Violence in 2 Kings 1

2 Kings 1 was in the lectionary provision for yesterday and offers food for thought following on from the previous post.

The narrative tells us that twice a captain and his fifty soldiers were destroyed by fire from heaven after Elijah the Tishbite said, "If I am a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty." The third company was spared because their captain requests that the man of God would value the life of the soldiers and their captain.

Readers are not commanded here to resort to violence or encouraged to take up their swords. There can only have been a few people in the history of reading this story who seriously contemplated imitating Elijah; those who did would have quickly discovered that their words are not quite as powerful.

The most thunderous of the twelve disciples of Jesus (Mark 3:17), James and John, felt the urge on one occasion and even they recognised that it would be a good idea to ask Jesus' permission first (Luke 9:54) which of course he did not grant. Read as part of the biblical canon, which includes its reception in the Gospels, the passage can hardly be read as an invitation to violence.

So what is the violence doing? Injured king Ahaziah wanted to consult "Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron" about his life expectancy. According to consistent biblical witness trusting in idols is a sure way to death. The angel of Yahweh makes sure that the king's messengers are intercepted by baal-sear ("a hairy man," verse 8) whose proper name is Elijah ("Yahweh is my God").

This man (ish) is responsible for the fire (esh) but so is the king. It is because the king orders Elijah to "come down" that fire "comes down" on his soldiers ("going up" is used seven times in this chapter, "coming down" ten times; see Peter Leithart, 1 & 2 Kings, 169, for more on the significance of this). The hundred men are a casualty of a war the king of Israel started.

The violence has a positive purpose as well. It demonstrates that the "man of God" has greater power than the king of Israel or the Baal-zebub of Ekron. Arguably this serves to encourage all its readers to trust the word of the prophet even when there is a conflict between the word and government authorities. It also points Christian readers to the incarnate Word of God that is stronger than Beelzebub, the prince of demons.

We see that violence is not inevitable. The captain who humbly submits to Elijah, truly recognising him as a man of God rather than blindly following the orders of his totalitarian king, saves not only himself but his whole company. (We are reminded that much of what we experience is corporate whether it be violence or protection from harm.)

Finally, intriguingly, the angel of Yahweh tells Elijah, "Go down with him; do not be afraid of him." This suggests that the earlier violence may have been an expression of fear. Unlike some other story-tellers in antiquity, biblical narrators are often reticent in offering evaluation and comments, except that 1-2 Kings has one-line summaries which offer a broad evaluation of the various kings. We are not told that Elijah was afraid and therefore called for fire from heaven but we are maybe invitd to contemplate the possibility. We also know that God identifies with his messengers even in some cases in which they overstep the mark, most notably in divine use of Nebuchadnezzar; the readiness with which fire comes from heaven in this story is therefore not unequivocally a divine endorsement of Elijah's call.

2 Kings 1 suggests that there may not be a simple answer to the question of violence. The narrative does not spell out but implies that rebellion against God and fear of powerful people may have something to do with it, as well as the need for people to know where true power lies.

All of this should reduce our potential for violence rather than increase it. If violence is ultimately the result of rebellion against God, we have foresworn this in our baptism. If violence is an expression of fear of others, we have repeated encouragement in the Scriptures to fear God rather than powerful people. If we are concerned about where true power is found we know that the power of Christ is manifest in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). There is no encouragement for us here to rsort to violence, nor reason to overlook this chapter.

Dark Passages in the Bible and the Quran

A few months ago I enjoyed reading Philip Jenkins’ The Lost History of Christianity (2009), so I was intrigued when I saw a link to an essay in the Boston Globe on harsh passages in the Quran and in the Bible.

Jenkins opens by reporting that the September 11 hijackers had been instructed to meditate on two lengthy suras from the Quran which “make for harrowing reading”. 

God promises to “cast terror into the hearts of those who are bent on denying the truth; strike, then, their necks!” (Koran 8.12). God instructs his Muslim followers to kill unbelievers, to capture them, to ambush them (Koran 9.5). Everything contributes to advancing the holy goal: “Strike terror into God’s enemies, and your enemies” (Koran 8.60). 

