Violence in the Hebrew Bible - Pt 1 - Violent Speech

Bradley Jersak with Matthew Lynch

Dr. Matthew Lynch is an Old Testament scholar based at Regent College in Vancouver, BC. He is been one of my go-to resources on issues of peace and violence in the Old Testament. In fact, I love to book him as a guest lecturer and regularly use his books as required reading in my courses at SSU.ca.

In a recent conversation with my students, Matt clarified a number of questions that were ‘aha! moments’ for me and worth sharing more broadly in a series of posts. Please understand that I’m sharing his ideas as I understood them, but for a more accurate and scholarly breakdown of the issues, you can factcheck my reflections in his books, Portraying Violence in the Hebrew Bible and Flood and Fury: Old Testament Violence and the Shalom of God.

In this first instalment, I’ll share what Dr. Lynch said about Violent Speech in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Typically, Western culture refers to ‘hate speech’ as speech that incites or causes violence (defined as ‘doing harm’). That is, hate speech leads to violence. But in some cases, we have come to recognize that the speech itself can be violent. In Canada, for example, holocaust denial is considered an act of violence in and of itself, such that freedom of speech by teachers in public classrooms is curtailed on that topic.

Dr. Lynch points out that the way words can be weaponized is a significant theme in the Psalms and Proverbs, where insults are described as arrows. This reminded me of the ‘fiery darts’ of the accuser described in Ephesians 6.

Violent speech is especially rooted in two kinds of ‘wicked speech’ in the Psalms and Proverbs: deceitful speech and boastful speech. Hearing that, I could not help but connect the dots to the deceit and boasting so popular in political campaigns today. I thought about how much violent speech occurs throughout every election cycle.

In the biblical texts, these aren’t like magical spells or curses (as in the story of Balaam in Numbers). Rather, according to the Hebrew tradition, violent speech generally starts in secret, grows into rumours, and is connected to false testimony. And it’s not that the words lead to violence. They are violent.

In some of the imprecatory (angry) Psalms, victims of violent speech cry out for divine vengeance: “Bring their words back on them and break their teeth.” Even that prayer sounds violent to me. But notice how slanderers are described. Their teeth are like fangs that can slice up a reputation and devour their victims. Venomous words can ruin someone’s life and that’s actually the intent. For the words to come back on the accuser would be to defang them of their power, to discredit their accusations, and to cancel their credibility.

It seems to me that this is precisely what Jesus Christ has done for us in exposing the diabolos (devil, slanderer, accuser) as a fraud and a liar. The shield of faith that extinguishes the flaming arrows of accusation refers to trusting what Jesus says about us as the truth.

Matt also pointed out the great deal of harm enacted in Eden when the seedbed of human sin was the serpent’s deceptive speech. Gratefully, in Genesis 3:15, we read that the sneak attack of the serpent (striking the heel) is ultimately reversed when the Seed of the woman ‘crushes the head of the serpent’… a promise fulfilled at the Cross as the ‘prince of this world now stands condemned’ (John 16:11) and ‘is driven out’ (John 12:31).

Stay tuned for part 2, when we’ll examine the Old Testament connection between human violence and ecological harm (‘ecocide’).