This seems to contradict the following verse saying, “Anyone who takes the life of a human being is to be put to death.” If this law were to be taken literally, every single Israelite would have had to sooner or later been put to death. Another contradiction can be found in the golden rule of a maxim in Leviticus 19:18, which says, “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself.” However, revenge was a very commonly accepted practice in the Israelite society as evidenced by the cities of refuge designated in Joshua 20. Numbers 35 sets up the position of an “avenger of blood,” whose duty is to murder someone who is guilty of murder. The purpose of the cities of refuge is for someone …show more content…
It is easy to mistake the difference between vengeance and justice, but Creach blends the two together into a different biblical perspective. Vengeance can be misinterpreted and abused through our contemporary understanding as an irrational and harsh response to a wrong, but the original Hebrew term for vengeance used in the Bible is meant to be understood in the context of justice meted out by legitimate authority. Creach defines “legitimate authority” by saying that “justice was not defined primarily by whether things accorded with laws established by the king, but by whether social relationships fulfilled God’s intentions for human society. In this way, the Bible places the word “justice” in parallel with the word for “righteousness.” Instead of seeing justice as a synonym for punishment, Creach reflects on justice as the opposite of violence. Creach explores instances of the faithful taking vengeance into their own hands and considers such actions as appropriate on the defense of “because the enemy had far superior power and was arrogant and oppressive.” However, Creach also accounts that these human cries for punishment against an offender are curbed by the declarations of God’s mercy and the hope of including these powers in the kingdom of