Warfare in Ancient Near East was as much a divine as a human affair. The mythological accounts dipict war fought among gods before the age of humans over the rule of the cosmos and, after the creation, for come into position as rulers over the mortal world. The Babylonian poem Enuma Elish (conventionally dated to ca. 1800-1200 BCE), summarizes at the end the main events of the story with the words: «Let them recite the song of Marduk, Who bound Tiamat and took kingship» (Talon, 2005). Marduk defeated Tiamat and became king. The two events are inextricably linked: by defeating Tiamat, Marduk was elevated to kingship with his exaltation also over the older gods. Marduk, the son of the storm, was appointed by the gods to lead the fight against Tiamat, the ocean as a personification of the primordial waters, who has planned to destroy them. In the struggle between these two personified natural elements, Marduk is victorious over Tiamat, and he divides the body of the slain goddess in two: with one part he forms the sky, with the other the earth. He assumes the role of the creator of heaven and earth, which he makes from Tiamat’s split body.

The Aššur version of Enuma Elish (dating ca. 700–600 BCE) (Lambert, 2013) suggests a innovative portrayal of Aššur’s position in the pantheon. It does not hide the fact that the Assyrian redactors were using Marduk and Ninurta traditions to characterize Aššur’s rule. This version promotes Aššur’s preeminence over the other gods in two ways. It portrays Marduk and Ninurta as subordinate agents of Aššur, such that the victories through which they attained kingship become acts of service to Aššur. Then it extends Aššur’s new role beyond ruling over the rest of the gods such that he takes over the roles of older gods in creation. Aššur is now king and he becomes older and more prominent than Marduk in the divine genealogy. Aššur not only replaces Marduk as the victorious warrior elevated to kingship among the gods, but he joins the primeval generation of gods, takes on roles in creation, and becomes “father” and “creator” of the gods.

From the other side of the fertile crescent, in the city of Ugarit, the Ba‘al Cycle (dating between ca. 1500–1300 BCE) narrates Ba‘al’s victory over Yam and his attainment of kingship (Smith, 1994, 2009). The Ugaritic Ba‘al Cycle, a mythic literature common in ancient Syria and Canaan, narrates the rise of the storm deity Ba‘al to kingship after he defeats the sea deity Yam (literally, “Sea”). Usually the purpose of the text is considered to be explanatory, particularly of regular seasonal changes. However, there is also a certain agreement among scholars that the narrative is about Ba‘al’s rise to power (Ballentine, 2015, p. 48). According to the reconstruction of the flow of the narrative, from the tablets found, the plot includes two conflicts in succession, first between Baʿal and Yam and second between Ba‘al and Môt (literally, “Death”). Yam represents the unruly powers of the universe who threaten chaos, until restricted and tamed by Ba‘al, and Mot, the dead son of ’Ilu father of the gods, represents the dark underworld powers and brings sterility, disease, and death. In the first conflict, Yam, Sea, sending his divine pair of messengers to the assembly of the gods held at the tabernacles of ’Ilu located at the source of the double-deep, at the cosmic mountain, that is, at the gates to heaven and the entry into the abyss. Yam, demands that Ba‘al be given over to him as a captive and that Yam’s lordship be acknowledged. Ba‘al in the decree of the assembly comes under the sway of Yam. But after a break in the text, the poem continues with Kotar, craftsman of the gods, predicting a victory of Ba‘al over his captors. Then in the assembly of the gods it is decreed by ’Ilu that a temple be built for Ba‘al, king of the gods. The craftsman Kotar constructs a palace and Ba‘al exults. The completion of the palace on Mt. Zaphon is the occasion then of a great feast of the gods, celebrating Ba‘al’s installation and inaugurating the temple cult.

The second conflict is a struggle between Ba‘al and the ruler of the underworld, Mot (Death). Ba‘al and his entourage, Clouds, Winds, and Rain, and others squires and knights, went down into the Underworld city of terrible Mot and he was made a slave of Mot. ‘Anat, the consort of Ba‘al, appears to succor her lord, giving battle to Mot. With the victory of ‘Anat, the dead god is strewn to fertilize the fields and the divine warrior Ba‘al, after yet another combat with the dead god, returns to take up his government, sitting as king of the gods. The Ba‘al cycle relates the emergence of kingship among the gods. However at Ugarit ’El and not Ba‘al was the creator god and remains so, therefore specific references to creation are absent from Ugaritic narrative.

