Biblical Genocide?
© Judah Landa
I. Introduction
It has become quite common lately, with the world’s attention riveted upon religion-based wars and terrorism, to hear and read assertions to the effect that the God of the Bible condoned and even mandated the genocidal annihilation of various ancient peoples. Like Goebbels’ big lie that attains widespread credibility when repeated often enough, this charge has reverberated around the world without challenge, in popular and scholarly media, to the point that it has achieved the status of an unquestioned and ‘obvious’ fact. No doubt this is in no small measure due to the long historical record of repeated Christian and Islamic violence perpetrated in the name of religion. This record, however, merely reflects human behavior and propensity to rationalize the most diabolical of activities. It does not, in and of itself, tell us much of anything about God’s thinking as reflected in the Bible’s pronouncements on the matter.
The claim is made, for example, that the ancient Israelites, when they were about to cross the Jordan River into the Promised Land, were commanded by Moses, speaking as he always does in the name of God, to ‘utterly destroy’ the seven local tribes they would encounter in the land – the Hittite, Girgashite, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite and Jebusite, collectively referred to in the Hebrew Bible (HB) as ‘the Canaanites’ – and ‘to not let live a soul among them’. In the same vein, the HB, also known as the Old Testament (OT), is quoted as instructing the Israelites not to forget to annihilate the Amalekites. To top this off, the Israelites supposedly get an advanced taste of the genocidal process by committing one such act against the Midianites before entering the Promised Land. All these ostensibly genocidal activities are directed and/or commanded by Moses in the name of God.
In the case of the Amalekites and Midianites, we are informed by the critics, the attacks against them were motivated by revenge for past grievances. There was to be no forgetting and forgiving; instead, an ‘eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ justice gone berserk was to prevail.01 In the case of the Canaanites, on the other hand, we are told that the motivation was based entirely on religious intolerance. The Canaanites were pagan idol worshippers, not to be tolerated but utterly eliminated. They were all to be killed and their ‘altars smashed, pillars broken, sacred places cut down and carved images (statues, idols) burned’.
It is no great secret, however, that most folks today who purport to be quoting the Bible cannot even read the book in its original ancient Hebrew format (very few people can), not to mention the inability to probe into the style and syntax of its expressions to ascertain their meaning. The typical modus operandi with the Bible is to take one of its questionable translations out of context and jump to pre-ordained conclusions, usually those that sit well with one’s agenda. In contrast, the ancient Jewish commentators have long ago weighed in on the meaning of various biblical statements, and ancient Hebrew was their mother tongue. They were experts par excellence in deciphering the intent of the original biblical text and, just as importantly, they did their homework. While they sometimes disagree amongst themselves, as scholars are wont to do, pertaining to the meaning of a particular phrase or verse, they were also unanimous (or at least nearly so) about many others. Their understanding of this subject – the issue of genocide in the Bible – differs significantly from the description presented above in many important respects, and it behooves us to consider their views.
In this essay we carefully examine just what the HB says pertaining to this issue, and what it does not say, and place these elements into proper context so that a coherent whole picture emerges from our analysis. On occasion we will need to weigh alternative translations of ancient Hebrew words and phrases against each other. In such circumstances we will apply textual evidence – not guesswork – to help us choose the likeliest intent of the text. A far more nuanced picture is destined to emerge, one that deviates enormously from the common perceptions presented above.
It should be highlighted at the outset that the general practice of the HB is not to present each of its stories, teachings, themes and laws in their entirety, all at once, in one place in the text. Instead, bits and pieces of a topic are presented here and there, and the overall picture emerges by bringing all the complementary parts together. The Israelites’ treatment of the local population to be encountered in the Promised Land, for example, is treated in five different places (two in Exodus, one in Numbers and two in Deuteronomy). Even stories are told and retold with particulars omitted in one telling and provided in another.02 There are multiple reasons for this pattern that need not be delved into here.03 Suffice it to say that the objective reader will be best served by awaiting the analysis of all the relevant texts pertaining to a particular topic, before formulating opinions or arriving at conclusions about the subject under discussion.
II. The Canaanites
A. Overview
In considering geopolitical events that occurred more than three thousand years ago, it is essential that we not project present conditions onto the distant past, when conditions were radically different. These days the inhabited part of the planet we live on is dominated by large nation-states, each of which is ruled by a government that claims to speak for all the inhabitants and resources within its territory. This is a legacy bequeathed to us by the powerful empires of the past and present that, with few exceptions, appeared on scene more recently than three thousand years ago. These empires, each in its own heyday, acted as steamrollers that crushed and obliterated the cultures and identities of countless city-states that stood in their way. Upon crossing the Jordan River into the Promised Land (the area between the river and the Mediterranean Sea, from the Sinai in the south to present day Lebanon in the north) the Israelites encountered, not a unified people represented by a single nation-state called Canaan, but a host of small city-states, each of which was ruled by a petty strongman or elite family. These ‘mayors’, as we shall call them, often quarreled, competed, conspired against and even fought each other, as the Amarna Letters amply demonstrate.
The archaeological and historical evidence inform us that the total urbanized population (those settled into cities) in the Promised Land in the second millennium BCE, numbered about fifty thousand. Vast tracts of unsettled land prevailed between and around these urban centers, through which passed, at any given time, an unknown number of semi-nomadic pastoralists in search of well endowed grazing areas for their animals. To protect themselves against attacks and raids from other city-states and incursions by nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples, many of the urban centers were surrounded by tall and formidable perimeter walls (as reflected in Deut 9:1).04 When the 600,000 wandering Israelites suddenly appear on the scene, they instantly constituted the new majority in the land and a force to be reckoned with. As expected and predicted in the Bible, some of the local strongmen saw this development as a threat to their hegemony and actively opposed it.
The Israelites were neither the first nor the last people to migrate into the area. Many of the already settled tribes were themselves relatively recent arrivals,05 and the Philistines certainly had no qualms about invading the territory after the Israelites’ arrival. With vast tracts of unsettled areas in the territory there certainly was ‘room’ for newcomers to settle without unduly disturbing the life-sustaining activities and resources of those already there. If we grant the right to bar newcomers to the first group to settle a territory, then the first Siberians to cross the Bering Straits into North America would rightfully be able to claim the entire North American continent for themselves and keep everyone else out. Were the thousands of escaped slaves from Egypt (the Israelites) to be relegated in perpetuity to the adjacent desert while other peoples, before and after them, freely exercised their right to migrate into and out of the territory? By what standard of right and wrong could such an argument be sustained?
Clearly then, some accommodation of the various groups to each other would have to be made for peace to prevail. And with the Israelites constituting the new majority in the land, certain prerogatives would rightfully accrue to them. A major source of contention would be the widespread local practices of public displays of idolatry, something the Israelites, at least at this point, found to be particularly abhorrent and offensive. Just as the majority in any democratic society generally has the right to impose and enforce its standards in the public arena, so would the Israelites be within their rights in their insistence on the abolition of public idolatry in the Promised Land. This is reflected in many verses in the HB, as we shall soon see.
The Israelites did not insist on, nor did they seek, the conversion of the local population to their religion. The unique and extensive obligations imposed by Judaism on its adherents have always been viewed by the Israelites as applicable only to themselves; Judaism has never, as a matter of doctrine, practice or policy, called for the proselytization of others (with perhaps some few and far between minor exceptions). There is nary a hint in the entire HB of an obligation to seek converts.
Judaism does, however, subscribe to the view that all human beings are commanded by God to abide by seven categories of laws, known collectively as the ‘Noahite laws’. The insistence on the abolition of public idolatry in the land, which is explicitly mandated in the HB (as stated above), has traditionally been expanded to be inclusive of the demand that non-Israelites in the land observe their seven commandments (one of which is the prohibition of idolatry) and that it was the Israelites’ duty to see to it that this indeed is the case. But this is not explicitly stated anywhere in the text. The seven commandments are: (1) no idolatry (worshipping gods other than the one God/Creator), (2) no blasphemy (cursing God by name), (3) no murder, (4) no incest and adultery, (5) no stealing (in any of its manifestations), (6) no eating the flesh of a still living animal (the humane treatment of animals), (7) to maintain a just and fair judicial system to enforce the above laws.06 Overall, this is not an onerous list of demands, and as with all the Torah’s laws, including those applicable to the Israelites, violations are punished only when committed willfully, knowingly and publicly.
Be this as it may, the explicit biblical mandate to the Israelites upon entering the Promised Land was limited to the elimination of public idolatry. This is repeatedly stressed in the Bible, not in terms of insuring that the local non-Israelite population does obey its own commandments, the first of which is the prohibition of idolatry, but in order to prevent the Israelites themselves from being swayed or enticed by their new neighbors into imitating their widespread practice of idolatry. Apparently the Bible was not particularly concerned about the Israelites’ imitation of the locals’ violation of any of the other six commandments on the list. Such violations were not nearly as common (at least not publicly so), nor were the Israelites unique in demanding obedience to those laws. The Israelites were unique, however, in their opposition to idolatry, which was practiced widely and publicly all around them. It is neither easy nor comfortable being different. It is therefore idolatry in particular that they needed to be kept away from, and it is this that the Bible addresses persistently and vociferously.
With the above framework in mind we turn to the five pertinent biblical texts regarding the prescribed treatment of the Canaanites to be encountered by the Israelites when they enter the Promised Land.
B. Exodus 23
In formulating His covenant with the Israelites, God promises to ‘send His messenger before them to protect them on the way, to bring them to the place that He has prepared’ (23:20). God is then quoted as saying, “If you will do all that I speak, I shall be an enemy to your enemies and persecute your persecutors (23:22) …. When he (God’s unnamed messenger who turned out to be Joshua) brings you to the Amorite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Canaanite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, and I annihilate them (23:23), do not prostrate yourself to their gods, do not worship them and do not follow their practices; rather you shall tear down and smash their pillars (23:24). You shall serve the Lord your God and He will bless your food and water (23:25)….”
The concern that the Israelites may be swayed by the widespread idolatrous practices of the local population is clearly displayed in the above passage. God’s promise of ‘annihilation’ is expressed in the context of Israel’s ‘enemies and persecutors’, that is, those who will oppose the Israelites’ presence in the land that God has ‘prepared’ for them and will seek to forcibly prevent that presence.07 In essence, God promises total military victory to the Israelites over their opponents, if they keep their part of the covenant by ‘doing all that God speaks’. This is further amplified as God continues to elaborate on His commitments. “I shall confound the entire people among whom you come and I shall make all your enemies turn the backs of the necks toward you” (23:27). Notice that while God will confound ‘the entire people’, it is Israel’s ‘enemies’, that is, those who will rise to oppose them militarily, who will be defeated as they ‘turn the back of their necks’ toward the Israelites. This is an important distinction, one that is also applicable to the continued discussion (23:28-31) of God and the Israelites ‘driving out’ the local population (a form of ‘turning the back’) - the context is Israel’s ‘enemies and persecutors’. Widespread local opposition was expected and predictable, or at least something the Israelites were acutely concerned about, and God promises to assist the Israelites in coping with it.
That this expectation was warranted is extensively demonstrated in the conquest story of the Book of Joshua. Not only was there intense military opposition to the newcomers, with hardly any of the local city-states reconciling themselves to peaceably coexist with the Israelites (Josh 11:19), when the Hivites of Gibeon did ordain to make peace with the Israelites, five neighboring Amorite cities attacked the Gibeonites for doing so (Josh 10:3-5)!
So we know that God will help the Israelites in their expected battles to defend their right to settle in the land. What about the local tribes who will not wage war against them? How are the Israelites to deal with those cities? In response to these questions the text records God’s mandate to the Israelites: they are not to follow the locals’ idolatrous practices (23:24) and they are to tear down and smash their pillars. Indeed, all public manifestations of idolatry, such as pillars, altars, shrines and statues, are to be eliminated from the land (Deut 7:5). Furthermore, “you shall not seal a covenant with them and their gods (23:32). They shall not dwell in your land lest they cause you to sin against Me (God), when you will worship their gods, for this will be a snare to you” (23:33).
The concern expressed here is that if the Israelites will repeatedly encounter physical and visual manifestations of idolatrous practices in their midst, they may become acclimated to such activities and be swayed to stray from the path they must adhere to, the path that prohibits alien- god worship. It is an undeniable feature of human nature to become mentally and emotionally habituated to what is experienced as the norm on a routine basis. Public displays of idolatry in any of its manifestation are therefore not to be tolerated in the land of the Israelites.
Sealing a ‘covenant’ with a tribe or city-state implies enacting a mutual, unconditional non-aggression pact, one that commits both parties to refrain from forcibly interfering in each other’s way of life. Such a covenant will constrain the Israelites from enforcing the law of the land with regard to the ban on public idolatry. It will also mislead the local tribe or city-state in that it will encourage its proclivity to persist in those practices. When the Israelites will then interfere with those activities, by tearing down an erected pillar or smashing a statue or shrine, as they are commanded to do, the local tribe or city will rightfully claim that the Israelites are violating their solemn oath. To be transparently clear and upfront in their interactions with the local population, the Israelites are admonished not to seal such a covenant with any of the local city-states or tribes.
It goes without saying that this admonition can apply only to local people who have chosen to not wage war against the Israelites. There is no point in prohibiting a covenant with people who are engaged in battle against you or are planning or preparing to do so (in which case they will not agree to a covenant if offered). Clearly then the text envisions the possibility if not the likelihood that some of the local city-states will reconcile themselves to the presence of the Israelite newcomers, and that no fighting will then take place between these folks and the Israelites. This, in turn, can only mean that the Israelites were not to attack these people, at the same time that they do not enshrine the arrangement in a binding covenant.
