“The Lord Is a Man of
War”
“Stretch out your hand over the sea, so that the water may come back upon the Egyptians” (Ex 14:26). God’s words to Moses. A death sentence for the Egyptians. The narrator explains their fate in a single sentence: “The waters returned and covered [them]; not one of them remained” (Ex 14:28). Immediately following this scene, in the next chapter of Exodus, Moses and the Israelites sing a victory song: “Horse and rider [the Lord] has thrown into the sea…The Lord is a man of war” (Ex 15:1, 3).[1]
I heard once the story of “a dedicated lay leader in an evangelical church, who in mid-life set out to read the Bible for the first time. He was first surprised, then shocked, and finally outraged by the frequency and ferocity of divinely initiated and sanctioned violence in the Old Testament. About halfway through the book of Job, he shut his Bible never to open it again and has not set foot inside a church since.”[2] Today’s scripture may not offend our sensibilities as much those other Old Testament texts in which God commands the annihilation of an entire people. After all, we generally like seeing the bad guys get their just desserts. It might feel sort of good to watch those Egyptian bullies drown from a distance. But today’s story portrays precisely the kind of God that disturbs many Christian readers. A God who is—as Moses and the Israelites put it—“a man of war.”
Christ “Is the Image
of the Invisible God”
Is this “man of war” the same person we see in Jesus Christ? Paul tells us that Jesus was the very “image of the invisible God,” in whom “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Col 1:15, 19). In other words, if you want to know what God looks like, look to Jesus. The Jesus who says things like, “Love your enemies, do good to those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (Luke 6:27-28). The Jesus who says, “Turn the other cheek” (6:28). The Jesus who tells us (in our gospel lectionary scripture for today) to forgive one another not seven times, but seven times seventy (Matt 18:22)—which is to say, even after we lose count. If you want to know what God looks like, look to the Jesus who blesses the peacemakers and calls them “children of God,” which suggests that God is the supreme peacemaker. Look to the Jesus who did not fight back against the Roman and Jewish leaders who put him to death but proclaimed forgiveness on the cross. Look to the Jesus who did not breathe vengeance or threats against the ones who betrayed him, the ones who deserted him, and the ones who killed him; rather his first public word after the resurrection, was, “Peace” (John 20:19). Look to the Jesus whose “salvation” is prophesied to take the very form of “forgiveness” and will—so the prophecy goes—“guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:77, 79).
I could go on and on, but you get the picture. The “man of war” depicted in Exodus, who purposefully brings down the waves on all the Egyptian army, seems a far cry from the Christ whose way is forgiveness and the patient, painstaking process of peace.
There is a simple resolution to this dilemma. Even among the earliest Christians, some readers have concluded that the God of the Old Testament is different than the God of the New Testament. One is barbaric, one is loving. One is vengeful, one is forgiving. The problem with this approach is that it runs counter to Jesus’ own understanding. Jesus was a faithful reader of Jewish scripture. When he articulated his mission, he used the words of the prophets (e.g., Luke 4:18-19). When he prayed, he used the words of the Psalms (e.g., Mark 15:34; Luke 23:46). When he spoke about God, he drew from the stories of Father Abraham and Moses (e.g., Matt 8:11; 22:32; Mark 1:44; 7:10). Make no mistake, the God with whom Jesus was one, whom Jesus addressed with the intimate “Abba,” “Daddy”—that God is the God of the Old Testament.
The Bible Is a
Conversation of Different Interpretations
So we’re left still with the dilemma, “How do we reconcile these different pictures of God? On the one hand, a man of war who destroys enemies. On the other hand, a crucified man who forgives them.”
A helpful starting point for me is the word “Bible.” Did you know that Bible comes from the Greek word biblia, which means “books”? The Bible is plural. It is a library rather than a single document. It is a conversation rather than a speech. In fact, it sometimes resembles a noisy debate filled with many different voices and perspectives. All of this points to a really important fact. The Bible is not God. It is inspired by God (cf. 2 Tim 3:16). It is like an ancient, sacred journal, filled with human experiences of God. What we are reading is ordinary humans like us trying to make sense of extraordinary experiences, experiences which they conclude must be divine. We are not reading science or even history (in the modern sense of that word). We are reading interpretation. And the Bible is filled with different interpretations of God.
