The Prophets and Non-Violence
By
J.R. Hyland
In the eighth century BC, the oracles of Amos, Micah, Hosea,
Isaiah and Jeremiah inaugurated an era in the spiritual and
ethical history of nations that continues in our own time.
These prophets were not reformers of the political-religious
system into which they had been born. They were iconoclasts who
understood that a corrupt system had to be dismantled in order
for a just and ethical society to be established.
They spoke out against the violence of war and the violence of
sacrificial religion. They condemned the exploitation of the poor
and powerless at the hands of a corrupt justice system and told
of a God whose parental love combined the tenderness of a mother
and the protectiveness of a father. And unlike the earlier
prophets who blamed the surrounding nations for the corruption of
the Israelites, men like Amos and Isaiah told the people it was
their own iniquities that brought suffering and calamity upon
them.
These prophets said God spoke through them. But how were they
able to receive a message that generations of religious spokesmen
had refused to hear. There were some brief allusions to similar
concepts that were embedded in the Book of Psalms, but those ideas had never gone beyond an embryonic stage of development.
Most of the Psalms were written circa 1000---950 BC during a time
of unprecedented territorial expansion and prosperity. And during
that time the wars fought by the sons of Israel, under the leadership of King David, confirmed them in the worship of a
violent and partisan deity, a god-of-war, who was celebrated in
many of the Psalms.
"[For David] Yahweh will force all your enemies under the sway of
your scepter in Zion....The Lord is at your right hand. When he
grows angry he shatters kings,he gives the nations their deserts,
smashing their skulls, he heaps the wide world with corpses."
Psalm 110 JB
The psalmists were convinced of their own righteousness and the sinfulness of their enemies and believed that God concurred with
that judgment. "[A Prayer by David] "Come Lord, Oppose my enemies
and defeat them! ..Punish them with the sufferings you have
stored up for them; may there be enough for their children and
some left over for their children's children! But I will see you
because I have done no wrong." Psalm 17:13-15 TEV)
But two hundred years after self-righteousness, war, and revenge
were celebrated in the Psalms, the Latter Prophets of Israel came
with a radially different message. Isaiah spoke God's assessment
of human behavior: "My thoughts are not like yours, and my ways
are different from yours. As high as the heavens are above the
earth, so high are my ways and thoughts above yours." And
nowhere were the ways of men further from the ways of God than in
the human glorification of the sword and of slaughter. It had to
end.
"This is what Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and
Jerusalem...They will beat their swords into plowshares and their
spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against
nation, nor will they train for war anymore." After the prophet
told the people what they must do, he implored them to do it:
"Come, O house of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord."
In the Northern Kingdom of Judah, the prophet Micah gave the same
kind of message that Isaiah gave in Jerusalem. The people must
never prepare for war again: they were to exchange their
destructive weapons of war for the farming equipment that would
nurture people rather than destroy them. Only then would "every
one live in peace among his own vineyards and fig trees, and no
one will make him afraid."
The prophet Hosea also spoke to the people of the Northern
Kingdom. He spoke out against the ruthlessness of their leaders
but he also indicted the average person for his worship of power
and violence: "Listen to the word of the Lord, O sons of Israel,
for the Lord has a case against the inhabitants of the land,
because there is no faithfulness or kindness...they employ
violence so that bloodshed follows bloodshed."
The oracles of Isaiah gave the same message about the people of
Judah. "Their deeds are evil deeds and acts of violence are in
their hands. Their feet rush into sin; they are swift to shed
innocent blood. Their thoughts are evil thoughts; ruin and
destruction mark their ways. The ways of peace they do not
know."
The worship of destructive force was a besetting sin of those who
were followers as well as of those who were their leaders. Men
who did not themselves command the power that wealth and
privilege brings, allied themselves with the collective power of
war. The rewards of such an alliance are immediately apparent.
The exercise of destructive force brings instant gratification.
The long periods of time and the constant effort it takes to
build anything of value--whether a city or a life--can be
destroyed in a moment of destructive power.
The great, ethical prophets of Israel called their people back
from their worship of war and destruction. They saw their
nation's reliance on force as evil: idolatrous; a perversion of
God's will."Why have you ploughed iniquity, reaped injustice,and
eaten the produce, lies? Because you have trusted in your
chariots and in your hosts of warriors." And the Prophets said
that this idolatry had been going on ever since the Hebrews
entered the Promised Land and annihilated the people of Jericho.
