The Warfare Motif in Ancient Near Eastern Literature

As with the Shuar, the Welame, the Kamine and most other primitive peoples (see the introduction), the people of the ancient Near East lived with the assumption that the cosmos was populated with both good and evil spirits. Also, as with these other peoples, this belief was not simply a theoretical piece of information for the people of the ancient Near East. They believed that the activity of these spirits greatly affected their lives. When things went well on earth, it was an indication that things were going well in the unseen world. When things were going poorly, however, when sickness, disease and tragedy abounded, then sinister spirits were clearly getting the upper hand.

Indeed, in a series of exhaustive studies of the demonology of the cultures that form the background to the Bible, Otto Böcher has argued that the prevailing view which dominated the thinking of the people of the ancient Near East (including the Hebrews), and continuing on through the New Testament period, was that all evil was the direct result of demonic activity.1 With some justification, some scholars have accused him of overstatement, since we do find instances where a distinction seems to be drawn between illnesses that are caused by demonic activity and those that are not.2 But if Böcher is guilty of overstatement, the overstatement is not great, at least as it concerns those cultures closest to the Old Testament authors.

It is clear that both the ancient Greeks and the ancient Egyptians also shared the customary view that the world is populated with good and evil spirits that can strongly influence the lives of people, for better or for worse.3 Their views of the spirit world, however, are toned down relative to that of Israel’s Mesopotamian neighbors. The thousands of texts recovered from the peoples of ancient Mesopotamia reveal an obsession with the activity of various good and (especially) evil spirits. The welfare of each person was viewed as largely contingent upon how good and evil spirits interacted with them. If one’s protective spirit (šêdu) abandoned one (for fear? carelessness?), one was immediately open to attack from demonic spirits.

Among the more prominent of the evil spirits in these texts are ašakku, a demon of diseases and burning fevers; nantar, a demon of plagues; ahhazu, whose name means “seizure,” and laba?u, whose name means “to throw down” (either or both perhaps referring to accidents, epileptic fits or demon-possessed states); ilu lemnu, an evil spirit who apparently brought misfortune; alû, a demon who hid in dark areas; lamaštu, who especially preyed on women in childbirth and on newborn babies (apparently when a šêdu was inclined to leave); anu, a vampirelike demon who drank the blood of children; pazuzu, a demon of the scorching north wind; and lilitu and rabisu, a night demon and a crouching demon, respectively, both of whom make appearances in the Old Testament, as we shall see. The list could easily be expanded.4

The Mesopotamians made every effort to ward off these many everthreatening demons, and to expel them once they had afflicted a person. Various prayers, incantations and magical spells were used to avert such spirits, as were a variety of figurines and amulets that honored various gods or spirits.5 When these failed, however, a demon might possess a person, who then required an exorcism. Signs of possession included a strong sense of condemnation by a god; outbursts of anger against a god or goddess; delusions, madness, inability to communicate, muscle paralysis with eyes turning (or seeing) different colors, and so on.67

The Old Testament has a much more optimistic understanding of Yahweh’s control over spirits, though it shares more of this demon-infested worldview than is usually conceded.

Myths of cosmic conflict. The warfare worldview of ancient Near Eastern peoples is seen not only in their demonology but in their cosmologies as well. Like most cultures throughout history, the ancient cultures of Mesopotamia gave mythological expression to the conviction that the world is in an ongoing state of war between forces of good and forces of evil. Indeed, for these people, as for many other ancient and primitive peoples today who provide evidence of their views, the very creation of the world was understood to involve cosmic conflict.

The best-known warfare myth among the ancient Mesopotamians is the Babylonian Enuma Elish, probably dating back to the second millennium B.C.7 In the beginning, according to this story, Apsu and Tiamat lived peacefully in “the happy nothingness of the pristine abyss,” as Russell puts it.8 In time, they together engendered other gods who eventually made too much noise and irritated them. Apsu therefore decided to kill them, but the younger gods learned of Apsu’s plan and beat him to the punch. Tiamat became enraged over this and therefore created a vast horde of demons, who were as frightful in appearance as they were in character, in order to exterminate this band of rebels.

In response, the rebels elected Marduk, god of Babylon and hero of this myth, to fight Tiamat and her evil cohorts. Marduk and Tiamat then engaged in a fierce battle until Marduk finally vanquished her by sending a storm wind into her as she opened her mouth to swallow him (cf. Gen 1:2, where Yahweh’s rûa?—“wind” or “spirit”—hovers over t^ehôm). The victorious Marduk then carved up “the monster” to do “artful works.”9 From her body parts Marduk created the orderly world. He assigned each god to play a role in preserving the order of this creation: the moon, the night, the sun and stars, and so on. He posted guards to keep “her waters,” upon which the earth rests, from escaping. He imprisoned and set guards over the demonic followers of Tiamat. Then, out of Kingu, Tiamat’s evil adviser, he created human beings for “the service of the gods.”10

Among other things, this mythological poem clearly expresses the conviction that order must fight and overcome chaos. Tiamat is a chaos monster who tries to “swallow up” order (Marduk).11 She must be slain and order imposed on her. The chaotic waters of her inner being must be perpetually kept at bay—a concern about the threatening waters that were believed to encompass the earth, a belief found throughout the ancient Near East, including the literature of the Old Testament, as we shall soon see.

