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It is clear in Romans 12:20 that with his quote from Proverbs 25:21–22 that Paul means that we repay evil with good: if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
But what exactly would the poet of Proverbs originally have thought of when he used this image?
Please read carefully through the arguments and counterarguments.
Interpretation 1: It is shameful
Summary:
It is an indication of burning shame. This is the feeling that it creates in the person when you repay evil with good. Even the fiercest enemy will be tamed if you overload him with love.
Arguments for this view:
This statement is completely in line with the context of Romans 12:20.
Arguments against this view:
Practice teaches us that certainly not any hostile person will be tamed to become shame, if we repay evil with good.
Interpretation 2: It is a punishment
Summary:
We make the other person’s guilt even heavier by repaying his evil with good. Burning coals on someone’s head is a cruel torture!
Arguments for this view:
The Bible knows this imagery for the punishment that God himself can inflict: Psalm 18:13–14; Psalm 40:11. Ezekiel 10:2. Burning coals
were also a punishment formerly applied to adulterous women: burning asphalt was poured on their heads.
Arguments against this view:
In Proverbs 25:21–22 and Romans 12:20, the biblical imagery of burning coals
does not seem to be a punishment, let alone a torture, but rather a means of trying to soften the wrong, harsh attitude of others.
Interpretation 3: It is a gift
Summary:
The rich in Palestine gave burning coals or glowing ashes to poor people to take home at night, so that they could also cook a little food on it and/or get some heat from it. The poor carried it home in bowls on their heads.
Arguments for this opinion:
This statement is in line with Paul's specification of how one can repay evil to one’s enemy with good: you give him something to eat and something to drink.
Arguments against this view:
The objection of this statement is that such burning coals
could only be gratefully accepted as a pleasant small gift, while the metaphor in the Bible creates the impression that the coals
do have an unpleasant effect. Especially if you do not receive it in a bowl, but those coals
are heaped
directly onto your head, as it is written in the Bible text.
Interpretation 4: It is unbearable
Summary:
As soon as you feel burning coals on you head, you try to shake it off immediately. It is unbearable. Burning coals
on someone’s head can therefore go two ways. Your enemy shakes off the painful coals
as soon as possible and tries to prevent more from being heaped on his head. So, he repents and changes his unpleasant attitude. But if he hardens, there are more and more coals
that he can no longer shake off and he is calling the burning anger of the Lord over his head.
Arguments for this opinion:
To want to heap fiery coals onto someone’s head, one will first have to grab those coals one by one. That is not an easy task; you hurt yourself in the first place. It can cause blisters. But the wonderful result can be that the hurt that the other person causes you disappears in the process!
20 To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.”