Tuesday, 15 June 2021

Who has enemies, foes, or adversaries and is there a difference?

 Foe / adversary will be found here. I have not been completely consistent in my semantic domains for this word. I have used two domains, Enemy and Trouble, and the same glosses appear in both. When I get my database restored I may regenerate these pages. 

Enemy will be found here. I may have been slightly inconsistent with domains for a single root that may have Hebrew homonyms, but I have not allowed English synonyms to overlap between Hebrew roots.

Technique aside, do we create enemies? Does God or y-h-v-h have enemies or foes or adversaries?

It appears that some Biblical writers would allow this. Notably Paul (Romans 5) and James (James 4). Are these later uses reflecting the enemies / foes / adversaries of the Old Testament?

The underlying question is, What is God like? Does the character of God permit the idea of 'enemy of God', or is that a human projection onto God's character?

The character of God is noted in Psalms 8 - 

From the mouths of babies and nurslings, you have founded strength,
for the sake of your adversaries,
that you might cease enemy and vengeance.

So if God has adversaries or foes (which maybe should be removed as an unnecessary gloss) then who are they? Us?

Note: I couldn't find many places where God 'has' enemies though there are implications in the letters of Paul and James. God delivers enemies into our hands and God destroys enemies on our behalf. (But while we can infer the  'how', especially in the old stories in Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings, I am not convinced we are explicitly told to imitate.) We have our analogies and introspections of course.



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