As with all mythical texts, the conflict envisioned in this poem must be understood as expressing a perennial conflict, though the event itself is portrayed as taking place in the primordial past.12 The poem is a story of the creation of the cosmos, but it is also a story about the reality of the cosmos now. Hence the poem was reenacted, and the victory of Marduk celebrated, at every New Year’s Festival. The victory of order over chaos, of fertility over infertility, of a helpful Nile over a flooding Nile, and so on, had to be won anew each year.

In this regard, it is also significant that humans and the world as a whole are created out of the body parts of these chaos monsters. Though we are created by Marduk (representing order), we are composed of Kingu (representing evil) and surrounded by chaos (represented by Tiamat). For this reason both humans and the world as a whole need constant divine supervision in order to keep evil and destruction at bay. The ancient poem recognizes that there is something sinister about the cosmos as a whole and humans in particular. As I said in the introduction, this theme is reflected in the majority of the world’s myths of origin, and is certainly found throughout the literature of the Anciet Near East. As we shall see, it is also prevalent in many of the Bible’s creation accounts, though it is, on the traditional reading, altogether absent from what has become the normative creation account, Genesis 1.

Moreover, it is important to note that the chaotic dimension of creation and of humans is the result of a conflict that did not need to arise. This point is frequently overlooked. For example, Walter Wink argues that the Babylonians had “no problem of evil” because for them, as expressed in Enuma Elish, evil “is simply a primordial fact.” “Evil is an ineradicable constituent of ultimate reality and possesses ontological priority over good.” Hence, he concludes, “the origin of evil precedes the origin of things.”13

On the one hand it is certainly true that neither the Babylonians nor any other ancient people wrestled with the “problem of evil,” for they did indeed see evil “as a primordial fact.” For them the world was simply the kind of place in which evil, suffering, chaos and so on were expected. But it is not quite correct to go beyond this and claim that this poem portrays evil as a constituent of “ultimate reality.” Evil is here certainly “primordial” in that it precedes the creation of the world. Indeed, as we have just seen, the creation of the world is itself the result of a war in this ancient myth, as in many others. But this is not to say that evil is either eternal or ultimate.

While none of the gods in Enuma Elish, or any of the other ancient combat myths, is morally perfect or even particularly admirable, they are nevertheless generally portrayed as being at least devoid of overt conflict until a rebellion breaks out that leads to war. In Enuma Elish and most other warfare myths of creation, the origin of overt evil is rooted in this act of rebellion.14

The reasons for this rebellion and warfare in Enuma Elish are, from a Christian perspective, comically trite, as they frequently are in such stories. This again does not speak well of the moral character of the victors in Enuma Elish. But this is not quite the same as saying that evil itself is a necessary and eternal feature of primordial reality. Rather, as in most warfare myths of origin, this poem reflects a dim awareness that actual evil goes back to decisions made by personal divine agents. In the Old Testament as well, argues Robert Murray, the origin of cosmic conflict is construed as the breaking of a “cosmic covenant.”15 Therefore, the biblical tradition generally construed evil as an interruption of the way the cosmos is supposed to obey God. It is not itself a natural feature of reality. This dim awareness becomes much more explicit, refined and expanded in the New Testament and early church.

The conflict-with-chaos motif (often referred to by the German term Chaoskampf) occurs in a wide variety of forms throughout the literature of the ancient world. According to Mary Wakeman, who examined the cosmic conflict lore of twelve civilizations, they are all essentially “about the same thing.” A hostile monster threatens creation; a heroic god defeats the monster and releases forces necessary for life; and the god then controls or fashions these life forces to bring about the creation of the world, or at least significantly influence life in this world.16

In the well-known Epic of Gilgamesh from ancient Sumer, for example, we read about a dragonlike sea monster named Huwawa who has to be vanquished by the hero Enkidu. In other ancient stories we read of a certain Tishpack battling the dragon Labbu; of Ninurta (the warrior god) battling Azag (a water demon); or, in another version, of the Anzu-bird that stole “the tablets of destiny” (the fate of humankind). In still other stories Enki (god of subterranean waters) must wage war against the personified primal waters who threaten to engulf him, or (among ancient Greeks) Zeus must conquer the evil Titans or (in another version) the evil Typhon.

