Welcome to Part 4 of my book analysis series of Esther Hamori’s new book, God’s Monsters. In this post, we are going to look at Hamori’s take on angels in the Bible. Hold on tight.
Chapter 4: The Destroyer and Other Angels
For the sake of brevity, allow me to first summarize Hamori’s basic thesis regarding angels: They are all angels of death! Even the ones who bring good tidings are death-dealing monsters who just follow God’s orders to slaughter people. In case you think I’m being hyperbolic, read on. I’m not.
To be fair, though, Hamori does correctly state near the beginning of the chapter that what she is really trying to do is to shake her readers out of that childish, simplistic, fuzzy-bunny caricature of angels clothed in white robes, praising God, and handing out candy and hugs to little children. Yes, it is true—that image is not the biblical image of angels. Yes, biblical angels are often terrifying and, quite frankly, scary. And yes, oftentimes, God uses angels to battle against evil and destroy the wicked. All that is true.
The problem with Hamori’s description of angels in chapter 4 (like I said in the previous post) isn’t actually faithful to the biblical text. It is her own caricature, obviously inspired by every horror and slasher movie she’s ever seen in her life. And the sad reality, whether one tries to whitewash something or blackball something, is that to do either one inevitably requires you to twist and distort the thing you’re whitewashing or blackballing.
With that, let’s jump in…
The Destroying Angel
Hamori begins by saying that although angels are God’s messengers who bring words of comfort, they are also “the most ruthless of God’s soldiers, the deadliest of all his divine hitmen” (106). And as she emphasizes time and time again, they only bring those words of comfort after they’ve knee-capped you!
She then brings up the story of Passover, when YHWH sends the Destroyer throughout Egypt to kill the firstborn. Let me first say that one of the problems critiquing Hamori’s work is that the stories she mentions require quite a bit of context and scholarly insight, and she gives none of that. She simply engages in some scandalous bomb-throwing and moves on. She shows no interest in actual understanding the actual story in question. For example, in the Exodus story involving the ten plagues, there are questions regarding historicity, literary artistry, etc. Now, I believe there was a historical Exodus, in that the Hebrews were slaves and came out of Egypt at a certain point in time. Still, when reading the story of the Exodus, it’s not a historical documentary. It is a literary narrative that interprets historical events in ways that should not be taken literally. When we read and interpret it, we need to read it as literature and interpret it along those lines. If we fail to do that, we end up with the interpretations Hamori gives us…and we are convinced that Luke Skywalker is a genocidal maniac…and that Rey (who was trained by both Luke and Leia) is even worse—after all, she and her friends blew up the entire planet of Starkiller Base! I mean, think of the ecological devastation and probably millions of life forms snuffed out! But hey, whaddya expect from someone trained by the twins of Darth Vader?
So, when it comes to the tenth plague, all that Hamori emphasizes is that God sends the Destroyer to mindlessly kill people. No context—just “God sends angels to kill.” At this point in the book, such an interpretation didn’t surprise me. What caught my attention is what Hamori said regarding Pharoah’s initial refusal to let the Hebrews god. She writes, “Back when Moses was asking the Pharaoh to let his people go, God decided to manipulate Pharaoh’s mind on the matter—but no to get Pharaoh to agree. Instead, God ‘hardens Pharaoh’s heart’ so he won’t let the Israelites god. That way, God can do it, miraculously and violently himself” (112).
How does this supposed biblical scholar not know what “hardening Pharaoh’s heart” means? I learned this in an early Biblical Exegesis class during my first master’s program at Regent College. The phrase doesn’t mean God “manipulated” Pharaoh’s mind to essentially hypnotize him into not agreeing with Moses. It means (to quote Gordon Fee!) that Pharaoh was already “one bad dude,” and that God was going to use Pharaoh’s badness to eventually bring about the salvation of His people. God tells Moses, “Go ask Pharaoh, he’s going to say no…because he’s one bad dude! That’s okay, when he says no and I bring the Hebrews out anyway, everyone will know that I am the true God and that Pharaoh and the gods of Egypt are powerless compared to me.” If anything, “hardening Pharaoh’s heart” does not mean God is using a Jedi mind trick on Pharaoh.