The expression “you shall not seal a covenant with them” is firmly tied to the following words, “and their gods.” As long as a covenant with ‘them’ is construed as a covenant also with ‘their gods’, that is, the local people are not willing and do not agree to abandon their public idolatry, no covenant is to be sealed with them. If, on the other hand, they do commit to cease that activity, a covenant may be sealed with them and, of course, once sealed, must be abided by. This in fact happened with the Gibeonites (Josh 9), and when the Israelites later violated their covenant with them, God held the Israelites to account (II Sam 21).
The above also holds for the phrase “they shall not dwell in your land”; this too is firmly tied to the following words, “lest they cause you to sin against Me …. For this will be a snare to you”. When the reason for the rule is not applicable, that is, the local tribe does not engage in war against the Israelites and commits to discontinue their public idolatry, the rule itself is no longer applicable. This is the case for all the Torah’s laws for which a reason is explicitly stated in the text – the reason is provided in order to set the parameters of the law. In the same vein, no reason is provided for certain laws in order to render those laws immune to exceptions based on excuses or rationalizations. The bottom line is that ‘they shall not dwell in your land as a snare to you’, that is, as practitioners of public idolatry.
As an aside, it ought to be noted that had the rule ‘they shall not dwell in your land’ been intended as a general principle, applicable to all the local tribes and cities irrespective of their conduct, the rule would run head-on into conflict with the law pertaining to not returning an escaped slave to his master. For the text explicitly states in that context, “he (the escapee) shall dwell with you (the Israelites) in your midst, in whatever place he will choose in one of your cities, as is beneficial to him, you shall not ill-treat him” (Deut 23:17). This law, it is generally agreed, is applicable (also, perhaps even primarily) to Canaanite slaves,08 yet Moses seems unconcerned about the covenantal rule ‘they shall not dwell in your land’. This must mean that the rule is tied to public idolaters who will be ‘a snare to you’, as described above, and an escaped slave is not about to publicly violate the cardinal rules of the country that grants him refuge.
It should also be emphasized that the overriding issue here is public idolatry, not private practices. For it is only public activities that, should the Israelites encounter them repeatedly, on a routine basis, in their midst, could act as a ‘snare’ to them. A local tribe that commits to refrain from public idolatry could therefore dwell unmolested among the Israelites. It may even get to enshrine the relationship in the form of a covenant. Other concerns remain, however, pertaining to the possible deleterious effects of intimate friendships and intermarriages with folks who persist in the private practice of idolatry, and the text will address these concerns later (as shall we).
What about a tribe or city that, while peaceful and thus not attackable, adamantly refuses to cooperate and insists on continuing to publicly engage in their idolatrous practices? The Israelites were to make it clear that those practices violate the law of the land, and they had every intention of enforcing it. If said tribe or city wished to avoid those enforcement measures (the tearing down of pillars and shrines and the death penalty – applied to Israelites as well – for public violations under certain conditions) they would be well advised to migrate out of the land and transplant themselves and their practices to some other place. All the local city-states were given the opportunity to do so. We are informed that Joshua sent messages to all the rulers in the land informing them of the three options to confront them, and that the Israelites would accommodate whatever path they choose to take. They could (1) coexist in peace (without public idolatry), (2) engage in war, and (3) migrate out of the land. The choice was theirs to make.09
Before examining other biblical texts pertaining to this subject, let us pause to note that surely there is nothing in what we have seen so far to suggest that the local peoples in the land were to be attacked, killed or driven out because they are Canaanites or Amorites or Perizzites or because they are idolaters. So much for the oft repeated charge of genocide leveled at the Bible. The passages we examine next will not only reinforce the above analysis, they will expand and elaborate upon it in ways that render this charge ever more risible.
C. Exodus 34
Associated with His forgiveness of the sin of the Golden Calf (an idolatrous act committed by a small fraction of the Israelites while the others stood by and did not interfere), God restates and reviews some of the provisions of His original covenant with the people. The people cavalierly violated that covenant but God nevertheless renews His promises - contingent on the people abiding by their commitments. Among the repeated items is the promise that God will “drive out before you (the Israelites) the Amorite, Canaanite, Hittite, Perizzite, Hivite and Jebusite” (34:11). As in the original covenant, of which this is an abbreviated review (see above from Ex 23:22-31), this statement refers to Israel’s enemies, that is, those who will actively oppose their presence in the land. It cannot be viewed as a blanket promise to drive the entire local population out of the land, for then all the immediately following admonishments, namely to not seal a covenant with them (the local population), to not intermarry with them and to not befriend them (quoted below), are rendered superfluous and meaningless. If the entire local population is to be driven out, with whom might the Israelites intermarry or seal a covenant and whom will they befriend?
The omission of ‘enemies’ here does, however, provide an opening to critics to take this verse out of its intended context and thereby distort its meaning, by applying ‘drive out’ to the entire local population. But the text is not much concerned about this. And the reason for this is easy to see. The review of the covenant in Ex 34 also omits, among other items, the fact, mentioned in the original covenant (Ex 23:29-30), that the driving out process (whatever it pertains to) will be a gradual one, one that will take longer than one year. So, to insist that the review is to be severed from the original regarding ‘enemies’, is to insist – to be consistent – that it must also be so understood pertaining to ‘gradualism’. Then the review has God driving out the entire local population immediately, without delay. This renders the following commandments, to not intermarry and to not seal a covenant and to not form friendships with the local population, utterly preposterous. This reading is therefore totally untenable and the text, assuming some reasonable level of intelligence on the part of its readers, expects the reader to reject this approach. The review of the covenant in Ex 34 must therefore be anchored to the original of Ex 23; the ‘driving out’ pertains to ‘enemies’ (as in the original) and this process will be a gradual one (also as in the original). The bans on covenants, friendships and intermarriages pertain to those not to be driven out, that is, those who are not ‘enemies’ because they choose to live in peace, side-by-side, with their new neighbors, the Israelites.
The text continues: “Be vigilant not to seal a covenant with the inhabitant of the land upon which you advance, lest it become a snare in your midst (34:12). Instead, you shall smash their altars, break their pillars, and cut down their shrines” (34:13). The juxtaposition of these verses reinforces what we said earlier (sec II B), namely that the ban on covenant making (with those willing to peaceably coexist with the Israelites) is tied to the local population’s propensity to engage in public idolatry, and that in the absence of the latter, the former is nullified.
The text then continues to elaborate: “For you shall not prostrate yourself to an alien god, for the very name of the Lord is ‘impassioned’. He is an impassioned God (34:14). If you seal a covenant with the inhabitant of the land, and they stray after their gods and sacrifice to their gods, and invite you and you partake of his feast (34:15). You will (then) take of his daughters for your sons, and their daughters will stray after their gods and (this will) entice your sons to stray (as well) after their gods” (34:16). This serves to alert the Israelites to the danger lurking in their midst even when the idolatry is practiced privately (by local tribes or cities who coexist peacefully with the Israelites and with whom a covenant may be sealed because they have abandoned their public idolatry). While the Israelites will then not see idolatry practiced in the public arena, there is the danger that friendships will lead to invitations to feasts which in turn will lead to intermarriages that will serve to entice them to stray from the fundamentals of their way of life. The text here does not ban covenants under these circumstances, but it does warn against close friendships and intimate relationships. This warning will be turned into an outright ban in a later passage (Deut 7:1-5).
So, we begin to discern the Bible’s multi-tiered approach to this subject, one that will be reinforced by future elaborations in later passages. Those among the local Canaanites who choose to wage war against the Israelites will have to contend with God’s promise of total victory to the Israelites. Those among them who reconcile themselves to peaceably coexist with the Israelites and refrain from public idolatry are welcome to do so; they may even get the arrangement enshrined (in writing or by physical marker) in the form of a covenant. If these folks maintain their idolatrous practices in private, however, they will find the Israelites unwilling to form social bonds with them (although trade and commerce may take place). Those who wean themselves entirely away from idolatry are subject to no restrictions (except perhaps intermarriage). Finally, those who persist in their public idolatry, in violation of the law of the land, will confront enforcement measures (just as will Israelites who do so) aimed at eliminating this practice.
D. Numbers 33
Elements of the above described paradigm are evident in the next passage in the HB on this subject, provided it is translated accurately. In Numbers chapter 33 God speaks to Moses in the Plains of Moab, at the Jordan River, commanding him to tell the Israelites the following: “You are about to cross the Jordan into the land of Canaan (33:51), and you will (or shall) cause all the inhabitants of the land before you to become your inheritance. You shall destroy all their prostration stones, all their molten images you shall demolish, and all their high places you shall eliminate (33:52). And you will (or shall) make the land your inheritance, and you will (or shall) settle in her, for to you have I given the land to inherit her” (33:53). The text then proceeds to quote God on just how the land is to be apportioned among the tribes and clans of Israel, then concludes the discussion with, “if you will not inherit (all) the inhabitants of the land before you, then those that remain (not inherited) among them will become stings in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they will persecute you on the land that you reside in her (33:55). And it shall (then) be that as I (God) contemplated doing to them, so will I do to you” (33:56).
For the Israelites to ‘inherit’ the inhabitants of the land, in this context, is for them to become responsible for the conduct of those inhabitants. While the Israelites are under no obligation to eliminate public idolatry wherever it occurs on earth, once they become responsible for the land they inherit and settle upon (33:53), they become obligated to eliminate public idolatry from their midst. They in effect then ‘inherit’ the problem of public idolatry, a problem that comes with the inhabitants, and they must contend with it. This is why the text here speaks of inheriting the land (in 33:53) and its inhabitants (in 33:52), and juxtaposes both of these with the requirement to destroy all molten images, prostration stones and high places (33:52). And to the extent that the Israelites fail to perform this obligation, the remaining publicly idolatrous inhabitants in the land will become a ‘snare’ to them (as in Ex 23 and 34) or, to use the more poignant language of the text here, they will become ‘stings’ and ‘thorns’ and ultimately ‘persecutors’ when God deems it appropriate to disinherit the Israelites, as He now contemplates doing to the present inhabitants (by promising victory to the Israelites, 33:55-56).
A complex and difficult Hebrew word appears twice in this passage, at the beginning of verse 52 (pertaining to the inhabitants) and 53 (pertaining to the land), namely vi-ho-rash-tem, which has been translated variously as ‘drive out’, ‘dispossess’, ‘possess’ and ‘take possession of’, among other formulations. Frequently the translations of this very same word by the same translators, in 33:52 and 33:53, are diametrically opposed to each other.10 To top off this untenable and confusing arrangement, it makes no sense to speak of ‘driving out’ the land, as some render 33:53. If driving out the land is to be presented as somehow constituting a shortened version for driving out its inhabitants,11 the problem of the text superfluously repeating itself arises, since the text then tells us twice, in quick succession, that the Israelites will (or shall) drive out the inhabitants. Either way this implies that ‘drive out’ is to be rejected as the intent of the text here in using vi-ho-rash-tem.
Based on how the root of this word is sometimes employed in the HB, it could be argued that any of the above definitions, plus a few others (such as ‘impoverish’), are technically possible here.12 Ascertaining the translation that best fits a particular text should, however, not be based on mere technicalities or on numbers (how many times a translation appears in the Bible), but on context, syntax, coherence and on which translation most renders the text bereft of anomalies, contradictions and superfluous repetitions.
Based on the above criteria, we are animated here to adopt ‘inherit’ (or its rough equivalent ‘possess’) as the best fitting translation - the one that most likely reflects the intent of our text - of the root of vi-ho-rash-tem, a word that appears twice in our text, once pertaining to the inhabitants (33:52) and once pertaining to the land itself (33:53). This root-word appears many times in the HB with this definition firmly established as the intent of the text. Not only does this definition best fit our entire passage in terms of consistency of usage, it also avoids the problems associated with the other (albeit technically possible) definitions, as described above. In addition, the same root-word appears again at the end of 33:53, in the form of lo-re-shet, where it must mean ‘inherit’ (or ‘possess’) and is so translated by nearly all English versions of the Bible. God certainly did not give the land to Israel in order that they drive it out (whatever that may mean), dispossess it or impoverish it. He gave it to them to settle upon it, in peace, as explicitly stated in this verse. This further enhances the likelihood that ‘inheritance’ is the theme of this passage, as translated above. To inherit the land (33:53) is to possess it and settle upon it; to inherit its inhabitants (33:52) is to assume responsibility for their conduct and to contend with their problems. This is no superfluous distinction.
We will have more to say in the next section about the nature of the enterprise of accurately and correctly translating ancient Hebrew words, why this is a challenging process, and how we go about overcoming the difficulties inherent to the task.
E. Deuteronomy 7
The ancient Hebrew of the original Pentateuch (five books of Moses) is a dialect of one of humankind’s earliest languages, frequently referred to as West Semitic. As such it is a primitive language of limited vocabulary; many of its words have multiple meanings, meanings that are derived from each other. In its earliest forms there were no vowels inserted between consonants to help distinguish words consisting of the same consonants but with different meanings and pronunciations, from each other. It is therefore not advisable to just pick a possible translation and blithely assume that it correctly reflects the intent of a particular phrase or verse in a biblical text. The likelihood of error in adopting such an approach is unacceptably high. As with Egyptian hieroglyphics, for example, even scholars and experts find it necessary to invest the requisite ‘due diligence’ of time and effort in order to arrive at the likeliest intent of many expressions in the HB. They typically do so by carefully examining the context of a particular expression and compare it to other texts where the same words appear in comparable contexts with (hopefully) better known and firmly established meanings. Needless to add, this is no task for amateurs; even recognized experts in the field frequently disagree amongst themselves.
By way of example, consider the Hebrew words consisting of the three consonants Shin, Lamed and Mem, in this order. Standing alone, such a combination of letters may allude to the word for ‘peace’ (shalom) or it may mean ‘complete’ or ‘whole’ (shulaim) or it may be commanding one to ‘pay up’ (shalaim). When inserted in a sentence, it may or may not be possible to ascertain the intended meaning from its context. Inserting the vowel Vav between the Lamed and Mem serves the purpose of fixing the intended meaning as that of ‘peace’. Absent the assistance provided by context or vowel, we would be at a loss to ascertain what the writer had in mind. In the case of the spoken word, the pronunciation may help.
