Do Not Take Revenge
One of the more tragic aspects of religious history has been the tendency of faiths to define themselves in relation to other faiths, which they must then negate to prove their own superiority. This is damaging and dangerous. The pages of history are stained with the blood of people killed in the name of God. This was surely not the intention of theologians, but it was the result.
One of the charges levelled by Christians against Jews and Judaism was that the “Old Testament” speaks of a God of vengeance while the New Testament speaks of a God of forgiveness and love.1Writing about America in the 1940s, Peter Novick says, “No lesson in comparative theology was as assiduously taught in Sunday schools across the United States as the contrast between the Old Testament God of vengeance and the New Testament God of love and forgiveness.” Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), 91.
Sadly, even Shakespeare could not avoid the calumny. In the very speech in The Merchant of Venice in which he almost humanises Shylock, he stops short at precisely this point. He has him say: “Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” It is a claim still made today.
It is important to know that it is not so. Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, teaches forgiveness. Divine forgiveness is at the heart of the holiest day in the Jewish year, Yom Kippur (Lev. 16). In the great encounter between God and Moses after the sin of the Golden Calf, God defines Himself in these terms: “The Lord, the Lord, is a merciful and gracious God, long-suffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin” (Ex. 34:6–7).
Ezekiel says in God’s name, “‘Do I desire the death of the wicked?’ declares the Sovereign Lord. ‘Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?’” (Ezek. 18:23).
God forgives. But so do human beings. Forgiveness is the point of the episode in which the book of Genesis reaches its climax and culmination. Joseph’s brothers fear that he will take revenge for the fact that they sold him into slavery. He comforts them, saying, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good, to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children.” Joseph “reassured them and spoke kindly to them” (Gen. 50:19–21). According to the philosopher David Konstan,2David Konstan, Before Forgiveness: The Origins of a Moral Idea (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010). the concept of forgiveness was born in ancient Israel. Christianity derives its ethic of forgiveness directly from Judaism.
Far from being a religion of vengeance, Judaism forbids it in this sedra:
Do not take revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbour as yourself. I am the Lord. (Lev. 19:18)
What is the difference between taking revenge and bearing a grudge? The sages give the following homely example:
“You shall not take revenge” – What is the scope of vengeance? [An example is] if X says to Y, “Lend me your sickle,” and Y refuses to lend it. The next day Y says to X, “Lend me your axe,” and X replies, “I will not lend you an axe, because you refused to lend me a sickle.” That is what is forbidden by the law, “You shall not take revenge.”3Sifra, Parashat Kedoshim 2:4 (10).
Maimonides explains: “[Being vengeful] is an exceedingly bad trait of character. Instead, a person should be forgiving in all his dealings since, for those who have understanding, everything [that happens to them in worldly matters] is insignificant and unimportant and not a proper cause for seeking revenge.”4Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Deot 7:7.
Maimonides gives this account to answer an obvious question. Why should the Torah legislate against a perfectly natural emotional reaction as in the case cited by the sages? You are not obliged to lend me your sickle, just as I am not obliged to lend you my axe. Why should I not reciprocate your lack of goodwill? Maimonides’ answer is that while my response may be justified, in harming you I am ultimately harming myself by becoming a lesser person than I should strive to become.
We should, suggests Maimonides, cultivate forbearance. That is strength of character. Revenge is reactive, forgiveness proactive. One who seeks revenge is allowing himself to be governed by someone else’s behaviour, to be dragged down to his level. That is something we should never do, however natural it may be to want to do so. When someone is rude to us we instinctively feel like being rude in return. But holiness – and the chapter in which the prohibition of revenge appears has the heading “Be holy” – is the ability to stand above instinct and not allow our actions to become reactions. Our task is to act graciously to others even if they act ungraciously to us. This is difficult but necessary. The alternative is revenge, and revenge is forbidden.
The prohibition against bearing a grudge is even more demanding, according to the sages:
What is the scope of bearing a grudge? [An example is] if X says to Y, “Lend me your axe,” and Y refuses to lend it. The next day Y says to X, “Lend me your sickle,” and X replies, “Take it. I am not like you who would not lend me an axe.” That is what is forbidden by the law, “You shall not bear a grudge.”5Sifra, Parashat Kedoshim 2:4 (11).
This is a remarkable passage. On the face of it, the second person has acted correctly, even generously. He has not taken revenge. To the contrary, he has repaid wrong (a refusal to lend) with right (he does lend). All that is wrong is his manner. Why is this a sin? The question is all the stronger when we remember that the Torah is for the most part concerned with acts, not motives, deeds, not thoughts. “Bearing a grudge” as the sages understand it seems to be all about motive.
Again it is Maimonides who provides the explanation. He writes: “One should wipe [the offence someone has committed against him] from his heart and not continue to bear a grudge, because for as long as he continues to bear a grudge and remembers [the wrong done to him], he may come to take revenge.”6Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Deot 7:8.
Animosity is not a safe emotion. It can explode into action at any time. The prohibition against bearing a grudge, implies Maimonides, is a kind of “fence,” a protective barrier, around the command not to take revenge. Not only is revenge forbidden, but so too is anything that might lead to it.