The Mesopotamian and Ugaritic poems employ the conflict topos in order to make claims about the legitimacy of a particular deity. These deities are elevated within their respective pantheons in relation to other deities who are complicit in the warrior deity’s rise to power and against of the rival figures they defeat. The narratives describe the authority of these deities as kingship, according to a royal ideology. They promote the institution of kingship by presenting it as the normative construction of authority among the gods (Ballentine, 2015, pp. 30-63). If in Mesopotamian culture the divine conflict is placed first of all on a theogonic and cosmogonic level, in Ugaritic culture instead it seems that the sustaining of the nourishment and the guaranteering of the world’s order were more important properties of deity than the original creation of things (Gibson, 1978, p. 7). Therefore the god who embodied those properties, and not the venerable and older creator father ’Ilu, was in the mythology the one who slew the monsters and overcame the forces of death and chaos. The struggle between Ba‘al and Mot, represented as a continuous competition, symbolizes the struggle between the forces of Life and the forces of Death in the world, and at the end the forces of Life always emerge victorious.

The narratives not only promote a particular deity but also a specific city and cult location. The version of Enuma Elish perform ideological work by promoting a specific deity, city, and temple, supporting particular socio-political arrangements and the interests of authority figures associated with Babylon. Enuma Elish promotes the deity Marduk to a preeminent status within the divine hierarchy, a status justified through his victories in combat. The narrative portrays the establishment of Babylon and Marduk’s temple as being the result of divine decrees and promotes these locations by claiming that they are sites of divine activity. This Marduk-centered and Babylon-centered ideology, would have served the interests of ruling authorities in Babylon by tying the city’s stability to cosmic events. The duty of human kings was to carry out the divine commission, and the warfare is a divine mission to remedy a wrong, for example a punishment to the violator of the boundary treaty which was set up by the divine witness. War occurs in a political context fundamentally characterized by fixed hierarchical relationship between vassal and suzerain. The gods were closely involved in decision-making processes related to war, whether political or tactical; they intervening on the battlefield, being asked for advice, and being honored and worshipped amid the of battle. Every aspect of war was taking into the realm of the divine. The divine help was decisive for the king’s victory over the enemies (Kang, 1989).

In the same way the version of Enuma Elish celebrated Assyrian places and honored the Assyrian god, Aššur. Aššur’s authority is extended to kings that associate the king with Aššur and claim that he has given the king authority and success.

The Baal Cycle diverges significantly. Ba‘al was king enthroned a top Mount Zaphon and is granted a palace upon his triumph in his battles, he is the giver of life: “he nourishes gods and men”. Though the poem deals completely with divine affairs, without any explicit mention of real world of Ugarit, the victory of Ba‘al is the foundation-myth of Ba‘al temple at Ugarit. Moreover the legitimatization of Ba‘al rule in heaven concerns the king’rule on earth and the construction of his palace, the practice of the royal cultus and the conceptions of royal legitimacy between birthright and dynastic discontinuities for charismatic claims. In this sense, the Baal Cycle inspires indeed a new tendencie in the production of authority. The Baal’s lordship is a matter of acquiescence, not a feature of the fixed order vassal–suzerain relationship (Ballentine, 2015, pp. 60-63). The story «suggests that sovereign authority is not a fixed entity but the result of successfully made claims» (Tugendhaft, 2018, p. 84). It opens the perspective of a world of incessant power struggles and competing assertions of authority (Tugendhaft, 2018, pp. 95-96).

The Bible exhibits the language of war and conflict and the use of the motif for legitimating divine and political human royal authority: the warrior God has defeated his enemies, and those victories attest to his sovereignty; the victorious God then has the prerogative to endorse the authority of particular human kings, and likewise to withdraw divine support. Whole narratives of the conflict motif contribute to legitimate the God of Israel, cultic acts in the Temple at Jerusalem, kings, and the institution of kingship. The motif with allusions, references, and imagery pertaining to the victory of a divine warrior, occurs in several genres, including narrative, poetic, proverbial, legal, historiographic, and prophetic texts.