An analogous word appears in the passage we are about to examine. It consists of the three Hebrew consonants Het, Resh and Mem, in this order, and is usually pronounced herem. It is used many times in the HB to mean ‘destroy’ (based on context, no vowel appears to help us),13 but is applied just as frequently to mean ‘proscribe’ (off limits) or ‘devote’ (set aside) or ‘ban’ (no benefit permitted).14 The intended meaning in our passage (Deut 7) can be determined only by carefully probing the text. Quite a few translations have gotten this wrong for failing to do so.
Deuteronomy, chapter seven, opens with: “When the Lord your God brings you to the land you come to possess, and He thrusts many peoples before you – the Hittite, Girgashite, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite and Jebusite - seven peoples greater and mightier than you, and the Lord your God delivers them before you and you defeat them” (7:1 - 2A). This introduces the subject of the expected battles with the Israelites’ enemies and reminds them of God’s commitment to an Israelite victory. This is then followed by a series of commands pertaining to what the Israelites must and must not do at that time.
Those commands begin with, as many translators render it, “you shall utterly destroy them” (7:2B). This is then followed by, “you shall not seal a covenant with them, and you shall not be gracious to them (or show them favor). You shall not intermarry with them, you shall not give your daughter to his son, and you shall not take his daughter for your son, for he will cause your son to turn away from Me (God), and they will worship alien gods. Then God’s wrath will flare against you and He will drive you out. Instead, this is what you shall do to them – their altars you shall smash, their pillars you shall break, their shrines you shall cut down, and their statues (idols) you shall burn in fire” (7:2B - 5).
Even a cursory reading of this passage, based as it is on the translation of herem as ‘destroy’, reveals the absence of tenability of said translation in this context. Does it make any sense whatsoever, after commanding the utter destruction of the local population, to then add ‘do not be gracious’ to the very entity to be destroyed, and then to go on to prohibit intermarrying with those same people? Nor does it make any sense for the text to say, ‘instead, this is what you shall do to them’, referring to smashing their altars (and the rest), when their utter destruction has already been commanded. Is not their ‘utter destruction’ also something to be done ‘to them’?
It makes far more sense to render herem here (in 7:2B) as ‘proscribe’ in the sense of ‘keep away from’ or ‘banned’. The general principle is thus stated at the outset, “You shall utterly proscribe them.” This is then very fittingly followed by an elaboration of what ‘proscribe’ entails – no covenant, no grace (leading to friendship) and certainly no intermarriage. In addition to the promised victory over their enemies (those that wage war against them), the Israelites are reminded of how they are to deal with those of the local population that choose not to wage war against them. These folks remain in the land, peaceably coexisting with the Israelites. The reviewed rules are based on the covenant between God and Israel, that is, the passages in Exodus discussed previously (sec II B-C), which Moses elaborates upon in Deuteronomy, as he does throughout this book. Public idolatry is to be abolished (no covenant, smashing of altars) and private idolaters are to be kept away from (no grace, friendship or intermarriage), all to one purpose – to help assure that the Israelites do not stray from their worship of the one and only, incorporeal God/Creator (thus no idols and images). Since ‘utterly proscribe’ is not something done to them, but something not done with them, it makes sense that the text later says, ‘instead this is what you shall do to them’, referring to smashing their altars (and the rest). Now it all fits together thematically and completely in that the text instructs the Israelites as to how they are to deal with all the relevant permutations of the locals’ reaction to their presence in the land: the opponents, the peaceful public idolaters and the peaceful private idolaters.
With this in mind, we once again find nary a hint or a whiff of a mandate to kill non-combatants, and certainly nothing even remotely suggestive of genocide. Moses later returns to this subject again as he continues his review of, and elaboration upon, the laws of the Torah. We examine that passage in the next section where all that has been said hitherto is strongly reinforced and the topic is broadened to include the rules of warfare.
F. Deuteronomy 20, Part I
This passage begins with the general rules of war to be obeyed by the Israelites, irrespective of who their opponent happens to be. Then the text distinguishes among wars against ‘distant’ enemies or, to use the description of the text, wars against “cities that are not of these peoples” (referring to the seven Canaanite tribes) and wars that are against cities “that are of these peoples,” with whom different procedures are mandated. The basis for the distinction is that the Israelites will be dwelling amidst, or at least in close proximity to, the local population, who will “teach you to act according to their abominations, that they perform for their gods, and you will (then) sin against the Lord your God” (20:18). This concern is apparently not applicable in the case of distant cities.
The presentation opens with, “When you draw near a city to wage war upon it, you shall (first) call out to it for peace. If it shall be that it responds to you in peace and opens to you, then it will be that the entire people present in it will be a tribute (tax) to you and will serve you. But if it does not make peace with you and wages war against you, then you (may) besiege it” (20:10-12).
The text does not state the reason for ‘drawing near’ the city to wage war upon it in the first place. Presumably there is a valid basis for this, at least as the Israelites see it, such as a territorial dispute or an alliance with another party already at war with Israel or border skirmishes or other incidents that have taken place. We know that Torah Law requires the king of Israel to obtain legal approval – based on Torah Law – of the seventy-one member High Court (sometimes called the Sanhedrin) before embarking on war (with certain limited exceptions).15 Be that as it may these verses make it abundantly clear that calling for peace is required before taking the very first steps in waging war, which in ancient times often consisted of besieging the targeted entity. This in turn implies the readiness to cease and desist from waging war when the call for peace is accepted. Furthermore, a careful reading of 20:12 allows for besieging the targeted city only after it “wages war against you.” The Israelites were thus commanded to not start the fighting or initiate acts of war (such as setting a siege).
This does not mean that they must wait to be attacked before responding in kind. It is probably sufficient that the other party takes concrete steps that are certainly aimed at war against Israel. It does mean, however, that the HB constrains the Israelites to defensive wars. In doing so the HB was millennia ahead of its time in its outlook and worldview.
Does this requirement apply as well to cities ‘that are of these peoples’, that is, to the Canaanite tribes within and near the land of Israel? The dominant/majority view among the rabbinic commentators and legal decision makers is that the answer is emphatically ‘yes’.16 And the evidence overwhelmingly supports this conclusion (to be discussed below). Israel is never to start a war “against anyone in the world”, to quote Maimonides, “in the absence of first calling for peace.” Calling for peace first means that one refrains from acts of war until the other party first acts in a war-like manner, as explicitly stated in 20:12. So much for the libelous, ignorant and haphazard charge of genocide directed at the HB.
Among the items of evidence in support of this important conclusion (external to this passage to which we shall soon return) and, even more importantly, to the idea that the Israelites so understood this mandate, are the following:
One, Moses sends messengers to Sihon, king of the Amorites, carrying a call for peace and friendly relations before the battle against the Amorites was joined at the initiation of the Amorites (Deut 2:26-29). The Amorites, we know, are one of the seven local peoples, and Sihon reigned nearby, just east of the Jordan River. Moses does so even after God had commanded him to ‘provoke war’ with Sihon (Deut 2:24-25), as is indicated by the sequence of verses (Deut 2:24-29).17 Clearly the call for peace always comes first; Moses understood that he must obey this law despite God’s command to provoke war with Sihon, for God would want him to obey God’s law. In the case of Sihon, however, God guaranteed that the call will not be accepted (Deut 2:30). Why then bother with a futile exercise of calling for peace? The reason must be to demonstrate by example that this is the proper way to go about matters of war and peace. It must be clear to the satisfaction of all that Sihon initiated the hostilities despite Moses’ call for peace (as described in Num 21:21-23 and Deut 2:32). This is the model to follow in all future encounters with potential opponents.
Two, Joshua keeps his covenant of peace with the inhabitants of Gibeon, a Hivite city-state within the Promised Land and another of the seven local peoples, going so far as to provide them with jobs (Josh 9:25-27). He does so despite the fact that the Gibeonites lured the Israelites into this covenant under false pretenses and by elaborate deception. He does so because he must do so based on the laws of the Torah. They came in peace; as non-combatants they could not be attacked, whatever the Israelites thought of their tactics. Had there been a command to kill all the local inhabitants of the land, as claimed by the proponents of the charge of genocide, Joshua’s actions would constitute a serious violation of that command of God, an inconceivable proposition. The covenant with the Gibeonites cannot be viewed as justification for such violation, as some have argued, since it was null and void – it was attained in error based on deception (see Josh 9) and its provision of peaceful coexistence would then be contrary to Mosaic Law. Each of these considerations constitutes grounds for the nullification of any vow, oath or covenant.18 Nor can concern for God’s and/or Israel’s reputation (in violating the covenant) be viewed as justification for such violation, as others have argued, for it stands to reason that those who would hear (or read about) this story would hear the whole story, including the part that the covenant was based on fraudulent claims. It must then be concluded that Joshua acted as he did because the requirement to call for peace, and its corollary to not attack those who accept the call, apples as well to the ‘cities that are of these peoples’.
Three, in summarizing the many battles Joshua waged upon entering the Promised Land, we encounter the following passage in the Book of Joshua: “Many days did Joshua wage war against all these (thirty-one) kings. There was not a city that made peace with the Israelites, except for the Hivites dwelling in Gibeon; all (cities defeated by Joshua) were taken in battle (of necessity since they would not make peace). For it was God’s doing to stiffen their hearts to engage in war against Israel, in order that they are destroyed (here herem is to be translated as ‘destroy’); that they not find favor, in order that they are driven out, as God commanded Moses” (Josh 11:18-20).
While this essay is not the place to delve into the theological implications of God’s stiffening certain hearts (as he famously does to Pharaoh of the exodus and to Sihon of the Amorites), it is however abundantly clear from this passage that in order for the Israelites to engage in battle with these ‘cities that are of these peoples’ (the named seven) those peoples had to first wage war against the Israelites. Whether God orchestrated this behind the scenes or not, this is what the Israelites had to see on the ground; it had to be the reality they confronted. Had the Israelites been commanded to engage in a wanton killing spree of the local population, as charged by the genocide proponents, there would be no need for God to stiffen hearts nor would the local population’s refusal to make peace be relevant. The message of this text is that had additional city-states and their ‘kings’ opted for peaceful coexistence, as did the Gibeonites, they could not and would not have been attacked by the Israelites, just as the Gibeonites were not attacked. It is this foundational principle that the text refers to in concluding with “as God commanded Moses.”
Four, the passage above might be understood as implying that the entire local population, with the exception of the Gibeonites, had their hearts stiffened to wage war against the Israelites and that this culminated in their destruction. But this is not the case. Many centuries later, during the reign of King Solomon, we encounter “all the people that remain of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, who are not Israelites, their descendants who remained in the land after them that the Israelites could not destroy (or proscribe). Solomon imposed upon them a labor tax (for his extensive construction projects)” (I Kings 9:21).
The phrase ‘could not destroy’ (assuming this is how herem is to be understood here) cannot be taken to mean that the Israelites were militarily unable to defeat and destroy them. This event occurs soon after the reign of King David who subdued many a foe mightier than these ‘remaining descendants of the seven tribes’ (such as the Philistines). Rather ‘could not’ here means ‘not permitted to’ as this expression is employed – beyond a reasonable doubt - in many other places in the HB (see, for example, Deut 12:17 and 17:15). The text is explaining why these people, remnants and descendants of the seven peoples encountered by the Israelites centuries earlier, remain in the land. The reason is that the Israelites were prohibited from, and therefore ‘could not’, attack them or drive them out. This must be due to their acceptance of peaceful coexistence with the Israelites. If, on the other hand, herem here means ‘proscribe’, the text is explaining why Solomon is giving them jobs – the Israelites were prohibited from proscribing these folks. This must be due to their having abandoned idolatry, at least in the public arena.
So there were city-states or parts thereof, other than the Gibeonites and the thirty-one who waged war against Joshua, who did reconcile themselves to the presence of the Israelites in the land. As non-combatants the Israelites were prohibited from attacking them or harming them, and did not do so. Since these cities were within the limits of the Promised Land, this proves that our understanding of the verses quoted earlier (Deut 20:10-12) is right on target – the requirement to call for peace before taking war-like steps, and its corollary the prohibition of attacking non-combatants, is intended to be applicable also to the local population within the Promised Land, and that this was so understood – and abided by – by generations of Israelites through the centuries. Had this not been the case, Solomon would not have had a population of Amorites and Hittites and Perizzites and Hivites and Jebusites upon whom to impose his (paid for) labor tax.
It should be emphasized that these rules of war are obviously not applicable only to entire city-states but also to parts of cities, villages and thus even to individuals. Should the ruler of a city, for example, choose to wage war and part of its population joins in this campaign and part does not, and this development is clear and ascertainable (it is not shrouded in the proverbial ‘fog of war’), then the non-combatants may not be attacked. The text focuses on city-states by way of illustration; there is no discernable basis to distinguish in this regard between cities and halves of cities and smaller components thereof, such as individuals. Complications that arise from the dynamics of the battlefield notwithstanding, the principle is clear and immutable.
With this in mind, let us now return to our text in Deut 20. Since the Torah has previously prohibited the sealing of covenants with the peoples of the land (Ex 23:32 and 34:12, Deut 7:2) due to the ‘snare’ posed by their public idolatry, it finds it necessary at this point (where the discussion is not (yet) focused on ‘cities that are of these peoples’) to explicitly permit such covenants with distant cities. The phrase “and opens to you” (20:11) conveys the permissibility of an ‘open’ relationship between Israel and the city-state under discussion, a relationship not limited to trade and commerce but one that may go beyond that into the realm of a covenant (mutual non-aggression pact) and even an alliance. The public idolatry of this city does not constitute a snare to be concerned about because it is “very distant” (20:15) from the everyday lives of ordinary Israelites.
