Original Meaning

HAMAN IS GONE, but the evil he set in motion lives on in the decree of death against the Jewish people. The king’s anger has subsided with Haman’s execution. This suggests the ruthless king was not angry because Haman had plotted to annihilate a whole race of people in his empire, even if they were Esther’s people, for that danger was still threatening. Apparently the king’s pride had been hurt by Haman’s affront to his honor, first by the decree against his queen’s people and then by falling on her couch. Ironically, Haman’s injured pride had driven him to plot the destruction of Mordecai and the Jews; the king’s injured pride had driven him to execute Haman.1 There is perhaps no better illustration of this in the Bible than “pride goes before destruction” (Prov. 16:18). The death of Haman sets a sequence of reversals into motion.

Because Haman was executed as a traitor to the throne, his property was confiscated. Herodotus reports an instance where the property of an executed traitor reverted to the king, who could dispose of it at will.2 In this case because Esther was the person wronged by Haman, the king bestows Haman’s estate on her.

Immediately, Esther summons Mordecai into Xerxes’ presence, who gives to Mordecai, the man who had years before saved the king’s life, the signet ring previously worn by Haman. In a great reversal Mordecai is vested with all the power and authority previously wielded by Haman (cf. 3:10). Having received Haman’s estate, Esther in turn appoints Mordecai over all the wealth and property previously owned by Haman. Ironically, Haman’s plot to destroy Mordecai leads to Mordecai’s acquiring both Haman’s position and property. As Fox points out, this scene restructures the relationship between Esther and Mordecai. “She now is a source and agent of wealth and empowerment for Mordecai.”3

Esther pleads with Xerxes to “put an end to” Haman’s evil death decree that still stands against her people (v. 3); but the king is unable to do so, for the decree of death is irrevocable. Xerxes’ bravado that had previously assured granting Esther’s request is now humiliated. All the power and wealth of the world cannot cancel death. Now, however, Esther and Mordecai have power and authority equal to Haman’s. The only solution to their dilemma is to write another decree to counteract the first with equal force.

The royal secretaries are summoned, just as they had been previously summoned more than two months earlier by Haman (cf. 3:12). Just as they had done for Haman, the scribes write Mordecai’s orders to “the satraps, governors and nobles” (v. 9). However, Mordecai’s decree is addressed also to “the Jews,” who are mentioned first in the list. The effect is to put the Jews of Persia on the same level as the rulers and to give them a distinct identity among the peoples of Persia. The people who were the helpless target of evil are now empowered.

As Haman had done, Mordecai writes in the name of King Xerxes. His message is that the Jews may take whatever measures are necessary to defend themselves. He seals the edict with the king’s signet ring—the same one used by Haman to seal the decree of death against them—and sends out the edict by mounted couriers to every part of the empire (v. 10; cf. 3:12). Like Haman’s edict, a copy of Mordecai’s words was to be issued as law in every province and made known to the people of every nationality so that preparations could be made for that day (8:13; cf. 3:14).

In order to counteract Haman’s decree, in other words, Mordecai has just effected a legalized war between the Jews of the Persian empire and any people of any nationality who might set themselves against the Jews. Just as Haman’s edict had been posted publicly in Susa, Mordecai’s edict was also to be posted in Susa (8:14; cf. 3:15). Civil war would be authorized even in the citadel of the king.

The author of Esther has constructed a contrast of reversals in chiastic order (see chart in comments on ch. 6). Haman’s original edict had caused “great mourning among the Jews, with fasting, weeping and wailing. Many lay in sackcloth and ashes” (4:3). After that decree had gone out, Mordecai had clothed himself in sackcloth and ashes and went through the city, wailing loudly and bitterly. In such a state he could not enter the king’s gate, much less the king’s presence (see comments on 4:1). Now, as the counter-decree goes out, the reverse occurs. Mordecai comes from the very presence of the king “wearing royal garments of blue and white, a large crown of gold and a purple robe of fine linen,” and he goes throughout the city in joyous procession (8:15; cf. 4:1–2). Mordecai, the Jew condemned to death, has risen from sackcloth and ashes to take the royal position of the one who had condemned him. His decree also brought “joy and gladness among the Jews, with feasting and celebrating” (8:17).