The Song of the Sea in Ex 15:1-18 is a epitome of how the language and the patterns of the Mesopotamian and Ugaritic myths are taken up and transformed. The canonical form of the Song of the Sea follows the same structure namely, conflict, victory (vv. 1-12), temple building (vv. 13,17) conquest of surrounding peoples (vv. 14-16), divine enthronement in an established kingdom (v. 17) and the proclamation of an eternal kingship at the end (v. 18). There are also some verbal parallels with Ugaritic material. In Ex 15:17, for instance, the Lord’s temple is located «on the mount of possession» and where his enthronement is described as «the place of abode». So Ba‘al’s enthronement is including not only a “mountain of possession” won in battle and the establishment of a throne, but also a “land of possession” and a “domain” or “kingdom” (Smith & Pitard, 2009). However there are radical transformations in the Song of the Sea. The Lord’s defeat of the Pharaoh and the Egyptians at the Reed Sea is proclaimed in historical context. His weapon was a storm at sea, a storm blown up by a blast of wind from his dilated nostrils. The sea is not personified or hostile, but a passive instrument in the Lord’s control (Ex 15:8, 10). There is no question here of a mythological combat between two gods in the divine realm, as Marduk’s victory over Tiamat, or within a divine cosmic framework as the victory of Ba‘al over Yam and Mot (Cross, 1997, pp. 112-144). The hymn celebrates the Lord’s victory at the sea and kingship with a language of declarative and descriptive praise (Dozeman, 1996, pp. 153-159). It is a celebration of divine power of the Lord. The Lord alone is worthy of praise because he possesses the ability to produce intended or desired effects on the other. Opposing powers to the Lord never emerge as independent. The arrogant statements by Pharaoh (in v. 9) where his own self-perceived power is stated, is meant only to provide background and contrast to the real power of the Lord that surrounds and overwhelms him through the movements of the sea that the Lord alone activates and controls (vv. 8.10.11). In the event of exodus, the Lord reveals his power over cosmic forces and over earthly forces, the Lord alone is God Creator and Lord of history. The praise of God for a specific deed in the history, the exodus, culminates in the confession of the incomparability of the Lord expressly stated with the words: «Who is like you among the gods, the Lord?» (v. 11; cf Deut 3:24; 4:39; Ps 86:8.10). In the praise, the strong designation: «The Lord is a warrior; the Lord is his Name» (v. 3) replies to what Moses had said in the story: «The Lord will fight for you» (Ex 14:14), and then «The Egyptians said … the Lord is fighting for them against Egypt» (Ex 14:25). The linguistic allusion to the mythic concept serves here to express in a metaphor the testimony of Israel the divine strength, majesty, protection, and salvation (vv. 1b, 2, 6-7, 11, 13). The image is used in the Bible to represent divine might wielded to save Israel (cf Deut 20:4; 1 Sam. 17:47; Zech 9:13–14). He who is with his creatures, and assures and keeps his promises. God’s Name connotes mighty in power and holiness, triumph and even destruction, among other attributes. God’s battle is for his people and also against “the enemies”. God’s battle indeed is against and to overthrow the arrogant self-confidence and pride by which human beings allow themselves to be dominated and led to violence and oppression (as it happened to Pharaoh).

At the end, the hymn – from a singular historic event of divine victory in battle – becomes account of salvation history, an archetype of the praise of God in all times and in all places with the proclamation of the Lord’s present kingship, the permanent reality of the Lord’s sovereignity: «The Lord reigns forever and ever» (v. 18).

The example of the Song of the Sea can help to read other allusions to mythological motifs, above all in the prophetic and poetic literature of the Bible (cf Ps 76; 77:17-20; 89:10-11; Isa 51,9-11; and so on), in a similar dynamic. The motif of the divine war, in this hymn, is radically transformed compared to the semitic mythological poems: the myths of creation, especially the battle with sea. For Israel the Lord is the sole, universal God and God’s battle here was the historical battle in which the Lord won salvation for Israel. However Israel keep drawing upon symbols and language which retained evocative power and meaning even when the old mythic patterns have been surpassed in the process of historicization. The contents of mythical language were attenuated and contested against mythology, but the symbolic significance of its language has sometimes been redefined and enriched by historical consciousness in a teology of the history. In fact the basic attributes of Israel’s God are historical and this also applies to the designation: «The Lord is a warrior», in which historical and symbolic elements are combined in a new tension and take on a new life.