"I brought you into a fruitful land to enjoy its fruits and the
goodness of it, but when you entered upon it you defiled it and
made the home I gave you loathsome."
The Latter Prophets were the first men of historical record to
denounce wars that had ended in victory for their own people.
Until then, the violence of battles won had always been
celebrated by the victors and whatever god they worshipped was
duly thanked for helping them to massacre their enemies. Unlike
individual acts of homicide which called for retribution, the
mass murder of battle was rewarded and those who took part in the slaughter were much-honored. But the prophets intruded on this
sanctification of violence. Just as they called for an end to
domestic injustice and brutality, so also they called for an end
to the injustices and brutalities of war. The sword and the
shield, symbols of triumph and glory among men, were to be
rejected by God's people. The celebration of destructive force
was to be replaced by activities that nurtured everyone: the plowand the pruning shears were the symbols of God's earthly kingdom.
Isaiah told the people of Judah what the Lord demanded of them
"The Lord's teaching comes from Jerusalem, from Zion he speaks to
his people...they will hammer their swords into plows and their
spears into pruning knives. Nations will not go to war, nor prepare for battle again. After the prophet told the people what
they must do, he implored them to do it: "Come now, descendants
of Jacob Now, descendants of Jacob, let us walk in the
(knowledge)light which the Lord gives us." Isaiah 2:4
But for the Latter Prophets, the brutality of war, its injustices
and its disregard of the suffering of others did not spring,
full-grown, in the heat of battle. They were spawned in the
cruelty and injustices of daily life. War was the ultimate
expression of the outrages that were tolerated in everyday
society by most of the people. When unjust laws and the greed of
men inflicted suffering on others, depriving them of their
possessions or their lives, the average citizen did not try to
help his neighbor: "The Lord has an accusation to bring against
the people who live in this land....'There is no faithfulness or
kindness.'"
Isaiah also told his people that the Lord took no pleasure in
religious rituals and penitential fasts. These were man-made
substitutes for what the Lord required. "When you fast, you make
yourselves suffer;...Is that what you call fasting? Do you think
I will be pleased with that? The kind of fasting I want is this:
Remove the chains of oppression and the yoke of injustice and let
the oppressed go free. Share your food with the hungry and open
your homes to the homeless poor. Give clothes to those who have nothing to wear."
The prophet Isaiah was calling into question a way of life that
created the poor among them in the first place. Injustice in
Judah, as everywhere else, was systemic. Those who were well-off
and powerful accumulated what they had by promulgating unjust
laws. Others used corrupt courts to cheat and defraud people.
Injustice permeated the entire society even while the scrupulous
observance of religious ritual was used as a yardstick to measure
righteousness. Piety and ruthlessness were joined together in an
unholy alliance.
"Woe unto you! You make unjust laws that oppress my people. That
is how you keep the poor from having their rights and from
getting justice. That is how you take the property that belongs
to widows and orphans....You go to court but you do not have
justice on your side. You depend on lies to win your case. You
carry out your plans to hurt others. You are guilty of lying,
violence and murder."
Isaiah made it clear that it was not only the lawmakers and
community leaders who were responsible for the rampant injustice.
Without the support of the average, law-abiding citizen who forms
the bulwark of any community, a corrupt society could not be maintained: "The Lord was displeased that there was no justice.
He saw that there was no one, he was appalled that there was no
one to intervene..."
For the ethical prophets justice was not an abstract concept: it
was a concrete activity: a divine imperative; the essence of
righteousness. And injustice was not only a manipulation of
religious laws, it was ungodly. The Prophet Amos denounced that
ungodliness: "You are doomed you that twist justice and cheat
people out of their rights...You people hate anyone who
challenges injustice and speaks the truth in court. You have
oppressed the poor and robbed them of their grain. I know how
terrible your sins are. You persecute good men, take bribes and
prevent the poor from getting justice in the courts."
The laws devised by men had been used to make a mockery of
justice, but it was not only in the court system that ungodliness
reigned. The Prophet Jeremiah juxtaposed the abuse of poor and
powerless human beings with the slaughter of helpless animals on altars dedicated to God. He stood in the Temple courtyard and in
the name of the Lord denounced the slaughter that took place on
the altars there.