Haman’s sudden death and Mordecai’s rise to power brought such fear to “many people of other nationalities” that they “became Jews” (8:17). The Hebrew word translated “became Jews” occurs only here in the Old Testament, and its meaning is debated. How are we to understand this “conversion”? Some have argued that the Persians recognized the improbable series of events as the hand of God and thus responded in true, heartfelt conversion to the God of the Jews.

Frederic Bush expresses doubt whether this word denoted a sincere religious conversion.4 As he points out, the people living throughout the empire would neither have known about nor seen the improbable series of events that led to Haman’s downfall, especially since most of them occurred in the private quarters of the palace in Susa. They would have known only two things: They had a law written by Haman, who was now dead, and a second law written by Mordecai the Jew, who now held the reigns of power. Bush concludes:

The enemies of the Jews might have been aware of an unnamed power ranged on the side of the Jews, but in the context it can hardly be some sense of the numinous that prompts the non-Jewish peoples to profess to be Jews, let alone a religious awe of the God of the Jews. It is surely, rather, the dread of the superior political and military power now wielded by Mordecai and the Jewish community that prompts their profession.5

Bridging Contexts

WITH THIS CHAPTER, as noted above, events leading to the deliverance of the Jews begin to reverse the previous events that initiated the conflict and threat. In almost identical words, Mordecai receives the signet ring once given to Haman, summons the royal scribes, and writes in the name of the king.

A translation issue. The decree of Mordecai echoes the words of Haman’s decree. Haman effected as public law the order “to destroy, kill and annihilate all the Jews—young and old, women and little children—on a single day, the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the month of Adar, and to plunder their goods” (3:13). Mordecai’s decree effected as public law the right of the Jews “to destroy, kill and annihilate any armed force of any nationality or province that might attack them and their women and children; and to plunder the property of their enemies . . . [on] the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the month of Adar” (8:11–12).

The extent of the parity between Haman’s decree of death and Mordecai’s counter-decree is obscured by the NIV translation. The NIV renders “women and children” as part of the compound direct object of the verb “attack,” translating the decree as giving the Jews permission to destroy any armed force that would “attack them [the Jews] and their women and children.” This reading of the Hebrew is defended by J. Baldwin, a Christian commentator, as well as by R. Gordis, a Jewish exegete.6 It is, however, a minority view among commentators and translators, who instead construe the Hebrew text of verse 11 to read: “. . . to destroy, kill, and annihilate any armed force and women and children of any nationality that might attack them.”7 In this reading of the Hebrew text, the Jews were given exactly the same terms of destruction that had been pronounced against them, their women, and their children.

Although she disagrees with this, Joyce Baldwin recognizes that commentators have been “almost unanimous” that, in fact, Mordecai’s decree authorized the Jews to kill not only the men who attacked them, but the wives and children of those men as well. Those few commentators, like Baldwin, who have opposed this reading of the Hebrew have generally done so on the grounds that it seems to create a moral problem, for God’s people should not be party to the same kind of mass slaughter that had been directed against their non-warring dependents. On her part, Baldwin explains that such interpreters and translators have misread the Hebrew because they understand the Esther story to be an example of “the retribution theme of the Old Testament by permitting, and even glorying in, the outworking of ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ (Ex. 21:23–25), so proving its barbarity by comparison with the New.”8 In other words, she sees such interpreters to be motivated by a Christian agenda of amplifying the contrast between the Old and New Testaments on the issue of retributive violence.

