Vengeance

In Deu 32:35 1Ch 12:19 Heb 10:30 Jud 1:7, means retributive justice- a prerogative of God with which those interfere who seek to avenge themselves. So also in Mal 28:4 ; though many suppose that the islanders meant the goddess of justice, Dike, whom the Greeks and Romans regarded as a daughter of Jupiter, and feared as an independent, just, and unappeasable deity.\par

Not Avenging

Lev_19:18; Pro_20:22; Pro_24:28-29; Mat_5:38-42; Luk_6:27-30; Rom_12:17-21; 1Th_5:15; 1Pe_3:8-9.

The LORD Avenging

2Sa_22:48; Psa_18:47; Nah_1:2; Rom_12:19; Heb_10:30.

Vengeance Belonging To The LORD

Deu_32:35-36; Psa_94:1; Rom_12:19; Heb_10:30.

Who The LORD Shall Avenge

Deu_32:36-43; Luk_18:7-8; Rev_6:9-11; Rev_18:20; Rev_19:1-2.

Who The LORD Shall Take Vengeance Upon

Deu_32:36-43; Jer_5:26-29; Nah_1:2; 1Th_4:3-6; 2Th_1:7-9; Jud_1:7; Rev_19:1-2.

VENGEANCE.—The word ‘vengeance’ (ἐκδίκησις) occurs in Authorized and Revised Versions of the Gospels only in Luk 21:22, where it refers to God’s providential punishment of sin. ἐκδίκησις occurs also in the phrase ποιεῖν ἐκδίκησιν (Authorized and Revised Versions ‘avenge’) in the parable of the Unjust Judge (Luk 18:7-8), and the corresponding verb ἐκδικέω (also rendered ‘avenge’; cf. (Revised Version margin) ‘do me justice of’) is found in the same parable (Luk 18:3; Luk 18:5). Outside the Gospels these words and the cognate ἔκδικος occur exactly a dozen times. Some of the passages will call for reference in the course of this article. We are not left, however, to the very rare use of this small group of words for our Lord’s teaching on vengeance. We gather it from several passages of direct instruction, from His continual insistence on an unrevengeful, a forgiving, loving spirit, and from His own conduct throughout His ministry, but especially at its close.

Our word ‘vengeance’ is closely related to two others,—‘avenge’ and ‘revenge,’—between which, at least in modern usage, an important distinction is made. Both have to do with the redress of wrong. In ‘avenge’ the idea of the justice of the redress or punishment is prominent. In ‘revenge,’ on the other hand, the predominant thought is that of the infliction of punishment or pain, not necessarily unjust, for the gratification of resentful or malicious feelings (note, e.g., in Jer 15:15 the substitution in Revised Version NT 1881, OT 1885 of ‘avenge’ for Authorized Version ‘revenge,’ and on the other hand the retention of ‘avenge’ in Rom 12:19). ‘Vengeance’ leans, now to the one, now to the other of these meanings. It may be just, it may be malicious; even when it is just, the motive may be wrong.

1. The aim of Christ was to create in His disciples a new attitude towards those who had wronged them. Evidently He was preparing them, at least in part, for injuries that must come to them as His followers (Mat 5:10 ff.); but His teaching has, of course, a much wider application. The permission, even encouragement, of retaliation by the OT, and still more the interpretations, exaggerations, limitations of the scribes and Pharisees, Christ swept away with an authority which astounded His hearers. He denounced the attitude of retaliation and hatred, and commanded His disciples to accept the sufferings which fell to their lot. But this was more than a demand for a new attitude. It was the exorcizing of an evil spirit, and the opening of the doors of the heart to a new spirit. An attitude may be merely external and mechanical. Christ wants more. The negative must have a corresponding positive or be morally worthless. Forgiveness and benevolence must take the place of vengeance; love, not hatred, must be the motive of thought and act. ‘Enemy’ must be blotted out of the vocabulary of the follower of Christ, at least as a category in which any of his fellow-men may be included. Others may hate and persecute him; he must love and pray for them, and do them good. It is this new spirit that is the supreme moral difficulty; it is here that all questions of interpretation and application must find their solution. We must remember, not only Christ’s ‘resist not,’ but also His ‘pray for,’ and His ‘love.’

