There’s a line in Ezekiel that seems most appropriate for August 23, 2023. It runs, given the translation of your choice, something like “God will send brutal men to seek vengeance on evildoers.” It’s predictive for almost all evildoers.
You remember Ezekiel, don’t you? He’s that 6th-century BC prophet who was carted off to Babylon in the forced exile imposed by Nebuchadnezzar II. And the Babylonian king? He was a would-be emperor whose hegemony took him all the way to both Syria and Egypt in a Putin-like attempt to conquer and control. By his writings, I’m guessing Ezekiel wasn’t a willing exile and that his Babylonian captors were in his eyes evildoers. They did, after all, take him from his native land and take his native land from him. Can anyone say, “The Crimea and Eastern Ukraine”?
Through centuries of records, we know that some evildoers do escape brutality and die rather peacefully. Nebuchadnezzar ruled for more than 40 years of his 80-year life and died in power. But like Caligula and the late Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin, onetime leader of the Wagner Group and slayer of innocent Ukrainians, many ruthless men who raised themselves to high status and control succumb to violence by other brutal men. On August 23, our contemporary version of a would-be Nebuchadnezzar, Yevgeny Prigozhin fell from on high—literally—when his former friend and another modern Nebuchadnezzar, the brutal Russian President Vladimir Putin, had his plane shot down or had it bombed. *
It’s a tough lesson that evildoers learn the hard way and usually too late. In fact, for so many former evildoers, it’s the last lesson they learn. However brutal they were in life, they find that someone equally brutal rids the world of them.
That Old Conundrum: How Can a Merciful God Allow Evil?
The unfortunate circumstance for the innocent is that they become victims before God sends the brutal men to avenge them. And so, over and over, generation after generation, the bodies of the innocent pile up. We ask, “Why does it take you so long, Lord?” Apparently, God has a pattern here, one that every generation sees unfold slowly: Bad guys become worse, and good guys become worse off. The bad guys generally survive until other bad guys decide their fate—no doubt, we think, by doing God’s will as told by Ezekiel. Is it God’s fault we are so slow to act against the bad guys? Couldn’t we have intervened sooner? Should the innocent become brutal to fulfill the prophet’s prophecy?
You might ask that of “police department de-funders” that have let cities fall into criminal ruin as evildoers degrade modern civilization. Or of irresponsible educators or parents who stand by as a generation of young people turn to mindless destruction and injury. Maybe you might ask that of yourself if you had a suspicion that someone was about to do evil, but you said or did nothing to prevent that evil. Should you have become a “brutal man” inflicting brutality on an evildoer to save the innocent from harm before they imposed that harm?
To Be Peaceful or Not to Be Peaceful, That Is the Dilemma
It’s usually difficult to displace or dispatch a powerful bad guy, thus the sometimes multi-decadal reigns of gang leaders and ruthless dictators and would-be Nebuchadnezzars. Putin, for example, is well protected, and he has a following among Russians who cannot fathom the havoc he has wreaked on Ukrainian civilians by bombing their homes and infrastructure. Many Russians have accepted Putin’s invasion just as the Germans of the late 1930s accepted Hitler’s invasions throughout Europe and the Soviet Union, and those who cannot accept such invasions have remained silent in fear of retribution.
So, here’s the dilemma of the innocent and peace-loving: Isn’t brutality toward Putin just another evil perpetrated by man? All those across the world who want to see an end to his war on Ukraine could ask themselves the moral question: Do we become the brutal men of Ezekiel’s prophecy without losing our innocence and morality?
Fictional Vengeance
I know that movies are movies and that fiction is fiction, but if I had to choose one piece of make-believe that best captures that line in Ezekiel, it would be Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, a film replete with all the irony one could want: Brutal men seeking vengeance on evildoers and at the same time often “saving” others, even other brutal evildoers. In the film Tarantino has Samuel Jackson mouth a fictional passage from Ezekiel. Maybe Quentin knew that Ezekiel prophecy I quoted above, but purposefully omitted it in favor of acting it out, pictures being worth more words than the Book of Ezekiel holds, actions serving as parables. Good fiction with a message can hide in pulp fiction. Ars gratia artis can also be subtly didactic.