While a great deal could be said about the varying particular agendas of each of these stories, the fundamental theme that runs throughout each is the same: order and good must war against chaos and evil; and the explanation for the imperfect nature of the world, and the future destiny of an orderly world, is found in just this war.17 Fortunately for the orderly world, the good (or at least the “better”) god always ultimately ends up winning—another intuition that, from a biblical perspective, must be judged as accurate.

We must pay more attention to the warfare myth as it is found among the Canaanites since, on the reckoning of most scholars, this culture exercised the most direct influence on the thinking of the Israelites.18 Here the Chaoskampf motif is prominent and occurs in a number of different versions.

One prominent combat story has Baal, the chief god in the Canaanite pantheon, battling the sea monster Yamm (yam means “sea”). Yamm initiates the conflict by taking Baal prisoner as a means of establishing his own lordship. With the help of a sympathetic craftsman who fashions a weapon, however, Baal is able to rise up and vanquish Yamm. He then proclaims, “Sea verily is dead, Baal rules.”19 Variations of this story represent Yamm as Lotan, a twisting serpent of the sea (“Leviathan” in the Old Testament). Or we read of the evil god Mot (mô? in Hebrew and Canaanite means “death”), whom Baal can defeat only with the help of his sister Anat.

As with Enuma Elish, we see here that the order of the world is perpetually threatened and must be defended. In a cosmology that understands water to encircle the earth, and in a culture in which life itself hangs upon the behavior of rivers and rains, this threat is primarily portrayed as being the threat of the sea. The world is encompassed by an evil force that, unless tamed, will certainly overwhelm it.

This theme was appropriated by the ancient Hebrews and incorporated into their inspired tradition, though much of its explicit mythological trappings were left aside. It constitutes the most fundamental way Yahweh’s battle against cosmic forces was expressed in the Old Testament.

Demons in the Old Testament

Having overviewed the perspectives of the cultural milieu of the Old Testament authors, we are now in a position to appreciate more fully their own perspectives on these matters. We shall therefore first consider their views of demons, then their views of hostile forces engulfing the earth and, in the next chapter, their views of cosmic monsters threatening to devour the world.

The first thing that must strike us as we compare the Old Testament with the surviving writings of the Israelites’ neighbors is the radical differences in their attitudes toward the spirit world. The Old Testament has none of the obsession with evil spirits that we find in the surrounding cultures. The fear and superstition, as well as the preoccupation with methods of protection and exorcism, that characterize these other Near Eastern cultures are altogether absent from the Old Testament.

Indeed, given its cultural context, it is remarkable how little the Old Testament says about evil spirits.20 Even where it does refer to evil spirits, it makes little of them. Nevertheless, the little we find here is important to our theme of God’s cosmic conflict with hostile forces, if only because it paves the way for what will in New Testament times become a full-blown demonological worldview.

Evil spirits “from the Lord.” A number of Old Testament passages refer to an “evil spirit” that Yahweh sends to perform various functions. Thus Judges 9:22-25 tells us that God “sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the lords of Shechem” that stirred up civic unrest and apparently increased crime among the lords of Shechem (v. 25).21 Similarly, Saul is several times said to have been “tormented” by an evil spirit sent from Yahweh (1 Sam 16:14, 22; 18:10-11; 19:9-10). It made him act in a violent and irrational manner and ultimately contributed to his downfall as king. 1 Kings 22:21-23 refers to a “lying spirit” that was sent by Yahweh’s heavenly council (see chapter four below) to deceive the false prophets of Ahab into telling him he could safely war against Ramothgilead, a prophecy that led ultimately to his death (vv. 29-37).

Many scholars cite such passages as evidence that Yahweh was seen as being morally ambiguous at this early stage of Israelite thinking. In this view, all evil, as well as all good, issues from Yahweh’s will. I argue against this view at some length in chapter five. For our present purposes it is enough simply to note that in none of these passages was the sending of the evil spirit an immoral or capricious act on Yahweh’s part. Rather, in each passage the Lord sent the spirit as an act of judgment. There was nothing morally ambiguous about the deed.

Hence the author of Judges 9 states explicitly that the evil spirit was allowed to arouse civic tension and crime because Abimelech and the citizens of Shechem had helped murder Abimelech’s brothers (9:23-24). Similarly, Saul’s spiritual torment was a direct result of his disobedience, deceit and arrogance (1 Sam 16:14-16, 23; cf. chap. 15). And the deception of Ahab’s prophets that led to his death was the direct result of his own apostasy (1 Kings 21:25) and his refusal to heed the advice of the true prophet of God (1 Kings 22:7-8, 23-28). Far from revealing an unrighteous dimension to Yahweh, then, the point of each passage is wholly predicated precisely on the righteousness of Yahweh, a righteousness that judges rebellion severely.

