In order to properly assess a text and its teaching, it must be read in
context. This context includes not only the date and place of its writing and
the ancient language in which it is written, but also the understanding and
worldview of its author(s). Regardless of a given reader’s beliefs, the authors
of Scriptures believed that God, angels, demons, the spirits of the dead, and
other spiritual realities were real. They held them to be as real as rocks,
trees, and humans. It is in light of those beliefs that they formulate their
writings and interpret events, words, and actions. When readers refuse to enter
into the worldview of an author, they end up constructing a false “reality” as
a backdrop for the text. They then praise or attack that reality, even if it is
false, misguided, anachronistic, or pure fiction. Condemning such fictional reconstructions
should not be confused with a legitimate critique of the text itself.
For all ancient peoples, the gods of neighboring nations were not
fictional. From the perspective of the authors of the Hebrew Scriptures, the
spiritual beings worshipped by other tribes, clans and nations surrounding them
were real. Frequently in the Old Testament, the word gods is even used
to describe them. They were not God in the sense that Yahweh is God, but rather
spirits created by Yahweh, their God, along with everything else that exists,
and who had since their creation fallen into rebellion against Him. These were
spirits that sought the destruction of humanity.
Ancient Israel understood these “gods” of the nations to have been assigned
to those nations by Yahweh, the Most High God, at one particular point. As part
of the judgment against humanity at the Tower of Babel, described in Genesis 11,
God distanced Himself from the nations of the world, assigning angelic beings
to shepherd them (Deut. 32:8). The nations were not to worship these beings,
not were these beings to seek to be worshipped (Deut. 4:19). They were not only
to shepherd the nations in the sense of governance but to religiously shepherd
them back to the Most High God. Other than St. Michael, who was assigned to the
nations of Israel, these beings failed in this assignment. (Saint Dionysios the
Areopagite described this in some detail in The Celestial Hierarchy)
Yahweh, the God of Israel, has promised to judge all of creation and
restore to justice, its rightful order. This justification of the cosmos includes
not only the visible, material world and human persons but also the invisible
world of angels and demons. Several points in Scripture make this judgment
explicit. Isaiah, for example, states, “In that day, Yahweh will punish the
host of heaven above and the kings of the earth below” (24:21). The culmination
of this final judgment is not only a new earth but also a new heaven (Rev.
21:1). The lake of fire as a description of eternal condemnation was created
not for humans but for the devil and his angels (Matt. 25:41) This particular judgment
of the powers and principalities both in the heavenly places and on the earth,
is known as the death of the gods because of its descriptions in Psalm 82/81.
Just as in the case with humanity, the judgment of these principalities
and powers, spiritual kings and rulers of nations, is not entirely put off to
the end but intrudes at various points in history. The ten plagues that trigger
nascent Israel’s Exodus from Egypt are described as Yahweh rendering judgment
against the gods of Egypt (Ex. 12:12). It should go without saying that from
the perspective of the author of Exodus, God is not judging or punishing a
group of fictional characters. The gods of Egypt are seen as real spiritual
beings who have led the Egyptian people into wickedness and evil. These principalities
are the ones whom Yahweh, the God of Israel, holds most responsible for the
evils of the Egyptian Empire and culture.
The humans who populated Egypt were moral agents responsible for their
actions. They suffered the consequences when judgment came upon Egypt, and God levelled
the scales, restoring justice. By directing the plagues of Egypt against the gods
of Egypt, however, Yahweh not only judges those spirits but also conveys truth
to the Egyptian people. The primary task of the pharaoh, in the Egyptian understanding,
was to establish and maintain ma’at, justice. As king and priest, it was
his task to make sure that relations between gods, humans, the river, and the
land were maintained for continued prosperity. His inability to restore justice
exposed him and the other Egyptian gods to be frauds, along with the illusion
of their power, might, and worthiness to be worshiped.
Though the Israelites were enslaved, literally, to Pharoah and the
Egyptian nobility, the common people of Egypt were not less enslaved in a spiritual
sense. Yahweh not only redeemed Israel from Egypt; He also offered the truth of
who He is to the Egyptians themselves, which had the potential to set them
free. The condemnation in the Hebrew Scriptures of the gods and god-kings of
the nations it not a condemnation of the humans who make up those tribes and
clans. It is instead a condemnation of those who have oppressed, abused, and enslaved
those people. An interpretation that delineates between the spiritual/political
powers oppressing a nation and the people of that nation does not
allegorize the text away or deny its historicity. It is simply a lense that validates
the distinction that the authors of these texts establish and see as important.
