Ravi Zacharias talks on God and War in the Old Testament
The rules of war for God’s people are laid down in Deuteronomy 20, and they represent a control of justice, fairness, and kindness in the use of the sword. Special hardship conditions were defined as a ground for excusing individual soldiers from military duty until those conditions were cleared (Deut. 20:5–7). Even those who had no such excuse but were simply afraid and reluctant to fight were likewise allowed to go home (v. 8). Unlike the contemporary armies of other nations, who might attack a city without giving it an opportunity to surrender on terms (1 Sam. 11:2–3), the armies of Israel were required to grant a city an opportunity to surrender without bloodshed before moving on to mount a full-scale siege and destruction of the city. In this context, the women and children were to be spared from death and cared for by their captors (Deut. 20:14). Only in the case of the particularly depraved inhabitants of Canaan itself was there to be total destruction (v. 16). The reason given to God-sanctioned war and destruction of the inhabitants of Canaan was the likely corruption of the moral and spiritual standards of Israelite society, in areas such as child sacrifice: “Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the LORD your God” (v. 18).
Consider two historic examples from Joshua and 1 Samuel. In the case of the destruction of Jericho (Joshua 6), God had given the people more than four hundred years to turn from abominable practices such as child sacrifice—while Israel endured slavery in Egypt. The killing of the inhabitants of Jericho by the Israelite army is a means of God’s judgment. Incidentally, those who did repent and show favor to Joshua were spared, namely the prostitute Rahab, who appears in Matthew’s genealogy of Christ.
The second example is from 1 Samuel 15, where Saul is commanded to wipe out the Amalekites. Saul displeases God by only killing that which is weak and despised and keeping the rest of the plunder for himself. This example and the destruction of Jericho are exceptions to the rules for war laid out in Deuteronomy 20, which offer a chance to surrender and other constraints on the best possible way to conduct war.16 It is important to note here that Israel is most often on the receiving end of God’s judgment rather than doling it out to others. In these two cases where intensive killing is done by Israel with the approval of God, the particular immorality of their enemies is cited as the reason. There is no sense of a carte blanche for Israel to kill and maim, but rather a period of struggle for this people to get established in a land that is conquered and reconquered by many groups.
What this means for the character of the God of the Bible is that he is revealed as the One who judges evil. Until I moved to London, I found this idea quite hard to understand. But in the community I live in, we are surrounded by the everyday reality of evil—from child prostitution to domestic violence, from drug dealers preying on the vulnerable to fatal shootings. We have stood with a mother in our congregation who buried her son, who had been stabbed in a contract killing. These painful incidents cause one to cry out for justice and to stand up for the victims. When the Bible talks about God judging evil, this is what it means. He will not allow perpetrators to go unpunished; even if they evade human justice, divine justice will stand.
Some postmoderns equate these biblical examples of violence with the acts of violence committed by Muhammad, the early Muslims, and subsequent followers of Islam to the present day. One of the clear distinctions between the wars in the Old Testament and the acts of violence committed and encouraged by Muhammad is that the biblical accounts occur in the context of a nation-state going to war against other nations. They occur within a limited time period that comes to a clear end rather than existing as generic examples that could be taken up by individuals or groups. The reader of the Old Testament is certainly not encouraged to take up arms, a view clearly seconded by reading the New Testament. The same cannot be said of the Qur’an.
How Does the God Who Orders War Relate to the God of the New Testament? Many people pit the picture of a violent God who destroys his enemies on the battlefield in the Old Testament against the New Testament understanding of God as a God of love who sends his Son to the cross to die for evil people.17 In fact, Jesus actually tells his disciple Peter to “put your sword back in its place” (Matt. 26:52). However, we do see the awesome, judging, powerful God who destroys evil in the New Testament in such places as Revelation 20:11–15:
Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
The Bible is the story of a cosmic struggle between good and evil from beginning to end. A Christian reading of the Old Testament interprets the battles depicted in the context of this cosmic struggle. Thus the battle of Jericho, the wars against the southern coalition of Canaanite kings, and the wars against the northern coalition in Canaan are historical examples of this larger struggle. God fought on behalf of many of the judges in the Old Testament as well as for faithful kings such as David and Jehoshaphat. At times God even used foreign nations to fight against Israel’s enemies in ways that helped his people. For example, the prophet Nahum announced the appearance of the divine warrior who would fight (in this instance through the Babylonians) against Israel’s longtime oppressor Assyria (Nah. 2:1–4).