«For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: … a time for war and a time for peace» (Eccl 3:1.8b). This recurring contrast happens in the events of human history, according to Qohelet.

The first phase of “military history” of the Israelites during the biblical period includes the penetration of Canaan by the tribes of Israel under Joshua (1200 – 1180 BCE), followed by the period of the Judges (1180–1030 BCE), the period of Saul (1030 – 1010 BCE) and David (1010 – 970 BCE), and ends with Solomon (970 – 931 BCE). In each of these periods, the politico-military structure of the Israelites changed significantly in terms of organization and tactics. In the Bible the books of Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, that immediately follow the book of Deuteronomy, belong to the Deuteronomistic History, refer these periods. Evidence from archaeology suggests the first period when the Israelites penetrated Canaan was a time of widespread destruction of Canaanite cities and strong-points. Whether this destruction can be attributed to the Israelites seems unlikely (Gabriel, 2003, pp. 28-31). As the Israelites settled in, however, it is probable that they came into conflict with other peoples of Canaan and that some of these disputes were as likely settled by negotiation as by battle, tactical fight. Many biblical narratives about “the Israelite conquest of Canaan” do not find corroboration in the archaeological record. The accounts of these biblical books remained an oral tradition until around 7th cent. BCE, when they were finally compiled in written form. Probably for reasons of national identity the redactors endowed the oral versions of these accounts with a narrative framework, sequence, chronology and theology that turned the oral tradition into a great national story of a people attempting to preserve their identity and culture against foreign cultural and political influences (Römer, 2007; Ro & Edelman, 2021).

What it is straiking is that in this literary deuteronomistic work in presenting the origin of Israelites settlement in Canaan in two books, Joshua and Judges, the violence accompanies the struggles of Israel to define itself as a nation, in contrast both with other nations (Canaanite and beyond) and with the tribal groups of which Israel is composed (Novick, 2018, pp. 150-158). The book of Joshua describes the entrance of the Israelites into the land of Canaan. They, according to narrative, defeat and kill much of its population, then take up residence, each tribe in its lot. The warfare takes the form of ḥerem, a term perhaps best translated in this context as “annihilative consecration.” That is, the victors dedicate their victory to God by taking no captives and typically no spoils; they instead destroy the entire population, man, woman, and child, and burn the spoils. The purpose of this policy, according to Deut 7, is to prevent the Israelites from learning the nations’idolatrous ways (Lyons, 2009; Niditch, 1993). It reflects actions of Josiah’s politico-religious reform (622 BCE) (cf 2 Kings 22-23).

An episode that illustates all this is told in Josh 11:1-15. A large and powerful Canaanite coalition of kings in the north is organized and headed by the king of Hazor to fight Joshua and the Israelites (vv. 1-5). The kings represent six of the indigenous nations: Canaanites (east and west); Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, and Jebusites (highland); and Hivites (below Hermon) (cf Deut 7:1; 20:17). This enemy is superior to Israel, both numerically and technologically. The size of the army is beyond number, «like the sand that is on the seashore», and fully militarized with the latest technology, «horse and chariot in very great number» (v. 4). The focus for the account is the military technology represented by the “horse and chariot”, a motif with the function to establish the themes of violence and conflict, and that represents prestige objects and powerful aspects of the kings, their military and oppressive power, especially associated from the first time with Egypt. In this scenario the central section refers Joshua defeats the army (vv. 6-9). It opens with the only speech of the Lord (v. 6) in the narrative. The saying contains a divine encouragement to Joshua: «Do not be afraid of them», (as in 8:1; 10:8), and twofold prediction of intervention, that of God: «tomorrow at this time I will hand over all of them, slain, to Israel»; and then that of Joshua: «you shall hamstring their horses, and burn their chariots with fire». The following segments report Joshua’s surprise attack (cf 10:9) and the subsequent rout of the kings (vv. 7, 8b-c). At the center stands the declaration that «the Lord handed them over to Israel» (v. 8a), attributing the victory to the Lord’s participation. The concluding formula of execution (in v. 9) reports that «Joshua did to them as the Lord said to him» (at the beginning in v. 6). Finally the last part of the narrative refers that Joshua also destroys the city of Hazor and the other cities of the coalition, and executes the kings (vv. 10-15) (Brueggemann, 2009).