"Thus says the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your
ways...Do not trust in deceptive words saying, This is the temple
of the Lord, the temple of the lord!...[but] if you do not
oppress the alien, the orphan or the widow and do not shed
innocent blood in this place..then I will let you dwell in the
land that I gave to your fathers..."
Among the Hebrew people, the violence of animal sacrifice had
become the center of religious worship. But it was a travesty of
justice, a substitute for godliness. And the Prophet Isaiah said
it was an abomination in the sight of God.
"[W]hoever sacrifices a bull is like one who kills a man, and
whoever offers a lamb is like one who breaks a dog's neck...They
have chosen their own ways and their souls delight in their
abominations."
The cult of animal sacrifices had made a giant slaughterhouse of
the Temple of the Lord: "The multitude of your sacrifices--what
are they to me? I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and
lambs and goats...Your hands are full of blood; wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight."
The Prophet Amos also denounced the cult of animal sacrifice as a
bloody substitute for justice and righteousness. "I despise your
feasts...When you offer me holocausts, I reject your oblations
and refuse to look at your sacrifices of fattened cattle...but
let justice flow like water and integrity like an unfailing
stream."
And in Jerusalem, Jeremiah reminded the people that it was they,
not God, who had instituted the bloodbath of animal sacrifices.
"I did not speak to your fathers, or command them in the day that
I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt
offerings and sacrifices.
The great prophets of Israel told the people that their way of
life was not only an affront to the God with whom they had
covenanted, it would lead to the destruction of their nation.
"The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants, for they have
transgressed the laws, violated the statues, broken the
everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse devours the earth, its
inhabitants suffer for their guilt."
But the prophets were speaking to a self-satisfied and prosperous
people who believed that success at home, and in the larger
world, belonged to the aggressive. Both Israel in the north and
Judah in the south were expanding their borders and their economy
and they saw militarism as essential to that expansion. And while
the prophets called by God warned that these policies would
ultimately lead to their own destruction, there were hundreds of
establishment priests and prophets who were giving a different mssage. Those false prophets were the spokesmen for an unholy
alliance of religion and nationalism and assured the people that
the Lord was well-pleased with them and would lead them to
victory. And the people believed them.
So despite the warnings of the prophets, they did not reform
themselves or cease from their worship of force. They believed
they were invincible: they were God's chosen people; heirs of the
covenant. They held to this claim right up to the time they were defeated and driven from their own land. By 587 BC, both Israel
and Judah had been overthrown by their enemies. The Hebrew people
had either been killed, or sent into exile--just as Amos, Micah,
Hosea and Isaiah and Jeremiah had prophesied.
It was fifty years before some of the Hebrew people returned from
their exile in Babylonia and when they did, they slowly began to
rebuild to rebuild Jerusalem. But once they had firmly reestablished themselves in the Promised Land there was, again,
widespread support for the claim that aggression and violence,
aided and abetted by God, would bring about the re-establishment
of a mighty Jewish nation. And within a few centuries of their
return from Exile, the Jewish people were once again involved in war and power politics.
Various wars and alliances continued to mark the history of
Palestine until 70 A.D. when Jerusalem and its Temple were
destroyed by the Romans. As in the past, the people listened to
those who urged them to put their trust in warfare and weaponry.
They believed the religious and secular leaders who told them
that if they provoked a war with the Romans, God would give them
victory over this latest enemy and restore Palestine to their
rule.
But even as the militant zealots were gaining widespread support for the
overthrow of those who occupied Palestine, God again inspired a prophetic
message which warned the Jewish people that initiating war would bring about
their own defeat, not that of their enemies. Around AD 30, Jesus of Nazareth began his ministry with a
claim that he was the fulfillment of Isaiah's promise of a God-appointed
messenger. Like the prophets who had come before him, he denounced the
religious rituals and rules that were used as a cover for injustice and violence. And he warned his countrymen that
unless they renounced their idolatrous worship of war and violence, they
would again bring destruction upon themselves. Once again Jerusalem would be
razed and the Temple would be destroyed.
It happened as Jesus had warned. But this time it was almost 2,000 years
before the Jewish people had a homeland to which they could return.
End Chapter
Excerpted from: BIBLE HEROES: Saints and Sinners
Copyright 2002, J.R. Hyland
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