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Divine Violence and Divine Presence: Reading the Story of Uzzah and the Ark in 2 Samuel 6 with Slavoj Žižek


 This article interprets the story of the outbreak of God against Uzzah in 2 Samuel 6 as an act of “divine violence,” a concept described by Slavoj Žižek in his book Violence: Six Sideways Reflections. In previous interpretations of 2 Samuel 6, the violence against Uzzah has been understood either as a punishment for a transgression, or as a capricious act of God’s power. Slavoj Žižek describes “divine violence” as violence, which is not a means to an end, and which irrupts from a position of vulnerability and impotence. By looking at the details of the Masoretic Text of 2 Samuel 6, it will be argued that the violence of God in this story should also be interpreted as divine violence: it lacks meaning as a punishment for transgression, and it stems from the vulnerability of God’s presence in the ark rather than from God’s transcendent power.