At the end the victory for Israel is overwhelming, but no details are given about the battle. The form the story suggests that the narrator has crafted a account of a previous campaign (at Hazor) to establish the internal boundaries of Israel in Canaan, into symmetrical reflections on the contours of Israelite identity. With this purpose in mind, the narrator has been more concerned to convey the meanings of the battles than to relate the details of what happened (Hawk, 2000, pp. 168-172). The battle illustrates a powerful message: the Lord’s initiative joined with faithful obedience brings victory over Canaanite power. This account of war in Josh 11 is also related to the law of warfare in Deut 20 and the law of the king in Deut 17:14-20(Dozeman, 2015, p. 476). The principal teaching in the law of war is contained in Deut 20:1, when Moses tells the Israelites, «When you go out to war against your enemies, and see horses and chariots, an army larger than your own, you shall not be afraid of them, for the Lord your God is with you». The law of the king in Deut 17:14-20 states that Israel may have a king (v. 15) and the Lord establishes the authority of the king and “he must not acquire many horses for himself ” (v. 16). The prohibition serves to curb the desire of a king to establish for himself a large cavalry for his prestige and strength, to prevent him from establishing cavalry and chariot forces in the army. In war, reliance on them encourages the king to feel that he is self-sufficient. The proper attitude toward them is expressed in 20:1 and Ps 20:8, which indicate that Israel relies on God, not horses and chariots. In this way the aim of the narrative of Josh 11 it seems to create a battle scene that brings to life the law of warfare in Deut 20 with a practice of the instruction for the king in Deut 17:16. The teaching of Moses in Deut 20:1 is the point of departure for the fictional war against the northern coalition of kings with their horses and chariots and their military force that is beyond number. The destruction of the superior military force in Josh 11 illustrates the power of the Lord described by Moses. The word of the Lord, given to Joshua, is unequivocal: all military force associated with kings must be eliminated (v. 6). All technological military force associated with kings must be eliminated by disabling the horse and by burning the chariot. The Lord gave permission for Joshua and Israel to act for their justice and liberation against an oppressive pattern of power, that of the weapons. The direct active intervention of Israel in order to break with a order of world ostensibly controlled by oppressive power of violence and to choose and disclose a complete transformation of the power situation of the world of Israel, a transformation also of monarchic institution. Only the trust in the Lord and the practice of divine instructions lead to effective acts of liberation and success. The quasi-monarchic leadership of Joshua, ispired by the royal ideal of Deut 17:14-20, has achieved many successes in Canaan for: «As the Lord had commanded his servant Moses, so Moses commanded Joshua, and so Joshua did; he left nothing undone of all the Lord had commanded Moses (v. 15)».

After Joshua’s death, the book of Judges portrays an epoch of political and theological instability, characterized by a cycle of sin, oppression, and salvation. The Israelites sin, especially through worship of foreign gods, then endure hardship under foreign rule, until God raises up a savior from one or another tribe who unites the Israelites and enables them to free themselves of the oppressors’yoke. However when the savior dies, Israelites sin again, and the cycle begins anew. Inside the book and at its conclusion, an explanation is repeated about this failure: “In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his eyes” (Judg 17:6; 18:1; 21:25), that is there was anarchy. The sentence contains the language of Deut 12:8 which opposes the cult in sancuaries as a wilderness practice involving everyone doing as he pleases. This language confirms the link between the redactor of Judges and the book of Deuteronomy, connected to the reform of the King Josiah of cultic centralization to Jerusalem.

In the books of Joshua and Judges the purposes of the deuteronomistic redactional project are multiple, in each episode, in the whole books, and among texts and books, on Israel’s identity in the past and in present od redactors. It is clear that Israel works out its identity in relationship to other nations, so it works out its identity in relationship to tribal and subtribal identity. The book of Joshua supports Israelite identity that success is achieved through united, national undertakings. The book of Judges attributes the instability and sinfulness of the period to the absence of a king, and so makes an argument for the necessity of the institution of monarchy a necessity that the house of David will ultimately supply in the books of Samuel and Kings. At the same time the redactors, through their reading of the past, support the action undertaken by the King Josiah, who guides the people in the fear of the Lord and in the practice of divine teachings, according to the ideal of the king’s law in Israel (Deut 17:14-20). For all this he is praised: «Before him there was no king like him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the Torah of Moses; nor did any like him arise after him» (2 Kings 23:25; cf Deut 6:4-5).

