Bible verses about revenge

“Love your neighbour” is the end of a sentence about revenge

Leviticus 19:18, third in the list above, is where you shall love your neighbour as yourself comes from. Jesus quotes it as the second commandment (Matthew 22:39), and it is nearly always quoted on its own. In Leviticus it is the second half of a sentence, and the first half is You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people. Love is what the sentence puts where the revenge was.

The word for bear any grudge is natar (5201). Brown-Driver-Briggs glosses it simply “keep”, and Strong’s gives “to guard; figuratively, to cherish (anger)”. It occurs nine times, and four of them are in the Song of Songs, about vineyards: They made me keeper of the vineyards. I haven’t kept my own vineyard (Song of Songs 1:6). So the grudge Leviticus forbids is, in its own vocabulary, something kept and tended. We cannot tell you what a Hebrew reader heard in the word; the concordance only tells us what else it was used for.

Both verbs Leviticus forbids are used of God

God is jealous, and the LORD revengeth; the LORD revengeth, and is furious; the LORD will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies.Nahum 1:2 · King James Version

Nahum 1:2 uses naqam (5358), the vengeance of Leviticus 19:18, three times, and then natar, the grudge, once: he reserveth wrath for his enemies (interlinear). The two things the reader is told not to do are said of God in a single verse.

He will not always chide: neither will he keep his anger for ever.Psalms 103:9 · King James Version

And natar again, the other way round: neither will he keep his anger for ever is the same verb (interlinear), where the modern rendering has stay angry. Of the nine occurrences, four are vineyards, one forbids you a grudge, one says God keeps wrath for his enemies, and three are about whether he keeps his anger for ever: Jeremiah 3:5 asks it, and Psalm 103:9 and Jeremiah 3:12 say he does not.

Read beside Deuteronomy 32:35, that is the pattern of these passages. Vengeance is not cancelled. It is claimed, by the one who also says, in the same verb, that he does not keep his anger for ever.

“Vengeance is mine” is a quotation, and not an exact one

Romans 12:19 and Deuteronomy 32:35 are the first two passages on this page so that you can compare them. The Hebrew of Deuteronomy says, literally, To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence, which is how the King James prints it. The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, has in the day of vengeance I will repay. Romans has neither: Vengeance is mine; I will repay. Ellicott’s commentary notes that the form “differs both from the LXX. and from the Hebrew” and is “precisely similar to that in Hebrews 10:30”, which quotes the line the same way. The Expositor’s Greek Testament adds that the Targum of Onkelos, an Aramaic translation, has it in the same form too, and that whether the verse was simply current that way, “we cannot tell” (commentaries).

Vincent’s Word Studies makes the observation worth keeping: “The antithesis between vengeance by God and by men is not found in Deuteronomy.” The song in Deuteronomy 32 does not set God’s vengeance against a person’s own. Romans 12:19 is where that contrast is drawn.

The same line settles a question the King James leaves open. The Greek of Romans 12:19 says give place to the wrath, without saying whose. The modern rendering prints God’s wrath, supplying a word the Greek does not have; the King James prints give place unto wrath. Ellicott, MacLaren and the Expositor’s Greek Testament read it as God’s, because of the quotation that follows. The Cambridge Bible reads it as the wrath “of the enemy or oppressor”. Ellicott rules out a third reading, letting your own anger cool, as one that “cannot be got out of the Greek”. The toggles show you the choice the modern translation made.

One more thread. The recompense in Deuteronomy 32:35 is shillem (8005), a noun that occurs only there, from shalam (7999), the verb of Proverbs 20:22: Don’t say, “I will pay back evil.” What you are told not to say is what God claims. And the next words, Wait for the LORD, are qavah (interlinear), the waiting verb our verses about hope and verses about patience are built on.

Romans quotes Proverbs, and stops early

Romans 12:20 is Proverbs 25:21-22, quoted, as the Expositor’s Greek Testament puts it, “exactly as in LXX”, down to the coals of fire. Then it stops. Proverbs goes on, and the LORD will reward you, and Romans leaves that clause off. The Cambridge Bible notes the omission and reads it as not pertinent to Paul’s point rather than untrue (commentaries). Both passages are in the list, so you can see it.