The real-life death of Prigozhin and the fictional deaths of characters in Pulp Fiction bring to the fore the age-old questions about evil and evildoers: Why do they persist through history? Why do they wreak havoc on the innocent for prolonged periods? What can the innocent do to rid themselves of evil without becoming evil in the act of riddance? It always seems to come down to either acting like the evildoers or waiting for brutal men to undo them.
Stalin Died a “Natural Death” like Nebuchadnezzar II—We Think
I’m old enough to remember my mother pointing to our local newspaper’s picture of Stalin lying in state. She simply said, “That was a very bad man.” Stalin, who reigned over 30 years and lived into his 70s, had suffered a stroke. No brutal men came to avenge the millions he put to death or impoverished by his tyrannical Communist regime. Hundreds of thousands of Russians actually mourned his passing. I suppose they were either unaware of the millions of their countrymen he had killed, or they just didn’t care that he killed them.
Like Stalin, someday, Vladimir Putin might die peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, by his supporting church friend, the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill who condoned killing Ukrainians, and by many adoring Russians who will remember all the “good” he did for his country by initiating a war in which thousands of Russians died. Such a peaceful death is beyond the control of those who have been killed—both Ukrainians and Russians—in the war and in other conflicts under his command. But it is possible he might die as Prigozhin apparently died this August in an act of brutality by some domestic or international enemy. That, too, is beyond the control of those dead innocents that will never know whether or not God sent brutal men to seek vengeance for their deaths.
Excuse the pessimism here, but that is the way of the world. People minding their own business, going to work, school, place of worship, picnic, party, or some other social gathering find themselves in the grip of evildoers and often killed by them. The dead then have no recourse; the living live in fear until Ezekiel’s prophecy comes to fruition in the elimination of the evildoers.
Guns and Brutality, Not Social Workers
There isn’t an end in sight for the rise of more evildoers. Every generation since Cain killed Abel has produced its stare of them. Just as innocent people suffered through human history, so for generations ad infinitum more innocent people will suffer. After our own era’s evildoers lie buried, others will plague our progeny .
Over the centuries appeasement and peaceful overtures seem to have had no effect with very few exceptions, such as the withdrawal of Attila from Rome at the request of Pope Leo I—though there are some doubts about the exact details for his withdrawal. That withdrawal by Attila who most certainly would have brutalized the populace, plus a later withdrawal by Genseric without brutalizing the populace makes an argument for peaceful solutions. But those stories are, as I indicated, exceptions. And today, in the tradition of Genseric’s tribe, we still have “vandals” who wreak havoc on innocent people.
But such retreats from Rome by invading armies by fifth-century AD evildoers are exceptions, and their withdrawal without conflict did not occur in the context of peaceful invasions of Roman territory. Others they encountered did not fare as well as the Romans. In other words, appeasement works only when evildoers acquiesce of their own volition. Otherwise, evildoers do evil.
In twenty-first century USA no peaceful solution has as yet been discovered to eliminate mass shootings and drive-by shootings that take innocent lives. The police can’t be present everywhere and all the time to prevent evildoers from inflicting harm. Even in response, they operate under a lag time that on a local scale reflects the months-long lag time between Putin’s invasion of the Crimea and eastern Ukraine and Ukraine’s and the rest of the world’s response. Evildoers initiate evil. Brutal avengers are a posse requiring informing, convincing, organizing, and acting—all taking time during which the bad guys hurt the innocent.
That makes the argument for the innocent becoming less innocent. It makes the argument for the innocent to become when they need to be the brutal men who seek vengeance on evildoers— or at least to protect the innocent under threat by either the threat of brutality or the actual brutality toward evildoers. And that means the more immediate the response, the less harm to the innocent. If European nations and the United States had responded more quickly or even had preemptively armed Ukraine when Putin threatened the invasion, would he have been emboldened to carry out his presumed conquest? Likewise, should free nations arm Taiwan to the teeth to ward off the Chinese by the threat of brutality?
Give the Good Guys the Wherewithal to Be Bad Guys before the Bad Guys Kill Them
Putting guns in the hands of the innocent can save the lives of those under the threat of evildoers. They might have to become as brutal as the characters in Pulp Fiction, the Italian populace who murdered Mussolini, the Libyans who killed Muammar Gaddafi, or as brutal as other men that God has sent to seek vengeance on evildoers.