Reading the Bible on the motif of divine and human war requires paying attention to a text’s unique stylistic or aesthetic and communicative qualities. Rhetoric is the art of composition by which written or spoken language becomes persuasive in way of communicating message (Porter & Olbricht, 1997). The study of the war involves confronting fundamental issues in Israelite history and the history of the biblical texts, work with an array of literary genres and the meanings of words and idiomatic expressions, with the dynamics between literary form and purposes, and the challenge to make sense of divergent languages and views of war in the biblical texts or how accounts are mutually illuminating and reinforcing.

The conception of Lord’s authority as kingship implied authorization of the institution of kingship (1 Sam 8; Deut 17:14-20). This was visible in the proximity of the Temple and palace in Jerusalem. The palace-temple complex was a common feature in ancient Near East, and the proximity of the temple and palace promoted, that is, it exhibited and functioned to establish, the legitimacy of the human king by displaying the divine endorsement of the ruling dynasty. This notion is clearly expressed in the divine promise in 2 Sam 7:13, which explicitly links God’s establishment of the king’s David dynasty with the king’s Solomon building of God’s Temple: «As for him, he will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever». David was chosen as a king, God found him to be loyal (cf 1 Sam 16:1-13; 2 Sam 7:11-16; Ps 89:21), and the divine commitment is to strengthen David and defeat David’s enemies: «On account of my hand he will be secure [to assist him], indeed, my arm will strengthen him. No enemy will rise against him, no iniquitous person will afflict him. I will crush his tormentors from before him, and smite those who hate him» (Ps 89:22–24). On the tradition side, moreover, several times David is told he is involved in «fighting the battles of the Lord» (1 Sam 18:17; 25:28). In the first instance, the enemies of his people Israel are enemies of the Lord, so that Israel’s battles for survival are part and are portrayed as battles of the Lord (cf Ex 17:14-16; Deut 25:17-19). For David, however, it is clear, from his first conflict with Goliath, and he articulates: «that all this assembly will know that the Lord does not save by sword and spear; for the battle is the Lord’s and he will give you into our hand» (1 Sam 17:47). The decisive factor to the victory in the war is ultimately not human prowess of force of armes, but the free exercise of God’s will (Prov 21:31).

One of the dramatic events in the history of David’s dynasty is referred in Isa 7:1-17. The narrative concerns the Syro-Ephraimite War of 734–732 BCE. In an attempt to oppose advances by the Assyrian King Tiglath-Pileser III, King Rezin of Damascus (kingdom of Aram) and King Pekah of Israel kingdom formed the Syro-Ephraimite alliance. They attempted to assemble all of the smaller states in the region into a united force to face the Assyrians. This coalition tried to force Judah to join them, but the King Ahaz refused to join with the conspiracy. The two Kings Rezin and Pekah combined their military forces and launched an extended campaign against the kingdom of Judah until a siege of Jerusalem (v. 1). The goal of their assault was to force Judah into the Syro-Ephraimite alliance by removing the Davidic king, and replacing him with a ruler and a more militaristic and nationalistic policy (vv. 5-6). This military pressure was a difficult beginning for the young King Ahaz; he was uncertain and frightened (v. 2). The situation was serious for him, for «the house of David» and the kingdom of Judah. In this situation the Lord sent the prophet Isaiah to Ahaz with a message to help and to encourage him (Roberts, 2015, pp. 108-122). God’s message is concise and in three points. First: «Be calm. Do not be afraid» (v. 4). This encouragement from the Lord indicated support from God. It expresses the Lord’s commitment to protect «the house of David» and to defend Jerusalem. The second point brought the content: «It will not come to pass!» (vv. 7-9a; cf v. 1; 2 Kings 16:5) The plan of the two human kings will not succeed (cf vv. 15-16). Only God’s plan is forever and the divine promise to «the house of David» (cf v. 14). The third word of encouragement in a literal translation of the Hebrew would be: «If you [pl.] do not firm up, you [pl.] will not be confirmed / if you are not faithful you will not be secure» (v. 9b). The words are meant for the king, his advisers and the people (cf v. 2). The prophet calls for the king and people to strengthen the personal faith in the Lord and his words as a necessary condition to being secure and confirmed. King and people are reminded of God’s faithfulness and of God’s assurance.