Nor do these passages require us to view these various evil spirits as simply obedient servants in Yahweh’s heavenly council, as many scholars hold.22 Each passage clearly stresses that the “evil” work of these spirits was in these instances carrying out Yahweh’s retributive will. But this need only imply that the Lord can at times use the evil intentions of malicious spirits to his own end, as he used the evil intentions of Joseph’s brothers to his own good end (Gen 50:20). The passages show how Yahweh can use evil spirits, but they do not in any way suggest that Yahweh himself wills evil.

Various other demonic spirits. The Old Testament also portrays several spirits as affecting the dispositions of people. Here too the operation of these spirits is understood to coincide with Yahweh’s righteous plan to bring judgment on individuals or on nations. For example, Isaiah 19:14 mentions that the Lord sent a “spirit of confusion” as judgment upon the Egyptians. Similarly, as punishment Sennacherib received “a spirit” that led him to return to his own country and get killed (Is 37:7). Jeremiah reports that the Lord was going to “stir up the spirit of a destroyer against Babylon and the people of Leb Kamai” in response to their sin (Jer 51:1).

It is possible that the “spirit of confusion” and the spirit that led Sennacherib to his death are simply metaphorical references to a particular state of mind. It is also possible that the “spirit of a destroyer” in Jeremiah is simply a reference to a mighty wind, as Frederick Lindström has argued.23 But given the Near Eastern context in which the authors were writing, a context in which a wide variety of dispositions as well as “natural” disasters were attributed to evil forces, it seems more probable that these phrases refer to actual hostile entities.

The Old Testament refers, always in an incidental manner, to a number of other demonic beings who were believed to inhabit the world. Two passages mention šedîm, usually translated simply as “demons” (following the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament; Deut 32:17; Ps 106:37). The Babylonians and Assyrians appear to have regarded šedîm as protective spirits, but the Old Testament authors see them in strictly negative terms.24

Along the same lines, Isaiah 34:14 refers to Lilith, who will inhabit Edom after it is rendered desolate. Lilith was well known throughout Mesopotamia as a demon who was believed to attack people, especially children, at night. This same demon may be referred to in Psalm 91:5, which speaks of the “terror of the night.”25 Isaiah 34:14 and 13:21 also refer to s^e‘îrîm, which many scholars take to be a reference to hairy demons or goat spirits, though the NIV translates it simply as “wild goats.” The concept of certain hairy and goatlike spirits was common among Israel’s neighbors, and it is likely that this conception lies behind the Old Testament prohibition against worshiping these s^e‘îrîm (Lev 17:7; 2 Chron 11:15).26

Genesis 4:7 may refer to another demonic spirit. On the basis of Mesopotamian parallels, E. A. Speiser and others make a fairly strong case that this passage refers to sin as a crouching demon, waiting to seize its victim.27 Also on the basis of such parallels, many scholars argue that references to “the pestilence that stalks” and “the destruction that wastes at noonday” in Psalm 91:6 are references to demons of pestilence and plagues commonly believed in throughout the Mesopotamian area.28

Finally, again on the basis of Mesopotamian parallels, many scholars argue that the Azazel (‘^aza’zel) referred to in Leviticus 16:8-26 is a vile desert demon.29 In this view, the scapegoat of the Yom Kippur ritual was believed to be loaded with all of Israel’s uncleanness, then banished from Israel and delivered over to the unclean demon. The act at once separated the people of Israel from their own sin and from the hostile demon who could seize this sin and use it against Israel. Whatever one makes of this theory, it is not insignificant to note that apocryphal literature later viewed Azazel (or Asael) as one of the most prominent leaders of the demonic army.30

Various scholars have attempted to find references to demonic spirits in other Old Testament passages, but they are all even more tentative than the references treated here.31 In any event, the Old Testament view of demons is clearly quite restricted compared to that of Israel’s neighbors. Although the Old Testament evidences that some spirits can torment, deceive and confuse people as well as bring about civic rebellion and national disasters—it has, in a word, something of a warfare world-view—it never treats these spirits as being anything more than of peripheral interest. Their reality is affirmed, but their autonomy from the will of Yahweh is minimized.

Such an emphasis was perhaps necessary at this early stage of biblical revelation in order to establish among God’s people the singularity and sovereignty of the Lord in the face of a culture that absolutely denied it. As the cosmic warfare motif develops in Scripture, however, the autonomy of these demonic entities, and the reality of their opposition to the Lord, becomes much more central. The themes of Yahweh’s battle with hostile cosmic forces (see below) as well as his ongoing struggle with other cosmic spiritual beings (sea monsters, see chapter three; and “gods,” chapter four) and with Satan himself (chapter five) get fused together with the theme of the world as being inhabited by demons. The result is a worldview in the New Testament that sees the earth as having been thoroughly seized by demonic forces.