However, not all interpreters who are offended by reading the decree as giving permission to the Jews to kill the women and children of their enemies are Christian. As already noted, Jewish scholar R. Gordis, like Baldwin, attempts to eliminate the perceived moral difficulty by reading “children” and “wives” in the Hebrew text as the third direct object of “attacking” (“. . . attacking them, [their] women and [their] children”), rather than in apposition with “armed force.” His rendering, however, is criticized by M. Fox, also a Jewish scholar, who writes that Gordis’s “valiant effort to eliminate the moral difficulty . . . does not (regrettably) accord with the Hebrew, which lacks ‘their’ before ‘children’ and ‘wives’ . . . even if the Jews did not carry out this aspect of Mordecai’s decree, the decree does allow it.”9

Christian scholar F. Bush criticizes the NIV reading endorsed by Baldwin by pointing out that the parallelism between Haman’s decree in 3:13 and Mordecai’s in 8:11 “clearly reveals” that the women and children of the attackers are to be destroyed:10

3:13	to destroy	all the Jews . . .	children and women	and to despoil them
8:11	to destroy	all the forces . . . attacking them	children and women	and to despoil them

It is the literary structure of reversals occurring throughout the book that favors the majority translation, not any agenda that contrasts the barbarity of the Old Testament in contrast to the New. If there is ambiguity in the Hebrew text of verse 11, the literary structure of reversals operating elsewhere throughout the book of Esther weighs in favor of translating verse 11 (against the NIV) as “to destroy, kill and annihilate any armed force, and their women and children, of any nationality or province that might attack them. . . .” If this is indeed the wording of Mordecai’s decree intended by the author, what then can be said to address the moral question of the Jews’ being given permission to kill the children and wives of their enemies?

A moral problem. One way to play down the moral question that surfaces with this translation is to note that even though the decree permitted the taking of plunder, the Jews did not in fact do so (9:10, 15–16). In a similar vein, therefore, as Fox’s comments above suggest, even though the decree gave the Jews permission to kill the women and children of their enemies, it was not necessarily carried out. In fact, when the killing in Susa is reported, the body count refers only to “men” (9:6, 12). However, when the final count of 75,000 dead is given, the reference is more generally to the “enemies” (9:16).

Yet some interpreters see a moral problem even if the attack by the Jews was limited to Persian men, because such an attack seems to be unwarranted in light of what is perceived to be the Persian pro-Jewish sentiment after Mordecai comes to power. For instance, S. Goldman calls the attack “a massacre, a Jewish bloodbath against Persians.”11 But he does not see a Jewish bloodbath against Persians to be a “disservice” to the Jewish name, because

the narrative of the Jewish attack on the Persians is an example of Jewish self-criticism, a bold questioning of the Jewish self-image. . . . Irony here produces a leveling effect: Jews behave like Persians, and Persians behave like Jews. . . . People turn out to be not so easily divisible as we have been led to think. Who is a Jew? Who is a Persian? The irony of a Jewish writer raising such questions is itself an ethical act. This irony means there is no superior race: “Jews in their actions, are not essentially different from the heathen.”12

But a close reading of the text gives no reason to believe the Jews killed the Persians unprovoked, as Goldman suggests. The decree permitted the Jews only to defend themselves against attackers, making it a matter of self-defense. Presumably the Persians who were killed had in fact attacked the Jews, regardless of whatever pro-Jewish sentiment others held. If the Jews did attack their enemies indiscriminately, their actions exceeded the permission of the decree.

By Goldman’s understanding, the book of Esther served as a self-criticism of the Jews in Persia, showing them to share in the violent human nature of their Gentile neighbors. This view is certainly consistent with the Lord’s much earlier admonition to ancient Israel as they were about to enter the Promised Land (Deut. 9:4–6):

After the Lord your God has driven them [the Anakites] out before you, do not say to yourself, “The Lord has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.” No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is going to drive them out before you. It is not because of your righteousness or your integrity that you are going in to take possession of their land; but on account of the wickedness of these nations, the Lord your God will drive them out before you, to accomplish what he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Understand, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people. (emphasis added)

God’s election of his people was not based on their own inherent moral superiority over the nations they would subdue. In fact, the reason the Jews had been later expelled from the Promised Land and were living in exile was because they and their kings had become as wicked as the Gentile nations. The Jews of Persia were capable of the same extent and decree of violence as their pagan neighbors.