After that, Hamori goes back to the story of David’s census and describes the angel: “This angel is a giant, like nothing we’ve seen before, high above the earth but visible to all, with its proportionally enormous sword covering the whole city—and it’s caught in the in-between, a freeze frame of the moment of crossing realms. The Destroying Angel’s sword, like its very body, is next-level terrifying” (115). Go ahead, read all of II Samuel 24, there is absolutely nothing in the chapter that describes the angel. How Hamori is able to give such a physical description is baffling.
After that, Hamori takes us to II Kings 18-19, to the story of Sennacherib’s invasion. Long story short, Hezekiah rebels against Sennacherib of Assyria, Sennacherib invades Judah and besieges Jerusalem. Hezekiah prays to YHWH for protection and Isaiah prophesies that YHWH would save Jerusalem. Then, we are told that an angel of YHWH went out and killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers, and that Sennacherib pulled up camp and went back to Nineveh—Jerusalem was saved.
Now, I don’t believe that a literal angel literally walked into the Assyrian camp and went Rambo on them. But it is a historical fact that Sennacherib did put Jerusalem under siege and for some reason failed to take Jerusalem. There are also historical indications and speculation that a plague of some sort might have swept through the Assyrian camp. Therefore, the writer of II Kings is describing that as an angel of YHWH. In any case, it’s a fascinating story of how YHWH saves Jerusalem from the oppressive Assyrian army.
Want to guess how Hamori characterizes it? First, she says that the angel of YHWH went out and killed 185,000 people…while they slept! There is absolutely ZERO mention of it being the Assyrian army. She completely rips the verse in question out of context and just says, “Look! God sends an angel to slaughter 185,000 people in their sleep!” Second, she compares YHWH saying that He will save Jerusalem “for my own sake” to a “smug perp” in a Law and Order interrogation room incriminating himself.
I’m sorry, but what the hell? Not only is her take juvenile and blatantly misleading, but how is YHWH saving Jerusalem like a smug perp incriminating himself? Oh wait, that’s right, Hamori doesn’t mention Sennacherib’s invasion, or that the people killed were soldiers. In her version, God just sends an angel to kill innocent people in their sleep for no reason! Let’s just call God “Freddy Kreuger.” Gotcha…
New Testament Fun with Angels
Perhaps one of the most hilariously stupid interpretations in her book involves the story in Acts 12 regarding the death of Herod Agrippa. In the story, after giving a rousing speech, the crowd shouts out that Herod Agrippa must be a god. When he gladly accepts the praise, we are told an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died. Now, we even have independent attestation of this. Josephus tells us that Herod died after five days of abdominal pain. Again, we have an actual historical event being interpreted by the writer as God’s judgment. Again, I don’t think a literal angel came down and punched Herod Agrippa in the gut or injected him with worms. Any scholar (or clear-thinking individual) will realize this.
How does Hamori characterize this story? Well: “An angel of the Lord immediately strikes him down, and he is eaten by worms and dies. Eaten by worms. Then dies. Not the other way around. The Acts story isn’t sloppily worded, accidentally implying that the worms precede the death. An angel struck Herod, and he was eaten alive” (122). That’s right! Hamori’s exegetical and interpretation skills are so acute that she claims God is the equivalent of Jigsaw in the Saw movies. I’m sorry, how can anyone take this seriously?
And what about some of Jesus’ parables, particularly the ones in Matthew 13 about the Wheat and the Tares (13:24-43) and the Great Catch of Fish (13:47-50) In the former parable, using the metaphor of a field, Jesus says that at the end of the age, his angels will collect everyone, the righteous and the sinners alike. Then, just as weeds are thrown into the fire to be burned, so too will the sinners; and just like the wheat is gathered into the barn, so too will the righteous. In the latter parable, the metaphor is now a great haul of fish. At the end of the age, the angels will separate the “good fish” from the “bad fish” and throw the bad fish into the fire.
Now, clearly, both parables contain metaphors that are used to describe the ultimate vindication of God’s people (wheat, good fish) and the ultimate destruction of the “children of the evil one” (really bad people who do the bidding of…yep…Satan). Hamori, though, doesn’t seem to get this. Instead, she interprets these parables like this: “Jesus’s point is that the reapers burning weeds is the metaphor, and what’s real is angels burning people. Jesus hits this last point hard, going on to talk more about the reality of angels tossing people into the furnace, even without any matching metaphor of burning on earth” (123). That’s right, no explanation what the fuller context of either parable is about. Just a ridiculously caricaturized version that amounts to, “Jesus is going to send angels to burn people!”
