Dread Warrior

It’s a Friday and the podcast prayer in my ear recites a portion of Jeremiah 20:

For I hear many whispering.

Terror is on every side!

“Denounce him! Let us denounce him!”

say all my close friends,

watching for my fall.

“Perhaps he will be deceived;

then we can overcome him

and take our revenge on him.”

But the Lord is with me as a dread warrior;

therefore my persecutors will stumble;

they will not overcome me.

They will be greatly shamed,

for they will not succeed.

Their eternal dishonor

will never be forgotten.

O Lord of hosts, who tests the righteous,

who sees the heart and the mind,

let me see your vengeance upon them,

for to you have I committed my cause.

Sing to the Lord;

praise the Lord!

For he has delivered the life of the needy

from the hand of evildoers.
Jeremiah 20:10-13 ESV

Verse 11 hits my ear and I suck on a phrase all day: The Lord is with me as a dread warrior. I love scripture because it always stays the same yet perpetually changes. We do not practice a dead religion; rather we are alive in the Spirit who imbues us with continual understanding for our context. The translation here (and elsewhere) is a little weird to our English brains. A more digestible translation might be: But the Lord is with me like a terrifying warrior (NRSVue). “Dread” in its original context is an adjective, it describes the kind of warrior the LORD is. The LORD is a dreaded warrior. The LORD’s enemies cower which is good news for Jeremiah who worries about the dark terror that surrounds him. When I heard it first, though, and throughout the day, I read “dread” as a noun. In other words, the LORD is a warrior against dread. The LORD targets dread. And dread probably stands no chance.

Dread comes to us in a lot of ways. Our marriages slip away from us and as we watch it fall away, we feel dread. We prepare for a career change or retirement or our children moving out of the house and the overwhelming change makes us dread. Sometimes, our brains are just sick and getting out of bed or going to the grocery or answering a text message fills us with an inescapable dread. Dread is unproductive, unfruitful, and arduous. In other words, its Sisyphean. It convinces us that evil and chaos are constantly around the corner. And the longer it doesn’t come, the worse we feel, the more certain of calamity we become.

Even though this is not the original context, I think reading “dread” as a noun in verse 11 is consistent with the character of God. The LORD is a dreaded warrior and the LORD is a dread warrior.

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Today is Palm Sunday, a day we commemorate in the life of the church as the day Jesus triumphantly enters Jerusalem just days before he will be executed as a threat to the government. The same crowd that will call for his execution can sense this man is indeed the Son of God. They rip palm branches off of trees and lay them as a path for his donkey. They cry out “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the LORD.” And even as he walks through the crowd of praise, Jesus’ sense of dread is mounting. He knows his death will come in a matter of days. He knows the pain will be excruciating. He knows his blood will spill out and his spirit will be given up. The sense of dread is everywhere and yet, still, this fully God, fully man, rides his donkey through the crowd, carries his cross, is mounted on the wood.

This is a dread warrior, impervious to the tricks of the Devil. This is a dread warrior, one who refuses to bow to the thing his mortal flesh fears most.

This is a dreaded warrior, to which even death cowers and trembles. This is a dreaded warrior, who will be strung up and killed and will die but will not stay there. Even the darkness trembles against him. Even the government. Even the boulder which blocks entry to his tomb.

Hosanna! Hosanna in the highest! Here comes the dread warrior. The crowd whispers “terror” on every side but he holds his head high. Hosanna! Hosanna in the highest! Here comes the dreaded warrior. The persecutors rise up to strike but they stumble. Praise the LORD! He has brought the dead to life. He has redeemed the wretched and the terrified.

He is coming for our dread and is coming in dread to the darkness. What then shall we fear? Where then is death’s sting?

I may fear the ending of my marriage, but I will not bow to it. I may worry over change, but I will not bow to it. I may be sick in the head, but I will not bow to it. I know the dread warrior. And the dreaded warrior is coming to save me.

Hosanna. Hosanna. Hosanna. Hosanna in the highest.

Bryce Van Vleet is the #1 selling author of Tired Pages and Before We All Die Let’s Have One Last Chat by the Fireside. He also hosts the podcast Death in Dakota, sells poetry art here, and masquerades as the spoken word artist Liihey. You can support him by clicking through blog posts or donating (scroll to the bottom of the page).

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Dread Warrior

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