The concept of holy war and its cessation. Perhaps this passage raises a moral question in the mind of modern readers that the original readers, and perhaps even the author, would not have recognized because they were familiar with the concept and practice of holy war.13 Baldwin suggests an essential component in understanding the moral dimension of holy war when she writes that the decree as understood to give permission to kill the women and children of the Jews’ enemies highlights its barbarity “by comparison with the New [Testament]” (emphasis added).14 Why is it that retributive violence is found throughout the Old Testament but in the New Testament Jesus teaches us to love our enemies as ourselves (Matt. 5:44; Luke 6:27, 35)? How are these two contradictory ideas to be understood?

The death of Jesus Christ, the Messiah of Israel, provides the only basis for the cessation of holy war, and the infilling of the Holy Spirit provides the only power by which one may love one’s enemies as oneself. All of the vengeance God’s people would like to wreak on those who practice evil has now been satisfied in the suffering and death of Jesus. He has taken the wages of sin, he has suffered the vengeance of evil. The vengeance due to us for our sins against others and due to them for their sins against us has been satisfied in Jesus’ body on the cross. It is only on the basis of recognizing that the penalty has been paid by Jesus that we can forgive others as we have been forgiven. True holy war in human history has ceased because Jesus has fought its last episode on the cross.

It is no accident of history that the modern nations that still endorse the concept of holy war (Arabic, jihad) are nations that reject the gospel of Jesus Christ and the moral system he commands. The five phases of holy war spanning biblical history and its transformation by the death of Jesus are explained by T. Longman:15

(1) God fights for Israel

(2) God fights against Israel

(3) God gives hope for future reconciliation

(4) Jesus Christ is the divine warrior who ends holy war on the earth

(5) The coming day of Christ will destroy all evildoers.

The brutality of the Esther story that has so troubled interpreters and its relationship to the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament must be understood within the redemptive-historical context of holy war and Jesus’ role in it.

As pointed out in the comments on 3:13, Haman’s edict against the Jews of Persia echoed what was to be the fate of the Amalekites, whom Haman represents. Would God’s people actually suffer the same fate as the wicked nations because of their disobedience to the covenant? Would God use Haman the Agagite to destroy the Jews exactly as their ancestors the Israelites had been commanded to destroy the Agagites? Such a reversal would have been more than tragically ironic. In historical hindsight, it would have ended God’s redemptive work in human history and signaled his abandonment to sin of not only his people Israel, but all humanity. In comparing the harsh terms of Mordecai’s counter-edict to Haman’s, both must be viewed in the greater context of biblical history.

Throughout Esther 8, the author has unfolded events in words that clearly echo but reverse events from the previous chapters. Therefore, Mordecai’s decree is to be understood as the exact reversal of Haman’s. This argues that the destiny plotted by Haman for the Jews is being turned back on the enemies of the Jews, including enemy wives and children. While the thought of Jewish-perpetrated mass killing may seem reprehensible by standards of modern morality (and probably even more so to readers of Esther on this side of the Nazi holocaust), the wording of Haman’s decree (and subsequently, Mordecai’s) actually echoes the Lord’s words to King Saul given through the prophet Samuel (1 Sam. 15:2–3):

This is what the Lord Almighty says: “I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.” (emphasis added)

The Lord’s words through the prophet Samuel in turn reflect his ancient promise in Exodus 17:8, 14–16, when the Amalekites were the first nation of the world who tried to destroy the Israelites:

The Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim. . . .

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write this on a scroll as something to be remembered and make sure that Joshua hears it, because I will completely blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.”

Moses built an altar and called it The Lord is my Banner. He said, “For hands were lifted up to the throne of the Lord. The Lord will be at war against the Amalekites from generation to generation.”

The promise given by God at the time of the Exodus turned into a command of destruction in Deuteronomy 25:17–19, when the Lord said to his people as they were about to enter the Promised Land:

Remember what the Amalekites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt. When you were weary and worn out, they met you on your journey and cut off all who were lagging behind; they had no fear of God. When the Lord your God gives you rest from all the enemies around you in the land he is giving you to possess as an inheritance, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!

The Amalekites as a people—men, women, and children—are paradigmatic in biblical theology as the enemies of God’s people. God’s double-edged promise turns into God’s command as he sends Israel’s army into battle against them.