Hamori emphasizes this ridiculous claim in with all the artistic flair of a snot-nosed sophomore when she says, “Later, sitting on the Mount of Olives, Jesus describes the great chucking of people into eternal punishment as something that will happen ‘when the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him’” (124). Yes, in parables and passages that clearly are talking about God vindicating His people and dealing with evildoers who oppress innocent people, Hamori manages to depict them as God’s “great chucking of people into eternal punishment.”
Finally, there is Hamori’s treatment of Revelation. First, she says that although some people might try to explain away the shocking violent imagery in Revelation by saying it is entirely figurative, “some things are literal.” God means God, angels mean angels, and their “bloody victory is not symbolic” (126). Someone should tell Hamori that the victory in Revelation is God’s victory over Satan and the Beast and those who ally themselves with the Beast—the victory over evil and the perpetrators of evil is a good thing.
“Oh, but there’s blood and violence!” Hamori says. Well, yeah, it’s apocalyptic literature! This kind of imagery is characteristic of that genre of literature. No one in their right mind takes that imagery literally.
Explaining Revelation in detail needs more than a blog post (but a brilliant explanation of it is found in my new book, The Blue-Collar Bible Scholar’s Reader’s Guide to the New Testament!). But for our purposes, it is important to know that in Revelation, the “earth” is (in typical dualistic fashion in apocalyptic literature) the kingdom of the Beast, where the followers of Christ are being persecuted. The graphic imagery of destruction with the trumpets and bowls of wrath are represent God’s judgment on the kingdom of the Beast. Almost all of it is filled with allusions to the Exodus, when YHWH redeemed His People and brought judgment on the oppressors of His people. Again, any Bible scholar worth his/her salt knows this.
But Hamori doesn’t seem to get this. She interprets the trumpets and bowls of wrath as coming upon EVERYONE. Consequently, she can’t understand why, when the angel blows the seventh trumpet, that starts heavenly praise and thanksgiving. She writes, “Wait, praise? Shouldn’t we be a peak cannon fire now? In other words, ‘Yippee ki-yay, it’s judgment time!’” (130). Yep, she actually referenced John McClain in Die Hard. The irony, of course, is when McClane said his famous line, “Yippee ki-yay, mfers!” it was a good thing, because the bad guys got what was coming to them! But Hamori is alluding to the phrase to mock the praise to God for bringing judgment upon evildoers because she wrongly interprets the seven trumpets as just indiscriminately wiping out innocent people. She even goes so far to claim that when the Temple in heaven is opened and the ark appears, that those are ominous and threatening signs.
She ends her take on Revelation (and any “good tidings” brought by angels anywhere in the Bible) this way: “The angel bringing these good tidings of comfort and joy, restoration and hope, also helps destroy the earth in the first place. The angel of this new hope can’t be separated from the story of its brutality. …If this is a new hope, it’s the hope of those surviving a new dimension of assault” (132). God’s angels, Hamori claims, are “responsible for some of the worst violence perpetrated against human beings in the Bible” (134).
This is not an exemplary biblical exegesis. It is the equivalent of blaming the Allies in WWII for defeating the Nazis, because you can’t tell the difference between Nazis on one hand, and innocent civilians and Jews on the other hand. In the real world—in God’s world—evil has to be confronted and destroyed. And part of the message in the Bible is that God, because He is good, will one day defeat evil. Granted, if you can’t read contextually and figure out that the Assyrian army contains soldiers, that the wheat and bad fish represent the children of the evil one, and that evildoers and those who ally with the Beast are evil, you’re going to misinterpret those passages and conclude that God just likes to torture people.
But that would just mean no one should take you seriously.
Loved this. Thank you!
Listen, I’m a biblical scholar and by no means do I take things in the Bible as literal. But you have to at least acknowledge that there are tons of people who do (24% per a 2020 Pew poll).
That being said, I love these series where you critique new books! Keep ’em coming!