Criswell Theological Review 7.2 (1994) 83-89
[Copyright © 1994 by
digitally prepared for use at
Gordon and
PROPHETIC ATTITUDES TOWARD
VIOLENCE IN ANCIENT
EDWIN C. HOSTETTER
Violence is
currently much on the mind of the public in the United
States. This
is due at least partially to the rapid increase in the amount
of
violent crime committed by juveniles. Other violent acts, such as the
recent
bombings of buildings, also fuel fear among American citizens.
When we think of violence today, we usually conceive of some
form of
physical assault:1 for example, beatings, murder, rape, rioting,
robbery, and
terrorism. The Hebrew prophets employed terms for
violence in
order to describe that kind of behavior as well.
"deeds of violence (smAHA [hamas]) are in their hands . . . they rush to
shed
innocent blood . . . desolation (dwo [sod])
and destruction are in their high-
ways" (Is a 59:6-7)2
"violence (smAHA) and
destruction (dwo) are heard within her" (Jer 6:7)
"the land is full of bloody crimes;
the city is full of violence (smAHA)" (Ezek
"those who store up violence (smAHA) and
robbery (dwo) in
their strongholds"
(Amos 3:10)
"cry to you 'Violence!' (smAHA) . . . destruction (dwo) and violence (smAHA) are
before me" (Hab 1:2-3)
In addition, however, the classical prophets used words for
violence
while
writing about a different sort of abuse of power.
"the scant measure that is accursed.
. . wicked scales and a bag of dishonest
weights? Your wealthy are full of violence (smAHA)"
(Mic
1 Cf.
Word in Context," Journal for Semitics 3 (1991)
161-62.
2 All
Scripture quotations come from the NRSV, unless otherwise indicated.
84 CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
"who makes his neighbors work for
nothing, and does not give them their
wages. . . your eyes and heart are only on your
dishonest gain, for shedding
innocent blood, and for practicing oppression (qw,fo ['oseq]) and violence
(hcAUrm; [merusa])"
(Jer
"put away violence (smAHA) and
oppression (dwo) . .
. cease your evictions of
my people. . . you shall have honest balances, an honest ephah, and an
honest bath" (Ezek 45:9-12)
The following paragraphs will analyze these so-called white-collar
crimes,
which the prophets nevertheless considered to be violent, un-
der three headings: namely, confiscation,
fraud, and injustice. This ex-
planatory but not exhaustive article examines the
passage above from
Micah 6,
Jeremiah 22, and Ezekiel 45 as well as other verses associated
thematically and terminologically.
Confiscation
In Ezek 45:9, portions of which have already been cited, Yahweh
commanded
and
confiscating it. Those leaders were supposed to avoid exercising
their
power in such a violent (smAHA) and oppressive (dwo)
manner. Com-
pare v 8:
"my princes shall no longer oppress (hnAyA [yana])
my people;
but they
shall let the house of
tribes."
(Vv 10-12 go on to exhort honest measurements--and give a
preview of
the next section, on fraud, in this paper. God's messenger
considered the
utilization of unjust and inaccurate scales and stan-
dards of measure also to be violent and
oppressive.)
Rulers are the group addressed again in Ezek 46:18. Yahweh did
not
permit them to commit the violence of alienating other people's
property:
"the prince shall not take any of the inheritance of the
people,
thrusting (hnAyA)
them out of their holding. . . so that none of my
people
shall be dispossessed of their holding." Ezekiel
the
prescriptive to the descriptive but continues to speak about the vi-
olent actions of rulers. The prophet deplored
the fact that "they have
taken
treasure and precious things." Private property was not immune
from the
ravages of these lion-like princes. It has been suggested that
they led
citizens blindly into situations (battle, rebellion, etc.) that brought
death and
confiscation.4
Isaiah lent his voice to deprecating the abuse of power by rulers
and
described their violence this way: "It is you who have devoured the
3
Presumably "oppression" ('oseq) corresponds with "dishonest gain; and
"violence"
(merusa)
with "shedding innocent blood."
4 R. H.
Alexander, "Ezekiel," The Expositor's Bible Commentary (12 vols.; Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 1986) 6.849.
E. C. Hostetter: PROPHETIC ATTITUDES TOWARD VIOLENCE 85
vineyard; the
spoil (hlAzeG; [gezela]) of the poor is in your
houses. What do
you mean
by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor?"
