Gods and War in the Ancient Near East

Wars were commonplace in the Ancient Near East. Questions include the roles gods played; which gods were revered in the different territories; who won, who lost, and why. This article is a brief survey attempting to address these issues.¹

Beginning with the patriarchs, God explained to Abram that taking possession of the land would have to wait many generations, for the sin of the Amorites will not be complete until that point (Gen. 15:16).

During the wilderness period, the Amalekites attacked Israel. As a result: Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Inscribe this in a document as a reminder, and read it aloud to Joshua: I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven!’ And Moses built an altar and named it Adonai-nissi (The Lord is my banner) . . . . The Lord will be at war with Amalek throughout the ages (Ex. 17:14-16); and in Deuteronomy: Therefore, when YHWH your God grants you safety from all your enemies around you, in the land that YHWH your God is giving you as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget! (Deut. 25:19). A few centuries later, God commands King Saul to destroy Amalek: Thus said YHWH of Hosts: I am exacting the penalty for what Amalek did to Israel, for the assault he made upon them on the road, on their way up from Egypt. Now go, attack Amalek, and proscribe all that belongs to him. Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants, oxen, sheep, camels, and asses! (I Sam. 15:2-3).

The claim that a deity commanded a war appears frequently in other ancient Near Eastern documents as well. For example, the Mesha Stele offers an especially clear example of a god commanding a war. King Mesha of Moab recounts: “I am Mesha, the son of Kemoš-yatti, the king of Moab, from Dibon . . . Kemoš restored it in my days… And Kemoš said to me: Go, take Nebo from Israel! And I went in the night, and I fought against it from the break of dawn until noon, and I took it, and I killed its whole population for I had put it to the ban of Aštar Kemoš… And from there I took the vessels of YHWH, and I hauled them before the face of Kemoš . . . And Kemoš said to me: Go down, fight against Horonaim! I went down and Kemoš restored it in my days.” Sometimes, the god required a little “coaxing” before issuing the command. Hammurabi of Babylonia declared to a man named Rim-Sin: “Now, the Larsaite has harassed my land with repeated attacks . . . I now urged Šamaš and Marduk, and they answered me with ‘yes.’ I would not have risen to this offensive without consulting a god.”

God often accompanied Israel to war, ensuring their victory. When the Israelites left Egypt, the Egyptian army caught up with them: Moses said to the people, ‘Have no fear! Stand by and witness the deliverance which YHWH will work for you today . . . YHWH will battle for you; you hold your peace!’ (Ex. 14:13-14); YHWH is a man of war; YHWH is His name (Ex. 15:3). In Deuteronomy, Moses told the people not to fear the Canaanites when they entered the land to conquer it: For it is YHWH your God who marches with you to do battle for you against your enemy, to bring you victory (Deut. 20:4). The book of Joshua offers a more specific example of divine intervention: While they were fleeing before Israel down the descent from Beth-horon, the Lord hurled huge stones on them from the sky . . . more perished from the hailstones than were killed by the Israelite weapons (Josh. 10:11).

Other ancient Near Eastern gods also accompanied their people into battle. In the Great Inscription of King Tukulti-Ninurta I of Assyria,² the king described how the god Ashur gave him power to “slay his enemies” and take control of neighboring lands. Tukulti-Ninurta stated more specifically that Ashur and the other gods gave power to his weapons and even accompanied him on campaign. A starker image of divine involvement appears in the Ten-Year Annals of King Muršili of Hatti, which recount how the Storm-god struck the enemy king with a lightning bolt, causing him to panic and fall ill.

When the Ammonites accused Israel of stealing their land, Jephthah responded with a lengthy defense, ending with: May YHWH, who judges, decide today between the Israelites and the Ammonites! (Judg. 11:27).

Conquering kings would administer oaths of fealty to vassal kings, and non-observance of an oath treaty taken in the name of a god opened that king up to punishment from the offended deity, and possibly even from his own people. In practice, violation of an oath meant that political relations between the two countries had broken down and demanded battle, but the religious component was an important part of how the conquering people conceptualized the reason they were again going to fight, die, and kill this other group.

In the Epic of Tukulti-Ninurta, the Assyrian king accused the Kassite king Kaštiliaš of breaking their treaty: “When we meet in battle, let [the god] judge the case between us . . .” The Hittites³ also called for a divine lawsuit. Muršili’s war with Uḫḫaziti makes this clear: “Now, come, we will fight. Let the Storm-god, my lord, decide our lawsuit” (Hittite Laws §169). A fourteenth-century BCE Hittite text records King Arnuwanda and Queen Ašmunikal praying to the Sun-goddess of Arinna, emphasizing their loyalty and accusing their enemies of oath-breaking.

As the gods were responsible for victory, the success of the Kaška people posed a theological problem. About a century later, Ḫattušili III reconquered the region, crediting the goddess Ištar with marching before him and granting victory. Because he was still young, Ḫattušili referred to this as his first “manly deed,” comparable to biblical Hebrew gevurah (Judg. 8:21; I Kings 22:46). Although most war gods were male, Ištar was a notable exception. With Ḫattušili’s defeat of Ḫaḫḫa, the Hittite perspective was that the gods, led by Ištar, had finally decided justly between the righteous Hittites and the sinful Kaška people.

Israel also took oaths seriously. Breaking an oath was referred to as mered (“rebellion”) or peshaʿ (“defiance”), as in God’s speech to Ezekiel (Ezek. 2:3). Kings notes three cases of defiance of the Davidic king (I Kings 12:19; II Kings 1:1; 8:20). Both Moab⁴ and Edom were subsequently defeated, highlighting divine disfavor for rebellion.

Israel itself was also held accountable. The Gibeonites were spared because of an oath sworn to them (Josh. 9:19-20). Chronicles explains that Jerusalem was destroyed in part because King Zedekiah violated his oath to Nebuchadnezzar (II Chron. 36:13). In this case, Judah was the victim, and God judged in favor of the Babylonians because the Judean king broke the fealty oath.

The Ancient Near East waged wars often, causing great loss of human and animal life, as well as economic destruction. The given reasons were that wars used religious language, the god or goddess joined in the war, that the enemy was judged by the deity to be deserving of destruction, or the war was commanded by the deity. These explanations did not change the realities of war, the destruction of cities and the loss of life, but they allowed kings to continue the wars without taking moral responsibility. Ancient Near East narratives do not always comment positively or negatively about the behavior of the characters involved. The preference of most of the classical Jewish commentators is to interpret the actions of the biblical “heroes” in a positive fashion. However, some commentators do not, even where the Bible itself has not expressed an opinion. In some cases, the Bible describes the protagonist as behaving in an improper and even anti-halachic manner.⁵ In the end, it was all up to the gods.

Across the Ancient Near East, war was never understood as a merely human enterprise. From the Hebrew Bible⁶ to Moabite, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Hittite royal inscriptions, kings consistently portrayed conflict as divinely mandated, divinely supervised, and divinely judged. Deities commanded campaigns, marched with armies, hurled storms upon enemies, and rendered verdicts in treaty disputes. Victory confirmed a god’s favor; defeat exposed guilt, oath-breaking, or sin. Even Israel, which emphasized covenantal obedience, interpreted both triumph and catastrophe within this same theological framework. Such claims did not lessen war’s devastation, but they provided a moral and religious grammar through which suffering, conquest, and political upheaval could be explained. In the ancient imagination, the battlefield was ultimately a courtroom – and the gods were its judges.