Understanding Violence in Old Testament - Psalm 139

Psalm 139 is one of the most beloved of the psalms. It beautifully express God’s nearness:

“You created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.’ (Ps 139:13-14)

Yet beginning at verse 19 there is a clear shift both thematically and emotionally. What begins as a psalm of intimacy and closeness to God suddenly shifts into a tirade of hatred:

“If only you would slay the wicked, O God! Away from me, you bloodthirsty men!... I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies.” (Ps 139:19, 22)

The raw hatred expressed here is disturbing, especially if we see this psalm as a model of prayer. As Christians we know it is wrong to pray for the death of our enemies and cultivate “complete hatred” (v 22). So how can we understand this psalm? Viewing this from the perspective of a screenwriter or actor, one would need to immediately ask what the emotional motivation was that triggered this shift? What breaks the psalmist out of the gentle rhapsody of feeling sheltered and initiate with God, into his sudden outburst of hatred? What is the personal back-story that accounts for this emotional and thematic shift in the narrative?

One clue is that we see that the psalmist's hatred is directed against “men of blood” (v 19), that is, against men of violence whom the psalmist wants to be “kept far away from.” When he wishes that God would “kill the wicked” therefore, this is clearly not meant in the context of Psalm 51 where David confesses his sins. In fact, the Hebrew word rasa translated as “wicked” is never used reflexively in the psalms to refer one’s self, but always refers to the other, to "them." This Hebrew word rasa ("wicked") is also frequently coupled with violence in the psalms:

“The Lord... hates the wicked and the one who loves violence” (Ps 11:15)

“...the wicked who do me violence, my deadly enemies who surround me” (Ps 17:9)

“Guard me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked; preserve me from violent men (Ps 140:5)

So the word rasa is used very much in the same way as we use the term “bad” people in the context of terrorists and child abductors. As with those emotionally charged themes, here too there is a history of hurt behind the psalmist’s words. Likely they or someone they love were the victim of violence, and now they are lashing out in their hurt. A friend of mine had a girl from Israel live with her family as an exchange student. This girl had seen Palestinians inflicting violence on little children, and one day confessed to my friend through tears “I hate them! I want them to suffer, I want their children to suffer like ours have! I know that’s wrong, but I don’t know how to stop. I just hate them so much.” If we read this psalm in that context, of emotional pain and trauma then the abrupt shift makes sense. It also shed light on the closing two verses:

“23 Search me God and know my-heart. Examine me and know my troubled thoughts. 24 See if the way of pain is in me, and lead me in way eternal.”

Verse 23 is an echo of the opening line of this psalm “God, you search and know me,” (v 1) which launches the psalmist into the beautiful description of god’s intimate knowledge of our inmost being. Here he adds “...and know my troubled thoughts” (v 23). This is frequently translated as “anxious thoughts” and as a result I, and many others, have read this in the context of assurance from doubt, as a verse of comfort when I doubt God’s love for me. I still think this is a perfectly legitimate way to read this—a psalm can take on new meaning as the Spirit uses it to speak into the context of our lives—but here I am convinced that in the original context the “troubled heart” that the psalmist speaks of is the one that caused him in pain and anger to be pulled out of worship and into his outburst of hatred.

His thoughts of worship and intimacy are troubled, disturbed, interrupted, by violence. This takes us into the next line “See if the way of pain is in me” (v 24). The Hebrew word here is otsev meaning pain or suffering, but many translations have instead “the way of wickedness” (NRSV) or “offensive way” (NIV) which both lose the direct emotional connection this term has to the very real hurt expressed in this psalm. Here is someone whose heart is "troubled" by violence, they are hurting, and because of this they lash out in anger. They are stuck in the “way of pain,” the way of hurting and being hurt, are praying that they would be brought out of this road of hurt, and instead be placed on “the eternal way” which is not characterized by hurt and violence, but by life.