If Ezekiel is to be believed, then brutality against evildoers by the innocent is justifiable.
But how can a civilization remain civil if even the innocent are encouraged to become brutal? Consider that in arming themselves, the innocent aren’t really encouraged to become brutal; they are simply given the wherewithal to protect themselves and other innocents.
We all know that somewhere on the planet, maybe even in our own neighborhoods, there could be an evildoer plotting at any time. There’s no foolproof protection against a surprise attack, but the potential for an immediate response and an actual rapid response shortens and possibly even prevents that attack. Evildoers, unless they are suicidal or pathological, fear brutality as evidenced by conquerors who have surrounded themselves with select protectors, such as “Royal Guards,” “Imperial Guards,” “Praetorian Guards,” “Varangian Guard,” “Hangu Beykalun,” “Tobang,” the Konigliche Ungarische adelige Leibgarde,” and sundry others sworn to protect leaders both good and evil.
Apparently, no brutal men effected a vengeance upon Nebuchadnezzar II who warded off, probably brutally, attempts to overthrow him or displace his armies. Prigozhin wasn’t as lucky, betrayed as he recently was by Putin. And as for Vlad, well, he’ll do what he can to protect himself from injury just as you or I might protect ourselves. But the threat of brutal men will always be on his mind, and he will find himself moving in smaller and smaller circles, probably using body doubles as Saddam Hussein did and supposedly the late Prigozhin did. That can’t be a sign of complete confidence. Thus, just knowing that potentially, there are brutal men seeking vengeance dampens the evildoer’s lifestyle. Vlad isn’t going to take his yacht for a cruise on the Black Sea at this time.
Not All Prophecies Become Reality
Regardless of Ezekiel’s statement, we know from history that some evildoers don’t succumb to brutal men out for vengeance in God’s name. And that’s why the innocent need the option to protect themselves from some would-be Nebuchadnezzar II attempting to victimize them.
Would the prophet Ezekiel think that armed innocents are doing God’s work?
*At the time of this writing, there is speculation that one of Prigozhin’s doubles was on the plane and not Prigozhin himself.
You remember Ezekiel, don’t you? He’s that 6th-century BC prophet who was carted off to Babylon in the forced exile imposed by Nebuchadnezzar II. And the Babylonian king? He was a would-be emperor whose hegemony took him all the way to both Syria and Egypt in a Putin-like attempt to conquer and control. By his writings, I’m guessing Ezekiel wasn’t a willing exile and that his Babylonian captors were in his eyes evildoers. They did, after all, take him from his native land and take his native land from him. Can anyone say, “The Crimea and Eastern Ukraine”?
Through centuries of records, we know that some evildoers do escape brutality and die rather peacefully. Nebuchadnezzar ruled for more than 40 years of his 80-year life and died in power. But like Caligula and the late Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin, onetime leader of the Wagner Group and slayer of innocent Ukrainians, many ruthless men who raised themselves to high status and control succumb to violence by other brutal men. On August 23, our contemporary version of a would-be Nebuchadnezzar, Yevgeny Prigozhin fell from on high—literally—when his former friend and another modern Nebuchadnezzar, the brutal Russian President Vladimir Putin, had his plane shot down or had it bombed. *
It’s a tough lesson that evildoers learn the hard way and usually too late. In fact, for so many former evildoers, it’s the last lesson they learn. However brutal they were in life, they find that someone equally brutal rids the world of them.
That Old Conundrum: How Can a Merciful God Allow Evil?
The unfortunate circumstance for the innocent is that they become victims before God sends the brutal men to avenge them. And so, over and over, generation after generation, the bodies of the innocent pile up. We ask, “Why does it take you so long, Lord?” Apparently, God has a pattern here, one that every generation sees unfold slowly: Bad guys become worse, and good guys become worse off. The bad guys generally survive until other bad guys decide their fate—no doubt, we think, by doing God’s will as told by Ezekiel. Is it God’s fault we are so slow to act against the bad guys? Couldn’t we have intervened sooner? Should the innocent become brutal to fulfill the prophet’s prophecy?