Whether consciously or not, Haman has attempted by his decree of death against the Jews to reverse the destiny of destruction, which God promised to the Amalekites, bringing it against God’s own people, the Jewish race. Mordecai’s decree reverses Haman’s and therefore turns that promise of destruction back onto the enemies of the Jews, who were seeking to destroy them. Mordecai’s decree echoes the command of the Lord himself, who throughout the Old Testament declared holy war on the enemies of his people.16 Because that promise of destruction included the wives and children of the Amalekites in 1 Samuel 15, so should the Hebrew be read in Mordecai’s decree in Esther 8:11.

However, there are important differences between the mandate of 1 Samuel 15 and Mordecai’s decree that must not be ignored. Unlike Israel’s King Saul and his army, the Jews of Persia were not to initiate the attack, but only to take whatever measures necessary to defend themselves. The Jews of the Diaspora were to live in peace with their neighbors unless their own existence was threatened. They were then given the right to defend themselves by totally destroying anyone, regardless of nationality, who tried to destroy them. This broadens the definition of their enemy to include any attackers, and at the same time loosens the association of the mandate with its historical roots in the Promised Land. Perhaps the Esther story gave biblical justification for later Jewish writers to call their enemies Amalekites or Agagites, regardless of their nationality. Thus, both God’s promise to protect his people and his command to destroy those who would destroy them are extended beyond the geographical borders of the Promised Land to wherever God’s people are dwelling.

Contemporary Significance

THE CONTEMPORARY SIGNIFICANCE derived from this passage depends on whether or not the reader views its meaning through the cross of Jesus Christ. If the reader does not, then it is indeed difficult to avoid using this text as a biblical rationale for some form of continued “holy” war, as Baruch Goldstein apparently did (see the Introduction). Christians who understand the hermeneutical implications of the cross of Jesus, however, must understand the significance of the passage quite differently.

The destruction of sin. If Haman’s plot had succeeded and the Jewish nation had been annihilated during the reign of Persia, obviously Jesus would not have been born and God’s plan of redemption would have been thwarted. The entire redemptive purpose and promise of God were inseparably bound to the lot of his covenant people. This fact alone, however, does not seem to demand the necessity of killing men, women, and children of other nations. Could not God preserve and protect Jesus’ ancestors without resorting to the violence reported in Esther?

Whether we like it or not, the Old Testament is full of God’s violence against the nations, who are portrayed as being such evil and sinful people that their destruction is the only remedy. Does this mean that there were no “good” people among those nations, people who did not deserve such judgment? This is the question Abraham asked the Lord before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 18:16–33). Far be it from God “to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike.” Abraham’s understanding of God’s justice prompted him to ask the Lord how many righteous people it would take to spare the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Lord indicated a willingness to withhold destruction for the sake of the righteous—even just a handful among the city’s population.

Apparently, however, not even ten righteous people, whether men, women, or children, could be found in Sodom and Gomorrah. Only Lot and his two daughters escaped the destruction of the cities, and that only by virtue of their relationship to Abraham (i.e., being a part of Abraham’s people), not because of their own righteousness. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and other nations in the Old Testament shows that in truth as only God can see it, there are no “good” people who by their own merit are undeserving of destruction. The Old Testament stories of death and destruction illustrate the New Testament teaching, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” and “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 3:23; 6:23).

From the beginning of time God’s war has been against sin and evil. It is easy to think wrongly of sin and evil as being abstractions apart from people. We seem to want God to destroy sin and evil but leave people alone. However, sin and evil do not exist apart from beings who sin and beings who do evil, whether angelic or human. Sin entered the world when Adam and Eve aligned themselves against God (Gen. 3). Because of their separation from God, he pronounced his irrevocable decree of death against them and all their descendants. The nature of sin (singular) is opposition to God, expressed as disobedience to his revealed will, i.e., various sins (plural). Because we are all sinners and evildoers, we all have God’s irrevocable decree of death against us. God could have justly destroyed the earth and everyone on it, for none of us is “good” by God’s high standards. Instead, he chose to issue a counter-decree to redeem a people out of sin and evil and into righteousness, removing them from the realm of his destruction to the realm of deliverance.

