02. Bloody, Brutal and Barbaric: Part One

Part 1

Ch.1: Slaughtering Children, Grabbing Virgins

W/O posit that we have four stacks of pictures in our minds when it comes to war:

Stack one: Modern-day war pictures 

Stack two: ANE war pictures 

Stack three: Biblical war pictures, group one—what Israel actually practiced in war 

Stack four: Biblical war pictures, group two—what Yahweh wanted Israel to do in war

We must take pains to separate Stack one images (which we all have plenty of) from the three stacks of ancient war pictures with which they have little in common. A distinction not observed by some prominent defenders of traditional answers to the questions of the Bible, genocide, and rape.

Part 2

Traditional Answers: Good for Big-Picture, Story-Line Questions

Ch.2: Where Traditional Answers Don’t Work

Traditional answers to our questions (first two positions on the chart given earlier) include:

(1) God as source of the holy war commands,

(2) the lofty and good purposes of biblical holy war,

(3) the noninnocent or evil status of the Canaanites, and

(4) an understanding of holy war as foreshadowing eschatological judgment.

(1) Eugene Merrill represents this part of the traditional answer: “The issue then cannot be whether or not genocide is intrinsically good or evil—its sanction by a holy God settles that question.” Again, “Thus, the moral and ethical dilemma of Yahweh war must remain without satisfying explanation. At the risk of cliché, all that can be said is that if God is all the Bible says he is, all that he does must be good—and that includes his authorization of genocide.”

(2) The good and lofty purposes of God justify any concrete actions God commands to reach those purposes. W/O write: “abstracted values/principles in Scripture often take on unstated pragmatic or culture-based components of rationale that reflect a less-than-ultimate ethic as those principles are applied in the more concrete . . . expression of the biblical text. Thus if the divine goal is for all to love God exclusively whatever historical measures taken by God at any period to pursue this purpose are justified.

Every rung on this ladder is morally justifiable because of the goal at the top rung. But this approach only works if every rung embodies the full and lofty goal of the top rung. But such is not the case in a historically developed pursuit of an ultimate goal as we find in scripture. Then every step along the way embodies possibilities within the cultures it develops that approximate in concrete, provisional and limited ways the goals toward which the whole story is headed. The ultimate goal then critiques and invalidates all those actions on various rungs once the top rung is reached even if God commanded them at those earlier times.

(3) The question is whether evil actions by any person or people group (the Canaanites) justify any and every sort of retaliatory action taken against them (genocide and rape). Traditionalists answer yes. The question of “innocence” in war (non-combatants, civilians, children) and theological innocence (sinlessness) are not equivalent or transferable categories though they are often confused or used interchangeably by traditional answers to biblical warfare questions where the theologically sinful are punished equally, indiscriminately, and justly for the evil of leaders and armies. Another case of square pegs being forced into round holes.  

(4) Gard claims that seeing “the destruction of the Canaanites as the final judgment foreshadowed is extraordinarily helpful in coming to grips with what is for many an ethical quandary.” Thus holy war has some analogical connections with the battles of final judgment pictured in scripture but do all aspects of historical instances of holy war preview God’s pristine and pure final judgment? W/O write “we appeal to eschatological judgment as the place where God will finally and perfectly provide a counterbalancing correction to the injustices of holy war justice and, for that matter, to any other elements of unjust justice within the incremental ethic of the biblical text. When it comes to the specifics of Old Testament holy war practices and their real (not just perceived) injustices, Christians need to embrace the theme of eschatological reversal within the ultimate justice story, namely, that God will someday right all wrongs. Our final better answer will emphasize the unfinished justice story.”

Ch.3: Where Traditional Answers Do Work

If traditional answers don’t work well as responses to our contemporary questions about genocide and rape in war, where do they work? The ethical questions original readers brought to the text reply W/O. And thus questions were about the justice of God within the canonical story of God’s sacred space: The Sacred Space Story [C = Canaanites] 

  

1. Is God just in removing Adam and Eve [C1] from the garden? 

2. Is God just in driving the Canaanites [C2] out of the Promised Land? 

3. Is God just in removing the northern-kingdom Israelites [C3] from the land? 

4. Is God just in taking the southern-kingdom Israelites [C4] from the land? 

5. Is God/Jesus just in expanding the land promise to the entire earth and bringing “outsiders” into the kingdom while placing “insiders” [C5] outside? 

