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George W. Knight III
mies. The Old Testament on a number of occasions speaks of God’s
instructing his people about war, both war waged to capture the land and
war in defense (cf. Exod. 17:8ff.). Deuteronomy 20 is an entire chapter
devoted to instructions from God for conducting the battle:
When you go forth to battle against your enemies . . . you shall not be afraid of
them; for the
L
o r d
your God is with you. . . . The
L
o r d
your God is he that
goes with you. . . . When you draw near unto a city to fight against it, then pro
claim peace unto it. . . . And if it will make no peace with you, but will make
war against you, then you shall besiege it [w. 1,4, 10, 12].
The God and Father of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and of our Lord Jesus
Christ, instructed his people of old to wage war when necessary and to slay
the enemy. Such a forthright statement as that of Deuteronomy 20 makes it
impossible to assert that the command “You shall not kill” was intended to
prohibit war. Further, these explicit instructions by God make it impossible
to maintain that God prohibits the believer from engaging in war under any
circumstances.
Before leaving this passage we should note that the nation addressed is a
theocracy, the people of God as the nation Israel. This point is important as
we consider the bearing of this passage upon the situation of today, in which
the people of God are a trans-national and supra-national entity, the
Church, and no nation may be considered the people of God. Although this
passage, and others like it in the Old Testament, gives evidence that war is
not prohibited, it does not thereby give warrant to a Christian group or to a
nation to apply this passage directly to itself to warrant its initiating war, for
neither is the special theocratic people of God.
Perhaps this distinction is highlighted by God’s insistence that the Israel
ites utterly destroy their enemies in the land. This is explained as the just rec
ompense of God upon those enemies because their iniquity is full (cf. e.g.,
Gen. 15:16; Lev. 18:24ff.). This is an intrusion or breaking into human his
tory of God’s justice upon men’s sins. And this intrusion is done by God’s
special command through special revelation. Although God may and does
accomplish such justice by other nations throughout human history (cf.
Habakkuk and Cyrus in Isaiah), no nation or group of people may apply
what was a special command in a particular situation to themselves to war
rant [their] initiating warfare.
Does not this consideration make an appeal to the Old Testament invalid
and useless? No, because it still recognizes the basic principle under consid
eration, that war itself is not always ruled out as contrary to God’s will. Even
though nations today, or groups of Christians, may not claim the right to act
for God in initiating a war of conquest and punishment, a nation or an indi
vidual may, like Israel, defend itself or others, as Israel did and as the Old