God’s counter-decree. In Esther the irrevocable decree of death and the counter-decree of life both issue from one and the same authority—the king’s signet ring sealed both. There has been much discussion in the commentaries whether it is historically true that the laws of Persian kings were irrevocable, since there is no extrabiblical attestation in Herodotus or other sources of this practice. It was not unreasonable for a monarch to refuse to rescind a law once publicly issued, for in doing so he would lose face and it would undermine his authority.17

Even if the author is using poetic license by introducing this element of irrevocability, perhaps he is making a theological point about human destiny. Just as Xerxes king of Persia could not simply rescind the first decree of death, God, King of the universe, cannot simply rescind the decree of death pronounced in the Garden of Eden against humanity. Instead, he issues a counter-decree of life, the gospel of Jesus Christ. Because God did not simply rescind the curse of death on humanity, his counter-decree of redemption necessarily resulted in the incarnation of his Son and in that Son’s death on the cross.

This counter-decree of life was initiated in history long ago when Yahweh chose a people out of all the nations on earth through which he would achieve this purpose of redemption. He set aside a place for his redeemed people to live in peace and security, but it was a land already populated with wicked and sinful peoples. As he sent his people, ancient Israel, into the land, he promised to make a place a for them, which necessarily meant destroying the wicked population already occupying the land. But then he cautioned Israel that the reason why they were receiving the land was not because of their righteousness but because of his grace (see Deut. 9:4–6, quoted above). The Lord warned his people (8:19–20):

If you ever forget the Lord your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed. Like the nations the Lord destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the Lord your God.

Acting as Yahweh’s agency on earth, Israel’s kings were commanded to destroy completely peoples whose wickedness had reached such proportions that they were threatening the very existence of God’s redemptive work through his people. As unsettling as it may be to reflect on the reality of God’s wrath, divine wrath is a necessary complement to God’s love and justice. Marcion, a Christian heretic of the second century, did not understand this, believing instead that the Father of Jesus Christ was too merciful and loving to be the same wrathful God of Old Testament Israel.

If, however, you or a loved one have been the victim of a horrible evil, your innate sense of justice demands that the wrong not simply be overlooked but that the perpetrator face appropriate consequences. To say that God is too loving to punish the wicked implicitly plays off God’s love for the victim against God’s love for the perpetrator. The full extent of God’s love for all of us can be appreciated only by recognizing the full extent of his wrath poured out on Jesus for the sins of the world (John 3:16). It is on the Cross that God’s love and his justice are reconciled.

The essence of holy war in the Old Testament is not about two nations in warfare, one of which happens to be Israel. Holy war is about God warring against sin and evil on the earth. His people were to live in the safety of holiness and righteousness. Their existence as God’s redeemed people was threatened from the beginning by the rest of the world, of which the Amalekites became the paradigm nation. Therefore, the success of God’s plan of redemption required the protection of his people in his war against evil, which required that those people take both offensive and defensive measures to assure their existence. This in turn meant that holy war became necessary whenever their existence was threatened until in the fullness of time, Jesus, the ultimate divine warrior and king of Israel, was born from and for God’s people.

Salvation, in other words, necessarily implies destruction. Salvation’s deepest significance is that people are actually saved from something both terrible and real, and that something is the wrath of God directed toward their sin and evil. Even in the Old Testament, God’s wrath turned against his own people when they degenerated spiritually and morally to the point where they were as bad as the pagan peoples of the world. In judgment under God’s wrath both Israel and Judah were destroyed, their cities burnt, and their people either killed by the sword or sent into a distant exile. Lamentations records Israel’s understanding of God’s wrath turned against his covenant nation (Lam. 2:5–6):

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.

He has laid waste his dwelling like a garden;

he has destroyed his place of meeting.

The Lord has made Zion forget

her appointed feasts and her Sabbaths;

in his fierce anger he has spurned

both king and priest.

The destruction of God’s chosen nation clearly demonstrates that God’s violence is not directed against certain races or nations, but is against sin and evil wherever it is found. The army of ancient Israel was his agency, but when they failed to obey him, they found themselves under the same wrath he had for the nations. He shows no favoritism, regardless of nationality.

