War is evil. There is no greater source of human injustice in the world.
War robs more from the poor than any thief. War kills more people than any mass murderer. War displaces more people than any land grabber. War wastes more natural resources than any natural disaster. War rapes more women and orphans more children than anyone or anything else. All the while, it lines the pockets of the wealthy who profit from destruction.
Edwin Starr’s funky song lays it out:
War, I despise
‘Cause It means destruction of innocent lives
War means tears
To thousands of mothers’ eyes
When their sons go out to fight
And lose their lives
War, huh, Good God, y’all
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing
War, huh, Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing!
Listen to me!
The Bible mentions many battles and Yahweh himself is described as a warrior. But war itself is never presented as a good thing. Whenever God’s opinion of war is offered, it comes off negatively. There are times to fight back to protect the lives of the vulnerable, but war itself is a hateful thing.
War – it ain’t nothing but a heartbreaker
War – friend only to the undertaker
War is the enemy of all mankind
The thought of war blows my mind
Psalm 76 pulls no punches when it comes to what God thinks of war and of those who cause it. But it starts out as any other psalm might.
God is renowned in Judah;
in Israel his name is great.
His tent is in Salem,
his dwelling place in Zion (Ps. 76:1-2).
As we might expect in any other psalm, God is well-known and highly regarded among his people. Judah and Israel revere him. We’re not yet told why, but we’ll get to that.
So often, we simply assume the worthiness of God. The Scriptures do so to a degree as well. But almost always, we’re told why God deserves our worship. The Scriptures don’t assume God should receive our praise simply because he’s a god or even the one, true God. The Scriptures continually put his active faithfulness front and center, showing his loyalty to his covenant with us as the reason for loving him. “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
This Asaph-penned song gives us a hint at the why of God’s great reputation when it refers to Jerusalem simply as Salem. The abbreviated name simply means “peace,” thereby renaming the capitol of Israel as Peace Town. His tent or tabernacle is there.
But “his tent is in Salem” doesn’t just mean “his temple is in Jerusalem.” It means God has made his home is Peace. Peace is his hometown. It’s where he camps out. Peace is where God wants to live.
That is why he is worthy of praise, why his reputation is so great: Peace is the center of God’s kingdom.
It’s not surprising that David who established his capitol in what used to be a Jebusite city which he renamed Jerusalem or City of Peace also named two of his sons Solomon (in Hebrew, it’s actually Shlomo, which is based on the Hebrew word shalom, peace, and could be rendered as Peaceful) and Absolom (which is also based on shalom and means Father of Peace). David was obsessed with shalom, with peace, wholeness, put-togetheredness. Shaped by and shattered by war, David longed for peace instead of reveling in war. I believe this is because of his relationship with Yahweh, the God who invented sabbath as a downpayment on the shalom he has planned for the creation he loves.
So what did Yahweh do to earn his praise?
There he broke the flashing arrows,
the shields and the swords, the weapons of war (Ps. 76:3).
God bends gun barrels into pretzels and heart shapes. He defuses bombs. He wrecks the war machine.
God has no saber on his mantle. He keeps no guns as decorations. God has no respect at all for any weapon. He trashes them because they are trash to him.
Talk. about gun control!
It’s because of his disdain for war and its weapons that his Glory shines.
You are radiant with light,
more majestic than mountains rich with game (Ps. 76:4).
Psalm 76 could easily skip verse 4. It divides two sets of verses about God destroying the weapons of war and the dogs of war. Verses 3, 5, and 6 could run together well, sticking to their anti-war theme, but for some reason Asaph dropped in verse 4 which sounds so incongruous.
Here’s why:
The Glory of God is tied to his destruction of the means of destruction.
God brings peace by ending war and this is to his great glory and praise. Those who are trampled by war look at him and all they see is beauty because he saves them from horrific hell of war.
The valiant lie plundered,
they sleep their last sleep;
not one of the warriors
can lift his hands.
At your rebuke, God of Jacob,
both horse and chariot lie still (Ps. 76:5-6).