(
share of
the harvest over to the leaders, or perhaps real estate belong-
ing to peasants was being forcefully snatched
by the elite.5
In Mic 2:1-2, 9 the focus is no longer
on the rulers but on other
members of
society. The verses refer to those with sufficient economic,
judicial, or
political influence to have accomplished the goals of a blatant
land-grabbing policy (note v 1--"it is in their power"). With a
violent
disregard for
justice, they greedily plotted shady tricks and schemed
exploitative business dealings in order to commandeer and misappro-
priate property: "They covet fields, and
seize (lzaGA [gazal]) them; houses,
and take
them away; they oppress (qwafA ['asaq])
householder and house,
people and
their inheritance. . . . The women of my people you drive out
from
their pleasant houses; from their young children you take away my
glory
forever." The weak were cruelly and forcibly deprived of a share
in
their beautiful heritage by the strong. Through misuse of power the
rapacious
owned much land which was not rightly theirs, even if legally
secured.6
The final pair of passages in this section on confiscation is less
straightforward: "deliver from the hand of the oppressor (qwafA/qOwfo
['asoq]) anyone who has
been robbed (lzaGA)" (Jer
likely,
however, that the oppressor's robbery mentioned here was a
property
crime and not a personal crime--that is, not larceny from the
person or
presence of another, rather theft of a type such as embezzle-
ment or burglary. The misdeeds characterized
would then not have in-
volved physical assault. The pericope's
horizons are certainly expanded
toward
other forms of abuse of power by Jeremiah's further order in
v 3 to
the king to "do no wrong (hnAyA) or violence (smAHA) to the alien, the or-
phan, and the widow." (They are commonly
named among those whose
rights were
easily disregarded because they could not defend themselves
against an
oppressor.) Yet the remainder of v 3 returns from specifying
the ill
treatment and violation of the defenseless to describing physical
assault--namely,
the shedding of innocent blood.
Fraud
Micah 6:10-12 introduces us to the "violence" (smAHA) of
swindling.
Verse 10
names the scant or short measure; v 11 identifies wicked or
5
Respectively, J. D. W. Watts, Isaiah 1-33 (WBC 24; Waco: Word, 1985) 43;
and
D. N. Premnath, "Comparative and Historical Sociology in Old
Testament Research: A
Study of
Isaiah 3:12-15,"
6 W. Brueggemann, "Land: Fertility and Justice," Theology
of the Land (B. F. Evans
and G.
D. Cusack, eds.;
86 CRISWELL
THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
misleading
scales as well as dishonest or fraudulent weights. The un-
scrupulous
elite in their aggressive greed have cheated their kindred
human
beings. The "lies" and "deceit" of v 12 might, in fact,
suggest that
the
powerful deprived their social inferiors of legal rights and abused
the poor
and powerless through bending the law to their own advan-
tage.7 (If
so, we receive a foretaste of the article's final section on injus-
tice in the courtroom.) In any case, the
passage definitely depicts the
making of a
dishonest penny by riding roughshod over others--espe-
cially the downtrodden.
Similar sentiments are expressed in Amos 8:4-6. Businesspersons
paid no
heed to the concerns of the peasant population but exploited
them.
This is the violence of gain at any cost. "We will make the ephah
small and
the shekel great, and practice deceit with false balances . . .
selling the
sweepings of the wheat" (vv 5, 6). Such is called trampling
on the
needy and bringing the poor of the land to ruin in v 4. It ulti-
mately resulted in their enslavement (v 6;
compare the slavery of 2:6-
7). The scenario probably unfolded in the following way: the
poor could
not pay
for grain bought to consume or sow; they ran into debt, piled up
due
interest payments, and had to sell themselves into bondage to work
off
their liabilities.8
Likewise, the prophet Hosea preached against unholy commerce:
"A
trader, in whose hands are false balances, he loves to oppress (qwafA)"
(12:7 [MT =
12:8]). Yahweh considered the use of false scales to be op-
pressive and violent. It distressed him to see the
crushing of the needy
(note Amos 4:1, with qwafA and CcarA (rasas)
or the extortion of neighbors
(note Ezek
Malachi 3:5 switches gears slightly. The economic corruption re-
ported
there is that done by "those who oppress qwafA) the hired work-
ers in their wages." Whether the
laborers were merely underpaid or
whether
their wages were actually held back is unclear.9 The
verse
goes on
to associate the hired workers with widows and orphans as
well as
aliens--the last three of which we encountered earlier. They of-
ten
suffered underhanded dealings (e.g., Jer 7:6, with qwafA;
Ezek 22:7;
7 L.
C. Allen, The Books of Joel, Obadiah, Jonah
and Micah (NICOT; Grand Rap-
ids: Eerdmans, 1976) 378; and D. W. Baker, T. D. Alexander, and
B. K. Waltke, Obadiah,
Jonah,
Micah: An Introduction and Commentary (Tyndale Old Testament Commentar-
ies 23a;
8 B.
Lang, "The Social Organization of Peasant Poverty in Biblical
(1982)
56-57.
9 J.
G. Baldwin, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi: An Introduction and Commentary
(Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries 24; n.p.: InterVarsity, 1972) 244. P. A Verhoef,
The Books of
Haggai and Malachi
(NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987) 293-94,
opted for
the latter.