When God said in Deuteronomy 9:4, “Do not say to yourself, ‘The Lord has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness,’ ” he declared that there are no inherently “good” people in any nation who by their merit are undeserving of death, including the people he had chosen to redeem. Yet God’s promise and purpose were to save a people from his final destruction of the earth, and that purpose was inseparably bound to the people of his covenant. In his wrath he did not destroy Israel utterly when they turned to sin and evil, for to do so would have meant giving up on his plan to redeem humanity from destruction.

God’s irrevocable decree of death and destruction has been countered by his decree that all who believe in his Son should not perish under his wrath but be delivered into eternal life. The violence of God against sin and evil can therefore be rightly understood only “in the shadow of the cross.”18 Jesus Christ is the ultimate divine warrior and king of Israel, who waged the final war against sin and evil on the cross on behalf of the people God will deliver from final destruction. As Reid and Longman explain,

The paradox of the divine warrior is that while he fights off every effort to hijack Israel’s destiny—whether from enemies without [e.g., Haman] or unfaithfulness within—he is also bearing the suffering of human history within himself. The God of battles carries sin and suffering with his own groans, and finally on the cross draws his sovereign wrath down upon himself.

“Holy war” takes on new meaning in this light. The divine warrior, who formerly drove the sword of Assyria and Babylon into the heart of Israel and Judah, is himself pierced by the same sword, now in the hands of Rome.19

Today’s war against sin and evil. Given Jesus’ death and resurrection, is holy war still a legitimate concept for the way God works in the world today? Was Baruch Goldstein in any way justified for his assault on Purim in 1994 that killed fifty-five Palestinians and wounded 170 (see the Introduction)?

The church of Jesus Christ replaces the army of Israel as the agency of God that wars against sin and evil in the world, and the theater of the battle has moved to the human heart, where sin and evil reside. When the apostle Paul instructs Christians to “put on the full armor of God” (Eph. 6:11) in our fight against sin and evil, that armor is defined by the spiritual qualities of faith, righteousness, and truth. Each Christian faces an individual battle against the sin and evil in his or her own heart. Ultimate victory in this battle is guaranteed because of Jesus’ victory over death and destruction when he rose from the grave and sent the Holy Spirit to empower those who are his to live righteously.

Are Christians now to wage holy war against unbelievers in the same way ancient Israel warred against the pagan peoples? In certain moments of Israel’s history God commanded them to make war against the surrounding nations or they would not have survived. The church’s survival today, however, does not depend on living securely within the boundaries of a particular geographical area. Our battle 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” (Eph. 6:12). Jesus himself teaches that now our battle with our enemies is to be fought with weapons of love (Matt. 5:43), which is impossible without the power of the Holy Spirit. The marching orders of the army led by Jesus Christ are found in Matthew 28:19–20:

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.

It is through the conversion of people from the realm of evil and sin to the kingdom of the goodness and righteousness of Jesus Christ that the victory is now to be won.

Literal, physical holy war was once necessary for the survival of the Messiah’s race until God’s redemptive purposes were actualized in human history on the cross of Jesus Christ. This certainly does not mean that because Jesus has come, the Jewish people are now expendable! However, the Jewish people need Jesus the Messiah, the divine warrior and king, to deliver them from death no more or less than the people of other nations.

The biblical practice of holy war must not be confused with the legitimate right of Israel to exist as a modern nation today. Israel’s existence today cannot be simply equated with the survival of God’s covenant people in the ages before Christ, as if Jesus’ death is irrelevant to the question. The right of Israel as a modern nation to use armed force to defend itself is as legitimate as the right of any other nation, but the continuing practice of holy war is not. Jesus Christ is the only Israelite righteous and just enough to wage holy war with clean hands and a pure heart. His cross is the only truly righteous theater of holy war. The cross of Jesus sanctifies all previous episodes of holy war in Israel’s history and makes any subsequent episode carnal. After the Cross, the continuing practice of “holy war” is everything but holy.