What the coals mean has been argued for a very long time, and Meyer’s commentary on Romans names the sides. One reading, which Meyer traces through Origen, Augustine and Jerome, takes them as the burning of shame and remorse, and the Expositor’s Greek Testament calls that “hardly open to doubt”. Chrysostom, Theodoret and Grotius took them as divine punishment, which Meyer rejects because the next verse, overcome evil with good, stands against it. Jamieson-Fausset-Brown reads them as the fire that melts metal, a heart softened by kindness (on Proverbs 25:22), and the Cambridge Bible adds the coals of a censer, with prayer rising from the enemy like incense. We are not going to settle it. Every one of those readings leaves the instruction itself standing: feed him, and give him water.

The court’s sentence, forbidden as a private one

If anyone injures his neighbour, it shall be done to him as he has done: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. It shall be done to him as he has injured someone.Leviticus 24:19-20 · World English Bible

Proverbs 24:29 forbids someone to say almost exactly this. Leviticus 24:19 has ka’asher asah, ken ye’aseh lo: as he has done, so shall it be done to him. Proverbs 24:29 has ka’asher asah li, ken e’eseh lo: as he has done to me, so I will do to him (interlinears for Leviticus 24:19 and Proverbs 24:29). The same words, with two changes: to me, and I. The first is a sentence passed. The second is a person deciding to pass it.

Deuteronomy 19 gives the same formula to the courts: the passage names the judges, the judges shall make diligent inquisition (19:18), before it reaches eye for eye, tooth for tooth (19:21). Keil and Delitzsch say of Proverbs 24:29 that “on the ground of public justice, the talio is certainly the nearest form of punishment”, and that the wronged person “ought not to set himself up as a judge”; the Pulpit Commentary says the rule “should not be applied to private wrongs” (commentaries).

So when Jesus says You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye in Matthew 5:38, he is quoting a rule for courts, and what follows is addressed to the person who was struck. MacLaren’s commentary puts it plainly: the old law “directed judges to inflict penalties precisely equivalent to offences”, but “that direction was not for the guidance of individuals” (commentaries). How far turn to him the other also reaches is argued over between Christian traditions, and this page does not settle it.

David, twice in two chapters

1 Samuel 24 and 25 are the same man in consecutive chapters. In chapter 24 Saul walks into the cave where David and his men are hiding, and David’s men tell him this is the day of which the LORD said to you, ‘Behold, I will deliver your enemy into your hand (24:4). David cuts off the skirt of Saul’s robe and no more, and 24:12, in the list above, is what he says to him: may the LORD avenge me of you; but my hand will not be on you. It is the sentence Romans 12:19 asks for, said to the enemy’s face. Meyer’s commentary on the coals of fire points to what Saul answers as the illustration: You are more righteous than I; for you have done good to me, whereas I have done evil to you (24:17).

In chapter 25 David is the one with the grievance. A man named Nabal has, in David’s words, returned me evil for good (25:21), and David tells his men Every man put on his sword! (25:13). Abigail, Nabal’s wife, meets them on the way, and 25:32-33 is his answer to her: blessed are you, who have kept me today from blood guiltiness, and from avenging myself with my own hand. The man who spared his enemy in the cave needed someone else to stop him one chapter later. If somebody has talked you out of it, that verse is what to say to them.

What these verses do not say

• They do not forbid justice. Six verses after Don’t seek revenge yourselves, Romans 13:4 calls the ruler an avenger for wrath to him who does evil, and the Greek is one family of words: ekdikeo for avenge and ekdikesis for vengeance in 12:19, ekdikos for avenger in 13:4. Barnes’ Notes joins them: “In Romans 12:19, vengeance is said to belong to God. Yet he ‘executes’ his vengeance by means of subordinate agents” (commentaries). What 12:19 forbids is doing it yourselves. Where that line falls in a particular case is something Christians answer differently, and this page does not answer it for you.
• They do not say the wrong did not matter. Handing a wrong over assumes it is real. If what was done to you is abuse, our verses about forgiveness carry the Church of England’s safeguarding guidance, and nothing on either page says you owe anyone access to you.
• They do not ask you to be calm first. Psalm 94 asks God out loud to Pay back the proud what they deserve. Handing it over can be done in words that are not calm, and our verses about anger start from there.
• The Bible’s first boast of revenge is on another page. Lamech’s seventy-sevenfold, and the number Jesus gives for forgiveness, are on the forgiveness page.