Reinterpreting and Rewriting Divine Violence
Beyond Reception History
The issue of violence in the Bible is one that has troubled translators, exegetes, theologians, and casual readers alike. What do we do when it describes violence, sanctions violence, or even describes divine violence directly? The earliest forms of reception of the Hebrew Bible, found in the Greek Septuagint, the Aramaic Targums, the New Testament, Rabbinic literature, or other derivatives, offer significant insight into how this thorny issue was approached and wrestled with.
Whether the intent was translation into a new language, theological reflection, or literary exploration, this history shows how a wide array of later genres creatively adapted the material from their sources in the Hebrew bible in order to add distance between the divine and depictions of violence, either positively through a figure known as the “Angel of the Lord” or negatively in early depictions of an “adversary” in what appears to be early literary forms of a Satan figure.
One clear example of introducing intermediary figures comes from the second century BCE book of Jubilees. This text, often placed in a genre called “Rewritten Bible”, rewrites much of Genesis and Exodus in the literary framing device of an angel revealing previously unknown details to Moses on Mount Sinai. Jubilees exhibits concerns about divine action, justice, and mercy that likely reflect the evolving sensibilities of second temple Judaism.
A key example in Jubilees is the added role given to Mastema, an angelic "Prince of Hostility" who serves as an adversary and accuser figure. In several instances, Jubilees has Mastema carry out punishments and trials attributed directly to God in the biblical accounts. This intermediary role distances God from directly participating in or initiating violence, instead utilizing Mastema to do so on God's behalf.
In one notable example in Genesis 22, God famously commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, but an angel intervenes at the crucial moment to stop the slaying of Abraham's son:
God said, “Take your son—your only son, whom you love, Isaac—and go to the land of Moriah! Offer him up there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I will indicate to you.” (Genesis 22:2)
However, in Jubilees 17:15-18, Mastema, an adversarial being which is an early form of a Satan-like figure, is the one suggesting to God that he test Abraham's loyalty by commanding the sacrifice of Isaac:
And the prince Mastêmâ came and said before God, “Behold, Abraham loves Isaac his son, and he delights in him above all things else; command him to offer him as a burnt-offering on the altar, and you will see if he will do this command, and you will know know if he is faithful in everything where you try him …” (Jubilees 17:16)1
In this retelling, God agrees to Mastema's proposition and Mastema watches eagerly during the binding of Isaac to see if Abraham will obey. Only when the angel cries out does Abraham stop, as in Genesis. This introduction to the narrative also appears to have incorporated elements of Satan’s accusation against Job in the introduction to that narrative in order to create a literary parallel.
By making Mastema the primary initiator of the test rather than God himself, the author of Jubilees adds an intermediary figure to create distance between God's will and the command for violence. This subtle yet meaningful change reflects theological developments regarding divine action and potential interpretations of divine justice. Mastema serves as an accuser and adversary who carries out the harsh commands of God, perhaps in the mind of this author sparing God the direct responsibility of initiating an infamously troubling circumstance.
