Old Testament Enemy Lovers

Love Your Enemies?

In perhaps his most countercultural teaching of all, Jesus commands his followers to love their enemies: “You’ve heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt. 5:43–44). And, “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you” (Luke 6:27).

Hating one’s enemies is among the most natural of things to do; loving them is among the most counterintuitive (Luke 6:32–36). Yet, this is the command of the Prince of Peace (Isa. 9:6), the incarnate God of Peace (Rom. 16:20) who commissions his followers to preach a gospel of peace (Eph. 6:15) about a kingdom of peace (Isa. 9:7; Rom. 14:17). Jesus calls us to imitate God, rather than imitate the gentiles who love only those who love them (Matt. 5:45–48). Indeed, Jesus’ command to love our enemies is grounded in God’s gracious love for his creatures, so that, as Donald Senior points out “In loving the enemy the disciple acts as God acts.”

For many, this represents a stark contrast between the “God of the New Testament” revealed in Jesus Christ and the “God of the Old Testament” revealed as a “warrior” (Exod. 15:3), who engages in warfare and directs his people to wage war against, and at times even exterminate, neighboring nations. What are we as followers of Christ to make of this violent God and people of God?

Reframing the Warrior God

Violence, war, and genocide are found lurking throughout the pages of the Old Testament, often blessed or even commanded by God. This poses troubling questions for those who receive the Old Testament as Christian scripture but read it through the nonviolent and peacemaking words of Christ. Those who take seriously Jesus’ teachings often wrestle with the paradox of Old Testament violence, proposing various approaches and answers. However, as important as these discussions are, there is another narrative thread running throughout the Hebrew Bible which anticipates the peaceful kingdom of Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of the kingdom of Israel’s God (e.g. Isa. 11:1–9). This narrative of peace and nonviolence is subtle and does not attract the attention of the forces of evil, in church and society, that continually drag us into violence and war. But the narrative exists nonetheless.

Collin Cornell, Fuller Theological Seminary professor of Bible and mission, encourages us to reframe, rather than deny, the troubling realities of Old Testament wrath and violence by emphasizing “the goodness and peace that the Old Testament puts in first place and last place, and the transitional or penultimate role the Old Testament assigns to divine wrath.” Cornell notes that the Old Testament begins (Gen. 1–2) and ends (Mal. 4:4) with God’s vision for peace and justice and that this theme is threaded throughout, interwoven among threads of wrath, war, violence, and retribution which all trace, not to God’s good design and intent, but to the horrific ramifications of evil. “You’ve heard that it was said … hate your enemy,” Jesus says in Matthew 5:43. But we scour the scriptures and never find such a command from God. Might God have already been preparing his people to love their enemies, even in the Old Testament?

N. C. Wyeth, In Naaman's House (from Children of the Bible), oil on canvas, 1929. Photograph by Pictures Now / Alamy Stock Photo.

Two striking examples of the peacemaking, nonviolent counternarrative of the Old Testament are found in 2 Kings 5–6, amid horrific stories of famine, revolt, war, and exploitation. In the accounts of the Aramean general Namaan’s slave girl and the prophet Elisha’s mercy on the Aramean army, we are invited into a different way of facing the horrors of war. These stories challenge the natural tendency to “hate our enemies,” inviting us instead to actively make peace by loving them.

The Israelite Slave Girl and the Aramean General

At the time of the events in 2 Kings 5–6 (ninth century BC), the Arameans were the primary enemy of the kingdom of Israel, with border skirmishes and isolated raids escalating into wholesale war as they fought constantly over the land of northern Palestine. In 2 Kings 5 we meet Naaman, a commander in the Aramean army who suffers from leprosy, a debilitating and incurable skin disease (but probably not today’s Hansen’s disease.)

Naaman’s wife has acquired an Israelite slave girl, taken captive in an Aramean raid on Israel. With every reason to hate Naaman, instead this girl shows him mercy, proactively directing him toward the Israelite prophet Elisha for healing of his affliction. Reluctantly, Namaan submits to the strange instructions of this foreign, enemy prophet – dip yourself seven times in the dirty Jordan River – and comes up cleansed! The effect of the healing is incredible. Naaman returns to Elisha and confesses, “Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel.” He offers Elisha gifts and vows to only sacrifice to the Lord.

