid harming food-bearing trees

Admittedly, that third point rocked my world recently. I had a nice little theology about war, and Deuteronomy 20:10-15 doesn’t fit! I’m still looking to find balance. I had believed (and taught) that wars in the Old Testament fell into two categories: self-defense and conquest of the Promised Land. Lo and behold, these verses don’t fit either of those categories. While I can’t think of an example of this, of the Israelites fighting merely to conquer a distant city, the Law does allow for it. Sounds like a license for “imperialism.”

So do we just write it off to the sort of things that happened before God became a Christian? Or how do we understand these verses?

The Bible & War: Battles in the wilderness

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As the book of Exodus begins, the Israelites are in Egypt and quickly become slaves there. As I mentioned yesterday, it’s only logical to suppose that their oppressors disarmed them.

When they left Egypt, they had weapons, enough to fight against the Amalekites when attacked in Exodus 17. Best guess is that this was part of the spoils they took from the Egyptian people. In Exodus 32, the Levites were told that each man should strap a sword to his side to kill the Israelites who were worshiping the golden calf.

On the way to the Promised Land, the Israelites had to fight several battles. In Numbers 21, the Israelites were attacked by the king of Arad, either because he thought they were invading his land or merely because he saw a chance to plunder a virtually defenseless people. In retaliation, the Israelites “utterly destroyed” all of the cities in his kingdom.

Farther down in the same chapter, the Israelites request permission to pass through the Amorite nation ruled by Sihon. Sihon responded by attacking the Israelites. God’s people won the battle and took possession of the land of Sihon. The same thing happened with Og, king of Bashan.

These were the battles that weren’t actually part of the conquest of the Promised Land but were fought en route to the Promised Land. The slave nation was now able to defend itself. We’ll look next at what the Law has to say about war, before talking about the Conquest.