What Does It Mean to Heap Burning Coals on Your Enemy?
If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink, 22 for you will heap burning coals on his head, and the LORD will reward you. -Proverbs 25:21-22
Old man McCoy had it with the Hatfield clan. He was fixing to get his rifle when one of his younger sons—all filled up with fancy book learnin’—suggested another strategy. “And this one is biblical, Pa!” he said. Rather than peppering them with lead, he suggested heaping burning coals of judgment upon their head.
Junior had stumbled upon Proverbs 25:21-22 (or maybe Romans 12:20). There we read that we should feed our hungry enemies. And by doing this, burning coals will be heaped upon them. “If ya really wanna get ‘em Pa, let’s fix them dinner. And that’ll show them! God will reward us for being nice and will rain down judgment upon their house. Vengeance is the Lord’s, let Him punish those wicked Hatfields.”
There is certainly some truth to Junior’s thinking here. It is certainly better to allow God to fight your battles than to do them with your musket. But is he really following the logic of this passage? Is kindness to your neighbor just a passive aggressive strategy to ensure their ultimate comeuppance at the hands of the Almighty?
Consider the context of Romans. Just a few verses prior, Paul urged those who had been transformed by the gospel that “love be genuine” (Romans 12:9). It’s hard to argue that Junior’s strategy here of feeding his Hatfield enemies is really the mark of genuine love. It’s not love; it’s a backdoor method of winning in the end. That’s not what Paul has in mind. That’s not what the gospel produces.
What, then, does it mean to heap burning coals on someone’s head?
Some do indeed connect this to the burning coals of Psalm 140. But that doesn’t really seem to fit the context here. I don’t think either are arguing for a passive aggressive method of God judging your neighbor. And Proverbs 25:22 ends with “and the LORD will reward you”. Typically, that is attached to doing kindness to a neighbor.
Because of not being satisfied with this explanation others have sought to find ancient customs which might give us a clue. One of these comes from ancient Egypt. Apparently, when someone did something stupid or wrong—bringing shame upon themselves—they’d carry a pan of burning coals on their head as a sign of repentance.
The view was popularized by Adam Clarke (that’s one of those free commentaries that you can get on the web from the early 1800s). The only problem is that there is absolutely no historical evidence that this happened in Egypt. As a side notes, that’s why it’s always a good idea to trace these things down. Sadly, preachers and Bible commentaries sometimes like to make up stories about the Ancient Near East. We know that if we’ve got letters behind our name (or maybe a title in front of it) that we can tell people about these ancient practices, spin a good story, and it’ll become part of our lore.
But it’s just not something that we can say with any certainty happened in ancient Egypt. That makes this interpretation at least suspect on those grounds. Another idea comes from Kenneth Wuest. He’s a Greek scholar and knows his stuff about ancient culture. He proposes this:
In Bible times an oriental needed to keep his hearth fire going all the time in order to insure fire for cooking and warmth. If it went out, he had to go to a neighbor for some live coals of fire. These he would carry on his head in a container, oriental fashion, back to his home. The person who would give him some live coals would be meeting his desperate need and showing him an outstanding kindness. If he would heap the container with coals, the man would be sure of getting some home still burning. The one injured would be returning kindness for injury.
That certainly makes a little more sense of the context. “Heaping burning coals on the head” is just an extension of giving bread and drink. It’s a way of symbolically saying that you are providing for the needs of your enemy—and even if that goober doesn’t straighten up—you’ll definitely be rewarded by YHWH.
Though Wuest might be correct and it certainly fits within biblical theology, there isn’t a ton of evidence that “heap burning coals” was used as a metaphor for providing for the needs of someone. Instead, “burning coals” is often used as a symbol of purification, refining, or judgment. Think here of Isaiah 6 when a burning coal was put upon his “sinful lips”.
What do we do, then?
I’m inclined to say that Wuest is correct in the direction of his meaning but maybe not so much in the metaphor. In other words, I think it is meant to be an extension of kindness to our neighbor and not passive aggression. But I don’t think it’s necessarily correct that this is just another type of provision. Instead, I do think it is talking about judgment—but I believe it is the kind of shame-inducing action that leads one to repentance.
The idea, I think, is that if someone hates you it is good to respond in kindness and not evil. That is the path of wisdom—the way of the gospel. When someone returns our hatred with kindness it has a way of humbling us. Rather than escalating the conflict it causes us to be shamed and perhaps that will lead us to repentance. So, I think our kindness has a purifying effect on our neighbors.
I’ll give a quick example. I was listening to a podcast the other day (Nateland podcast). And Dusty Slay mentioned how he’ll sometimes respond to online comments. In his better moments he noted that he’ll respond to mean and aggressive comments with kindness. And usually what happens is that the person will soften their stance. They’ll feel embarrassed because they realize they weren’t viewing Dusty as a human being. When they “wake up” they are ashamed and scale back the aggression.
I think something similar is what Solomon is talking about here in this Proverb. We aren’t kind for the sake of “winning”. We’re kind because it is the right thing to do. If your enemy is hungry, feed him. That’s the pattern which Christ has given to us. If you believe in a God who rewards such kindness, and a God who will ultimately make all things right, you don’t have to respond with vengeance. You are looking to God for reward and not your hater. You don’t have to “get them”.
Ultimately, we want to see those who hate us to be won over to the kingdom of God. And one means that God uses to bring this about is through our kind response to their evil actions. If we’re kind only as a strategy to make our enemies look bad, we’ve missed the heart of the gospel. The call to heap burning coals isn’t about passive-aggressive vengeance—it’s about responding to hostility in a way that reflects the mercy of God. Kindness doesn’t always change an enemy, but it does reveal who we truly trust for justice.