Yahweh’s Conflict with the Raging Sea

As is the case with its view of demons, the first thing that must strike us as we compare the Old Testament’s understanding of Yahweh’s cosmic battles is how radically it differs from the views of all its neighbors. In place of the various songs that depict a multiplicity of imperfect gods fighting each other, in the Old Testament we find—polemicizing explicitly against such views—the proclamation that Yahweh is the one Lord God Almighty, and he is altogether “holy” (e.g., Lev 10:3; 11:44-45; Josh 24:19; 1 Sam 2:2; Ps 71:22; 89:18; 99:9; Is 41:14-16; 43:3, 14-15, etc.). In place of the variously construed myths of humanity being formed from the dismembered carcass of an evil deity, we here find the divinely revealed understanding that humanity is made in the image of the holy God and after his likeness (Gen 1:26-27). Like God, we are given a dominion of authority—the earth—not because God needs help, as in pagan mythology, but simply because having this sort of dominion is what being godlike means.32

What is more, while the notion that creation involved cosmic conflict is pervasive in the Old Testament, as it is in Mesopotamian myths, the emphasis on Yahweh’s sovereignty over other gods is unprecedented. In place of the demon-infested paranoia that plagued other cultures, in the Old Testament we find a robust confidence that “the whole earth is the Lord’s.” The existence of demons is admitted, but their ability to afflict humans—at least God’s people—is at this early stage of revelation strongly minimized.

To say that the inspired Old Testament view of God, humans and the world stands far above what we find in other ancient Near East literature, however, is not to suggest that it altogether lacks elements found in this literature. Like their neighbors and most other non-Western cultures, the Israelites held the conviction that the world is, at least to some extent, characterized by a state of cosmic war. The Hebrews’ intense monotheism did not prevent them from adopting the belief that the world was under siege by forces that were hostile to it. Understandably, given the surrounding cultures, they too expressed this by talking about such things as the raging waters that they believed encircled the earth, or the ferocious sea monsters that waged war upon it.

This theme constitutes one of the oldest and (judged by later revelation) one of the most profound elements of the cosmic warfare motif found in the Old Testament, though modern Bible readers often minimize or overlook it altogether. We shall review the most prominent examples of this motif.

Like all ancient Near Eastern peoples, the Israelites believed that the earth rested upon waters. When the author of Genesis 1 begins his creation account by referring, without explanation, to “the surface of the deep” (t^ehôm) and “the waters” (1:2), no ancient Near Eastern person would have had trouble understanding what he was speaking about. This was “the deep” or “the waters” on which everyone believed the earth had been founded (Ps 24:1-2). As a number of different creation accounts in the Old Testament make clear, Old Testament authors believed that, in some primordial chaotic form (see Gen 1:2), the earth was originally completely engulfed by water—“the deep”—but that Yahweh pushed back the waters to make dry land appear. He separated the waters below the earth (upon which its “foundations” rest) from the waters above the earth, holding up the latter with the stretched-out “expanse” (Gen 1:6-10; Ps 24:1-2; 104:2-9; Prov 8:27; Job 9:8; 38:6-12).

Now in the Genesis account, the “waters have been not only neutralized, but demythologized and even depersonalized.”33 Perhaps as a means of emphasizing God’s complete sovereignty in creation (or complete victory over anticreation forces of chaos; see chapter three below), and perhaps in order to express unambiguously the altogether novel conviction that the physical world is in and of itself “good,” the author presents the many “gods” of his Near Eastern neighbors as strictly natural phenomena.

Hence the “deep” that in Enuma Elish was represented as the evil Tiamat is here simply water. Far from battling it, Yahweh’s “Spirit” (or “breath” or “wind”) simply “sweeps” or “hovers” over it (1:2).34 So too, the stars, moon and sun, which Babylonian and Canaanite literature viewed as enslaved rebel gods, are here simply things that Yahweh has created (1:14-19). The expanse, the earth and human beings, far from being carved out of the bodies of defeated gods, are simply spoken into existence by God with the rest of creation (1:6-10, 26-27). In creating the world, according to this author, Yahweh has no competitors.35

Yahweh and personified hostile waters. Not all Old Testament passages demythologize water in this fashion, however. Some texts follow the pagan Near Eastern traditions more closely and express the conviction that while the creation itself is good, something in the foundational structure of the cosmos exhibits hostility toward Yahweh. While God created the world under a “cosmic covenant” of peace, as Robert Murray puts it, this primordial covenant has been broken, and the creation itself has fallen into a state of war.36 To express this breach of covenant and its ensuing war in the context of ancient Near Eastern culture meant talking about personified hostile waters.

From this perspective, the mythological Mesopotamian and Canaanite stories about Tiamat, Leviathan or Yamm could be seen as erroneous, but not altogether erroneous. Insofar as they express the conviction that something about the cosmic environment of the earth (“the waters”) was, and still is, hostile toward Yahweh and toward humanity, the biblical authors could understand these stories to express a profound truth. Insofar as they expressed this truth, this dissolution of the cosmic covenant, they could be appropriated into the inspired canon, so long as it was made clear that Yahweh, not the divine heroes of the surrounding cultures, defeated these foes and restored order to the cosmos.

