Warfare in the service of cosmic order

Warfare in the world of the Old Testament of course served economic and political goals, but it was also embedded within a theological conception of divinely ordained cosmic order. This work examines the relationship of cosmic order within Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Israel. Mesopotamian cosmic order was established and maintained by the national god through the suppression of chaotic forces that threatened to destroy human society and the natural world. Society, centered in the person of the king, existed for the sole purpose of serving the gods and maintaining the rituals that provided for their daily needs. As society, the nation, the king, and the people were an intrinsic part of cosmic order, having been created by the gods, their maintenance was of paramount importance. Warfare served to suppress chaotic enemy forces that challenged Mesopotamian hegemony and that sought to disrupt cosmic order. Egyptian cosmic order was formally articulated in the concept of maat, the ordering force which existed in a duality with the disordering force of chaos. Maat was the proper ordering and functioning of the integrated whole of reality comprised of the gods, the natural world, the Egyptian nation and society, and the pharaoh. The pharaoh was the divine lynchpin that maintained and extended this order through good rule, cultic observance, and military campaigns to suppress existential threats to maat. Israel’s conception of cosmic order was rooted in the sovereign rule and reign of Yahweh, characterized by צדק and משפט . The people were called, via covenant, to adhere to Yahweh’s statutes and ordinances, but unlike Egypt and Mesopotamia, neither the king, nor the kingdom and land were construed as essential to cosmic order. Instead of maintaining cosmic order, warfare was subordinate to it: success in warfare came from alignment with cosmic order instead of being essential to it.