159. Biblical Violence and the Mission of God, with Matthew Lynch, author of Flood and Fury

Matthew Lynch is associate professor of Old Testament at Regent College and the author of Flood and Fury: Old Testament Violence and the Shalom of God.

Matthew Lynch’s book focuses on two stories of violence in particular: the Flood and the Conquest of Canaan.

We need to read the Bible through the lens of Genesis 1.

Matthew Lynch uses “shalom” as a catchall for “right-relating wholeness before and with God.”

Violence is a direct attack on the shalom that characterizes the good creation of God.

Violence has no essential or primordial place in creation. It’s not part of creation’s charter.

Genesis 6 tells us that before God sent the flood, the world was already ruined because violence filled the earth.

Joshua and the Canaan’s conquest is a decidedly “in-between” story.

Canaan had been an old Egyptian outpost manned by warlords.

Joshua casts a vision of a counterculture to the imperial system that Israel is finally getting out from under.

Matthew Lynch unpacks the challenging command of God in Joshua to “completely destroy” the Canaanites.

Jericho was more of a military outpost than a city. There wouldn’t have been many women and children.

According to Matthew Lynch, the framework of scripture is decidedly shalom-oriented.