The Old Testament attests to a number of battles and wars between the Lord’s covenant people and foreign nations. One scholar has written, “The Bible is a book of human and divine battles. In regard to both it is impossible to overstate the degree to which the world of the [Old Testament] was (like other ancient societies) a warrior culture. Warfare was a way of life in the sense that it occurred more or less continuously.” “Human battles” refers to those battles where armies fought one another without God’s help; “divine battles,” however, are those that were fought with God’s divine intervention.

This chart sets forth examples of battles between Israel and the armies of foreign nations in which the Lord’s intervention won the battle for Israel. That Lord, of course, was none other than the premortal Jesus Christ. 

As column 3 demonstrates, the Lord used a variety of means to conquer Israel’s enemies. He employed the natural elements, such as the waters of the sea, great hailstones from heaven, thunder, and earthquakes. Or He smote the enemy with blindness, caused them to hear noises, or destroyed them with plagues. By whatever means, the God of Israel demonstrated time and again that He was more powerful than the great armies of Egypt, Moab, Edom, Ammon, Assyria, Syria, and others. During their day in history, each of these armies was a mighty world power with trained warriors who were equipped with modern (for the period) war vehicles and weaponry. The fact that Israel’s relatively small army defeated such great armies is evidence that God Himself served as Israel’s chief captain and “man of war” (Ex. 15:3; cf. Isa. 42:13; 45:1–6). As Joshua 23:10 states, “One man of you shall chase a thousand: for the Lord your God, he it is that fighteth for you.” And David warned Goliath, “For the battle is the Lord’s and he will give you into our hands” (1 Sam. 17:47).

The children of Israel’s success in battle, of course, depended on their obedience to God’s commandments. When they demonstrated obedience, they generally prevailed, but when they were disobedient, they usually suffered defeat. An example of such a defeat is recorded in Numbers 14:40–45, where Moses told a group of Israelites that they would not prosper in battle because of their transgressions. Moses warned, “Go not up, for the Lord is not among you; that ye be not smitten before your enemies. For the Amalakites and the Canaanites are there before you, and ye shall fall by the sword: because ye are turned away from the Lord, therefore the Lord will not be with you.” This group of Israelites, however, did not heed Moses’s words and went to battle anyway, and “then the Amalekites came down, and the Canaanites which dwelt in that hill . . .  smote them, and discomfited them” (Num. 14:42–43, 45).