You might ask that of “police department de-funders” that have let cities fall into criminal ruin as evildoers degrade modern civilization. Or of irresponsible educators or parents who stand by as a generation of young people turn to mindless destruction and injury. Maybe you might ask that of yourself if you had a suspicion that someone was about to do evil, but you said or did nothing to prevent that evil. Should you have become a “brutal man” inflicting brutality on an evildoer to save the innocent from harm before they imposed that harm?
To Be Peaceful or Not to Be Peaceful, That Is the Dilemma
It’s usually difficult to displace or dispatch a powerful bad guy, thus the sometimes multi-decadal reigns of gang leaders and ruthless dictators and would-be Nebuchadnezzars. Putin, for example, is well protected, and he has a following among Russians who cannot fathom the havoc he has wreaked on Ukrainian civilians by bombing their homes and infrastructure. Many Russians have accepted Putin’s invasion just as the Germans of the late 1930s accepted Hitler’s invasions throughout Europe and the Soviet Union, and those who cannot accept such invasions have remained silent in fear of retribution.
So, here’s the dilemma of the innocent and peace-loving: Isn’t brutality toward Putin just another evil perpetrated by man? All those across the world who want to see an end to his war on Ukraine could ask themselves the moral question: Do we become the brutal men of Ezekiel’s prophecy without losing our innocence and morality?
Fictional Vengeance
I know that movies are movies and that fiction is fiction, but if I had to choose one piece of make-believe that best captures that line in Ezekiel, it would be Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, a film replete with all the irony one could want: Brutal men seeking vengeance on evildoers and at the same time often “saving” others, even other brutal evildoers. In the film Tarantino has Samuel Jackson mouth a fictional passage from Ezekiel. Maybe Quentin knew that Ezekiel prophecy I quoted above, but purposefully omitted it in favor of acting it out, pictures being worth more words than the Book of Ezekiel holds, actions serving as parables. Good fiction with a message can hide in pulp fiction. Ars gratia artis can also be subtly didactic.
The real-life death of Prigozhin and the fictional deaths of characters in Pulp Fiction bring to the fore the age-old questions about evil and evildoers: Why do they persist through history? Why do they wreak havoc on the innocent for prolonged periods? What can the innocent do to rid themselves of evil without becoming evil in the act of riddance? It always seems to come down to either acting like the evildoers or waiting for brutal men to undo them.
Stalin Died a “Natural Death” like Nebuchadnezzar II—We Think
I’m old enough to remember my mother pointing to our local newspaper’s picture of Stalin lying in state. She simply said, “That was a very bad man.” Stalin, who reigned over 30 years and lived into his 70s, had suffered a stroke. No brutal men came to avenge the millions he put to death or impoverished by his tyrannical Communist regime. Hundreds of thousands of Russians actually mourned his passing. I suppose they were either unaware of the millions of their countrymen he had killed, or they just didn’t care that he killed them.
Like Stalin, someday, Vladimir Putin might die peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, by his supporting church friend, the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill who condoned killing Ukrainians, and by many adoring Russians who will remember all the “good” he did for his country by initiating a war in which thousands of Russians died. Such a peaceful death is beyond the control of those who have been killed—both Ukrainians and Russians—in the war and in other conflicts under his command. But it is possible he might die as Prigozhin apparently died this August in an act of brutality by some domestic or international enemy. That, too, is beyond the control of those dead innocents that will never know whether or not God sent brutal men to seek vengeance for their deaths.
Excuse the pessimism here, but that is the way of the world. People minding their own business, going to work, school, place of worship, picnic, party, or some other social gathering find themselves in the grip of evildoers and often killed by them. The dead then have no recourse; the living live in fear until Ezekiel’s prophecy comes to fruition in the elimination of the evildoers.
Guns and Brutality, Not Social Workers
There isn’t an end in sight for the rise of more evildoers. Every generation since Cain killed Abel has produced its stare of them. Just as innocent people suffered through human history, so for generations ad infinitum more innocent people will suffer. After our own era’s evildoers lie buried, others will plague our progeny .
