Flood and Fury, Matthew J. Lynch. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023.

Summary: A searching study of the biblical texts on the flood in Genesis and the conquest of Canaan, facing the issue of violence and God’s participation, against the backdrop of the shalom of God.

Violence has been a sad part of the human story since the fall, and its continued existence and the havoc it wreaks in human lives is something any thoughtful person wrestles with. What is also troubling to many thoughtful, believing or not, is the violence in scripture, particularly in the Old Testament, that is either God-sanctioned or God-perpetrated.

Some approaches to this defend the violence as necessary, as God’s warranted judgment. Others are basically arguments that try to eliminate the problem by saying it didn’t really happen that way. Matthew J. Lynch takes a somewhat different approach in this book, one that at some points says there is more (or perhaps less) to the perception of violence than meets the eye, and yet does not deny the reality of violence but also tries to set in a larger context of God’s shalom and God’s great compassion.

Lynch begins by contending that we need to face the problem without “burning down the house.” which he argues Marcion did in trying to excise violence from scripture. To do so is to eliminate a tension that leads to greater insight. He then briefly surveys the different approaches to the violence in scripture and then contends that we need an approach that reads slowly and carefully, reads problematic texts in light of the whole, that is willing to be surprised and shocked, that continues to allow the Bible to “bite back,” speaking into our own situation, and that keeps wrestling.

The next two parts take two major concerning passages on violence–the flood narratives in Genesis and the conquest of Canaan including the practice of herem. First, in Genesis 1-8, he explores the theme of shalom and its shattering. In contrast to other origins narratives, he notes the shalom that is part of the DNA of creation–of wholeness, of harmony, of human rule causing all to flourish. This ended when sin entered in. He traces the development of violence, not only against Abel, but against women through polygamy, military and political violence. He develops the idea of the spread of creation-destroying violence and God’s conclusion to bring it to an end through the flood to restore shalom through returning the world to the formlessness at the beginning of creation. It should be noted that he does allow questions both about the universality and historicity of the flood, opening the way to treating this as story of how God pursues shalom.

He then turns to the conquest narratives. Perhaps the most interesting thing in his discussion here is that he shows that there are two “reports” in Joshua, and we usually hear only one. The Majority Report focuses on the utter destruction of cities and their inhabitants. The Minority Report is of the settlement of Canaan little by little, sometimes settling with the peoples around them, sometimes displacing them, and sometimes enslaving them, all of which are far more merciful. He shows how both are in the text, but often only the more violent texts are focused on, and these may in fact have been limited to key military outposts and political cities, some with relatively small populations. At times, he allows for hyperbole in the accounts. More controversial, and less grounded in the biblical text, he allows for the possibility of not a “conquest” but a gradual “infiltration” consisting of some coming from outside and others already in the land. Also, he suggests that Joshua’s conquests of the “kings” of Canaan completes the Exodus, as these kings would have been vassals of Egypt–an intriguing idea. What he proposes is that the literary art of Joshua is to display Joshua as a second Moses, who completes what Moses began. This allows us to resolve discrepancies between biblical accounts of Jericho and the archaeological evidence (or lack thereof) of a conquest.

The concluding section, perhaps was the most helpful. He sets these accounts against the larger Old Testament narrative in which he believes the covenant-keeping love and faithfulness of God predominates. He does argue that accounts of wrath and judgment are embedded in this larger picture and that this is a “wicked” problem, one he would deem “irresolvable.” There is mystery here, and as he has observed earlier, to try to pull out violence and judgment diminishes, yet its presence troubles.

I particularly appreciate in this work the way he looks closely at the biblical text while reading it within larger themes–the shalom of God in Genesis, the love and mercy of God, evident even in many places in Joshua (e.g. Rahab). His insistence that we credit both the majority and minority reports in Joshua and ask what is the larger narrative purpose of incorporating both is important. His willingness to not settle for simple answers and even to allow scripture to question us–for example about our own ecological violence and exploitation of others for our benefit–is a strength of the book. I do find unsettling his willingness to go along with scholarship that basically concludes that some texts really can’t be read as they would most plainly be understood, or that history really didn’t happen the way it is rendered in Joshua. I realize these pose challenges. I’d rather live with the discrepancies than deny the biblical text, and hope for further illumination.

However one comes down on these questions, Lynch has written a thought-provoking study of two important sections of the Old Testament dealing with God-sanctioned or -perpetrated violence. If you are looking for a resolution, it is not here. But you will find valuable insights along the way, and a posture in approaching the questions that, apart from concessions to critical scholarship, is one worthy of imitation.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.