Rethinking God’s Assumed Violent Streak

by Marty Alan Michelson

God, as represented in the Old Testament, often gets blamed for actions that are not accurate. Here, the author works to correct some of those misinformed views as he works through the story of Moses.

Let’s reread a biblical story in order to rethink the role of God and humans in enacting violence. No doubt about it, the Bible narrates stories that include violence. But in many biblical stories, we do not see a violent God nor is violence God’s hope for human action.

What do you remember from the story of Moses when he encounters Pharaoh? A quick summary of the story could be:

After inflicting the Israelites with slavery and refusing to acknowledge God’s activity in several plagues, Pharaoh gets what is coming to him and the Israelites get freedom. Moses is a primary agent, but God is the force of action.

As we meet Pharaoh in Exodus chapter 1, he is an unnamed king who puts “masters” over the “slaves” in order “to oppress them with forced labor.” The “oppressed” slaves “multiplied” and were worked more “ruthlessly” with “hard labor” and “all kinds of work” (Exodus 1:11-14). This is quite a list of direct quotes, noting not their service or industry, but Pharaoh’s structural social violence.

Pharaoh commands midwives to, “Kill the boys!”

We never hear God speak in this story (chapter 1). We only hear about God. We hear that God gives life in response to Pharaoh’s killing. Most specifically, God gives life to those who refuse violence. Shiphrah and Puah, the midwives, save lives and get families.

Pharaoh calls for more violence—ordering all people that they “must” throw all Hebrew boys into the Nile.

The actions of Pharaoh are about death, but God’s actions are all blessings.

In chapter 2 we witness the collaboration of four more women (now six total) acting to save lives despite Pharaoh’s decree. The boy, Moses, is saved by the calculations and plans of Miriam; Jochebed, Pharaoh’s daughter; and the servant of Pharaoh’s daughter. Even his daughter does not follow Pharaoh’s command to “throw” the boys into the Nile. She does not cast into the Nile, but pulls from the Nile. She does not drown with water, but nurtures with milk!

Only Pharaoh is violent in this story; in fact, in the story of Moses being saved, God is not even named as an agent or actor. Only Pharaoh acts to take life. Various women act to save lives.

Nothing more is narrated of Moses’ childhood (despite what Hollywood films might try to make us believe). We do know Moses is raised in Egypt, and it seems he embraces Egyptian patterns. Without any instruction, invitation, or command of God, Moses takes and murders. Moses has learned too well the patterns of Egypt—violence begetting violence. The action of Moses though was not authorized, sanctioned, nor protected by God. Moses has to flee.

Moses chooses violence. God does not protect him for his choice. Violence is not narrated as God’s hope or choice.

Later, after a generation passes, God appears to Moses. Much could be said about the passage of God’s revelation at the burning bush, but here, with our attention to issues of violence, we note that before any “plague” comes in the story, God states that he will act against “Egypt”—the land, but not the people. “So I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all the wonders that I will perform among them. After that, he will let you go” (Exodus 3:20).

We have to be fair and clear here. God will act. That is for sure. God’s actions will have consequences for Egyptians and for how life functions. But, God’s actions are not for and against humans, individually or specifically or directly.

In the events that will come, God does not permit the Israelites to act against Egypt. This is central to the nuance of this article. It is God who acts to reframe Pharaoh’s choices—not Moses or Aaron or any other person. Where Moses had earlier acted to kill an Egyptian, without directly mediated knowledge of God, killing to effect his own perception of justice, now, Moses must learn to not act, to not kill, but to stand by and let God act.

We will not narrate each of the continued actions of God, but we do need to note a few items. First, the signs and wonders that God brings are not characteristically called “plagues” in the text of the Bible itself. (It is a sad misreading to call them all “plagues.”) Only frogs, death of livestock, and locusts are “plagues” (chapters 8, 9 and 10). More characteristically, the activities of God are called “signs” or “wonders” or “signs and wonders,” in chapters 3, 4, 7, 10, 11, and 15. And, the introduction of God’s activity, comprising all of chapters 3 and 4 is rife with the language of signs and wonders, and no language whatsoever of plague or destruction.

The emphasis of God’s activity is on wonders, not plagues, and superlative events.

We cannot discount the violence of the tenth action of God, called a plague, and narrated across chapters 11-13. God clearly announces the death of every firstborn in Egypt, from Pharaoh to slave girl to cattle.

God’s activity to bring violence requires several observations.

First, there is a kind of distributive equality to the death that comes from God. As Exodus 12:29-30 records that from the throne to dungeon “there was not a house without someone dead.” Gruesome as this must have been, the violence God brings is in some odd way “equal” (my term, not a biblical quote).

Second, the foretold death of the firstborn is never actually narrated. Though we read that every firstborn will die (Exodus 11:4-5) and “At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in Egypt” (Exodus 12:29), what chapters 11 and 12 prepare for is never described in narrative. We read verse after verse instructing the Israelites how to prepare for this night, but the death is not narrated. No blood. No sword. No violence is described, so it can’t be celebrated.

Third, and most crucial, when the violence that God brings finally comes He sets about an elaborate plan both to save the Israelites and to save them from violence. Exodus 12:22 says, “Not one of you shall go out the door of his house until morning” the Lord commands, and again in 12:28, “The Israelites did just what the LORD commanded Moses and Aaron.” God guarantees and requires that his agents are far removed from the use of violence. Death will come, but Israelites are not permitted to kill.

Pharaoh had intended to kill not only the firstborn sons, but all sons! More than 80 years later, when the Lord acts to turn Pharaoh’s violence back upon him and those who had perpetrated it, God insures that no Israelite is present. This non-bloody, equally-meted-out death, wrought by the Lord, uses no human action or agency.

Marty Alan Michelson is professor of theology and ministry at Southern Nazarene University in Bethany, Oklahoma.

Read the first article in this two-part series: "Wonders, Freedom, and Life" http://bit.ly/Zc45RX

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