For example, the psalmist affirms Yahweh’s sovereignty in creation in a way ancient Israelites could understand when he says of the Lord: “You stretch out the heavens like a tent, you set the beams of your chambers on the waters. . . . You set the earth on its foundations” (104:2-3, 5). But, precisely as part of his emphasis on Yahweh’s sovereignty, the psalmist adds that it was at Yahweh’s (not Baal’s or Marduk’s) “rebuke” that “[the waters] flee” and “at the sound of your thunder they take to flight” (v. 7). It was, moreover, the Lord and no other who gave these rebel waters their assigned place (v. 8) and who “set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth” (v. 9). Not only the general concepts, but even the very wording of this ancient revelatory poem correlates with Canaanite accounts of Baal’s conflict with Yamm.37

Similarly, the author of Proverbs 8 states that Yahweh “established the fountains of the deep” (t^ehôm) and “assigned the sea [yam] its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command” (vv. 27-29). The author here plainly understands God’s act of creation to have involved some type of conflict with cosmic chaos, but also clearly portrays Yahweh as being more than up to the task.

Similarly, the author of Job, perhaps transforming another Canaanite hymn, records Yahweh inquiring of Job as follows:

As Jon Levenson notes, we have here

Similarly, in another passage that many scholars believe directly echoes (but transforms) a Canaanite hymn, the psalmist writes:

The point of these passages is clearly to stress that Yahweh (and no other god) reigns supreme over the “proud” chaotic waters that threaten the foundation of the earth. Indeed, unlike Baal, Tiamat, Enki or any other Near Eastern hero who is said to have controlled the chaos, Yahweh’s sovereignty is such that he can master these destructive forces by his mighty voice alone. Unlike the pagan gods, Yahweh does not even need a weapon! The voice that simply speaks the world into existence simply speaks control over the forces that threaten the world.41

Nevertheless, it is important to note that these passages do not take Yahweh’s supremacy over the waters to entail that the waters are not really hostile to God and do not pose a genuine threat to the earth. The supremacy of Yahweh in these passages is predicated on just the opposite conviction.42 A very real battle took place when God created the world, and it is still taking place as Yahweh (not Baal or Marduk) preserves the world from chaos. As Levenson again expresses it, “Creation endures because God has pledged in an eternal covenant that it shall endure and because he has, also in an eternal covenant, compelled the obeisance of his great adversary.”43

Yamm as God’s opponent. The motif of raging waters occurs in a number of other Old Testament contexts as well. In a passage that many scholars believe mentions the Canaanite god Yamm by name, the psalmist writes: “How long, O God, is the foe to scoff? Is the enemy to revile your name forever? . . . You divided the sea [yam] by your might; you broke the heads of the dragons in the waters” (Ps 74:10, 13).

This passage, which is possibly echoing another Canaanite hymn, seems to identify yam with “the dragons in the sea,” and the monster is clearly a mocking enemy of Yahweh. The author is affirming the Canaanite imagery of order fighting cosmic chaos, but crediting Yahweh rather than Baal with the victory.44 In typical Near Eastern and biblical fashion, he is portraying this chaos as a hostile, rebellious sea monster.

As Levenson notes, the whole tenor of the passage testifies to the author’s belief in the authenticity of Yahweh’s struggles against the forces of chaos. Yahweh’s cosmic victory over evil is “invoked here precisely when conditions have rendered belief in God’s mastery most difficult.”45 Though the psalmist affirms God’s “power to defeat even the primeval personifications of chaos,” he refuses to “pretend that there is some higher or inner world in which . . . horrific events are not known.”46 In short, even though God is in an ultimate sense sovereign, for the psalmist his battles with evil are not on this account in any sense a sham. In contrast to Augustine, the psalmist sees that evil and thus warfare are absolutely real for God just as they are for his creation.

Yamm may also be referred to by name in Job’s frank question to Yahweh about the way he had been treated: “Am I the Sea [yam], or the Dragon, that you set a guard over me?” (Job 7:12). In other words, he is objecting to being treated like one of God’s cosmic opponents, Yamm. The sea monster Yamm, he acknowledges, needs to be kept under guard, but why Job?47 Similar references to Yamm may perhaps be found in Job 9:8, which speaks of Yahweh treading “the waves of the Sea” [yam], and Habakkuk 3:8-15, which speaks of Yahweh’s “rage against the sea [yam]” that “roared and lifted its waves on high” (3:8, 10). The author then proclaims, “You trampled the sea [yam] with your horses, churning the mighty waters” (3:15).48

This last reference seems to combine elements of the cosmic conflict motif with the historic deliverance of Israel out of Egypt (cf. vv. 12-13), a combination that occurs elsewhere. Thus Isaiah 51:9-11 also sees Yahweh’s deliverance of the children of Israel through the Red Sea as a type of “Yahweh’s cosmogonic battle with Yamm.”49 Isaiah first proclaims how Yahweh “cut Rahab in pieces” and “pierced the dragon” (v. 9). Rahab, we shall see, is one of the names for the sea monster(s) Israelites believed inhabited the waters surrounding the earth. Isaiah then continues by proclaiming that it was Yahweh who “dried up the sea [yam], the waters of the great deep [t^ehôm],” and thus “made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to cross over” (v. 10). Isaiah sees in the parting of the Red Sea a reenactment of (and perhaps a renewed victory over) the great sea monster Rahab. The one victory is a microcosm of the other.