The Greek Septuagint provides another example of using an intermediary figure to distance God from violence. Unlike the indirect command toward violence found in the narrative of Genesis 22, the highly enigmatic story of Moses and Tzipporah in Exodus 4:24 contains a description of the divine engaging in violence directly in attempting to kill Moses:
Now on the way, at a place where they stopped for the night, the Lord met Moses and sought to kill him. (Exodus 4:24)
However, the Septuagint alters the source text to make the “angel of the Lord”, rather than God himself, the aggressor against Moses:
And it came to pass that the angel of the Lord met him by the way in the inn, and sought to kill him. (LXX Exodus 4:24)2
This change transfers the violent action from God to an angelic agent. The translators of the Torah for the Septuagint demonstrate how, in the ensuing centuries after the Exodus text was written, thoughtful readers were wrestling with these depictions of divine violence and even with the appearance of the divine engaging in apparent human-like behavior. Daniel Gurtner, commentating on a Greek translation of Exodus, emphasizes, “… [Exodus 4:24-26] is among the more enigmatic pericope in the Hebrew Bible. It is not even mentioned by Philo or Josephus, and takes on new meaning in LXX Exodus ... The subject is the ἄγγελος Κυρίου, ‘angel of the Lord’ ... though the Masoretic Text reads יְהוָה and makes no mention of an ‘angel’ …”3
Interestingly, there is slightly different language used here in one of the later Targums, this time at the end of the short story:
Zipporah took a stone, and circumcised the foreskin of Gershom her son, and brought the severed part to the feet of the angel, the Destroyer. (Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 4:26)
This same language of a “destroying angel” added here to the Exodus story made its way into the New Testament (whether directly or indirectly is a matter of scholarly debate) in the first epistle to the Corinthians:
… do not complain, as some of them did, and were killed by the destroying angel. These things happened to them as examples and were written for our instruction, on whom the ends of the ages have come. (1 Corinthians 10:10-11)4
These translations and their reception into their varied communities reshaped the biblical narratives and God's actions within them to better align with their own cultural and theological context. The example of the Septuagint shows how traditions were fluidly adapted based on the perspectives of new generations of readers.
One of the most discussed examples of inter-biblical intertextuality and the introduction of an intermediary figure lessening divine violence comes in 1 Chronicles 21. This text retells the account in 2 Samuel 24 of David's census. In 2 Samuel, God explicitly incites David to perform the census, an action that ultimately leads to a punitive plague against Israel for David's pride. The instigation is attributed directly to God:
The Lord’s anger again raged against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, “Go count Israel and Judah.” (1 Samuel 24:1)
However, the Chronicler's retelling subtly shifts the action away from God. Instead of God inciting David, 1 Chronicles 21 introduces a “Satan” (literally, “adversary”) figure:
Satan opposed Israel, inciting David to count how many warriors Israel had. (1 Chronicles 21:1)
While scholars debate the nature of this figure, if it’s a supernatural “Satanic” being found in later Christian and Jewish literature, or perhaps just a human “adversary”, the shift in perspective away from direct divine action to an intermediary is often seen as an attempt to avoid impugning God's character by transferring direct causation of the census away from God.
Biblical scholar Michael Segal expands on this idea and adds a more nuanced reading between Samuel and the Chronicler, stating, “The syntactical subject in the verse from Samuel is not the Lord himself, but 'the anger of the Lord', and it is possible that the author responsible for 1 Chronicles 21 interpreted 'the anger of the Lord' as an evil, divine entity, based upon Psalm 78:49: ‘He sent against them his burning anger, wrath, indignation, trouble, a band of evil angels.’ According to this interpretation, the rewriting in 1 Chronicles 21 does not present evidence for a direct exchange of YHWH by Satan, but rather a reinterpretation of 2 Samuel 24:1, in which one evil angel has been replaced by another destructive, heavenly entity. The understanding of ‘the anger of YHWH’ as an evil angel is reinforced by a common tradition in rabbinic literature that takes ‘anger and wrath’ as destructive angels in light of Deuteronomy 9:19 ...”5
These few examples surveyed provide just a small sampling of how later interpreters handled difficult portrayals of direct and indirect divine violence in the Hebrew Bible. By introducing intermediaries like angels or satanic figures, they worked to bring their inherited texts and traditions into alignment with evolving theological sensibilities and concerns.
Their insights remain instructive today for how sacred texts maintain relevance across changing times and cultures. Though confronting violent depictions of the divine remains challenging, the history of interpretation provides resources for wrestling thoughtfully with these ancient portrayals ourselves. This interplay and tug-of-war between innovation and continuity allowed the Bible to shape religious imagination for millennia and to continue to do so today.
Gurtner, Daniel M. Exodus: A Commentary on the Greek Text of Codex Vaticanus (pp. 230-231) Brill, 2013
Segal, Michael The Book of Jubilees: Rewritten Bible, Redaction, Ideology and Theology (p. 209) Brill, 2007