Warriors and the equivalent of tanks in the ancient Near East — horse and chariot — are done for. But the language here is surprisingly peaceful for such destruction. Instead of blood and guts, fire and smoke, we get sleep. The warriors sleep and can’t lift their hands. The horses lie still.
They do so at a rebuke, at a strong word, not by God swinging his sword and cutting them off at the knees.
God wins his peace peacefully. His war against war is unwarlike.
But that doesn’t make him any less fearsome.
It is you alone who are to be feared.
Who can stand before you when you are angry?
From heaven you pronounced judgment,
and the land feared and was quiet —
when you, God, rose up to judge,
to save all the afflicted of the land.
Surely your wrath against mankind brings you praise,
and the survivors of your wrath are restrained (Ps. 76:7-10).
The “fear of the Lord” stops us in our tracks. It is a confrontation with the reality, presence, power, goodness, and love of God. It is an awareness of all of who God is colliding with the everyday details of our lives. It’s the kind of life that results from living in a God-soaked world.
Circumstances determine how we experience the fear of the Lord. If I am walking with God and my life is attuned to him and aligned with him, I may experience the fear of the Lord as his reassuring Presence. If I am in worship amid the gathered people of God, I may experience the fear of the Lord as an overwhelming sense of awe and glory. If I am actively working against God and his purposes in the world — doing what we call sin and evil — I may experience the fear of the Lord as a suffocating dread.
In Psalm 76, we have both ends of the spectrum. First, we have the fear of the Lord experienced by those who long for his justice to be unleashed. “From heaven you pronounced judgment, and the land feared and was quiet — when you, God, rose up to judge, to save all the afflicted of the land.”
Seeing God at work, bringing his justice against the warmongers causes the land to go quiet.
I see this as the silence of awe and the silence of satisfaction. The action of God to bring justice quiets the clamor for that justice. At the same time, the violent turning of the tables by his action brings a stunned awe. Both of these are the fear of the Lord.
Preceding and infusing the action of God to bring justice is his anger. There’s a sense of fire in the Hebrew word chemah translated as wrath in verse 10. I prefer the word “fury,” with its fiery feel.
God sees the injustice of war and burns with fury. The whims of the powerbrokers tear apart the lives of the poor and vulnerable as they are shreaded by the war machine — and he is enflamed!
That burning passion is turned against the hawkish politicos. And that means the flip side is true — it’s on the side of the vulnerable, “to save all the afflicted of the land.” This is why it brings him praise. There are survivors due to his fury with the violent and because of that the fear of the Lord comes out in grateful praise.
Make vows to the LORD your God and fulfill them;
let all the neighboring lands
bring gifts to the One to be feared.
He breaks the spirit of rulers;
he is feared by the kings of the earth (Ps. 76:11-12).
We see the other end of the spectrum of the fear of the Lord in the passage above. The peace-killing rulers of nations experience the fear of the Lord as dread, their violent actions turned against them.
But they are given the option of trading that fear of the Lord for the first kind. Although our God may fight against those who choose the path of violence, he remains the God of peace. He wants to be at peace even with those who have warred against him and those he has protected.
The neighboring lands are invited to make vows to Yahweh and to offer their gifts (i.e. tribute) to him, thereby acknowledging him as their liege, their lord, their God. The fear of the Lord they would then experience would be more harmonious, having realigned themselves with him.
Back to Edwin Starr.
War has shattered many young men’s dreams
Made them disabled, bitter and mean
Life is much too short and precious to be fighting wars these days
War can’t give life, it can only take it away
Life and love. These are our Lord’s priorities. They are diametrically opposed to war which is why Psalm 76 is so vehemently opposed to death-dealing conflicts. The day has not yet come when the lion lies down with the lamb as in Isaiah’s vision. But those who joyfully fear the Lord will work and pray to that end. To do anything else would be to at cross-purposes with the one who is furious with warmongers.
A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him —
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of might,
the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the LORD —
and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.
He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears;
but with righteousness he will judge the needy,
with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.
He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
Righteousness will be his belt
and faithfulness the sash around his waist.
The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them.
The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
and the young child will put its hand into the viper’snest.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea (Is. 11:1-9).
Amen!