The same thing seems to occur in Psalm 77:16, where the psalmist speaks about Yahweh’s parting of the Red Sea in terms that sound much like a Canaanite cosmic battle myth: “When the waters saw you, O God, when the waters saw you, they were afraid; the very deep trembled.” He then concludes, “Your way was through the sea, your path, through the mighty waters; yet your footprints were unseen” (v. 19). Again, the Red Sea that would have held Israel in captivity is here seen as a type of the raging cosmic waters that, if not for Yahweh’s power, would have held the very order of creation in captivity.

A similar phenomenon occurs in Psalm 74:10-17, where the psalmist cries out for Yahweh to silence his (and Israel’s) enemies as he did when he split open Yamm and “crushed the heads of Leviathan” (vv. 13-14), Leviathan being yet another sea monster personifying cosmic chaos. So also the Lord’s overthrow of Nineveh is celebrated as God’s victory over Yamm (Nah 1:4).50 Earthly battles against evil mirror and reenact cosmic battles against evil. When Israel’s enemies “roar” against it, the roar of the raging primordial sea is heard. When Yahweh sets these enemies fleeing with his rebuke, his victory over this raging sea is accomplished once again (cf. Is 17:12-13).51 When Israel is conquered, however, it is like being swallowed and then spewed out by the mighty sea serpent (Jer 51:34; cf. v. 55).

Given the general cultural context within which all this is being written, one cannot take these statements as mere metaphors. We have simply no reason to assume that the biblical authors did not believe that these cosmic monsters existed. To the contrary, such expressions make sense only on the assumption that the biblical authors did believe in the existence of these anticreation cosmic forces, and did believe that Yahweh had to genuinely battle them.

Leviathan is alive and well on planet earth. But the central point of such expressions was not simply to assert as a piece of theoretical information the sheer existence of these various cosmic chaos creatures. This much everyone at the time took for granted. Rather, these hymns express the authors’ perception that the cosmos is besieged at a structural level with forces of evil that God himself must battle: evil is not a minor anomalous occurrence on the otherwise pristine stage of the world. They also express the deep biblical conviction that this same warfare is played out in the life of God’s children as they confront their enemies.

In other words, this cosmic warfare is not a thing of the past, nor is it a war that occurs “in the heavenlies,” nor is it a war that God fights alone. To the contrary, the thrust of this last group of passages is to proclaim that this war is a present struggle, it occurs in human history, and it very much involves the human race, especially those who know God. The insight is that all who name the name of the Lord are called to identify and resist, in the power of God, the structural forces of evil that work to thwart God’s plan for the earth in general and for humanity in particular. When we fight, we do not do so on our own power, but God himself reenacts his primal victory over these destructive forces through us.

For the ancient Israelites, there was no bifurcation between what occurs “in heaven” and what occurs “on earth,” and neither should there be with us, if our perspective is to be truly biblical. We might (and must) express and apply this ancient biblical conviction in our own times by identifying and then resisting “the cosmic serpent” in the structural evil that besieges our own culture and the church of God. For example, when we resist the spiritual complacency and empty religiosity that has deeply infected much of Western Christianity at a structural level, we participate in God’s cosmic battle with Leviathan. When we fight the ongoing tendency to compromise the radicality of the gospel by identifying it with this or that political ideology, or by allowing it to be taken hostage by this or that cultural ideal or movement, we are resisting “the twisting serpent.”

But Israel’s battles with hostile waters were not always religious in nature, and neither are ours. When we “take up arms” against corporate greed, and when we follow the call of the Lord in feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, befriending the guilty, embracing the socially repulsive, and siding with victims, we are participating in God’s cosmic struggle against cosmic chaotic forces of destruction. Similarly, when we strive to be responsible stewards of the earth we were originally given responsibility over (Gen 1:28-29) and resist the fallen tendency to rape it for our own convenience, we are fighting anticreation forces that are attempting to thwart God’s plan for the earth.

Moreover, when we refuse to benefit from another culture’s (or our own) slave labor, and when we come against governments that systematically oppress the masses, we are taking up arms against Rahab. When we expose and confront the many subtle forms of structural hatred that presently choke our own culture, whether in the form of systematic prejudice, institutional injustice, or the demonization of other peoples in the name of nationalism, we participate with God in the same spiritual battle that has been going on since the dawn of history.

