Posts tagged with: retribution

If God wants to make my happiness complete, he will grant me the joy of seeing some six or seven of my enemies hanging from those trees. Before their death I shall, moved in my heart, forgive them all the wrong they did me in their lifetime. One must, it is true, forgive one’s enemies – but not before they have been hanged.

Richard John Neuhaus, over at the First Things blog On The Square, posts an excerpt from the upcoming print edition that excoriates the NAB translation (also noted at Mere Comments).

Neuhaus writes of Jesus’ answer in Matt. 18:22 to Peter’s question, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?” that “Jesus obviously intended hyperbole, indicating that forgiveness is open-ended. Keep on forgiving as you are forgiven by God, for God’s forgiving is beyond measure or counting.”

It’s not so much that I think that Neuhaus’ comment is wrong as I think it misses perhaps the primary allusion in Jesus’ statement: a reversal of the commitment to escalating retribution that marks Lamech’s legacy.

Thus we read in Genesis 4:23-24 of Lamech, “I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me. If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times.”