When Israel disobeyed God, they too faced his judgment: “The LORD will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will come at them from one direction but flee from them in seven, and you will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms on earth” (Deut. 28:25). Further, there is an entire book of the Bible devoted to giving an emotional and theological response to the fall of Jerusalem, the book of Lamentations. This book paints a picture of God as a warrior. But in this case the warrior was not protecting his people; he was acting as their enemy: “The Lord is like an enemy; he has swallowed up Israel. He has swallowed up all her palaces and destroyed her strongholds. He has multiplied mourning and lamentation for the Daughter of Judah” (Lam. 2:5). There is no sense, then, of Israel being used to judge others while remaining immune from God’s judgment.
Commands from God to go into battle and kill people may seem to contradict the idea of a God of love, but the Christian interprets these passages in the context of the overall story of the Bible that introduces us to a God who is just and good, who fights against evil and judges those who fight against him. The coming of Christ and the beginning of the New Testament institute a new era in a biblical understanding of battle. Jesus appears as the divine warrior, but he has intensified and heightened the battle. No longer is the battle a physical battle against flesh-and-blood enemies over a piece of land. Now it is directed toward spiritual powers and authorities.
The exorcisms of the New Testament point toward this. Here we see the violent nature of the conflict. Jesus has authority over all the powers in the universe, even though they assert themselves against him. It is ultimately in his death on the cross that he demonstrates his supremacy over that which would oppose him. Jesus’ ascension into heaven is described in military language when Psalm 68 is referred to in Ephesians 4:7–8: “But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. This is why it says: ‘When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men.’ ”
Jesus defeated the powers and authorities, not by killing people but by dying for them. This transition from the prior way of warfare in terms of historic physical battles over land to the new era of spiritual warfare was dramatically demonstrated when Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane. The Gospels describe how Jesus’ disciple Peter grabbed a sword and chopped off the ear of the high priest’s servant (Matt. 26:47–56; Mark 14:43–52; Luke 22:47–53; John 18:1–11). Jesus responded by healing the man’s ear and saying, “Put your sword back in its place . . . for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?” (Matt. 26:52–54).
The object of Christ’s warfare focuses on spiritual realities, and the weapons used are spiritual, not physical. This becomes one of the most important metaphors for living the Christian life. Ephesians 6:10–18 is the famous passage that employs military metaphors for the spiritual task of following Christ and living a prayerful, godly life. Paul writes, “Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (vv. 11–12).
Jesus has shown that it is now a betrayal of the gospel to take up physical arms explicitly to promote the interests of Christ. Thus there is some discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments when it comes to warfare, yet this discontinuity is not absolute.18 We also see continuity, especially in light of the New Testament’s picture of the final judgment, and its form of warfare that uses spiritual weapons to demolish spiritual strongholds.
Zacharias, R. (2008). Beyond opinion: living the faith that we defend. Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
Consider two historic examples from Joshua and 1 Samuel. In the case of the destruction of Jericho (Joshua 6), God had given the people more than four hundred years to turn from abominable practices such as child sacrifice—while Israel endured slavery in Egypt. The killing of the inhabitants of Jericho by the Israelite army is a means of God’s judgment. Incidentally, those who did repent and show favor to Joshua were spared, namely the prostitute Rahab, who appears in Matthew’s genealogy of Christ.
The second example is from 1 Samuel 15, where Saul is commanded to wipe out the Amalekites. Saul displeases God by only killing that which is weak and despised and keeping the rest of the plunder for himself. This example and the destruction of Jericho are exceptions to the rules for war laid out in Deuteronomy 20, which offer a chance to surrender and other constraints on the best possible way to conduct war.16 It is important to note here that Israel is most often on the receiving end of God’s judgment rather than doling it out to others. In these two cases where intensive killing is done by Israel with the approval of God, the particular immorality of their enemies is cited as the reason. There is no sense of a carte blanche for Israel to kill and maim, but rather a period of struggle for this people to get established in a land that is conquered and reconquered by many groups.
What this means for the character of the God of the Bible is that he is revealed as the One who judges evil. Until I moved to London, I found this idea quite hard to understand. But in the community I live in, we are surrounded by the everyday reality of evil—from child prostitution to domestic violence, from drug dealers preying on the vulnerable to fatal shootings. We have stood with a mother in our congregation who buried her son, who had been stabbed in a contract killing. These painful incidents cause one to cry out for justice and to stand up for the victims. When the Bible talks about God judging evil, this is what it means. He will not allow perpetrators to go unpunished; even if they evade human justice, divine justice will stand.