The divine message is of support for the king and his tack of resisting the pressure of his northern neighbors to join them in conspiracy or to abdicate as they hope. The message attempts also to dissuade Ahaz from calling for the Assyrians for help (Ho̵genhaven, 1990). The Lord’s promise that dynasty will maintain the throne forever, depends upon the Davidic king being able to defend his political autonomy, also against rival kings, strengthening his trust in God of the promise and carrying out his words. The King Ahaz actually, according the reports in 2 Kings 16:5-18 and 2 Chronicles 28:16-25, called for the Assyrian King and followed protocol as a loyal vassal of the Assyrians with serious consequences for the kingdom of Judah (Isa 7:17).

Historiography in the Bible is always deeply interpreted by theology. According the narrative, in this war that the king of Judah must face the issue is not the force of the arms, but the divine message is urging the King Ahaz, his court and the people to take seriously their own royal and Jerusalem-Zion theology. The Lord’s foundational commitments will remain firm and unmovable, providing security for the king and people who trust the Lord, but the king and people who attempt to find security on some other foundation will be swept away (cf Isa 28:16-19).

The Lord is true King (cf Ex 15:18; Isa 6:5) and reigns supreme over life and death (cf Deut 32:39-42). For this reason, human faith in weapons (cf Josh 24:12; Ps 76:4), horses and chariots (Ps 20:8; 33:17; Isa 31:1-3) and or strategic international treaties (cf Isa 30:1-5; Hos 12:2) is viewed as illusory and deceptive. Human estimations of military strength are turned upside down by theology that Israel’s God will reliably protect the faithful and wring deliverance out of threat. The ideal form of warfare decisively subverts the importance of bigger (cf 1 Sam 17), stronger (cf Ps 33:16) or more numerous warriors (cf Josh 11). From the exodus fundamental theological paradigm, moreover, the direct action of God with the free exercise of his will involves a corresponding “passivity” on the part of Israelites (cf Ex 14:13-14). They alone followed Moses into the sea and were witnesses of the action of divine deliverance (cf Ex 14:29.31). Biblical theology’s ideal war for Israel is characterized by trust and not fear, because fear is the anxiety that arises from misplaced trust in human ability and control of the army.

The ascription of warfare to God actually serves to limit rather than promote militarism on Israel’s part (Chapman, 2013). The biblical language with its particular distinguishing features in narratives shows the consistent effort to limit justifiable warfare in Israel’s location of its true security in God’s faithfulness rather than in human might. In fact the consistent goal of the Lord’s activity in the world is not violence and war but peace (cf Ps 11; Isa 2:4; Zech 9:9-10). The Lord is who «makes wars cease to the end of the earth …» (Ps 46:10). All war in Israel’s memory carries the quality of a temporary reality. Battle accounts with the use of cosmological language imply that war represents an unnatural disruption within the created order and not a feature of the way things are supposed to be, a return of chaos. According to history of revelation, God guides Israel’s history to witness and to move toward a ideal world without violence and war «for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea» (Isa 11:9).

The consideration of biblical language from the point of view of the reinterpretation of the symbolic of the myth, that rhetoric and that of historiography reintepreted by theology, and even that of their intertwining, opens significant perspectives for critical reading biblical texts on the motif of divine and human war. There is, morever, an additional point of view in biblical language, the metaphorical one: the Lord’s battle is against the arrogance, the sin, the evil, and not against human beings, with the end of the wars in the messianic days, but this is the subject for a another essay.

REFERENCES

• Ballentine, D. S. (2015). The Conflict Myth and the Biblical Tradition. Oxford University Press.
• Brueggemann, W. (2009). Divine Presence Amid Violence: Contextualizing the Book of Joshua. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock.
• Chapman, S. B. (2013). Martial memory, peaceable vision: Divine war in the Old Testament. In T. H. ThomasJ. Evans, & P. Copan (Eds.), Holy war in the Bible: Christian morality and an Old Testament problem (pp. 47–67). InterVarsity Press.
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