The Hebrew Bible is drenched in war. Battle after battle, conquest after conquest, enemies crushed and cities burned. For many readers, this is a problem—a troubling, violent edge to a text they want to be about faith and spirituality. But what if we’ve been asking the wrong question? What if the Bible isn’t full of war because ancient Israel was especially warlike, and what if it isn’t an embarrassment to be explained away? What if the violence serves a purpose we haven’t understood?
Here’s the insight that changes everything: the Bible is full of war because war commemoration is how nations are made (Exod 17:14). Not war itself—the actual fighting, the blood and mud—but the memory of war, the stories we tell afterward about who fought, who sacrificed, who showed up, and who ran away (Judg 5:23). Those stories don’t just record history; they create community.
Think about it. Every nation needs a past. It needs tales of its people’s struggles, victories, allies, and traitors. And nothing tests a community like war. When faced with an imminent threat, it is imperative to make a decisive choice (Deut 20:8).
Nation Without a State
Here’s the really radical insight. The scribes who compiled the Bible discovered something that most ancient peoples never figured out: a nation can exist without a state (Ps 137:1–4). A state has borders, an army, and a king. It can be conquered. The Assyrians and Babylonians were very good at conquering states. They wiped out Israel’s kingdom in 722 BCE and Judah’s in 587 BCE. That should have been the end of Israel as a nation.
But it wasn’t. Because the biblical scribes—especially during and after the exile—constructed an identity that didn’t depend on having a throne or an army or even a territory (Jer 29:4–7).
The Word of God and His story are what you take with you when you can’t take the land. The nation survives the loss of sovereignty because the nation was never just about sovereignty.
Rahab vs. the Gibeonites
Rahab is a prostitute in Jericho, a Canaanite woman on the fringes of a doomed city. By every measure, she should be destroyed when Israel conquers. But she’s not. She hides the Israelite spies and lies to the king, risking her life and her family’s lives (Josh 2:1–7). And because she does, she and her family are saved. She ends up living “in the midst of Israel” (Josh 6:25).
The Gibeonites, by contrast, deceive Israel. They pretend to be travelers from a distant land so that Israel will make a peace treaty with them (Josh 9:3–15). But here is the crucial difference: Rahab lied for Israel, at enormous personal risk. The Gibeonites lied to Israel for their self-preservation.
Rahab had nothing to gain and everything to lose. She was standing on the losing side of history—Jericho was about to fall. Yet she threw her lot in with Israel, declared her faith in the God of heaven and earth (Josh 2:11), and risked death by her king’s hand. That is courage. That is solidarity. That is why she is saved and ultimately honored in Israel’s story (Jas 2:25; Matt 1:5).
However, the Gibeonites acted solely to protect themselves. They offered no loyalty, no sacrifice, no risk. They tricked Israel into protecting them without ever having to prove themselves in the crucible of war. And for that, they are cursed to be woodcutters and water-carriers, forever subordinate (Josh 9:22–27).
The difference between Rahab and the Gibeonites is the difference between courage and cowardice, between genuine solidarity and self-serving manipulation. The Bible is making a sharp point: How you show up when it counts determines where you belong.
But the deeper tragedy is that Israel failed to consult God before making the treaty (Josh 9:14)—a warning that discernment matters as much as courage.
What the Bible Actually Offers
The biblical model of nationhood cannot be simplified to contemporary blood-and-soil nationalism. It is not about ethnic purity alone—Rahab and Ruth (Ruth 1:16) come from outside. It is about story, law, and the willingness to show up: a shared past, a shared constitution (Deut 31:9–13), and a shared commitment to sacrifice for each other. At its heart is this truth: what defines a people is not the territory they hold but the covenant they keep.
War, Israel and Jesus
Jesus inherits the story of a people defined not by land alone but by covenant, memory, and the holy wars of Israel where God Himself fought for His nation. But Jesus does not abandon that story—he fulfills and deepens it, revealing a warfare far more radical than swords and chariots. He is a King who defends his people from her ultimate enemy—sin, death, and the spiritual forces of darkness.
The wars of Israel were always ultimately the Lord’s: He fought for them against Egypt, against their oppressors, against the impossible odds. Jesus reveals that the true enemy was never merely human armies but the powers of rebellion behind them—Satan and his dominion. When Jesus warns of wars and rumors of wars (Mark 13:7), he does not deny violent conflict; he reframes it. The decisive battle is spiritual. And in his resurrection, Jesus triumphs where no earthly warrior could: he defeats death itself, disarms the rulers and authorities, and leads captivity captive (Col 2:15).
Conclusion
The Hebrew Bible does not glorify war; it transforms it. What looks like ancient violence is actually the blueprint for an unshakeable truth: nations are forged not by borders, but by memory and covenant. When empires crushed Israel’s state, the scribes discovered something revolutionary—identity survives the loss of land. Rahab proved that courage and solidarity matter more than bloodline. The Gibeonites proved that self-preservation without sacrifice leads only to subjugation.
The people who wrote these words lost everything—temple, king, army—and still did not disappear. They remembered. They kept the story. And in Jesus, the ultimate warrior defeats not human armies but death itself.
So do not ask whether you will win every battle. Ask instead: Will you show up when it counts?
No empire, ancient or modern, has the final word. God does.
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What an insightful article. Thank You.
Blessings, Will! Let’s keep thinking together.
For Augustine of Hippo Davide against Goliath is a prefiguration of the deafeat of the devil by Jesus.
For me warrior heroes from Tanakh are a prefiguration of Yeshua/Jesus, i mean biblical characters like King David, Joshua and biblical warriors like Gideon.
Thank you, Luca.
Very interesting and educational, thank you. If I may, here is another take on why Moses never crossed the Jordan. From a topological view, when we cross our own spiritual Jordan River the curse of the law stays on the east side, as we are under the law tof grace not works. Since Moses represented the law given at Sinai, with its curses, it was a foreshadow of that law not following us into Caanan, which represents our period of santification. I have heard several other explanations, all very interesting tools for broader learning.
It’s always good to hear other opinions. Thank you, Ken. Blessings!
Honestly, I couldn’t care less about the nation-state whose citizen I am, or about its image. It is now a plurinational state.
Honnêtement, je me contrefous de l’État-nation dont je suis ressortissant, de son image. Il est désormais un État plurinational
Thank you for sharing.
Moses never crossed because he was punished for his own disbelief in the way he struck the rock; a lesson for all of us.
Correct. That is the reason.