This in fact occurred during the reigns of David and Solomon who formed multiple alliances with foreign kings and city-states. Solomon’s alliance with Hiram, King of Phoenicia, served the interests of both parties (I Kings 5:26) while the Phoenicians surely continued their idolatrous practices and no doubt did so publicly. The same can be said of Solomon’s alliance with the Pharaoh of Egypt, an alliance sealed by his marriage to Pharaoh’s daughter (I Kings 9:16).
The phrase “the entire people present in it will be a tribute (tax) to you and will serve you” (20:11), conveys the idea that the Israelites are permitted (not commanded) to form any association with this distant city that serves its interests, including a military alliance. The text assumes (a form of implied blessing) that Israel will be the stronger party in such an alliance, one that will provide protection to the weaker party (the distant city under discussion) against potential or existing threats from third parties. It is therefore to be expected that as part of the arrangement that city would be paying tribute, raised from taxes imposed on its inhabitants, to Israel in return for the protection provided. The point is not to command or advise the Israelites but to permit them, in this case, to engage in activities that have hitherto been repeatedly prohibited. Despite the continued public idolatry of the distant city, the Israelites may form any voluntary associations, covenants and even military alliances deemed to be in their interest.
Should the city choose to “not make peace with you” but instead “wages war against you” (20:12), the Israelites can join the battle with confidence and high morale for “the Lord your God will deliver it (the enemy) into your hand and you will (not ‘shall’) smite all its (adult) males by the blade of the sword” (20:13).19 This promise of total victory is expressed in a manner that reflects the norm of warfare in ancient times; enemy combatants were expected to be adult males, not women or youngsters (although exceptions to this norm did occur).20 Smiting ‘all its males’ is therefore akin to smiting ‘all its combatants’. The text speaks of males, instead of explicitly referring to enemy combatants, because it wishes to set up a contrast with women and youngsters who carry a presumption of the status of non-combatants and are to be so treated (see below). Nothing in this verse ought to be construed as giving license to attack non-combatant males; that would conflict with the sense of the immediately preceding verses.
The text continues: “But the women and the youngsters and the animals and everything (else) to be found in the city, all its spoil, you may plunder for yourselves; you will (not ‘shall’) consume the booty of your enemies that the Lord your God gave you” (20:14). This section of Deut 20 then concludes with the following summative statement: “So shall you do to all the cities that are very distant from you, that are not of the cities of these peoples (the enumerated seven tribes)” (20:15). In ancient times, an undefended city of women and youngsters constituted a tragedy in waiting. Sooner or later such a city was bound to fall prey to some marauding band of nomadic outlaws or to a neighboring city-state that did not respect – unlike the Israelites – the rights of non-combatants, and there was no telling the abuse and suffering to which those women and youngsters would be subjected. This was the reality on the ground in the second millennium BCE in the Middle East during the age of city-states. No police force or National Guard was ready and waiting to come to their assistance; no call to ‘911’ would bring relief. The responsible thing to do was for responsible people, those who would respect the lives and human rights of these women and youngsters – like the Israelites – to take them into protective custody. At least then they would dwell in a society that – unlike the city they hailed from – does not start wars, it only reacts to them.
With the Israelites now responsible for protecting and providing for the women and youngsters of the defeated city that waged war against them, it should come as no surprise that they would deem themselves entitled to ‘consume’ the spoils (livestock, household goods, food supplies) of their vanquished enemy. This is in addition to the consideration of the cost in lives and resources incurred as a result of the war that was foisted upon the Israelites by the intransigence of their enemy. Just how all these rewards and responsibilities were to be apportioned among the victorious Israelites is not discussed here; some discussion of this subject appears in Num 31:25-54. Let us hasten to note, however, in this regard, that contrary to the erroneous views of some, the Torah prohibits the institution of slavery, both of fellow Israelites and non-Israelites, and did so millennia before it became fashionable to do so. So in no way can these women and youngsters be seen as constituting an influx of bodies for the Israelites to enslave, although it would be reasonable to assume that they would be expected to ‘earn their keep’. But this is not the place to delve into this subject.21
G. Deuteronomy 20, Part II
Up to this point the text in Deut 20 focused on three elements of warfare: The requisite call for peace (20:10), the procedures to follow with entities that respond positively to this call (20:11), and the applicable rules in the case of cities that choose to wage war (20:12-14). The text concludes this section with the summative declaration, “So shall you do to all the cities that are very distant from you, that are not of the cities of these peoples” (the enumerated seven tribes). It then embarks on the next section with the introductory words, “But from the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance …,” indicating that for those cities (within the Promised Land) the preceding section does not apply. This immediately leads to the question, not addressed explicitly in the text, as to which of the three elements discussed previously do not apply in the upcoming presentation. Do all three elements not apply? Or, does only one or two of them not apply and if so which elements do not apply?
We presented much evidence earlier (sec II F) that the requisite call for peace applies to all potential enemies, both within and outside the Promised Land, and that this was so understood by the Israelites. This would tend to exclude the first of the three elements from consideration as a distinguishing feature between near and far cities. That leaves elements two and three in play.
The answer to the above questions becomes entangled in how we translate two key words in the upcoming verses. We already encountered one of these, the root-word herem (sec II E). It is translated either as ‘destroy’ or ‘proscribe’ and we have seen earlier (sec II E) that in Deut 7 it makes far more sense to translate herem as ‘proscribe’. It should be noted that the context there pertained to the very same subject discussed here, that is, the interaction of the Israelites with the peoples they will encounter within the Promised Land.
The other word to contend with here is the Hebrew tihayeh. It can mean ‘let live’ or ‘permit to remain alive’, but it can also mean ‘give life to’, as in ‘nourish’ or ‘enhance’ or ‘revive’. The latter definition is more precise grammatically and is so used extensively in reference to the resurrection of the dead at the end of days (tihiyat ha-maitim) with its promise of the return of life to the deceased.
One possible translation of the upcoming verses, based on herem as ‘destroy’ and tihayeh as ‘let live’, proceeds as follows: “But from the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall not let a soul live. Rather, you shall destroy them – the Hittite, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite and Jebusite – as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that they do not teach (or ‘acclimate’) you to act according to all the abominations that they performed for their gods and you will sin to the Lord your God” (20:16-18). This of course negates all three elements applicable to the distant cities – no call for peace and thus no acceptance of a positive response to such a call. The Israelites are to attack, kill and destroy all those they encounter within the land, permitting not a soul to remain alive.22
But, as stated above, the tower of evidence presented earlier (sec II F) emphatically demonstrated the contrary. The call for peace mandate was deemed by generations of Israelites to be applicable also to the ‘cities of these peoples’ and this formed the basis of actions taken be Joshua, Moses’ lifelong disciple and successor, and Solomon and even Moses himself, the speaker of the very words we are examining. So this translation must be rejected on historical grounds, in addition to the textual basis (discussed below) for doing so.
Perhaps only the third element is to be negated for the peoples within and near the Promised Land, but the first and second elements remain in effect? That is, the requisite call for peace remains in effect, as does the prescribed treatment of cities that respond positively to this call, but when a city embarks on the path of war all its inhabitants are to be killed if the city is situated within the land (as opposed to killing only combatants, the applicable rule for distant cities). Could this be the message of the text? 23
The answer must be ‘no’. This interpretation must be rejected as logically untenable. If we accept the proposition that the call for peace is in fact applicable to the ‘cities of these peoples’ (the seven enumerated tribes within and near the promised land), as we must, then we must accept its corollary that a positive response must be honored (element two) and that non-combatants are therefore not to be attacked (element three). For the text to then mandate the killing of all the local inhabitants, including non-combatants, is to blatantly contradict itself within the span of a mere few verses.
We ought to also take into account the fact that the text here too provides a reason for its rules and, as discussed earlier (sec II B), such reasons are intended to set the parameters for the rules they support. Whatever translation we adopt here, the stated rules must be bound by the stated reason, “so that they do not teach (or ‘acclimate’) you to act according to all the abominations that they performed for their gods …” (20:18). All this is augmented by the phrase, “as the Lord your God has commanded you” (20:17), which must refer to the covenantal laws of Ex 23 and its review in Ex 34. The above translation, however, leads to some insurmountable contradictions. One, there is nary a mention in the covenantal laws (either in the original or its review) of a command to kill everyone in sight. Two, the publicly idolatrous practices of the local population is presented in the covenant laws as the reason for not sealing a covenant with them (Ex 23:32-33, 34:12-16), not for killing all the inhabitants. Three, if the entire local population is to be destroyed due to their public idolatry, as the above translation of our text would have us believe, what is the point of mentioning a ban on sealing a covenant with the very same people you are commanded to destroy?
It makes far more sense, and it is far more consistent with all the other texts on this subject, to translate herem here as ‘proscribe’ (as in Deut 7) and tihayeh as ‘nourish’. The text is thus saying the following: “But from the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall not nourish a soul. Rather, you shall proscribe them – the Hittite, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite and Jebusite – as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that they do not teach (or ‘acclimate’) you to act according to all the abominations that they performed for their gods and you will sin to the Lord your God” (20:16-18).24
The requisite call for peace (element one) and the ban on attacking non-combatants when war is waged of necessity (element three) remain in effect for cities within the land, as for distant cities. It is element two, the rules of conduct for peaceful coexistence, which is being modified. Unlike distant cities, the public, and to a lesser extent also the private, idolatry of cities within and near the land, are of great concern, for they may ‘teach you to act according to all their abominations …’
‘You shall not nourish a soul’ parallels the ban on sealing a covenant with public idolaters within the land, ‘as the Lord your God has commanded you’ in Ex 23 (32-33) and Ex 34 (12-16), for the very same reason. This is a key point of departure between distant cities and those nearby. ‘You shall proscribe them’ parallels the ban on intermarriage and intimate friendships in Ex 34 (15-16) and Deut 7 (2-4), which applies to private idolaters as well. These bans ought to also apply to populations in distant cities, since the stated reason for them is equally valid to all cities, whatever their location. The reason the text does not explicitly focus on this is probably that the great distance rendered intimate friendships and intermarriages unlikely (at least in ancient times).
Seen in this light, there is perfect congruity among all five biblical texts pertaining to this subject, and there is consistency between these foundational texts and the actions of Moses, Joshua and Solomon. And the charge of biblically mandated genocide has not a leg to stand upon.
H. The Gibeonites
The fascinating story of the Hivite tribe in the large and mighty city of Gibeon (and three neighboring cities) is presented in Joshua 9. It occurs soon after Joshua led the Israelites across the Jordan River into the Promised Land, followed by resounding victories over the enemy cities of Jericho and Ai. Since the particulars of this story overlap our discussion pertaining to the distinction between distant and nearby cities, our analysis would not be complete in the absence of an examination of those particulars.
The Gibeonites sent ambassadors to Joshua and the Israelites, who were encamped at the time at Gilgal, with the following message: “We come from a distant land, now seal a covenant (non-aggression pact) with us (as representatives of our people)” (Josh 9:6). The Israelites were concerned that these individuals may be misrepresenting the situation. “Perhaps you (really) dwell in my (Israel’s) midst; how then can I seal a covenant with you?” (9:7). The Gibeonite ambassadors then perpetrate an elaborate deception by displaying dried and crumbling bread, cracked wineskins, and worn and patched sandals and clothes. This persuades the Israelites of the veracity of their claim that they came from far away. Joshua and the leaders seal the requested covenant with these Gibeonite representatives, and this is coupled with an oath (to abide by the covenant) taken in the name of the Lord, God of Israel (9:15,18,19).
It took no more than three days for the Israelites to discover that they had been duped. Outraged at the audacity of this deception, and acutely distressed that they had fallen for it, the Israelite rank and file want to attack the Gibeonites, but this is prevented by Joshua and the leaders (9:18,19,26). When the Israelites then turn their ire upon their own leaders, they are informed in no uncertain terms that the covenant – backed by an oath in the name of God – must be abided by. Joshua curses the Gibeonites but gives them jobs; ‘lowly’ jobs to be sure – hewers of wood and drawers of water – but sustaining jobs nonetheless. It is not clear what types of ‘loftier’ jobs he could have given them (to still the voices of modern day critics). Someone needs to draw the water and hew the wood.
The Gibeonites live and thrive in the land, amidst the Israelites, for centuries to come. Their presence in the land goes unnoticed in the Bible until the reign of King David, when a three year famine in the land is attributed, in the name of God, to wrongful treatment of the Gibeonites by David’s immediate predecessor, King Saul (II Sam 21). The shocking details of what follows raise many poignant questions that are beyond the scope of this essay to address. The key point for our purposes is the Israelites’ recognition, centuries later, that the covenant with the Gibeonites endures and must be honored, and that God calls them to account for violating it. Mind you, this is God who ostensibly commanded the Israelites – if we accept the position of the purveyors of the charge of biblical genocide – to destroy those Gibeonites (as one of the seven local peoples, the Hivites)!
Multiple questions arise, however, pertaining to how the story of the Gibeonites relates to the foundational laws in the biblical texts we have been examining. Clearly it mattered much to the Gibeonites that they be seen as a distant people, as opposed to a local people. But if what we concluded earlier is correct, why was this so? The requisite call for peace, we said, and its corollary, the acceptance of a positive response to this call, that is, the law to not attack non-combatants, is equally applicable to nearby cities as to distant cities. So what difference does it make whether they were near or far? And if, as we mentioned earlier (sec II B), Joshua made it clear in messages to all the city-states in the Promised Land that peaceful coexistence was an option, one that the Israelites will accept, then the Gibeonites must have known that this option was available to them too. So why did they engage in that elaborate scheme to deceive the Israelites regarding their location?