What occurs on earth, again, is a replica and a mirror of what occurs in heaven. Indeed, it is a microcosmic example of the macrocosmic spiritual struggle. In God’s power, we are mandated to join in the fight.

The seas and individual struggles. The cosmic war is not only fought on a structural or corporate level, however. From a biblical perspective, evil affects everything at every level and therefore must be fought on every level as well. Thus individual struggles also reflect a dimension of this cosmic war.

Hence biblical authors occasionally express their personal woes in terms that are reminiscent of the ancient Near Eastern conflict myths. For example, the psalmist cries out to God, “Rescue me from sinking in the mire; let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters. Do not let the flood sweep over me, or the deep swallow me up, or the Pit close its mouth over me” (Ps 69:14-15). And again, “Stretch out your hand from on high; set me free and rescue me from the mighty waters, from the hand of aliens” (144:7).

Given the original cultural context within which they were written, these statements cannot be taken as mere poetic flourishes. To the contrary, the very meaning of such expressions in ancient culture was predicated on the belief that such demonic realities actually existed. Hence in a manner that resembles Jesus’ portrayal of Peter as a channel for Satan (whom Jesus certainly believed was real, Mt 16:23), David is portraying his enemies as conduits for the destructive cosmic forces he truly believes in. Indeed, like Jesus, David here actually identifies his enemies with these raging rebellious cosmic waters.

Elsewhere, David compares the proud and rebellious cosmic seas, which lifted themselves up against God at the time of creation, to the enemies who now rail against him (Ps 93:3-4). Just as the Lord defeated rebellious chaotic forces at the time of creation and throughout the ages past, so David now cries out for God once again to defeat these forces, as exhibited in his enemies.52 All this is clearly predicated on the belief that these raging seas and cosmic monsters are real and can be confronted in individual struggles.

Such a motif should not be taken as giving us carte blanche to demonize all our personal enemies—a tendency that can itself certainly be demonic! But it does entail that individual believers are not to be “ignorant of [Satan’s] designs” (2 Cor 2:11). When we wrestle individually with forces that seek to destroy us, whether it be literal physical enemies who seek our life, as with David, or emotional, psychological and spiritual forces that seek to incapacitate us, we are combating powers that oppose God’s will for our life. In short, our personal struggles have a cosmic, spiritual dimension.

Not that prayer is the cure-all for such maladies; David certainly did not respond to all his battles with Yamm only in this fashion. Rather, prayer is only one form (albeit a crucial form) of spiritual warfare. We resist the anticreation forces that oppose God whenever we do anything that genuinely restores creation—including ourselves as central features of God’s creation—to the place where God originally planned it to be. As the Israelites never bifurcated the heavenly from the earthly, so we should never bifurcate the spiritual from the earthly and the practical. For example, we have every biblical reason to assume that the discovery and use of medication, the development and use of Christ-centered counseling, and the committed tough love of friends walking beside us to keep us accountable, to help us overcome temptation, and to encourage us when we fall are all forms of spiritual warfare.

Conclusion

While believers today cannot affirm as literal the mythological portrayals of the cosmic forces that the biblical authors give us, we can and must affirm the reality to which these mythological portrayals point. There was and still is something hostile to God at a cosmic level, infecting the cosmos at a structural level, which he has battled and must continue to battle to establish and preserve his good creation. Moreover, this is a battle that all who side with God are called to participate in.

Put in a nutshell, the Old Testament assumes a type of warfare worldview and thus views the very creation and preservation of the earth as something that has to be fought for. There is, at this point of revelation, little reflection as to why these forces are hostile to God or how the continued existence of these forces squares with God’s omnipotence. Later revelation will begin to address these questions. For now, simply note that the texts do not necessarily imply that the evil forces are either primordial (viz., not created) or willed by God (common positions argued sometimes by contemporary scholars). Rather, the nature of both the cosmic forces and the demonic spirits seem to be such that they ought to have been different than they are and hence are sometimes explicitly portrayed as rebellious (following Near Eastern parallels).

Later revelation, as well as church tradition, portrays these powers as having been involved in a freely chosen mutiny—the view that alone allows us to affirm the full reality of the evil these powers represent, while also holding to the omnipotence and utter uniqueness of the one eternal Creator.53

Far from holding to any view of the world as meticulously following a divinely ordained blueprint, the Old Testament operates with the assumption that Yahweh faces real opposition, and this opposition concerns forces that are foundational to creation. While the whole cosmos was originally created good, at some early point something went profoundly wrong at a structural level. Only God’s fighting on our behalf preserves the order of the world.

As we shall now see, however, to have said this much is to have hardly begun to flesh out the full dimension of the Old Testament’s understanding of God’s cosmic opponents. We have yet to consider Leviathan, Rahab and Behemoth, to which we now turn.