E. C.
Hostetler: PROPHETIC ATTITUDES TOWARD VIOLENCE 87
with qw,fo and hnAyA), in
particular because of their "relatively insecure
relational
environment."10
In the oracle at Jer 22:13-17, the
big-shot builder might not have
been a
king11 but was clearly building like one. The rights of others
in the
community were violated since the guilty party made neighbors
work for
nothing, i.e., he did not give them their wages (v 13). It could
even be
that they were enslaved;12 this would presuppose a monarch as
builder, who
was disrupting the well-being of the whole people. Such
callous
exploitation of workers for dishonest gain is lumped together in
v 17
with shedding innocent blood and with practicing oppression
(qw,fo) and
violence (hcAUrm;). (The recollection that justice and fairness
had been
administered appropriately by the builder's "father" on be-
half of
the lowly and needy [vv 15-16] leads directly toward the next
section of
this essay.)
Injustice
Originally the words intended by "these" in Zech 7:7 may
have
been the
saying of vv 9-10: "Render true judgments . . . do not oppress
(qwafA) the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the
poor." The verses
would
then have
summed up the message of the preexilic prophets. As
things
now
stand, however, Zechariah preaches this to his hearers as a fresh
set of
instructions from Yahweh.13 Judgments in the courts were sup-
posed to
be consistent with the facts of the case and faithful to the
stipulations of the law. The system should honor due process. It could
be that
the exhortation about administering justice was meant to apply
particularly to the widows, orphans, resident aliens, and indigents.14
Fairness
ought not be denied them even though they did not have
enough
prestige to insist upon it. Their precarious societal status made
them an
easy mark for those violent decision makers whose con-
sciences did
not bother them. Deciding against the powerful in favor
of the
widow, orphan, or alien at court required extraordinary scrupu-
losity. Yet Yahweh called for exactly that.
10 M. Schluter, "Relational Justice," seminar conducted
at the Fifth Triennial Con-
vocation of
Prison Fellowship International,
11 See
R P. Carroll, Jeremiah: A Commentary (OTL;
1986) 427-28.
12 W.
J. Wessels, "Towards a Historical-Ideological
Understanding of Jeremiah
19; Old Testament Essays (
13 P.
J. Scalise, "An Exegesis of Zechariah 7:4-14 in
Its Canonical Context," Faith
and
14 So
D.
Widow, the Orphan, and the Sojourner," Int
41 (1987) 347, 350.
88 CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
Other passages in this section make explicit what Zech 7:9-10
leave
implicit at
best. Isaiah
loves a
bribe and runs after gifts. They do not defend the orphan, and
the
widow's cause does not come before them." These
weak, underpriv-
ileged, and defenseless members of the community
were deprived of
the
justice due them in legal assemblies. The court officials who were
expected to
prevent such infringement were the very ones who ac-
cepted bribes from the rich as an inducement to
render unjust verdicts.15
In 10:1-2,
the prophet condemned the violence of individuals "who
make
iniquitous decrees, who write oppressive statutes, to turn aside
the
needy from justice and to rob (lzaGA) the poor of my people of their
right."
He had in mind both the enacting of oppressive laws against the
helpless--widows
and orphans are identified in v 2--and the returning
of
unjust decisions based on existing laws. Again, according to Jer 5:28
there were
scoundrels who "do not judge with justice the cause of the
orphan. . .
they do not defend the rights of the needy." If the REB is cor-
rect, then an earlier clause in the verse
speaks of lies that were told in
the
court but overlooked by the judge (perhaps for a fee) so that justice
was
subverted by the powerful: "they turn a blind eye to wickedness."
Amos railed against the violence of courts which defrauded poor
people by
declaring their cases against rich folks to be without merit
or by
preferring a rich plaintiff over a poor defendant: "you who affiict
the
righteous, who take a bribe, and push aside the needy at the gate"
(
righteousness to the ground!" (This same text also criticizes confisca-
tion: i.e., charging tenant farmers too much
for use of the land16--"you
trample on
the poor and take from them levies of grain" [v 11.) Simi-
larly, Isaiah voiced a dire warning for policy
makers "who cause a
person to
lose a lawsuit, who set a trap for the arbiter in the gate, and
without
grounds deny justice to the one in the right" (29:21). Yahweh
abhorred
those with political and juridical authority who used their
power to
prey on the innocent. In fact, he placed whoever perpetrates
injustice (v
21) in the same class with whoever perpetrates violence
(v 20).17
15 E. W Davies, Prophecy and Ethics:
Isaiah and the Ethical Traditions of
(JSOTSup 16; Sheffield; JSOT, 1981)
93-94, 110. "
16 D. A Hubbard, Joel and Amos: An
Introduction and Commentary (Tyndale Old
Testament Commentaries;
17 W. A M. Beuken,
"Isa 29;15-24:
Perversion Reverted," The Scriptures and the
Scrolls:
Studies in Honour of A. s. van der
Woude on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday
(F: Garcia
1992) 50 & 55.
E. C. Hostetter: PROPHETIC ATTITUDES TOWARD VIOLENCE 89