Most psalms begin with a lament, and end in praise. Here the order is reversed: It begins in praise, and ends in anguish, hatred, and pain. So we need to look back to vv 1-18 to find the answer to the psalmist's troubled angry heart at the end. The message of the psalm, if we look back to these beautiful opening lines, is that God knows our troubled hearts, God knows our pain, and even our darkness, even when we “make our bed in hell” (v 8), God can “make that darkness into light” (v 12). Even our hatred and pain can be transformed and redeemed by the God who knows us. God meets us there in our darkness and there in that embrace can turn that darkness into light.

The bitter reality of war

My friends at Picture Atlantic have a new album out called Dulce et Decorum Est which is Latin for "It is sweet and good". It's the title of a famous poem from World War I by Wilfred Owen which painfully captures the bitter reality of war,

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori.

The last line translated from the Latin is "it is sweet and right to die for your country"

I see that boy drowning from mustard gas, his desperate eyes of looking into mine. I curse the night that is war, and I pray God's comfort and strength for everyone who has lost a loved one, and for those who are in the middle of that hell. I just have to believe that Jesus is stronger than all the death and pain we can dish out in this broken world.

Penal substitution and the OT narrative of judgment

Andrew Perriman responding to my blog on a non-penal understanding of Isa 53 proposes that while we should not see the Servant Song as a picture of the satisfaction of the demands of justice, he does want to retain a penal view understood in the context of the Old Testament narrative. He writes that,


“There is at least a difference to note between God directly punishing Jesus in order to satisfy the demands of justice and Jesus being implicated in the direct punishment of Israel (in order to satisfy the demands of the Law).”


This is indeed much more Jewish and historical than the classical Calvinist presentation of penal substitution, but it is something I would also want to ultimately reject as well, in particular that last part about “punishment... in order to satisfy the demands of the Law.” The reason not because I reject the biblical narrative, but because I think this only tells half the story.

Much of the book of Isaiah indeed conveys exactly this above narrative: Israel has sinned and now, Isaiah tells them over and over, they are suffering calamity, oppression, and death for their sin. This is not just in Isaiah, it is all over the OT. Andrew writes further that, “in the biblical setting we should recall that sickness is a consequence of Israel’s failure to keep the covenant (cf. Deut. 28:20-22).” Again this is quite true. In the Old Testament mindset, sickness is conceived of as both impurity, and punishment from God.

While this represents the broad picture of sickness in the Hebrew Scriptures, it is important to note that the Old Testament does not present a single static view, but a dynamic one containing internal critiques and developing understandings of who God is. In the book of Job for instance we find a divine critique of the view of Job’s friends, who assumed that Job’s afflictions must have come as the result of his sin. In contrast to their judgment, Job is declared by God to be “a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil” (Job 1 :8). The rest of the book that follows proceeds to give us one long and colorful protest against judging the sick and suffering. Similarly, in Isaiah we again find a critique of the connection of sickness with sin in the story of the suffering servant who, Isaiah tells us, was falsely considered “struck down by God, and afflicted” (Isa 53:4). Yet it is through the righteous suffering of the servant that healing is to come to Israel: “by his bruises we are healed” (Isa 53:5). One might even say that the suffering servant song serves as an internal critique of the view in Isaiah itself that suffering comes as the result of sin.

This inner-biblical critique of the view that sickness and suffering are punishment for sin finds its strongest statement in the gospels. At times Jesus seems to associate sickness with sin (for example in the healing of the paralytic Lk 5:20ff), and other times he explicitly denies it (as with the blind man in in Jn 9:2-3), his focus throughout however is never on ascribing blame, but that “the works of God might be displayed” through a reversal of the curse of sickness and affliction. Andrew is again spot on when he writes, “when Jesus heals the sick, it is to be understood as a sign that the curse is being lifted, that forgiveness is being offered to Israel.” The paradigmatic statement of Jesus here is “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Lk 5:31–32). Here a connection is indeed drawn between “sinners” and “those who are sick,” but the order is reversed: instead of saying that the sick are guilty, he is saying that sin is an illness in need of healing, rather than judgment. This reflects a significant shift: even if sickness is the result of sin, God’s action in Jesus is now to reverse that judgment via healing.