6. Is God/Jesus just in taking the sins of idolaters [C6] on himself?  

7. Is God/Jesus just in creating a new heavens and earth (a final Eden) where unrepentant sinners/idolaters [C7] are not permitted to enter?

The biblical story about sacred space—the creation, fall, reclamation and restoration of a place for God to dwell with humans. Holy war is the way God goes about this. So the question the original readers of the Bible asks boils down to “In the creation of sacred space (an Eden-like place for dwelling with humans), is God just in driving out the “Canaanite” idolaters of any generation (even his own people) or not permitting them to enter that space?”

The pain of humanity, “Canaanites” all, alike in their pain of having been cast out of the land was the question of the justice of such divine expulsion. For it must be just if God is to be trusted. In other words, the biblical story is a theodicy, a justification of the ways of God. To the questions raised by this theodicy the traditional answers are well-suited.

THEIR STORY-LINE QUESTION IS NOT OUR MILITARY-QUESTION

“The original audience of the Hebrew Bible during the preexilic (driving out is coming), exilic (driving out is here), and postexile times (aftermath of being driven out) were reading/hearing the earlier Joshua war texts and even the original Eden account about  Adam and Eve through their own experience of being driven out of sacred space.”

Our questions today arise at a different level in the story. “Genocide and war rape, while at the top of our minds, reside in the ancient biblical text and for the original Israelite audience several floors below the level of the story line, with certain details of how warfare took place in an ancient world.” And in that world the ethical injustices we see they would not have.

GOD MOST HOLY: MOUNTAIN, HOUSE, AND SACRIFICES

“Unless we expand our thinking to include the difference between our fallen, sinful world and an untainted, pristine God and the extent to which he goes on our behalf, we will never comprehend the interface between God and our world.” In other words, W/O contend, the holiness of God is the chief reality we must take into account. And that in the following three ways: the mountain (Ex.19-24), the house/temple, and sacrifice rituals in the temle.

Mountain (Ex.19-24)

On the mountain Moses and the elders of the people shared a meal with Yahweh with a smooth lake-life surface under Yahweh’s feet (Ex.24)

House

At bottom of the mountain a house for God is built. Radiating out from the center of this house are lessening levels of holiness: (1) Yahweh’s cube-shaped room, where he would meet and speak with Moses, the holy of holies. Next came two further descending areas of descending holiness within the temple: (2) the holy place and (3) the sacred courts. Outside the temple lay (4) the camp of the temple; (5) outside the camp, a compound where certain diseased people had to live, and finally (6) the desert. Sacred space and sin separated as far as possible.

Within the holy of holies sat a rectangular box (Ark) – the “footstool of God” according to biblical writers. They conceived of God enthroned in heaven with his footstool on earth in holy of holies. “God is enthroned far off in the heavens so cosmically distant in his purity and being that it takes all of these layers or levels of graded holiness just for his toes to touch our earth.”

“The mountain and temple share the image of God’s feet. Moses and the leaders of Israel eat and drink a shalom meal before a peaceful, tranquil lake (a smooth, crystal-clear sea) that appears under God’s feet. This mountain image carries over into the temple with its in-house version of a crystal sea (the lavers) and a place for God’s feet (the ark of the covenant). Even so, the psalmist invites the worshiper to draw near to God’s feet: “Exalt the LORD our God and worship at his footstool [the ark]; he is holy” (Ps 99:5; see also 1 Chron 28:2; Ps 132:7).”

Sacrifices

“The rabbis tell us that God gave us five fingers so that we would never forget the five sacrifices. If you use your fingers to number them (kinesthetic learning), they are easier to remember: reparation, purification, burnt, grain, peace.”