Elisha refuses Namaan’s gifts and instead sends Israel’s enemy away with the blessing, “Go in peace.” Alongside Namaan’s slave girl, Elisha loves his enemy, extending God’s gracious power of healing to him. In so doing, he not only speaks peace to his enemy but also invites him into life-giving covenant with Yahweh. Tony Merida notes that this is one of many parallels between Elisha’s and Jesus’ ministries, in which physical healing leads to complete salvation.

Deuteronomy 28–30 provides a backdrop to these events. Here God promises blessings on his covenant people for obedience and curses for disobedience. Among the blessings are physical abundance and health (28:11), while the curses bring terrible diseases (28:21–29; 60–61), including “festering sores and the itch, from which you cannot be cured.” Yet, if they are faithful to the covenant, these diseases will fall on their foreign enemies (30:7). Both the Israelite slave girl and prophet would have been justified in thinking, “Here is a foreign enemy of God’s people who is suffering the righteous punishment for his sins.” Instead, they both showed compassion, grace, and mercy, extending God’s covenant love beyond the borders of Israel to their enemy.

The Israelite Prophet and the Aramean Army

Tragically, in the following chapter, 2 Kings 8, Aram and Israel are at war once again, with Israel outmaneuvering their opponent. The king of Aram suspects a spy but is told it is the prophet Elisha who is informing the king of Israel about his movements. The king sends his army after Elisha and finds him and his servant in the valley city of Dothan. In the morning, Elisha’s servant wakes and exits the tent first to see them surrounded by Aramean horses and chariots. He panics, but Elisha assures him, “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” One can imagine the confusion of Elisha’s servant in the face of such simple arithmetic.

Then comes a series of opening and closing of eyes – both physical and spiritual. Elisha prays for his servant’s eyes to be opened, and he sees the horses and chariots of fire – a contingent of the army of the Lord of Hosts – surrounding the Aramean army on the hill. Elisha then asks God to blind the Arameans and leads them into Samaria, the capital city of Israel, where he prays once more, and God opens their eyes. Elisha hands the helpless soldiers over to their enemy. But when the king of Israel wants to kill them, Elisha instructs him to treat them kindly as prisoners of war, give them food and water, and send them home. After the captured soldiers are fed a “great feast,” they return home in peace. The story ends with the words, “So the bands from Aram stopped raiding Israel's territory.”

These stories represent the power of peacemaking through loving our enemies. The frequent battles of conquest and revenge, which appear throughout the Old Testament, invariably prove the truth of Martin Luther King Jr.’s words that “returning violence for violence multiplies violence.” But in between are these stories that offer a pathway toward peace. They not only provide a counternarrative to violence and war in the Old Testament but a model for actively loving our enemies today.

Choosing Not to Be an Enemy

In the Hebrew scriptures, the defining characteristic of an enemy is hatred. Jesus’ command to love our enemies redefines them – no longer an enemy, now a beloved. Paul instructs us, “If it is possible, as far as it depends upon you, live at peace with everyone” (Rom. 12:18). Hatred and love are expressed through concrete action. Others may insist on hating us and treating us as enemies; we can nevertheless love them by treating them as friends.

This is precisely what God has done for us in Christ. If the height of human love is dying for one’s friend (John 15:13) and people may sometimes die for a good or righteous person, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:7–8). God has reconciled the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them, and his love compels us to be his ambassadors, serving as messengers and ministers of reconciliation to those who have not yet been reconciled to God (2 Cor. 5:14–21).

To follow Christ, then, means following him into a way of life in which we regard no one as an enemy, a posture in which we do not entertain hatred for anyone. Rather, we actively love those who consider us their enemies, befriending them, caring for them, and even giving our lives if necessary to demonstrate divine love to them. May we follow the example of Christ and those who preceded him, including the Hebrew slave girl and the prophet Elisha.