Yet we cannot end the subject there. The Hebrew Bible does contain several references to revenge, if not on our part, then on the part of God: “It is Mine to avenge; I will repay,” says God (Deut. 32:35). “The Lord is a God who avenges. O God who avenges, shine forth” (Ps. 94:1). “For the Lord has a day of vengeance,” says Isaiah (Is. 34:8). Besides which, vengeance is surely an aspect of justice. What is justice if not the principle that, as we act towards others, so will others act towards us? If we do right, we are rewarded. If we do wrong, we are punished. What is the difference between retributive justice and revenge?
This is an important and much misunderstood subject. In the human domain there is a fundamental difference between justice and revenge. Revenge is personal, justice impersonal. Revenge involves taking the law into your own hands. Justice is the opposite. It means handing over your cause to an impartial tribunal to examine the evidence and apply the law. The move from revenge to justice is the most fundamental any society can make. When courts and the legal process take the place of retaliation, it is no longer the Montagues against the Capulets but both under the impartial rule of law. Justice is not revenge.7This was the point often emphasised by Simon Wiesenthal. See his Justice, Not Vengeance (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1989).
It is the only sane alternative to it.
What then does Tanakh mean when it speaks of the vengeance of God? The answer is this: vengeance only exists under conditions of lawlessness. In giving the Torah to Israel, God wants His people to be role models of the opposite: lawfulness. That is the only way violence can be eliminated from society. Not only are His people to keep the law. They are to study it day and night, and teach it to their children “when they sit at home and when they walk on the way, when they lie down and when they rise up.” God wants the law to be engraved on His people’s hearts. Only thus can justice and freedom coexist.
Almost invariably, when we hear of vengeance on the part of God, it is in the context of international politics, where violence, aggression, and war, rather than peace and justice, rule the affairs of humankind. God’s promise that He will execute vengeance is an assurance to His people that there is justice in the world because there is a Judge. Judaism is a religion of justice and love, because without love, justice is harsh and inhuman, but without justice, love is partial and selective. That is one of the themes of Genesis. Love is beautiful but it is also divisive. It leads to family conflict and sibling rivalry, between Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers. There must be justice as well as love if humanity is to survive.
Justice is fundamental to Judaism, and in its name even God Himself can be held to account. That is the meaning of Abraham’s challenge, “Shall the Judge of all the earth do justice?” But while the Torah is a scheme for justice within society it cannot in and of itself be a code for justice between societies until all nations acknowledge the sovereignty of God; in other words, until the Messianic Age. The question before the End of Days is therefore this: How is a nation to respond to the injustices committed against it by other nations?
To this, the Torah gives a radical answer: it must leave this to God. If a nation seeks to right the injustices committed against it by other nations, it will find itself held prisoner by its past, unable to build the future, and it will be caught in a cycle of retaliation that will lead to war without end. That is what happened at the Treaty of Versailles of 1919. The victors of the First World War sought to execute retribution against Germany and it led eventually to World War II.
What the prophets mean when they say in the name of God that “vengeance is Mine,” is that there are forms of justice that only God can execute, not human beings. Only for the God of justice are revenge and retribution the same thing. When the psalmist prays, “O God who avenges, shine forth,” he means: God, let there be justice in this world. But You must do it, not us. We can judge individuals in courts of law, but we cannot judge nations. We do not know who is innocent and who guilty. We can wage war to defend ourselves and our children, but we cannot wage war to execute justice: You alone are the Judge of all the earth. The call for divine vengeance is a renunciation of human vengeance while keeping faith in the ultimate rule of justice in the affairs of humankind.
The Christian theologian who has seen this most clearly in our time is Miroslav Volf, who makes the powerful point that “Most people who insist on God’s ‘nonviolence’ cannot resist using violence themselves (or tacitly sanctioning its use by others).” In fact, he says, “in a world of violence it would not be worthy of God not to wield the sword; if God were not angry at injustice and deception and did not make the final end to violence, God would not be worthy of our worship.”8Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1996), 303.
It is no coincidence that Volf knows whereof he speaks. He is a native Croatian who writes out of personal experience of the ethnic warfare that ravaged the former Yugoslavia after its breakup in the early 1990s. His words are worth quoting at length:
My thesis that the practice of non-violence requires belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many Christians, especially theologians in the West. To the person who is inclined to dismiss it, I suggest imagining that you are delivering a lecture in a war zone…. Among your listeners are people whose cities and villages have been first plundered, then burned and levelled to the ground, whose daughters and sisters have been raped, whose fathers and brothers have had their throats slit. The topic of the lecture: a Christian attitude towards violence. The thesis: that we should not retaliate since God is perfect noncoercive love. Soon you would discover that it takes the quiet of a suburban home for the birth of the thesis that human nonviolence corresponds to God’s refusal to judge. In a scorched land, soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die. And as one watches it die, one would do well to reflect about many other pleasant captivities of the liberal mind.9Ibid., 304.
Vengeance is one of the most profoundly dangerous of human instincts, and Judaism (and Christianity) are a prolonged battle against it. Wrongs must be righted through the due process of law, reactive emotion must be conquered by a discipline of the mind, and larger questions of ultimate justice belong to God. There are times when violence must be met with violence: hence the concept of a justified war of self-defence (milḥemet mitzva). But to commit violence in the name of God is to forget the difference between God and humankind. There are some things, and vengeance is one, that belong to heaven, not to fallible creatures of earth.