This teaching of Christ is found constantly throughout the Gospels. He pronounced ‘blessed’ the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers, the persecuted (Mat 5:5; Mat 5:7; Mat 5:9-10 ff.). He rebuked James and John when they would have called down fire from heaven on the Samaritan village that would not receive Him (Luk 9:51 ff.). He taught His disciples to forgive a sinning but penitent brother, not with a niggard, but with a generous and inexhaustible forgiveness (Luk 17:3 f., cf. Mat 18:21 ff.). He even makes God’s forgiveness of a man depend on the man’s forgiveness of his fellow (Mat 6:14; Mat 18:35, Mar 11:25 f.). He taught His disciples to pray that they might be forgiven as they forgave others (Mat 6:12, Luk 11:4). He warned the Twelve, as He sent them out on their mission (Matthew 10), that they would suffer hatred, persecution, even death, for His sake; and charged them to be, in the midst of wolves, ‘wise as serpents and harmless as doves’ (Mat 10:16), in the endurance of their sufferings to have no fear, but to rely on God.

2. His own conduct during His ministry is the best commentary on His teaching. It is true that there is much denunciation of evil (e.g. Matthew 23), that He upbraided for their unbelief the cities where He had wrought His great miracles (Mat 11:20 ff. ||), that He swept the Temple clear of those who had robbed it of its sanctity (Joh 2:14 ff., Mat 21:12 ff. ||). But these are echoes of the Divine wrath; they are not in any single instance the expression of personal anger, of retaliation, of hatred. On the other hand, we have His patient endurance of all manner of personal abuse, His heart-broken lament over Jerusalem (Mat 23:37 ||), His bearing during and after His trial (Matthew 26, 27), and above all, His prayer on the cross: ‘Father, forgive them: for they know not what they do’ (Luk 23:34).

3. This teaching of Christ, forbidding vengeance, requiring forgiveness and love, is built on a firm religious basis. His aim as a religious Teacher, as the Sent of God, was to renew the sin-broken fellowship between men and God, to make men sons of God; but the indispensable condition of sonship is unity of nature. The essence of the Divine nature is love, and the highest manifestation of the Divine love is forgiveness and benevolence. The spirit of malevolence, of retaliation, of vindictive dealing with men, is alien to the spirit of God. Therefore it must be banned out of the heart of those who would be sons of God, and replaced by the spirit of forgiveness, of ungrudging love. It is this conception of the essential love of God issuing in forgiveness, in love, that is the basis of the high demands of Christ, and the inspiration and possibility of our response (Mat 5:43-45; Mat 5:48; Mat 18:23-35, Luk 6:35. Note, also, how Christ links the Second Commandment to the First as ‘like unto it,’ Mat 22:39 ||).

4. If the teaching of Christ seem at first sight impracticable, destructive of moral order, and delivering wrong-doers from the fear of punishment, the answer to these objections is not far to seek. In the first place, liberation from the spirit of vengeance is a moral triumph for the sufferer of wrong. Revenge is evil. It belongs at best to a lower stage of morality and of the knowledge of God. It cannot justify itself to those who have seen God in the face of Jesus Christ. The sons of God must be like the Son of God, like God Himself, who loves and forgives without limit. Further, love is the most potent moral force that the world has ever known. To meet wrong with revenge may be a satisfaction, and may seem a right thing to the natural man. Vengeance may accomplish its object, may fully punish and even crush the wrong-doer. But it does not conquer him, it does not crush the wrong out of his heart, it does not make him ashamed of his sin, it does not win him to good and to God. Love does—not always indeed, but often—and nothing else can. Love is a heaping of coals of fire on an enemy’s head (Rom 12:20), the kindling of a burning shame in his heart, the overcoming of evil with good, the triumph of God. See art. Retaliation.

5. There is a further and a very solemn strain in the teaching of Christ, in which we find the final answer to the fear that moral anarchy may arise from the exorcism of the spirit of vengeance. The clearest expression of it is found outside the Gospels (Rom 12:19): ‘Avenge not yourselves, beloved, but give place unto wrath [τῇ ὁργῇ, the wrath, the wrath of God]: for it is written, Vengeance belongeth unto me; I will recompense, saith the Lord.’ To avenge ourselves is to assume the prerogative of God. So Christ teaches, e.g., in the parable of the Unjust Judge: ‘Shall not God avenge his own elect?… I say unto you, that he will avenge them speedily’ (Luk 18:7 f.). It is in this light that we must read all Christ’s words of denunciation, His parables of Judgment, His judicial acts (such as the cleansing of the Temple), His lament over impenitent Jerusalem. ‘It shall be more tolerable … in the day of judgment’ (Mat 10:15; cf. Mat 10:33; Mat 11:20 ff; Mat 12:36 f., Mat 16:3 f., Joh 8:44). The moral order of the world will be vindicated by Him whose right alone it is to mete out vengeance to evildoers, who alone has adequate knowledge and wisdom to do justice to sin.

