Lethal Agents or Locally Extinct: Wild Animals and Divine Violence in the Hebrew Bible

Abstract

Throughout the Hebrew Bible various aspects of the natural world are utilized by deities to enact violence and judgement on the earth. Sometimes these natural instruments of divine violence are inanimate, such as climatic or geological processes, but often other agents become involved in God’s violent activity too. This article focuses on the overlooked role wild animals play within divine violence in the Hebrew Bible and outlines two ways that they feature. Firstly, they participate in enacting divine violence. Often wild animals are sent by God to attack and eat people as retribution for their disobedience within the Hebrew Bible. While some scholars have previously described wild animals as instruments of divine violence in such passages, the language of agency is perhaps more appropriate for understanding their role here. Secondly, wild animals can also be subjected to divine violence along with humankind. This manifests in a number of ways, including being afflicted by famine, drought, and disease, and this suffering of wild animals is often portrayed negatively in biblical texts. However, if the people are obedient to God, then they are correspondingly blessed with the complete removal of wild animals from the land. This portrayal of violence against wild animals, through their forced eradication or local extinction, is positively described as it benefits the human occupants of the land. The relationship of wild animals with divine violence in the Hebrew Bible is therefore complex with animals being able to exercise their own agency as part of the violent judgement upon humankind but then also being subjected to extinction to suit human survival. The article concludes by examining how these findings might impact arguments surrounding the moral difficulties with God’s violent activity in the Hebrew Bible.