Revenge Is Holy
“Arise, O L-rd, and scatter Your enemies! Let Your foes flee before You” (Numbers 10:35). The Sifri (Behaalot’cha 84) asks, “Can He who created the world be said to have ‘enemies’?” Rather, the verse informs us that if someone hates the Jewish people, it is as though he hates G-d.
The Sifri continues, “It says, ‘In the greatness of Your excellency You overthrow those who attack You’ (Exodus 15:7). Can anyone be said to ‘attack G-d’? Rather, the verse is teaching us that if someone attacks Israel, it is as though he attacks G-d.”
Vengeance. Revenge. In our world of assimilated confusion, we wander blindly without understanding. Concepts that are fundamental to Judaism become objects of shame and derision because of the influence of gentile, assimilated values.
And so vengeance becomes, thanks to the gentilized and perplexed era in which we live, a maligned thing.
But vengeance is a fundamental Jewish concept. No trait is more justified than revenge in the right time and place. G-d Himself is called nokem, avenger. “The L-rd is a zealous and avenging G-d. The L-rd avenges and is full of wrath. He takes revenge on His adversaries and reserves wrath for His enemies” (Nahum 1:2).
The Rabbis said (Berachot 33a), “Shall we say that even revenge is great because it appears between two names of G-d – ‘A G-d of vengeance is the L-rd’ (Psalms 94:1)?” R. Elazar responded, “Indeed – where revenge is necessary, it is a great thing.”
“A great thing”! We are not talking here about personal revenge against a fellow Jew, which is forbidden. We are talking about revenge against non-Jews who seek to harm the Jewish people. Their plots constitute a profanation of G-d’s Name and a war against G-d, since he who does not fear to slay the Jew fears not the G-d of the Jew either. The desecration of one is the desecration of the other. As Rashi states on Ezekiel 39:7, “The degradation of Israel is a desecration of G-d’s Name.” For in the eyes of the gentile, the weakness and defeat of the Jew is “proof” of the impotence or, G-d forbid, non-existence of the G-d of the Jew.
Thus, whoever relents on taking revenge against Israel’s enemies is actually relenting on avenging G-d. Who would dare “pass” on such an obligation?
And thus King David declares: “O violated daughter of Babylon, praiseworthy is he who repays you in accordance with the manner that you treated us” (Psalms 137:8). Similarly, Samson prays to G-d: “Strengthen me just this one time that I may exact vengeance from the Philistines for one of my two eyes” (Judges 16:28). And in the Talmud we find the following:
During the Second Temple period, the Jewish people established the thirteenth of Adar as a holiday called “The Day of Nikanor.” What did this holiday commemorate? “Nikanor was a Greek general. Every single day he would sweep his hand over Judea and Jerusalem and say, ‘When will it fall in my hand that I may trample it?’ When the Hasmoneans defeated the Greeks, they cut off Nikanor’s thumbs and big toes and hung them in the gates of Jerusalem, saying, ‘Let revenge be taken through the mouth that would speak arrogantly and the hands that would sweep over Jerusalem’” (Ta’anit 18b).
To our sorrow, we have been influenced by alien cultures, and revenge today is considered by many to be negative and evil in nature. The very opposite is true!
The Jewish Idea, The Jewish Press, 1980