A Merciful God in the
Old Testament
Consider these two consecutive sentences from today’s scripture. “Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Israel saw the great work that the LORD did against the Egyptians” (Ex 14:30-31). The first sentence is fact, more or less. The Israelites saw Egyptians who had died. But the second sentence is interpretation. Israel interprets the dead Egyptians as “the great work that the Lord did against the Egyptians” (Ex 14:31). But elsewhere in the Old Testament, judgment is interpreted less as the damage wrought by a warrior God and more as a natural consequence of hurtful behavior. The wisdom tradition in the Old Testament, for instance, talks about judgment in terms that are comparable to karma. Listen to these verses: “The nations have sunk in the pit that they made; in the net that they hid has their own foot been caught” (Ps 9:15). “Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity” (Prov 22:8). From this sort of perspective, Egypt’s demise is a natural consequence of their unjust ways.
The larger point to make here is that Old Testament does not present us with a unified portrait of God. (Neither does the New Testament for that matter. There’s arguably more divine violence in Revelation alone than in all the Old Testament, if you consider that over a third of the human population dies in its pages; cf. Rev 9:18.)
Because many people commonly assume that the God of the Old Testament is vengeful and violent, a plain and simple “man of war,” I would like to highlight just a few of the places in the Old Testament that present a very different portrait of God. Perhaps it is best to begin with what might be called the creed of the Old Testament, a description of God’s character that is repeated so often in the Old Testament that some scholars think it was a statement of confession. You’re probably familiar with it. God is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (e.g., Ex 34:6; Num 14:18; Neh 9:17; Ps 86:15; Ps 103:8; 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jon 4:2; Nah 1:3). Surely it is this merciful God whom Jesus has in mind, when he tells his followers, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). We find this merciful God all over the Old Testament, if we pay close attention. Listen to Micah, “Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over…transgression…[who] does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in showing clemency? You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” (Mic 7:18-19). Fellow prophet Hosea gives voice to this merciful God: “I will not execute my fierce anger…for I am God and not a man…and I will not come in wrath” (Hos 11:9). Or in the Psalms, we find again and again that God’s forgiveness is always on offer, if we but turn toward God: “I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity…and you forgave the guilt of my sin” (Ps 32:5).
It must have been this more merciful portrait of God that inspired Rabbi Yochanan in the third century to reinterpret Israel’s passage out of Egypt. A great Jewish teacher in his time, Rabbi Yochanan seems to have been disturbed by the suggestion of a violent warrior God in the Exodus story. He fills in some of the gaps to the story in a way that seeks to rehabilitate God’s character. He writes that as the Israelites left Egypt, the angels began to sing for joy, but God stopped them, saying, “The work of my hands, the Egyptians, are drowning at sea, and you wish to sing songs?” (Megillah 10b).
The Criterion of
Christ
It is not my place to judge how others interpret scripture. I really appreciate the Romans text in today’s lectionary, where Paul reminds the church in Rome not to quarrel over interpretation and not to judge those who interpret differently, because God welcomes all who interpret in good faith, and they should do so too (Rom 14:1-12). I only want to share how I have come to interpret some of the Bible’s more difficult passages, to show that our tradition (both Christian and Jewish) is not nearly as narrow and rigid as some might suppose. There are many different interpretations of God’s character within scripture itself as well as without.
How I interpret the difficult passages in the Old Testament (and New Testament) that represent God as violent and vengeful, is simple. I interpret them by the criterion of Jesus Christ, whom I believe is the “image of God,” in whom “the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Col 1:15, 19). And I believe that the God whom I see in Jesus, “the prince of peace,” is all over the Old Testament. (We might do well to remember that that title comes from the Old Testament, from Isaiah 9:6.) When I read a story like today’s story, I would heartily affirm its central message: “Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the Egyptians” (Ex 14:30). But according to the criterion of Christ, God saves not through violence but through forgiveness and peace. In my interpretation, Israel’s salvation comes when by Moses’ leadership they awaken to God’s love for them, and they believe they are worthy of freedom, and by God’s grace and a series of unusual events that undermine the power of Pharaoh and Egypt, they walk free.
And I’m with Rabbi Yochanan here. As they leave and the Egyptians are drowned in the sea, God is conflicted. God feels joyful, of course, for the Israelites’ freedom. But also heart-broken for the Egyptians, who are God’s children too.
Prayer
Slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love—
Our experiences are many and diverse,
But they all point to you
And your salvation.
May we be mindful today
Of the ways you have saved us,
And also of the ways that we need saving still.
…
And may we find hope for the future
In scripture’s witness to all the ways
Your salvation has reached us in the past.
In Christ, our savior: Amen.
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