It would, of course, be easy to hold this teaching of Christ in a wrong spirit, to cherish a sense of satisfaction that, even if we may not avenge ourselves, yet vengeance is certainly in store for wrong-doers. This would be entirely contrary to the spirit of Christ. It would be the old evil spirit of vengeance in a new form, a more subtle and therefore a worse form. It would mean an utter absence of the love which Christ inculcates, which desires and prays for the good of the enemy. It would be the conquest of ourselves by evil, not of the evil in others by good. But, on the other hand, the moral sense which God has implanted in us, and which He has strengthened by His revelation of Himself, could not rest satisfied unless it were assured that evil shall not go unpunished, that unrepented wrong shall receive its due reward from an all-wise and, let us add, an all-loving God.

Literature.—Grimm-Thayer, Lex. s. vv.; EGT [Note: GT Expositor’s Greek Testanent.] , ad locc. cit.; Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture, ‘Matthew’; Tholuck, Com. on Sermon on the Mount; Goebel, Parables; Sanday-Headlam, Romans; Moule, Romans; Stevens, Teaching of Jesus; Wendt, Teaching of Jesus; Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible , artt. ‘Anger (Wrath) of God,’ ‘Avenge,’ ‘Ethics,’ ‘Forgiveness,’ ‘Goel’; JE [Note: E Jewish Encyclopedia.] , artt. ‘Forgiveness,’ ‘Goel,’ ‘Retaliation.’

Charles S. Macalpine.

ven´jans. See AVENGE; GOEL; RETRIBUTION; REVENGE.

The word ‘vengeance’ (ἐêäßêçóéò), with its corresponding substantive ‘avenger’ (ἔêäéêïò, 1Th_4:6, Rom_13:4), is an essentially NT word and never carries with it the suggestion of arbitrary or vindictive reprisals: it is always a just retribution, and a retribution inflicted by God Himself or His instruments (1Pe_2:14). If the idea of wrath is associated with the use of the word, as in Rom_3:5; Rom_13:4, such ‘wrath’ (ὀñãÞ) is the eternal righteousness or justice of God acting in harmony with His revealed will. In both Rom_12:19 and Heb_10:30 the words’ Vengeance is mine; I will repay’ are quoted somewhat loosely from Deu_32:35 (ἐí ἡìÝñᾳ ἐêäéêÞóåùò ἀíôáðïäþóù). The verb (ἐêäéêÝù) occurs in the parable of the Unjust Judge (Luk_18:3; Luk_18:7-8) in the sense of affording protection from a wrong-doer and so vindicating the right of the injured person. It is then applied by our Lord to the Divine vindication of the ‘elect,’ the phrase used being ðïéåῖí ôὴí ἐêäßêçóéí ôῶí ἐêëåêôῶí, which suggests the protection of persevering saints as well as the just penalty inflicted on their aggressors.

In the ethics of Christianity the Golden Rule solves the problem of private and personal revenge. Revenge at the bidding of momentary passion or as the gratification of a selfish emotion is resolutely condemned by the teaching of Christ, and forgiveness takes the place of the old savage law of retaliation (see Mat_5:38-48). Of the assertion ‘Vengeance is mine,’ W. H. Moberly (in Foundations, London, 1912, p. 280) writes: ‘This limits, but at the same time consecrates, the notion of retribution. The disinterested infliction of retribution is sometimes a moral necessity’; and he further quotes T. H. Green (Principles of Political Obligation, § 183): ‘Indignation against wrong done to another has nothing in common with a desire to revenge a wrong done to oneself. It borrows the language of private revenge just as the love of God borrows the language of sensuous affection.’

Punishment, if it is to carry any moral weight, must involve the vindication of law, and consequently the new ethic of Christianity which controlled the conduct of the Apostolic Church is based on love, which rules out of revenge the element of private and personal malevolence (see some cogent remarks by J. S. Mackenzie, Manual of Ethics4, London, 1900, p. 404 f.). The repetition of the quotation from Deu_32:35, in the form in which it comes to us in two such representative Christian writings as the Epistles to the Romans and the Hebrews, shows clearly that the Christian consciousness had grasped the idea of punishment as in effect a Divine prerogative. The private individual has not to assume judicial functions which properly belong to a recognized legal tribunal or ‘powers’ regarded as Divinely ordained (Rom_13:1-6).

On the relation of the subject to war, E. Will-more (J. Hibbert Journal xiii. [1915] 340) describes how the doubts of a friend-a Territorial soldier-as to the moral Tightness of war (based on ‘Vengeance is mine,’ etc.) were resolved by reading of the atrocities of Belgium and the nature of German atheism. ‘Vengeance belongs to God,’ he wrote; ‘then we are God’s instruments.’ War as a method of giving expression to the law of international righteousness is admittedly repugnant to the Christian conscience; but until the method is superseded as the result of a consensus gentium, a Christian nation is not absolved from the duty of vindicating either by offensive or by defensive warfare the eternal principles of right and justice.

R. Martin Pope.