Analogous questions can be addressed to the Israelites. Why were they so angered by the Gibeonites’ deception when it really made no difference whether a distant or nearby city chose not to wage war against them, in either case they were commanded to accept such a response to their call for peace and not attack it? The Gibeonites’ ruse, it turns out, was utterly irrelevant. So why did they react with such anger as to contemplate attacking a people they were now prohibited from attacking? And it is not plausible to view this as an emotional tantrum in reaction to hurt pride at having been duped.
Perhaps the Gibeonites wanted more than just not to be attacked. Perhaps they sought the sense of security of a stronger relationship based on a covenant coupled with an oath. But could they not have achieved this honestly by renouncing the practice of public idolatry? That would have served them far more effectively than to jeopardize their budding relationship with the Israelites by deceiving and angering them. And if their goal was to surreptitiously win a license to continue their public idolatry, they must have known that this could not work. They did reside within the land; their city could not be moved. Sooner or later the Israelites were bound to notice and confront the public idolatry in their midst and, covenant or no covenant, were committed to act against it. The covenant was a mutual non-aggression pact, not a license to violate the law of the land.
The best explanation is that the Gibeonites were not expert in the nuances of Mosaic Law, nor did they trust Joshua’s messages and declarations of peaceful intentions. With mounting apprehension did they witness the Israelite forces pour across the Jordan River into their territory. They then witnessed Joshua’s resounding victories over Jericho and Ai (9:3). They knew that the Israelites intended to settle in the land (9:24) but could not know the scope of the Israelites’ intentions as to the extent of that settlement. They claim to have heard rumors that the Israelites meant to drive all the inhabitants out of the land (9:24). All of this consumed them with fear and trepidation (9:24). They reasoned that as a local population the Israelites would view them as an obstacle to their settlement of the land and would therefore not accept their offer of peaceful coexistence (irrespective of Joshua’s messages). But the Israelites should have no reason to reject their offer coming from a distant people that are far enough away to be beyond the Israelites’ ambitions. To the contrary, the Israelites should be interested in acquiring allies adjacent to their territory. The Gibeonites’ calculations were not based on the laws and principles that governed Israelite behavior, but on their realistic perception of the geopolitical situation they confronted with a sense of foreboding and mounting insecurity. Of course their deception was bound to be exposed and they well knew that. But acting out of fear, they hoped the covenant would serve as a restraining influence on the Israelites. If it did not, they have lost nothing.
What the Gibeonites could not foresee was that their deception would cause the Israelites to violate their sacred law prohibiting the sealing of covenants with public idolaters in the land. This law is not applicable to distant cities, as demonstrated earlier (sec II F), but is most definitely applicable to nearby cities. So it mattered much to the Israelites whether the ambassadors came from near or far. True, the covenant with the Gibeonites was rendered null and void by its fraudulent basis and by its illegality (contrary to Mosaic Law), as discussed earlier (sec II F), and things could still be made right by assuring that the Gibeonites henceforth refrain from public idolatry, but this does not alter the fact that the Israelites committed the deed – they did seal a covenant with a city within the land before that city abandoned its public idolatry, and they did so very soon after entering the Promised Land.
It was this fact, that the fraudulent covenant with the Gibeonites meant that they had violated their covenant with God, that so angered the Israelites, to the point that they contemplated attacking the Gibeonites. But Joshua and the leaders intervened to remind them of another salient provision of the law (their covenant with God) – the ban against attacking or harming non-combatants. The Gibeonites did in fact come in peace and continued to profess their peaceful intentions. It was for this reason, and only for this reason, that the covenant with them must be abided by.
An important conclusion emerges loudly and clearly from the story of the Gibeonites. The notion that tihayeh in Deut 20:16 is to be translated as ‘let live’ and herem in Deut 20:17 means ‘destroy’, thereby commanding the Israelites to destroy the entire local population within the Promised Land irrespective of the acceptance of peaceful coexistence, is rendered utterly untenable. Had that been the Israelites’ understanding of the text and the rules it promulgated, they would have known that they were in perpetual violation of its commandments, from the time of Joshua all the way to David, merely by allowing the Gibeonites to remain alive. No justification for this violation is provided by the covenant, since it was null and void. Nor is God’s reputation or the Israelites’ sanctification of His name at stake. Anyone who would hear or learn of the Israelites’ reneging on their solemn oath (by destroying the Gibeonites) would surely also learn of the fraud perpetrated by the Gibeonites in order to obtain said covenant. And it certainly makes no sense to postulate the willful violation by Joshua of Moses’ teachings. Nor does it make sense for the Israelites to perceive that God is punishing them for mistreating the Gibeonites, when it was God Himself – in whose name Moses spoke – who commanded the Gibeonites’ destruction. We should actually expect just the opposite. God should be punishing the Israelites – centuries later - for allowing the Gibeonites to live!
The risibility and bankruptcy of the charge of biblically mandated genocide of the Canaanites should be transparently obvious by now for all to see. It is time to move on to the next case.
III. The Amalekites
A. Overview
The Amalekite tribe dwelled south of the Promised Land but near to it, in the north-central region of the Sinai Peninsula (see Gen 14:7 and Num 13:29). This tribe never appears in the list of the seven peoples inhabiting the land upon which the Israelites were to settle. The Israelites therefore had no designs on the Amalekites’ territory, whether or not this was understood by the Amalekites, so the two peoples should have been able to live side-by-side in peace. Yet the Amalekites soon became an enduring and implacable foe of the Israelites, even before the Israelites came near their Promised Land.
It all began right after the exodus. Upon emerging from Egypt the Israelites made a right turn southward into the Sinai Peninsula, traveling initially along its western edge.25 They were headed to the peninsula’s largest oasis, known as Oasis Feiran, with its numerous wells, thousands of trees (even today) and vegetation covered arable land. Before they would get there, however, they were overcome by fatigue and dehydration at biblical Refidim (Ex 17:1-7).
Moses later reminds them of what occurred next and commands them to remember it. “Remember what Amalek did to you on the way, when you were leaving Egypt. He accosted (or ‘surprised’) you and struck those among you who were stragglers in the rear, when you were faint and weary, and he (Amalek) did not revere God” (Deut 25:17-18). While it may be argued that the Amalekites viewed the approaching horde of Israelites as a threat to ‘their’ oasis, one still recoils at the cruel and barbaric act of launching a surprise attack on faint (from lack of water) and weary (from traveling) refugees escaping enslavement and oppression.. Some of us today, having become jaded by horrendous world wars and repeated attacks by nation against nation, not to mention innumerable and mindless atrocities (many committed in the name of religion), may shrug our shoulders at this event and see it as just another example of the reality of the human condition. But the new Israelite nation, under the leadership of Moses – the man who just could not stand by and abide injustice (Ex 2:11-12, 13-14, 16-17) – perceived itself as constituting a new and improved version of nationhood, one based on reverence for God and His principles. The Amalekites’ behavior was utterly contemptible in their eyes.
B. Repeated Attacks
Moses’ admonition to the Israelites to ‘remember what Amalek did to you’ is brought up again centuries later by the prophet Samuel in urging King Saul to act upon it (I Sam 15:2). Some folks see this as perpetual grudge bearing and vengeance baiting for offenses committed eons ago. Would it not be much better for all concerned to forget and forgive, to let bygones be bygones, and move on with life? Is this not a recipe for endless warfare? But this view represents a profound misreading of history. The Amalekites returned again and again to attack the Israelites, hardly ever missing an opportunity to join with others in waging war against the Israelites. This is more than amply demonstrated in the HB, our only source for all these events.
About one year after the above described surprise attack, a small band of Israelites embarked on a path to the Promised Land without Moses’ approval. The Amalekites wasted no time in joining the Canaanites – who, unlike the Amalekites, at least were inhabitants of that land - in attacking that band of Israelites (Num 14:40-45). At a later point in time, shortly after the Israelites had settled in the land, the Amalekites joined the Moabites in attacking the Israelites (Jud 3:13). Later they joined the Midianites in waging war on Israel (Jud 6:3). This was an ongoing phenomenon during the reign of King Saul (I Sam 14:48), before Samuel’s reminder to Saul of Moses’ instructions.
Furthermore, even after Saul’s campaign against the Amalekites (in response to Samuel’s urging), which was undertaken to bring an end, once and for all, to the repeated attacks of this implacable foe (I Sam 15), and which ostensibly ‘solved’ the problem, we still encounter the Amalekites battling King David’s forces (I Sam 27:8). One such nasty attack occurs at Ziklog with severe repercussions (I Sam 30:1).
It should also be borne in mind that the HB is not, and was not intended to be, a comprehensive historical record of events. The Book of Judges, in particular, spans a period of many centuries, from just after Joshua to just before King Saul, yet is a rather sparse record of events, one that surely omits much information. We know, for example, of significant incursions by Egyptian forces into the Levant during this period, yet no mention of these occurrences appears in the biblical record (unlike later incursions). Whatever the reason for this skimpy treatment of history, and many theories for this have been proposed, we ought to accept the likelihood, based on the dynamics of the relationships between the peoples of the region, that other Amalekite attacks on the Israelites occurred that have gone unrecorded. The Israelites certainly perceived that the Amalekites were in a perpetual state of war against them, with brief interludes in activity solely for the purpose of regrouping to live to fight another day. One also gets the sense that the Israelites saw the Amalekites as instigators of attacks against them by others, attacks that would not have occurred absent the encouragement and support of the Amalekites.
So, while Moses and Samuel both convey God’s commandments pertaining to the Amalekites, as prophets are supposed to do, those commandments reflected the reality of conditions on the ground. The Israelites needed to confront the Amalekite threat, despite the fact that the Amalekites’ territory was not within the borders of the Promised Land. The exhortation of the prophets was focused on God’s commandments in order to endow the Israelites with the sense of resolve, confidence, courage and morale they would need upon embarking on the dangerous mission of ridding themselves of the Amalekite threat. This is the task of prophets; it is not their job to review and assess the already well known military situation.
C. What To Do
What precisely did Moses advise/command the Israelites to do about the Amalekite problem? “When the Lord your God grants you relief from all your enemies around you, in the land that the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance to possess it, you shall erase the memory of Amalek from under the heavens, do not forget” (Deut 25:19). A similar expression is encountered in the text right after Amalek’s first encounter with the Israelites, a tough and difficult battle that ended in less than a resounding victory for the Israelites (Ex 17:13). God promises there to “erase the memory of Amalek from under the heavens” (Ex 17:14). In the next verse Moses speaks of “God’s war with Amalek from generation to generation” (Ex 17:16). The message embedded in these texts, which were conveyed before the history of repeated attacks by the Amalekites was fully developed, is that the Amalekites will return to battle the Israelites again and again, from ‘generation to generation’, but God will wage war against them on behalf of the Israelites. And, unlike the first encounter, the future will bring total victory to the Israelites and an end to threat.
But what precisely does the phrase ‘erase the memory from under the heavens’ mean? The critics who are committed to the notion of biblical genocide prefer to interpret this as referring to the annihilation of the entire Amalekite population, men, women and children, and perhaps also their livestock, pets and other possessions. This understanding runs counter to a few salient facts. One, it never happened. Even Saul’s major campaign against the Amalekites, at Samuel’s urging, achieved nothing of the sort, since David battles the Amalekites after that event (discussed above). We even encounter Amalekites in battle against Israelites at the time of King Hezekiah, many centuries after David (I Chronicles 4:43), and Amalekite individuals in action, even one who owned slaves, in between these events (I Sam 30:13, for example). And it certainly cannot be said that none of Israel’s powerful kings, some of whom subdued the fearsome and mighty Philistines - who wreaked havoc along the entire eastern Mediterranean coast and battled Egypt on land and at sea – were incapable of accomplishing this God-given mandate (if that is what it was) against a much smaller and weaker enemy.
Second, this interpretation runs counter to our established understanding of the text in Deuteronomy 20, and the dominant rabbinic view as codified in Jewish law, which states that the requisite call for peace applies to all peoples, both near and far, specifically inclusive of Amalek (see sec II F).26 And this means, as discussed earlier, that a positive response to this call must be accepted and abided by, and that said non-combatants may therefore not be attacked. How can this possibly be reconciled with total annihilation? And what is the point of waging war against an enemy’s livestock and possessions, as some insist is the case based on these texts and that of I Sam 15 (discussed below)? Would not the victory feel much sweeter if you get to keep your vanquished enemy’s spoils?
The phrase ‘erase the memory’ actually means nothing of the sort. Instead, it means precisely what it says. Amalek as an entity is to be forgotten. Their existence as a known or familiar state or tribe, one with the customary self-governance and power to exercise control over a particular territory, and the ability to wage war, is to be eliminated. Their army is to be either peacefully disbanded, if they choose not to wage war, or forcibly destroyed in battle, if they choose to wage war. Their government and leadership are to be abolished, their population scattered and their territory absorbed. Over time the Amalekites will experience what happened to many other peoples in the region, from the Moabites to the Edomites to the Philistines and many others – they will be assimilated into other cultures and groups to the extent that hardly anyone will recall the former existence of an entity called Amalek. A key point is that this process, once initiated, evolves and progresses over time as the threat gradually disappears. This process was indeed begun by Saul but not completed by him, nor was it completed during the reigns of his immediate successors. In the course of time, however, the process was in fact completed. There exists no member state of the United Nations known today by the name of Amalek (or Moab, Edom or Philistia, for that matter), nor is anyone’s passport or birth certificate stamped “Amalekite’.
The above described ‘program’ entails no deliberate killing of non-combatants, the overarching prohibition of which covers the Amalekites. As a matter of fact, the program need not involve killing anyone, provided the Amalekites peacefully submit to it. These are the consequences of behaving as the Amalekites did with respect to the Israelites.
