“If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat; And if he is thirsty, give him water to drink; For so you will heap coals of fire on his head, And Yahweh will reward you.” (Prov 25.21-22; cf. also Rom 12.20).
Since the fall, a line of antithesis has been drawn between the serpent and his seed and the woman and her seed (Gen 3.15). We are mortal enemies. We each desire the other’s destruction, though destruction doesn’t mean exactly the same on both sides of the line. The serpent and his seed desire and work toward the annihilation of God and his image; utter destruction. The woman and her seed desire and work toward expulsion or conversion of the serpent’s seed.
We, the seed of the woman, have been given an armory full of weapons to use. Paul tells us that we have the sword of the Spirit to fight these principalities and powers in the heavenly places (Eph 6.17). Jesus demonstrated the power of this weapon in his battle with the devil in the wilderness (cf. Matt 4.1ff; Lk 4.1ff.). This is an obvious weapon for warfare.
Proverbs tells us and Paul echoes that we have another weapon: deeds of mercy, giving our enemies what they do not deserve. When our enemies are hungry, we are to feed them. When our enemies are thirsty, we give them water to drink. Jesus takes up this strategy of warfare when he tells his disciples in Luke 6.27-28, “… Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you.” We are to return good for evil.
When we act in mercy toward our enemies, we are told that we will “heap coals of fire on his head, and Yahweh will reward” us. We might think that God is telling us to “really get their goat.” “If you want to really tick them off, treat your enemy with kindness.” But this can’t be what this means. That sort of understanding only fosters an attitude of bitterness that is acting, not out of genuine love for the other person, but out of revenge.
The “coals of fire” are the coals from off of the altar. If I had to choose between the bronze altar in the courtyard and the altar of incense in front of the veil, I would have to choose the latter. The first time this family of words is used in Scripture is Leviticus 16.12. There the high priest is instructed to take coals from the altar of incense, put them in a censer, and enter behind the veil in the smoke of this incense. This incense is the offering of prayer, something that is made clear in Luke 1 as Zechariah is praying and again in Revelation 8 where the incense is associated directly with the prayers of God’s people.
When we act in mercy toward our enemies, we are making them an offering before God. We are delivering them over to God for him to accept or reject. They will either turn into a sweet smell through conversion, or they will become a stench in his nostrils and be rejected. Whichever happens, when you act in mercy toward your enemies, you are actively presenting them to God. He will deal with them accordingly. This fits well with what Paul says just before he quotes Proverbs 25.21-22: “Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Rom 12.19). When you make your enemies an offering, God will deal with them appropriately and at the right time.