Now here's the part that I think Andrew leaves out: The primary way in which sickness is expressed in the gospels is not in terms of God’s curse, but of demonic affliction. By the time of the gospels, a major shift had occurred in Judaism, and the idea that affliction and sickness stemmed from Satan had become widespread. So while there was still the sense in Second Temple Judaism that Satan served as an “agent of God’s wrath,” and thus that sickness was ultimately the result of God’s judgment, there was now also the notion that sickness came from “the enemy.” This later focus is what we observe in Jesus, who saw the Satanic reign as something to be opposed and overcome. Jesus frames his healing ministry in terms of the kingdom of God advancing against Satan’s kingdom (cf. Lk 11:17–20). This approach to sickness carries over into the approach Jesus took to sin: people are in need of being liberated from both sickness and sin. Jesus "came for sinners" because "it is the sick who need a doctor." Here we have a more sophisticated understanding of sin and sickness: it is not just something to be quarantined, it is something to be healed. The full narrative is not "do good and be blessed, do bad and be cursed" but a way to make the rotten pure and new again.

That is why I would ultimately disagree with a view of the atonement that views Jesus as bearing the “punishment of Israel in order to satisfy the demands of the Law.” In one sense this may be true. I would agree that (as Martin Hengel puts it) Jesus bears the full weight of human wretchedness. But I have a big problem with the idea that this “satisfies” the “demand” of God’s law. The picture I see in the NT and the early church is that the punishment itself is seen as evil, and identified with the will of the devil and not with God’s will. It is something that needs to be opposed and overcome, not fulfilled or satisfied.

God did not kill Jesus, nor did justice or the law. Injustice did. Evil did. We did. As Peter says on Pentecost, “wicked men put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead.” (Acts 2:23) That’s Isaiah 53 in one sentence.

How to do a Bible study in Hebrew even if you don't know Hebrew

People are always impressed when you can talk about what the original Hebrew or Greek means in a Bible study. So I thought I would share an easy way to look up words in the original biblical Hebrew. It's easy to do, can greatly expand your understanding of God's word, and will only cost you 50 bucks.

First the free part: look up a passage in the Bible using the Greek and Hebrew concordance function of Blue Letter Bible. You can search for a passage in the Bible and it will show you the corresponding Hebrew or Greek text for that verse. Just hit the "show me" button below to see an example of Psalm 34:2 (it will open in a new tab so you can continue reading).

You can see there that verse in the NASB and the corresponding Hebrew lemmas for each word. Click on the Strong's number for a word and it will open a page that will give you a definition for it. Pretty awesome. If you want to look up your own verse, just click on the "C" to the left of your verse.

Now comes the money part. The dictionary. There are two sections, one called "outline of biblical usage" which is not a dictionary at all. Don't use that. Below that is the famous Gesenius lexicon. It's not bad, but it is quite dated (this one is from 1847!) so you should really have something more up to date one. It can be quite challenging to find a good Hebrew dictionary. Some like the HALOT are outrageously expensive, and others like the BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs) looks like a bunch of gibberish to non-specialists and really doesn't give definitions at all. Fortunately for Hebrew there is the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (TWOT) which is reasonoallby priced and very practical to use. It gives long, detailed, and understandable definitions of all important Hebrew words, and what's more: you don't need to know Hebrew to look stuff up in it. Blueletterbible.com gives you both the Strong's number, and even the TWOT number which you can use to find your word in it.

So let's try that out with Psalm 34:1-2. The NASB reads

My soul will make its boast in the LORD; The humble will hear it and rejoice.

If you look up the word translated "humble" you'll find it can also mean "oppressed" which is how that line is rendered in the NIV

My soul will boast in the LORD; let the afflicted hear and rejoice.

Or how about if we look up the word translated "rejoice." It's not really the kind of thing anyone says outside of a religious context. Even from the Gesenius we can see that the word has to do with having a joyful disposition. So what if we translated it more in the way we talk today and said "let the afflicted hear and be happy"? This can help us to think more about what the text is actually saying where the familiar religious words tend to just roll over us. Of course you could go on and on like this, which is the point. It's a fairly simple way to dig into a text and see things in it that you might have missed otherwise by exploring it in the original language.