This program was unique to the Amalekites in two major ways. First, as a territory and people located outside the Promised Land, there ordinarily – in the absence of their record vis-à-vis the Israelites – would have been no aggressive measures of any kind taken against them or their public idolatry. Second, various components of the program, such as abolishing their self-governance coupled with the scattering of their people, were at all not applicable to other entities within or outside the land, even those that chose to wage war against the Israelites. There was no mandate, for example, to arrange for the erasure of the memory of the Amorites. The fact that the Amorites were eventually forgotten must be ascribed to the vicissitudes of history (specifically the actions of the invading empires from the east). Amalek, of all the peoples in the region, was indeed singled out in this important respect.
D. Samuel’s Disappointment
If the process of ‘erasing the memory’ of a tribal entity is supposed to be a rather lengthy, drawn out progression, one that may span generations, why is the prophet Samuel so distraught at Saul’s performance? Speaking in the name of God, Samuel tells Saul, upon the latter’s return from the campaign against the Amalekites, that he has acted “in defiance of the Lord’s will” (I Sam 15:19) and that consequently “the Lord has rejected you as king over Israel” (15:26). This sounds like a most serious failing on Saul’s part, one that strikes at the heart of his role as king. But Saul did in fact defeat the Amalekites, as evidenced by his capture of their king Agog (15:20).and as testified to by the text (15:8). If the results fell short of Samuel’s expectations, for some reason, there is always tomorrow to launch a follow up campaign. So what is the problem? It cannot be that the memory of Amalek had not yet been erased, for that of necessity must take an extended period of time.
The usual understanding of the Samuel-Saul interaction is based on the proposition that the word herem, which appears multiple times in the text of the story (I Sam 15), is to be translated throughout as ‘destroy’. Samuel therefore directed Saul to “attack Amalek and to destroy (herem) all that belongs to it, to have no pity on it, killing from men to women, from infants to sucklings, from oxen to sheep, from camels to donkeys” (15:3), and Saul neglected to do so. Well, in defending his performance Saul claims to have indeed destroyed Amalek (based again on herem as ‘destroy’) and even captured their king (15:20). The text itself confirms this (15:8) and Samuel does not contest this assertion. We know this to be, at best, a gross exaggeration (again, assuming herem here means ‘destroy’) since the Amalekites lived to fight against Israel after this event, as discussed earlier. Be this as it may, this is not the basis of Samuel’s criticism which is entirely focused on the Amalekites’ livestock. “What is this bleating of sheep in my ears and the lowing of oxen that I hear?” (15:14), thundered the prophet at the king. Saul then must admit that “the people (his troops) spared the choicest of the sheep and oxen for sacrificing to the Lord your God. The rest of the livestock we destroyed” (based again on herem as ‘destroy’, 15:15). So supposedly the great failure here is that some of the Amalekites’ livestock (the choicest among them) were not killed on the battlefield but were to be slaughtered as sacrifices elsewhere (at any of the altars in existence at the time).
Does this make sense? All the animals end up dead in any event, and Samuel’s original instructions to Saul to ‘destroy the Amalekites’ livestock’ (15:3) can readily be understood as permitting this. And if, for some mysterious reason, the location and method of slaughtering those animals is the focal point of this discourse, why does not Samuel simply direct Saul to finish the task and kill the remaining beasts (not as sacrifices)? An alternative explanation must be advanced to render this story comprehensible.
The difficulty is magnified by the fact that Samuel accepts Saul’s assertion that the remaining animals will be slaughtered as sacrifices. He does not express disbelief or question that statement. Instead, Samuel severely criticizes the notion that offering sacrifices to God can make up for violating His will. But if the point of God’s will, as expressed by Samuel to Saul before the campaign, was to ‘destroy’ the animals (based on herem as ‘destroy’ in 15:3), where is the big violation of God’s will? Whether killed on the battlefield and left to rot or slaughtered at an altar and eaten, those animals are no more!
The alternative interpretation is, however, staring us in the face, considering all we have seen regarding that multi-tasking ancient Hebrew word herem. With many of the appearances of herem in our story translated as ‘proscribed’, in the sense of ‘prohibited, off limits, banned’, a far more sensible picture emerges. Most importantly, Samuel’s directive to Saul before the campaign was launched (15:3) speaks of proscribing (not destroying)27 and killing; the ‘proscribing’ is applicable to “all that belongs to it (Amalek), from infants to sucklings, from oxen to sheep, from camels to donkeys” and the ‘killing’ is applicable to Amalek itself, “from men to women”, referring to those engaged in combat. (It probably was expected that the extreme enmity of the Amalekites toward the Israelites would animate them to draft their women into this ultimate showdown.) The crucial point is that the Israelites are in no way to benefit from the plunder of the Amalekites’ possessions and that as a result there must be no plundering. This includes offering their livestock as sacrifices to God, since such sacrifices (peace or thanksgiving offerings) are typically consumed by those offering them.28 In addition, the offering/sacrifice is considered to be a benefit to those who bring them even if they do not actually consume their flesh.
Why is a ban on benefiting from plunder of such monumental importance? To put this in perspective, consider that this is not the first or last time that a strict ban on the taking of plunder, and on benefitting from the possessions of a defeated enemy, has been imposed on the Israelites. That these bans were taken very seriously is evident from the fact that the consequences for the Israelites were dire indeed when any of them violated such a ban, such as at the battle of Jericho (Josh 7). In praying for victory at the battle of Arad, before arriving at the Promised Land, the Israelites deem it appropriate to vow not to plunder their soon to be vanquished enemy (Num 21:2). God accepts the ‘offer’ and the victorious Israelites abide by their vow (Num 21:3). The Book of Esther prominently contrasts the Israelites’ attitude toward plunder with that of their Persian enemies. King Ahasuerus’ decree, instigated by his minister Haman and dispatched by couriers to all the provinces of the Persian empire, called for “the killing and destroying of all the Jews, young and old, children and women, in one day … and to plunder their possessions” (Est 3:13). The promise of plunder was designed to motivate the mob to seize the moment, to enrich themselves by acting upon the king’s orders. By contrast, when the wheel of fortune reversed the respective roles and it was the turn of the Jews to “strike at their enemies with the sword” (Est 9:5), we are informed that “they did not lay their hands upon the spoils” (Est 9:10,15,16).
At stake are Israel’s reputation and the credibility of its claim to be acting on the basis of the justness of its cause and the lofty moral principles decreed by the one God/Creator of the universe. The unseemly “swooping down upon the spoils” (15:9), to quote Samuel’s thunder at Saul, serves to negate all protestations of rectitude and righteousness in the eyes of a watching world. All that people see and believe, under such circumstances, is war for the sake of plunder and greedy self-enrichment at the expense of others. In seeing things this way the world was, of course, reflecting their own experiences. War was always associated with plunder and plunder was frequently the ultimate cause of war. But the Israelites saw themselves as a ‘light onto the nations’ whose impeccable conduct would serve as a model of righteousness for all to emulate. It was always of utmost importance to the Israelites that they not only act properly and justly, but that they are perceived by all to be doing so. This is known as ‘sanctifying the name of God’ (Lev 22:32). There can be no stronger statement and more impressive visual display of this paradigm than for the Israelites to defeat an enemy and follow that by doing something unheard of – refrain from taking any of the spoils. Imagine what a deep impression such an unheard of development would make on all who heard of it, and the lessons and conclusions they were bound to draw from this.
Interestingly, not all of the Israelites’ battles were associated with this herem (proscription). The battle of Ai, for example, which followed on the heels of the battle of Jericho (where the ban was in effect), did not come with this proscription (Josh 8:2). The likely basis for this is that once the point had prominently been made at the monumental battle of Jericho, that it was not plundered – to the astonishment of all neighboring peoples – despite Israel’s great victory, there was no imperative to repeat the lesson.
In the case of the Amalekites, where the Israelites acted not only to defeat them but to initiate the process of ‘erasing their memory from under the heavens’, it was deemed to be of crucial importance that this be perceived by all as the Israelites acting justly and properly in their own self defense. There was therefore to be absolutely no plundering of the Amalekites’ possessions and no benefitting from them. Those possessions were placed under a herem (proscription) by the authority of the leading prophet Samuel, and this certainly included the taking of animals for any purpose. Saul must have known and appreciated this; Samuel made it abundantly clear to him (15:3). Once the Israelites ‘swooped down upon’ (15:9) the Amalekites’ livestock and hauled them off, the damage had been done. It would not be undone by then sacrificing some or all of those animals at an altar to God (followed by eating them). It was Saul’s inadequacy as a leader that rendered him ineffective in enforcing the ban on his troops and his people. This is why Samuel tells Saul “the kingship will be torn from you and given to one worthier than you” (15:28), that is, one who has what it takes to effectively lead and impose/enforce the law upon the people.
IV. The Midianites
A. Overview
Unlike the case of the Amalekites, Moses does not postpone the day of reckoning with the Midianites to some later date. At the command of God to “assail the Midianites and defeat them” (Num 25:17, 31:2), Moses dispatches an army of twelve thousand Israelites (31:4-6), together with their commanders (31:14) and Phinehas the priest (son of the High Priest Elazar), to do just that. The Israelite army is victorious. They kill all the (adult) males, including the five Midianite kings and Balaam the Seer (whom the Midianites, in collusion with the Moabites, recruited to curse the Israelites, Num 22:7). The Israelite army then returns to Moses with the Midianite women and their young (male and female) and all the animals (cattle, donkeys, sheep and goats) and other possessions taken as spoils of war (31:7-9). Moses, the High Priest Elazar and the leaders of the congregation greet the returning troops outside the Israelite camp and inspect the vast plunder they brought back (31:13).
But Moses is not at all pleased with what he sees. He angrily criticizes the commanders, but not Phinehas, for having allowed the women to live, the women who “by the word of Balaam caused the Israelites to betray God in the matter of Peor, and there was the plague in the congregation of God” (31:14-16). Moses then orders them to “kill all males among the young and all women who know man for lying with a male you shall kill, and all the young among the women who have not known lying with a male you shall keep alive for yourselves” (31:17-18). The text does not explicitly state whether or not this order was carried out, but it is clear from the later accounting of the distribution of the human captives that it was (31:35). Only women who “have not known lying with a male” appear in the list.
A frequently asked question is how would the Israelites know whether any particular Midianite woman had been with a male? As is often the case with biblically-related questions, a careful reading of the text provides the answer (assuming the question is pertinent and the text wishes to provide the answer). The convoluted phrase ‘women who know man for lying with a male’ (quoted above from Moses speech, 31:17), rather than stating this far more coherently and simply as ‘women who have known lying with a male’, is very instructive. This is especially so considering the simplicity of the contrasting expression in the next verse pertaining to the young among the women “who have not known lying with a male.” Moses is not distinguishing between women who have and have not been carnally with a male. Had that been his point, he is inexplicably silent about the adult women (not in the category of the Hebrew taf which we have been translating as ‘young’) who have not been with a male and the young among the women who have been with a male (if such existed). Instead, Moses is distinguishing between adults, all of whom presumably ‘know (present tense) man for lying with a male’, that is, they are old enough to be mindful of the fact that human males and females complement each other sexually, whether or not they have actually engaged in this activity, and those too young to be mindful of (mentally engaged with) such matters and therefore presumably ‘have not known (past tense) lying with a male’.
In other words, adult women are presumed to have been with a male and are to be killed, while minors are presumed to have not been with a male and are to be spared. All the Israelites need to do is ascertain the age of a woman; there is no need to introduce miracles not stated in the text.29 Whether there existed a well defined cut off point for this process and, if so, what that number was, is not stated in the text. This would get us involved with the thorny issue of what precisely the Hebrew taf implies in terms of age. As this is not germane to the objectives of this essay, there is no need to get sidetracked by that discussion.30
Needless to say, all this has provided much fodder to the Bible critics. Not only do we encounter here the slaying of captive non-combatants, we find the Israelites keeping the female virgins, and only the virgins, for themselves. This does not appear to be morally defensible conduct, to put it mildly. How could Moses, in the name of God, countenance such activity, especially in light of all that has been said earlier – the requisite call for peace and its corollary, the prohibition of attacking non-combatants?
The critics, however, are being a bit hasty here. The mere uniqueness of the virgin issue, which appears in the context of the Midianite enemy and nowhere else, should give us cause to pause. What is so different in this case, of all others, to render the issue of virginity relevant and important? It turns out the solution to this conundrum is embedded in the text. All we need do is read carefully and attentively.
B. The Record
Let us first pose a few more salient questions. Clearly the Midianites’ possessions, unlike those of Amalek, Arad and Jericho (discussed earlier), were not proscribed. All the spoils were brought to Moses for appropriate distribution – sizeable quantities of humans, animals, utensils and garments (31:20-54) – and were distributed as he directed. This can be compared to the case of Ai whose possessions were also not proscribed, probably because it followed closely on the heels of the Jericho event whose possessions were proscribed (see sec III D). The Midian event likewise followed a proscribed victory, that of Arad (Num 21:2-3), since both occurred in the fortieth year after the exodus. But, if so, why deny the Israelites the useful services of all those adult women and young men? And why do this on the basis of their sexual experiences?
Questions also arise pertaining to Moses’ angry denunciation of the Israelites’ commanders (31:14). Did Moses provide them with clear instructions when he dispatched them? If he did, how come they violated his instructions, and did so in the presence of Phinehas the priest (whom Moses does not criticize).31 If he did not, why is he so angry at them? All he needed to do is provide those clear instructions now, upon their return, and it will be done (as indeed was the case)! If Moses expected it to be obvious and self-understood that the adult females and young males are to be slain, and he is angry at them for not seeing things his way, what was the basis for this misunderstanding between them?