He then points out that at a more domestic level Sura 4.34 has been used to justify violence. This is how the text reads in a translation offered by Ahmad Shafaat who offers a commentary on the passage:

Men are (meant to be righteous and kind) guardians of women because God has favored some more than others and because they (i.e. men) spend out of their wealth. (In their turn) righteous women are (meant to be) devoted and to guard what God has (willed to be) guarded even though out of sight (of the husband). As for those (women) on whose part you fear ill-will and nasty conduct, admonish them (first), (next) separate them in beds (and last) beat them. But if they obey you, then seek nothing against them. Behold, God is most high and great. (4:34)

I am not a Quran scholar nor even a Quran reader and hence reluctant to say much about these passages. But the following comment by Jenkins prompts me to stress one of what are probably quite a few key differences between the Bible and the Quran:

The Bible contains far more verses praising or urging bloodshed than does the Koran, and biblical violence is often far more extreme, and marked by more indiscriminate savagery.

Is that so? I don’t know. But while Jenkins is right to stress that all Scriptures need interpretation and maybe even right to claim that there is a process of forgetting and remembering passages, he seems to overlook the simple fact that the Bible contains a variety of books and genres which individually and as a canonical whole function very differently from the suras of the Quran.

What is the evidence for the statement above? Jenkins thinks of “frightful portions of the Bible...ordering the total extermination of enemies, of whole families and races - of men, women, and children, and even their livestock, with no quarter granted.” But can we find any such passage in the Bible? I am not so sure. 

There are narratives in which God orders or expects the extermination of a people. Most of these belong to the traditions about the conquest of Canaan. How these stories relate to historical events is much debated today, as is their role and significance for biblical faith. But what is clear is that they are not commands to the reader. They can only be read as “ordering the total extermination” of contemporary “enemies” by an act of imagination and interpretation which is far from obvious.

Jenkins then refers us to Psalm 137 which “begins with the lovely line, ‘By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept’” and “ends by blessing anyone who would seize Babylon’s infants and smash their skulls against the rocks.” It is a frightening prayer, to be sure, but again this pained outcry of an oppressed nation is not a call to arms. 

“Vengeance is mine, says the Lord” (Deuteronomy 32:35) is not a passage Christians should suppress and forget but one we ought to remenber and treasure as a warning against taking vengeance into our own hands (Romans 12:19). 

The Quran was written over a comparatively short period of time with individual suras addressing readers on pretty much the same level, except for the hermeneutical principle that chronologically later passages can abrogate earlier verses. (This is a complicated matter, given that the suras are not arranged in the chronological order of their origin.)

The Bible by contrast was put together over a very long period of time and speaks to readers in many and different ways and only rarely by way of direct command. It has its centre in Jesus Christ who is spoken of as the Lion from the tribe of Judah and presented as a slaughtered Lamb. 

Much, much more would need to be said here, not least because there are other passages to which Jenkins appeals. But my point is that Jenkins seems to have paid no attention to genre and genre is critical for all interpretation. Here is the summary Philip Jenkins offers:

Commands to kill, to commit ethnic cleansing, to institutionalize segregation, to hate and fear other races and religions . . . all are in the Bible, and occur with a far greater frequency than in the Koran. At every stage, we can argue what the passages in question mean, and certainly whether they should have any relevance for later ages. But the fact remains that the words are there, and their inclusion in the scripture means that they are, literally, canonized, no less than in the Muslim scripture.

The majority of biblical passages to which he refers are not in fact commands to readers of the Bible but commands within Biblical stories and some are not even commands at the level of the narrative. Even texts that may legitimately be called commands to the readers implied at first, albeit embedded in narratives (Exodus to Numbers) and speeches (Deuteronomy), are not now canonized as commands, not when we talk about the Christian Bible. There is therefore no need for a “holy amnesia” with regard to “dark passages” in the Bible. Even “texts of terror” are “useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16).