In other words, it is an example of reading biblical texts correctly and in
context.
The Christian Old Testament is filled with texts calling for judgment
and condemnation, and even the deaths, of kings and rulers and principalities
over the nations. Psalm 149/148 speaks of the saints carrying two-edged swords
in their hands “to execute vengeance on the nations and judgments on the tribes
by binding their kings with chains and their nobles with iron chains, in order
to execute on them the judgment of the Scriptures” (vv. 7-9). Isaiah speaks of
the demonic powers of Sheol being punished and never rising again (26;14). In
the Greek text, the translator adds the interjection, “being more evils upon
them, O Lord, bring more evils upon them who are glorious upon the earth” (vv.
14-15). The “them” of this call for justice is quite clearly these aforementioned
demonic powers of Hades.
Examples abound, but one passage in particular is of note for its
prominence in discussions of imprecations within the Christian Old Testament.
Psalm 137/136 is a psalm written in Babylonian exile. This exile in a foreign,
pagan empire is the theme of the psalm itself, beginning with the question as
to whether it is even possible to truly worship Yahweh in a foreign land (v.
4). The worship of Judah’s God was so closely associated with Zion, with the
Jerusalem temple, that attempting to offer such worship, even through hymns,
seemed difficult in light of its destruction (vv. 1-3). The memory of Jerusalem
was key to the continuation of that worship (vv. 5-6). This is not merely
nostalgia for a time and place now lost, but the memory of all that transpired
in Judah’s wickedness and the subsequent judgment.
The psalm then takes what modern readers understand to be a sharp turn.
It speaks of the nation of Edom and its actions at the fall of Jerusalem to
Babylon (Ps. 137/136.7). It speaks of Edom as a daughter of Babylon, a loyal
collaborator of Judah’s oppressor (v. 8). It states that the one who takes
vengeance against Edom will be blessed, in particular the one who smashes Edom’s
little ones against the rocks (v. 9). A literal reading of this psalm, the
reading that has made it controversial, understands this to be an angry and bitter
human in exile calling for the violent murder of Edomite babies as retribution.
The subtext here, however, is the long history between Edom and Judah,
which includes and overarching spiritual dimension. Judah and Edom are
descended from Jacob and Esau, Israel and Edom, respectively. These two brothers
experienced conflict and ultimate reconciliation, as described in Genesis. Edom
had received a portion of Abraham’s inheritance as his descendants, but this
involved a vassal relationship with Israel and later Judah. Some of the
Edomites, as described in the psalm and in the historical accounts of Jerusalem’s
fall, took pleasure and rejoiced in that fall, seeing it as freedom despite
their now being vassals of Babylon.
The author of Psalm 137/136 and other ancient Judahites understood there
to be a spiritual cause behind Edom’s schadenfreude over Judah’s fate. Just as
St. Michael the archangel was seen to be the guardian angel of Israel and later
Judah as a nation (Dan. 12:1), Edom was guarded and governed by the fallen
archangel Samael, who is often equated with Satan in Jewish writings of the
period during and following the exile. Only such an evil spirit could have inspired
Edom’s rejoicing in Judah’s devastation. The psalmist seeks the destruction of
this demonic spirit at the hand of Yahweh, the Blessed One.
This understanding of this psalm led the Church Fathers, nearly uniformly,
to understand the “little ones” here spoken of not as infant humans of Edomite
ethnicity. Ethnicity, in fact, was not really a concept in its modern sense at
the time of the psalm’s composition. Rather, these little ones are the progeny
of the evil spirit who is here being condemned. They are the sins, evil
thoughts, and temptations placed in the minds and hearts of humanity that lead
humans to destruction. These thoughts and temptations lead, for example, one
people group to rejoice at the suffering of her neighbor. They are the source
of all resentment and wickedness and violence. Just as Yahweh, the God of Israel,
is the Blessed One par excellence, so also is the person blessed who resists
and defeats Satan, not falling prey to him as did the Edomites of the sixth
century B.C. (Stephen De Young, God is a Man of War: The Problem of Violence
in the Old Testament [Chesterton, Ind.: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2021], 64-69)