The above issues have, of course, been noticed by many commentators on the text, some of whom struggle mightily to resolve them to various degrees of satisfaction.32 Let us begin our analysis by addressing an even more fundamental question: Why “assail the Midianites and defeat them” (25:17) in the first place? Why “avenge the Israelites against the Midianites” (31:2)? Vengeance for what wrongs perpetrated against the Israelites?
Well, the text provides the answer to these questions in one rather succinct verse, one loaded with much information. Let us examine it with due care. “Because they are harassing you with their conspiracies (present tense), that they conspired against you (past tense), because of the matter at Peor, and because of the matter of Kasbi, daughter of the chief of Midian their sister, who was slain in the day of (the era of) the plague (which took place) because of the matter at Peor” (25:18). Multiple points appear here, some of which necessitate the recollection of other texts. First and foremost, the Midianites’ ongoing harassment of the Israelites must be stopped. The opening of this verse is clearly in the present tense (tsoh-ri-rim vs. tsa-ra-ru), despite some published but inaccurate translations of this complex formulation. Then the text shifts to the past tense to indicate that the harassment has occurred and is ongoing. The requisite call for peace is thus not applicable here since the war has already begun, initiated by the Midianites (Deut 20:12, sec II F). Now is the time to respond effectively and not to engage in superfluous exercises in futility. Calls for peace under these circumstances will only be seen as a sign of weakness or timidity, thereby encouraging further harassment and conspiracies.
The phrase “because of the matter at Peor” is not intended as an elaboration on the past conspiracies mentioned just prior to it, but is to be connected to “assail the Midianites” of the previous verse. It serves to provide an additional reason for that command. Had the former been intended, the text would have said ‘that they conspired against you in the matter at Peor’, not ‘because of the matter at Peor’ (bi-di-var Peor instead of ahl divar Peor). The same is applicable to the following phrase ‘because of the matter of Kasbi’. In other words, the continued harassment and the matter at Peor and the matter of Kasbi are all independent elements in the pattern of Midianite behavior that provides the basis for the command to assail the Midianites. Then the text reminds us of the severity of the ‘matter at Peor’ by associating it with ‘the day of the plague’.
How is the ‘matter of Kasbi’, the Midianite woman who was actually slain by an Israelite (none other than Phinehas the priest who accompanied the Israelite army in the battle, 25:7-8), a reason to assail the Midianites? The text provides the answer. Kasbi was a Midianite royal princess, the daughter of one of their kings (named Zur, 25:15 and 31:8), and she was ‘their sister’, that is, of Midianite stock and ethnicity. Surely then the Midianites are engaged in another round of conspiracies to avenge her death at the hands of the Israelites. They will not allow the killing of ‘their sister’ and royal princess to go unanswered.33 We thus have past harassment, ongoing harassment, and sure to come future harassment. The continued harassment must be stopped and the expected future attacks must be pre-emptively eliminated.
What was ‘the matter at Peor’ and its associated plague and how to these relate to the Midianites? Peor is the place where Moabite and Midianite women engaged in harlotry with Israelite men (25:1-6), the end result of a scheme hatched by Balaam in Midian (31:8,16) in order to spread idolatry (25:2-3) and death (25:9) in the Israelite camp. Twenty-four thousand Israelites died by the time the plague was done taking its toll.
The association of harlotry and death can mean only one thing. The Moabites and Midianites knew that their whoring women were infected with what today is referred to as Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD’s) and deliberately sought to spread disease and death in the Israelite camp by enticing Israelite men into engaging in sexual activity with these women. While STD’s are not always fatal these days even if not treated, this was not so in ancient times. Bacteria and viruses evolve over time to greater or lesser virulence and severity. As recently as 1495 CE, when Syphilis (one of a variety of STD’s) was first recorded in Europe, the disease quickly spread to kill more than five million people. The disease typically covered its victims with pustules from head to toe and caused flesh to fall from their faces, until death followed within a few months.34
Unlike the plagues at the golden calf event (Ex 32:35), the Korah rebellion (Num 17:11) and the craving for meat episode (Num 11:33), all of which are explicitly attributed to God in the Bible, the plague at Peor is not so described. God is angered (anthropomorphically speaking) at the sinful behavior of the Israelites ensnared by the harlotry and idolatry (25:3), but this anger is not textually connected to the plague. Most likely, Moses and the Israelites realized, too late to prevent the onset of damage, that the plague pre-existed the harlotry at Peor.
To Moses and the Israelites the actions of these women, no doubt directed and orchestrated by the male power establishment of Midian and Moab,35 and ultimately the brain child of Balaam, constituted warfare by other means. A person infected with a known sexually contagious and fatal disease who deliberately, or even just knowingly, engages in sexual activity with a non-infected and unsuspecting individual, is legally committing premeditated murder or, at least, negligent homicide. This issue rose to prominent public attention in recent years when the AIDS virus appeared and the disease was nearly always fatal.
This war by unconventional means, which resulted in the deaths of many thousands of Israelites just as effectively as launched arrows and piercing swords, was another of the conspiracies and harassments initiated by the Midianites against the Israelites. In this campaign the women may have been mere pawns of their male dominated ruling classes, but as adults they were responsible for their actions. The Moabites could at least offer a scintilla of an explanation for their behavior. Their territory was adjacent to the Israelite camp in the Plains of Moab (22:1) and, having witnessed the Israelites’ military prowess in the battles against kings Sihon and Og of the Amorites (21:21-35), they had reason to be fearful of an attack by the Israelites (22:2-3). They therefore deemed it necessary to resort to surreptitious and unconventional means of warfare, such as hiring Balaam the Seer to curse the Israelites (with Midianite assistance, 22:4-7) and sending their infected women on missions of harlotry with the Israelites. There was reason to hope that in the course of time the Moabites’ fears would be allayed and they would cease their aggressive actions against the Israelites. But the Midianites’ home territory was in Northwest Arabia, some two hundred miles from the Plains of Moab,36 and the Israelites have been moving northward, clearly headed away from them. They were not threatened by the Israelites and they knew it. What was their excuse for their abominable behavior and implacable enmity toward the Israelites?
The above conveys a sense of what the Israelites were up against and why they perceived an urgent need to act against the Midianites and not the Moabites. God’s instructions to Moses reflected the reality of the geopolitical situation (as it did in the case of the Amalekites); the goal was not to go after the pawns (the women harlots), but to cut off the head of the snake that persisted in biting the Israelites. Complications arose however when the victorious Israelite troops return from Midian with a cohort of women and it is not known (barring obvious physical manifestations) who among them, and how many of them, are infected with a deadly STD. These woman were supposed to be resettled among the Israelites since, as stated above, the Midianites’ possessions were not proscribed. The Israelites would probably have dearly preferred to do so and benefit from whatever services these woman would provide. In addition, leaving the women with their youngsters behind in now defenseless Midian was not an option, for the reasons discussed earlier (sec II F). But there is a problem. With highly contagious and deadly STD’s known to have been rampant among the Midianites, any number of these women could become the source of disease and death that would spread throughout the Israelite camp. What is to be done?
C. After the War
The Israelite army and their commanders, including Phinehas the priest who accompanied them, all knew the rules of warfare, reviewed by Moses in Deuteronomy, chapter 20 (sec II F). First and foremost, non-combatants must not be attacked. In addition, the Midianites were in the category of a ‘very distant’ people regarding whom Moses explicitly commands sparing the women and youngsters (Deut 20:14). Since the Midianites’ possessions were not proscribed, and leaving a defenseless enclave of women and minors would constitute a most irresponsible policy, the Israelite forces took the only proper and lawful action available to them – they brought the women and youngsters back with them. Most likely the adult women and their youngsters were mounted on some of the thousands of donkeys captured during the engagement (31:34) and everyone trekked back together to the Israelite camp in the Plains of Moab.
This then put Moses in a bind. By the rules of engagement his troops performed flawlessly. They violated none of his instructions. But as the ‘loyal shepherd of the flock’ who took his responsibility to provide for and protect the health and welfare of the Israelites (his flock) most seriously, he could not countenance the integration of these adult Midianite women into the Israelite camp. The risk of a renewed plague in the camp from the STD-infected women, whatever their number under these circumstances, was just too great. Moses knew with certainty from the experience at Peor that the plague is transmitted via sexual activity, but he and the Israelites must also have considered the distinct possibility that other more benign forms of contact may also serve as conduits for the spread of the deadly disease. Fear (of the dreaded disease) combined with ignorance (of its modes of transmission) led to frustration (feeling trapped by the situation) and then to anger.
Moses vents his frustration and anger in front of his commanders (31:14) for foisting this dilemma upon him. He is not angry at them as much as he is angry at the situation he now confronts. His speech is focused entirely on the adult women and the plague associated with their harlotry (31:15-16). He can consider giving the female youngsters the benefit of the doubt, based on the lower odds of their having become infected (due to the presumed absence of sexual activity) coupled with the greater unlikelihood of their interacting sexually with Israelites before themselves succumbing to the disease they may be harboring. But he sees no alternative to eliminating the adult women despite this violation of his promulgated rules of warfare. This angers and frustrates him enormously.
This is analogous to the common practice these days of destroying an entire herd of cattle when Mad Cow Disease, or any such contagious infection, is detected among them. With human beings in similar situations, however, we would today quarantine and isolate them, treat them medically as best we can, wait as long as necessary for the hopelessly infected to die, then release any survivors with a clean bill of health. Moses does not see this as an option. There was no treatment for STD’s at his disposal, waiting for the infected women to die could take many months (if not longer), and the process of quarantining so many people and providing for them for an extended period would itself put the Israelites at risk. (With the number of underage females given at 32,000 (31:35), it is reasonable to postulate a roughly equal number of adult women.) The terror of an out of control, incurable and fatal plague, coupled with ignorance of precisely how the disease is and is not spread from person to person, led to singularly extreme measures.
In evaluating the actions of Moses in this complex and tortured situation, and that of the Israelites in obeying his orders, it is imperative, to be fair, not to project present conditions and the current state of our knowledge onto the distant past. The fact that Moses became visibly angry is itself a highly unusual development, one that occurs at only a handful of situations in forty years of very stressful and challenging leadership of a troublesome and rebellious flock (to put it mildly). That anger ought therefore to be viewed in perspective, as reflective of the acute moral dilemma he confronted here.
Rabbinic tradition informs us that whenever Moses became angry he committed errors in judgement. Well, this is one of those only three occasions.37 The rabbis don’t cite the treatment of the adult Midianite women as the error in this case, but it is likely that some folks may see it that way. Should Moses have sent (escorted) these women back home to Midian, with or without their young, despite the fact that some number of them were guilty of mass murder (in deliberately causing the infection of thousands of Israelites with fatal diseases) and, perhaps just as importantly, may continue infecting countless others? It may be argued that the answer is ‘yes’; at least that way the blood-guilt would not accrue to the hands of the Israelites.
Inexplicably, while Moses makes an exception for the female youngsters and spares them, probably for the reasons stated above, he does not do so for the male youngsters (based on the text as we have it). Granted that he knew that males, once infected, can transmit the plague as well as females, since the Israelite men who engaged in harlotry with the Moabite and Midianite women contributed to the rapid spread of the plague into the Israelite camp And Moses was concerned also about possible modes of transmission other than sexual activity, which would lead him to oppose the absorption of any Midianites, males and females, adults and minors, into the camp. But if he does distinguish between adult and minor females, the former to die and the latter to live, why not do likewise for the males? Stating this otherwise, if he was willing to take a chance with the young women and spare them, based on the considerations discussed above, why not do so as well with the young men and spare them too? It would seem – from the perspective of over three millennia later - that the one certain mode of transmission (sexual activity) was as unlikely to become the source of a renewed plague in the case of the minor males as in the case of the minor females.
There are ample grounds, however, to propose that a particular easily missed corruption of the text may have made its way into verse 31:17, and this would drastically alter its meaning. The text as we have it, from 31:15 to 31:18, contains two major incongruities that have drawn the attention of the commentators.38 First, Moses’ introductory remarks to his commanders (31:15-16), which were clearly intended to form the basis for his following orders (31:17-18), provide his reasoning for why sparing the (adult) women is untenable. Not a word does he say about the men. It is on the basis of this reasoning that he then proceeds to distinguish between the adult and minor women. His order to kill the male youngsters then comes out of nowhere and remains entirely unsupported by reasoning. With the spoils of the Midianites not proscribed, on what basis are the male youngsters, unlike their female counterparts and all other Midianite possessions (except for the adult women for whom Moses does provide the basis), to be kept from the Israelites? If Moses finds it necessary to explain the basis of his orders pertaining to the women, why does he not see fit to do likewise regarding the men?
Second, the current Hebrew text of verse 31:17 states, in essence, “now kill all the males among the young and all the adult women you shall kill.” This is followed in verse 31:18 by, “and all the young among the women who have not known lying with a male you shall keep alive for yourselves.” Should not verse 31:17 have said instead, ‘now kill all the males among the young and all the adult women’, then complete the set of orders in 31:18 with instructions for sparing the young women? Does not the second half of 31:17, ‘and all the adult women you shall kill’, imply a contrast with the first half that pertains to all the young males? But there is no contrast; the young males are also to be killed.
Also to be considered is that the Hebrew word for ‘kill’ in speaking to a group (as opposed to an individual) is hirgoo or harohgoo and these words are so used in 31:17. The Hebrew word for ‘keep alive’ in speaking to a group (Moses to his commanders) is hahayoo and this word is so used in 31:18. All three of these words consist of four letters with identical first and last letters (the Hebrew Heh and Vav, respectively). The structural differences between their second and third letters (Resh vs. Het and Gimmel vs. Yud, respectively) are rather minor. This is the case in both the ancient paleo-Hebrew and the later square-Aramaic scripts. Adding a vertical line to the left side of Resh in the currently used script, for example, transforms the letter into Het, and erasing or omitting the lower portion of a Gimmel turns the letter into a Yud. While the text of the HB was certainly transmitted across the millennia with meticulous attention to detail, scribes and copyists are after all only human. It would not take much for hahayoo (keep alive) to inadvertently become hirgoo or harohgoo (kill) and, with some bad luck, have this error perpetuated by later scribes who copied it.