Over the centuries appeasement and peaceful overtures seem to have had no effect with very few exceptions, such as the withdrawal of Attila from Rome at the request of Pope Leo I—though there are some doubts about the exact details for his withdrawal. That withdrawal by Attila who most certainly would have brutalized the populace, plus a later withdrawal by Genseric without brutalizing the populace makes an argument for peaceful solutions. But those stories are, as I indicated, exceptions. And today, in the tradition of Genseric’s tribe, we still have “vandals” who wreak havoc on innocent people.
But such retreats from Rome by invading armies by fifth-century AD evildoers are exceptions, and their withdrawal without conflict did not occur in the context of peaceful invasions of Roman territory. Others they encountered did not fare as well as the Romans. In other words, appeasement works only when evildoers acquiesce of their own volition. Otherwise, evildoers do evil.
In twenty-first century USA no peaceful solution has as yet been discovered to eliminate mass shootings and drive-by shootings that take innocent lives. The police can’t be present everywhere and all the time to prevent evildoers from inflicting harm. Even in response, they operate under a lag time that on a local scale reflects the months-long lag time between Putin’s invasion of the Crimea and eastern Ukraine and Ukraine’s and the rest of the world’s response. Evildoers initiate evil. Brutal avengers are a posse requiring informing, convincing, organizing, and acting—all taking time during which the bad guys hurt the innocent.
That makes the argument for the innocent becoming less innocent. It makes the argument for the innocent to become when they need to be the brutal men who seek vengeance on evildoers— or at least to protect the innocent under threat by either the threat of brutality or the actual brutality toward evildoers. And that means the more immediate the response, the less harm to the innocent. If European nations and the United States had responded more quickly or even had preemptively armed Ukraine when Putin threatened the invasion, would he have been emboldened to carry out his presumed conquest? Likewise, should free nations arm Taiwan to the teeth to ward off the Chinese by the threat of brutality?
Give the Good Guys the Wherewithal to Be Bad Guys before the Bad Guys Kill Them
Putting guns in the hands of the innocent can save the lives of those under the threat of evildoers. They might have to become as brutal as the characters in Pulp Fiction, the Italian populace who murdered Mussolini, the Libyans who killed Muammar Gaddafi, or as brutal as other men that God has sent to seek vengeance on evildoers.
If Ezekiel is to be believed, then brutality against evildoers by the innocent is justifiable.
But how can a civilization remain civil if even the innocent are encouraged to become brutal? Consider that in arming themselves, the innocent aren’t really encouraged to become brutal; they are simply given the wherewithal to protect themselves and other innocents.
We all know that somewhere on the planet, maybe even in our own neighborhoods, there could be an evildoer plotting at any time. There’s no foolproof protection against a surprise attack, but the potential for an immediate response and an actual rapid response shortens and possibly even prevents that attack. Evildoers, unless they are suicidal or pathological, fear brutality as evidenced by conquerors who have surrounded themselves with select protectors, such as “Royal Guards,” “Imperial Guards,” “Praetorian Guards,” “Varangian Guard,” “Hangu Beykalun,” “Tobang,” the Konigliche Ungarische adelige Leibgarde,” and sundry others sworn to protect leaders both good and evil.
Apparently, no brutal men effected a vengeance upon Nebuchadnezzar II who warded off, probably brutally, attempts to overthrow him or displace his armies. Prigozhin wasn’t as lucky, betrayed as he recently was by Putin. And as for Vlad, well, he’ll do what he can to protect himself from injury just as you or I might protect ourselves. But the threat of brutal men will always be on his mind, and he will find himself moving in smaller and smaller circles, probably using body doubles as Saddam Hussein did and supposedly the late Prigozhin did. That can’t be a sign of complete confidence. Thus, just knowing that potentially, there are brutal men seeking vengeance dampens the evildoer’s lifestyle. Vlad isn’t going to take his yacht for a cruise on the Black Sea at this time.
Not All Prophecies Become Reality
Regardless of Ezekiel’s statement, we know from history that some evildoers don’t succumb to brutal men out for vengeance in God’s name. And that’s why the innocent need the option to protect themselves from some would-be Nebuchadnezzar II attempting to victimize them.
Would the prophet Ezekiel think that armed innocents are doing God’s work?
*At the time of this writing, there is speculation that one of Prigozhin’s doubles was on the plane and not Prigozhin himself.
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