Some postmoderns equate these biblical examples of violence with the acts of violence committed by Muhammad, the early Muslims, and subsequent followers of Islam to the present day. One of the clear distinctions between the wars in the Old Testament and the acts of violence committed and encouraged by Muhammad is that the biblical accounts occur in the context of a nation-state going to war against other nations. They occur within a limited time period that comes to a clear end rather than existing as generic examples that could be taken up by individuals or groups. The reader of the Old Testament is certainly not encouraged to take up arms, a view clearly seconded by reading the New Testament. The same cannot be said of the Qur’an.
How Does the God Who Orders War Relate to the God of the New Testament? Many people pit the picture of a violent God who destroys his enemies on the battlefield in the Old Testament against the New Testament understanding of God as a God of love who sends his Son to the cross to die for evil people.17 In fact, Jesus actually tells his disciple Peter to “put your sword back in its place” (Matt. 26:52). However, we do see the awesome, judging, powerful God who destroys evil in the New Testament in such places as Revelation 20:11–15:
Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
The Bible is the story of a cosmic struggle between good and evil from beginning to end. A Christian reading of the Old Testament interprets the battles depicted in the context of this cosmic struggle. Thus the battle of Jericho, the wars against the southern coalition of Canaanite kings, and the wars against the northern coalition in Canaan are historical examples of this larger struggle. God fought on behalf of many of the judges in the Old Testament as well as for faithful kings such as David and Jehoshaphat. At times God even used foreign nations to fight against Israel’s enemies in ways that helped his people. For example, the prophet Nahum announced the appearance of the divine warrior who would fight (in this instance through the Babylonians) against Israel’s longtime oppressor Assyria (Nah. 2:1–4).
When Israel disobeyed God, they too faced his judgment: “The LORD will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will come at them from one direction but flee from them in seven, and you will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms on earth” (Deut. 28:25). Further, there is an entire book of the Bible devoted to giving an emotional and theological response to the fall of Jerusalem, the book of Lamentations. This book paints a picture of God as a warrior. But in this case the warrior was not protecting his people; he was acting as their enemy: “The Lord is like an enemy; he has swallowed up Israel. He has swallowed up all her palaces and destroyed her strongholds. He has multiplied mourning and lamentation for the Daughter of Judah” (Lam. 2:5). There is no sense, then, of Israel being used to judge others while remaining immune from God’s judgment.
Commands from God to go into battle and kill people may seem to contradict the idea of a God of love, but the Christian interprets these passages in the context of the overall story of the Bible that introduces us to a God who is just and good, who fights against evil and judges those who fight against him. The coming of Christ and the beginning of the New Testament institute a new era in a biblical understanding of battle. Jesus appears as the divine warrior, but he has intensified and heightened the battle. No longer is the battle a physical battle against flesh-and-blood enemies over a piece of land. Now it is directed toward spiritual powers and authorities.
The exorcisms of the New Testament point toward this. Here we see the violent nature of the conflict. Jesus has authority over all the powers in the universe, even though they assert themselves against him. It is ultimately in his death on the cross that he demonstrates his supremacy over that which would oppose him. Jesus’ ascension into heaven is described in military language when Psalm 68 is referred to in Ephesians 4:7–8: “But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. This is why it says: ‘When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men.’ ”
Jesus defeated the powers and authorities, not by killing people but by dying for them. This transition from the prior way of warfare in terms of historic physical battles over land to the new era of spiritual warfare was dramatically demonstrated when Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane. The Gospels describe how Jesus’ disciple Peter grabbed a sword and chopped off the ear of the high priest’s servant (Matt. 26:47–56; Mark 14:43–52; Luke 22:47–53; John 18:1–11). Jesus responded by healing the man’s ear and saying, “Put your sword back in its place . . . for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?” (Matt. 26:52–54).
The object of Christ’s warfare focuses on spiritual realities, and the weapons used are spiritual, not physical. This becomes one of the most important metaphors for living the Christian life. Ephesians 6:10–18 is the famous passage that employs military metaphors for the spiritual task of following Christ and living a prayerful, godly life. Paul writes, “Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (vv. 11–12).
Jesus has shown that it is now a betrayal of the gospel to take up physical arms explicitly to promote the interests of Christ. Thus there is some discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments when it comes to warfare, yet this discontinuity is not absolute.18 We also see continuity, especially in light of the New Testament’s picture of the final judgment, and its form of warfare that uses spiritual weapons to demolish spiritual strongholds.
Zacharias, R. (2008). Beyond opinion: living the faith that we defend. Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