Replacing hirgoo with hahayoo in the first half of 31:17 resolves both of the incongruities discussed above in one bold stroke. The verse then reads as follows: ‘now keep alive all the males among the young and all the adult women you shall kill’. What a contrast where we expect to see one! And Moses’ introductory statement is now finely tailored to its purpose, to provide a basis for the necessity of not absorbing the only category he then commands to kill, the adult women. And this also resolves the paramount mystery of Moses’ distinction between the male and female youngsters, for no distinction now exists between them. Moses discusses them separately for the sake of clarity - to associate the explanatory words ‘who have not known lying with a male’ with the ‘young among the women’, in support of his distinguishing the female youngsters from their adult counterparts.
To summarize: The battle against the Midianites was waged in self defense, to bring a halt to ongoing Midianite harassment. The battle was conducted by the Israelites in accord with the Torah’s rules of warfare, including its cardinal feature of not attacking non-combatants. The aftermath of the war became entangled in the well founded fear of the spread of a deadly epidemic, an epidemic that had already taken a huge toll in Israelite lives (and surely also an untold number of Moabite and Midianite lives) and that was deliberately foisted upon them in an act of war by some of the same women they had taken into captivity. This resulted in the killing of the adult women, the youngsters among the women were spared, and the male youngsters may have been killed (based on the text as we have it) or they may have been spared (if our proposed emendation is correct).39 While it could be argued that a grievous misdeed was committed by a distraught and angry Moses caught in the vise of conflicting concerns and principles, and his orders were obeyed by an equally confounded Israelite army, it must be acknowledged that the Midianites were not innocent bystanders in this sordid affair and that the health and welfare of the wider public – Israelite and others – must be protected.40 Nor does any of this support the charge of genocide – the planned extermination of an ethnic or national entity – leveled at the Bible. For that charge to be applicable here the Israelites would have had to aim for the slaughter of the entire Midianite population – not sparing anyone – for the purpose of exterminating that tribal entity, unadulterated by considerations of self defense and public health.
Interestingly, the Midianites survive this disaster for an encore campaign of harassment against the Israelites at a later date, after the Israelites were settled in the Promised Land (Judges 6, under Gideon). We must therefore interpret the phrase “they killed all the (adult Midianite) males” that appears in our story in reference to the battle (31:7) as referring to ‘all those they encountered’ or to ‘all those who fought against them’. There must have remained a sizeable population of men and women of Midianite stock after their encounter with the Israelites, in order for Midian to be able to wield a fighting force of significant military capability about a century later. This constitutes another nail in the coffin of the charge of genocide. It is time to lay that coffin in the ground and give it the decent burial it deserves.
V. Conclusions
We have examined every passage in the HB that can remotely be construed as condoning or mandating genocide, whatever its conceivable motivation, and have come up empty handed.
Two important questions arise as a result of this finding. First, how then did it come to pass that so many intelligent and fair-minded people have accepted this erroneous view? Second, what lessons are to be drawn from this widespread misleading of the public?
The source of the difficulty, it seems, is the dichotomy of the Bible’s great popularity and the fact that hardly anyone can read it in the original with any degree of sophistication. Many wish to know what it says and means, some because they revere it and others in order to criticize it, but very few are in a position to form their own independent judgement. To read a translation is to obtain a second hand report, based on the translator’s understanding or misunderstanding of the text. Translations are inherently imprecise, particularly when the translators seek to produce a ‘readable’ version in the new language. Published translations frequently are the product of committees of editors and the compromises arrived at when disagreements arise among its members. Often the members of these committees are motivated by divergent agendas, some of them far from benign; they neglect to engage in the challenging, time consuming, yet necessary scholarly analysis to arrive at the likeliest intent of the original; and they deliberately deviate from the original to render their output accessible and easy to read, lest sales plummet.
As stated earlier (sec II E), the ancient Hebrew of the original HB is one of humankind’s earliest languages. As such, it consists of a rather limited stock of words, many of which have multiple and borrowed meanings. In addition, the text of the HB has a style and syntax of its own, one that is imbued with highly sophisticated and nuanced expressions. It must be analyzed carefully and meticulously in order to correctly discern its intent (or multiplicity of intentions). This is no task for amateurs; it calls for the dedicated efforts of experts and scholars. Contrary to the opinion of some, this process is not a free for all, where every opinion that feels good can somehow be read into the text. There are standards to this field of inquiry, as there are in any other serious and worthy endeavor.
So what is the motivated and conscientious individual to do? Other than undertaking the tall task of mastering ancient Hebrew and biblical style, the objective student of the Bible would be well advised to begin by comparing and contrasting different translations from diverse sources. This will help highlight areas of complexity and uncertainty, which could then be followed by further study and opinion gathering. Every topic in the HB must ultimately be viewed within the context of the whole; something is seriously amiss if unresolved inconsistencies and troublesome anomalies remain.
Hopefully this essay contributed to a clarification of the Bible’s stand on the rules of war and related issues. True to form, it took a thorough linguistic examination of multiple texts to arrive at a complete, coherent and consistent picture of those rules. Now, if only all nations and peoples abided by these rules, our world would be a much better place indeed.
VI. Notes
01. ‘An Eye for an Eye’ is another idea commonly, but just as erroneously, attributed to the HB. See J. Landa, An Eye for an Eye, forthcoming (available upon request by writing to judahlanda@comcast.net).
02. Prominent examples are the story of Eliezer’s encounter with Rebecca (Gen 24:1-27) and its retelling by Eliezer (Gen 24:34-48) and the story of Pharaoh’s dreams (Gen 41:1-7) and its retelling by Pharaoh (Gen 41:17-24).
03. One rather obvious reason would be to convey the message that decisions to be made, and actions to be taken, based on the text must await the study of the entire book.
04. This is particularly the case for the mid-sixteenth century BCE in the Levant (toward the end of the Middle Bronze Age) when the Israelites’ entry into the Promised Land took place (after the exodus from Egypt followed by forty years in the wilderness). See J. Landa, The Exodus: Convergence of Science, History and Jewish Tradition, Hakirah, vol. 14 (2012), p. 187-236.
05. The Amorites, for example, are known to have migrated in various directions at various times, with their point of origin either in Arabia or further east.
06. See Babylonian Talmud (BT), tractate Sanhedrin, 56a and Maimonides’ Mishna Torah, Laws of Kings, chapter 9.
07. In other words, the six tribes recorded here are to be associated with the following ‘do not worship their gods’ and not with ‘I annihilate them’. This must be so in order that all the other texts on this subject and the actions of Moses and Joshua (and others) do not conflict with the sense of this passage.
08. See BT, tractate Gittin, 45a.
09. Jerusalemite Talmud (JT), tractate Shivi-ith on 6:1; Midrash Rabbah Devarim (Deuteronomy), 5:14; Maimonides’ Mishna Torah, Laws of Kings, 6:5
10. See, for example, N. Scherman and M. Zlatowitz, eds., The Artscroll Series: The Stone Edition (Brooklyn, USA: Mesorah Publications, 1993), p. 923 and The Hebrew-English Tanakh (Philadelphia, USA: Jewish Publication Society (JPS), 1999), p. 365. Most of the translations in this essay are adopted from the best of these works, except as noted in the body of the essay (as is the case here).
11. See commentary of Rashi, ad loc. (Rashi is an acronym for Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki, 1040-1105. His commentary on the HB and the BT is widely popular and much discussed.)
12. For reshet as definite ‘inheritance’ or ‘possession’ see Gen 15:3,7, 28:4, Lev 25:46, Num 36:8, Deut 15:4, 30:5; as definite ‘drive out’ see Num 14:12, Josh 15:14, 23:9; as definite ‘impoverish’ see Gen 45:11, I Sam 2:7, Prov 20:13, 23:21.
13. As in Deut 2:34, 3:6 and Josh 11:11.
14. As in Lev 27:21, 28, 29, Num 18:14, 21:2 and Deut 7:26.
15. See Maimonides’ Mishna Torah, Laws of Kings, 5:2.
16. See references at note #09 above, Maimonides’ Mishna Torah, Laws of Kings, 6:1 and the commentary of Nahmanides (Ramban) on Deut 20:10. (Ramban is an acronym for Rabbi Moshe ben (son of) Nahman, 1194-1270.)
17. Some commentaries, such as Nahmanides, ad loc., disagree with this sequence of events despite the order in the text, but all agree that Moses called upon Sihon for peace, as this is stated explicitly in the text.
18. BT, tractate Gittin, 46a; Maimonides’ Mishna Torah, Laws of Oaths, 1:6-7, 5:14
19. The Hebrew in this verse and the next (see further along in essay) employs the inverted past tense, as it does in many places (such as Deut 8:10, 17:14, 22:8), which could denote either a narrative (in the sense of a prediction) or a command (‘shall’ instead of ‘will’). Ascertaining the intent of the text in such situations is not always easy. Here we adopt ‘you will smite’ due to its juxtaposition with ‘God will deliver’ (God cannot, of course, be commanded to deliver) and ‘you will consume the booty’ of the following verse (it makes no sense to command consumption of booty).
20. In recounting the Israelites’ battles with Sihon (Deut 2:33-35) and Og (Deut 3:6-7) of the Amorites, both of whom initiated these wars against the Israelites (Deut 2:26-32, 3:1), Moses indicates that their women and youngsters were also destroyed in the fighting. (Herem in this context is to be translated as ‘destroy’ since their animals and other booty were taken by the Israelites, thus indicating that these enemies were not ‘proscribed’.) This must imply that these Amorite kings drafted all their available manpower into their ‘wars onto death’ against the Israelites, including women and youngsters. In recent times we witnessed similar policies – women and/or youngsters actively engaged in warfare – in Japan during World War II and on both sides of the Iraq-Iran war (1980-88), among many others.
21. Enslaving a non-Israelite is just as prohibited as enslaving a fellow Israelite. The correct translation of the Hebrew ehved is ‘one who works’ or ‘one who serves’, not ‘slave’ or, as some translations render it, ‘bondsman’. Suffice it to cite here just three prominent features of the Torah’s laws pertaining to the ehved that clearly demonstrate this point. One, killing him is a capital offense punishable by death (Ex 21:20). Two, he may not be forcibly returned to service (Deut 23:16-17). Three, to abuse him is to lose him (Ex 21:26-27). The notion that the Hebrew Bible condones slavery is as ignorant and wrong as the charge that it mandates genocide.
22. This possibly approximates the position of Rashi, ad loc., with the exception of those who convert to Judaism.
23. This appears to be the position of Nahmanides, ad loc.
24. This is the position of Ibn Ezra (1089-1167). His reference to ‘killing if you can’ means ‘if you are permitted to’. It is common in the Torah to express a prohibition as something ‘you cannot do’ (as in Deut 12:17, 17:15 and others).
‘Proscribe’ instead of ‘destroy’ is also the translation of the JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh, p. 418. Contrary to their note c, however, there is no comparing herem here to that of Lev 27:29, where the context is altogether different.
25. We follow here the dominant view among scholars regarding the likeliest path of the Israelites after the exodus, and see no reason to doubt is veracity. See K. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, USA: Eerdman’s, 2003), p. 254-274 with map on p. 629.
26. See Maimonides’ Mishna Torah, Laws of Kings, 6:1, 4.
27. This is the translation of the JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh, p. 603. Contrary to their note a, however, there is no comparing herem here to that of Lev 27:28-29 (via Josh 6:18), as the contexts are altogether different. See also note #24.
28. See the first seven chapters of Leviticus for the rules governing the various categories of sacrifices.
29. See commentary of Rashi, ad loc., in which he describes the miraculous means by which the Israelites ascertained which of the Midianite women had been carnally with a male and those that had not.
30. My guess is that the status of the vast majority of the Midianite women vis-à-vis their being adults or minors was established visually, by observing their skin tone, height, etc. The few that did not lend themselves to this method were probably interrogated to ascertain their awareness of human sexuality.
31. Needless to add, the role of Phinehas the priest is not the same as that of Saul the king. Saul is deemed unfit to carry on in his role; not so Phinehas. The king is held responsible for seeing to it that the laws are implemented and enforced, while the duties of the priests are to teach the laws and inspire (as opposed to compel) adherence to them.
32. See, for example, the commentaries of Rashi, Nahmanides and Ibn Ezra, ad loc.
33. This point is made by Ibn Ezra, ad loc.
34. See the fine review of the progression of STD’s and other diseases over time (historically speaking) by J. Diamond, The Arrow of Disease, Discover, October 1992.
35. Otherwise why would one of their royal princesses (Kasbi) become ensnared in this dastardly scheme? See commentary of Nahmanides, ad loc.
36. This is based on the archaeologically accepted association of Qurrayyah pottery with the Midianites, and various textual and historical considerations.
37. See commentary of Rashi on 31:21 taken from Sifri (a Talmudic era source).
38. See, for example, commentary of Rashi, ad loc., taken from Sifri #157, and others.
39. In the accounting provided in verses 31:32-35 the male youngsters must - if they were spared - be presumed to be included in the category of captured “human lives of the women who have not known lying with a male” (31:35, numbering 32,000), lumped together with the female youngsters for brevity’s sake. This is supported in verses 31:40 and 31:46 where the identical category – as confirmed by the numbers - is described merely as “human lives” without the additional words “of the women who have not known lying with a male.”
40. Moses’ dedication to the well-being of non-Israelites was amply demonstrated at the daughters-of-Jethro event in Ex 2:16-19. There is a reason why that story appears in the HB.