Three prepositions -from/to/with- give is a clear sense of how approach to God occurs. “With reparation and purification sacrifices, the worshiper moves away from sin that displeases God and finds forgiveness. With burnt and grain sacrifices, the smell becomes a pleasing aroma, and the worshiper moves in dedication and consecration to/toward God. Finally, as a climax to the drawing-near ritual, the worshiper eats and drinks a shalom meal in the presence of God with the mountain backdrop of crystal-clear serenity (a peaceful, pure lake), celebrating being at peace with God.”

According to W/O we require “a cosmic-sized understanding of God’s holiness” to enable us to see the necessity for sacred space to facilitate the meeting of God and humanity.

FIRST [LITERARY] CANAANITES(L) DRIVEN OUT: ADAM AND EVE (Literary Canaanites are all those driven out from their land by God/Ethnic Canaanites are the inhabitants of the land of Canaan).

Gen.3:23-24 is the first “driving out” story in the Bible. That makes Adam and Eve the first literary Canaanites. The earliest readers/hearers of the Pentateuch could have easily connected Genesis 3:23-24 and holy war. For example, in Exodus 33:1-3 Yahweh assures his people that he will send an angel before them to drive out the Canaanites from the Promised Land. Gen3 and Ex.33 (79) have in common angels who drive out residents, importance of sacred space, and connections to larger story-line. “Already the Pentateuch itself has joined together three ideas: (1) Eden’s garden  and the Promised Land of Canaan, (2) Eden’s sanctuary/temple  and Moses’ tabernacle, and (3) sin as why Adam and Eve lost their garden, why the Canaanites lost/will lose their land, and why various Israelites lost their chance to enter the land.”

 At this basic foundational level biblical holy war does not have to kill everyone involved in order to create or protect sacred space.” It is creation of sacred space not ethnic kills, then, that is the object of holy war. Is God just in driving Adam and Eve, the first Canaanites, out of the garden? Yes.

SECOND CANAANITES(E) DRIVEN OUT: ETHNIC CANAANITES AND THEIR ALLIES

Scripture sometimes identifies “Canaanites’ with up to fourteenfteen different people groups in the land and sometimes with the Canaanites proper. “The people-group diversity under this umbrella or catchall usage of the term Canaanite further erodes any strict ethnic focus. It hints at the land (and creating sacred space) being the issue, not the ethnicity of the people on the land.”

“The broad story-line understanding of holy war is that Israel drives out the Canaanite people groups little by little as their own Israelite population enlarges. As with the initial drive-out conquest under Joshua to gain a foothold, the long-term objective was a gradual driving out of idolatrous people from the land (Ex 23:30-31). The biblical authors describe the conquest with a range of drive-out language regarding the Canaanites: drive out, expel  (gāraš ); take possession of land by driving out and dispossessing (yāraš); clear away, remove (nāšal); thrust out, push out (hādap);  cast out, send away (šālaḥ); and vomit out (qîʾ).”

“The biblical authors use this drive-out language to connect the biggest pieces of the holy war story in terms of exile: the exile anticipated (Pentateuch) and the exile realized (Kings and Chronicles). That exile link clinches its central role within the biblical story line.” Even in the Pentateuch, the reason given for God’s dispossession of the Canaanites is stated in terms the Israelites themselves will be removed from the land in the exile (Lev. 18:2-3,24-25,28; 20:22-24; Dt.18:9-12).

This is the story line in which the traditional answers make good sense—a holy God working to create sacred space for his fellowship with humanity. A round peg in a round hole.

THIRD AND FOURTH CANAANITES(L) DRIVEN OUT: NORTHERN KINGDOM AND SOUTHERN KINGDOM ISRAELITES

“The exile forced them to take a close look in the mirror and think, ‘We are the Canaanites of our day!’ Within the broad story line of Scripture there can be no doubt that Yahweh drove out Israelites from the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom because of their sin; they embraced idolatry and other detestable acts on par with those of the original Canaan land dwellers.”

“Themes of shared idolatry and shared detestable acts (sacrificing children) make it clear that the exiles, like the original Canaanites(E), have polluted the land. It can no longer function as sacred space” (1 Ki.14:21-24; 21:25-26; 2 Ki.16:2-3; 2 Chr.28:1-3; 2 Ki.17:5-8,11; 2 Ki.21:1-2; 2 Chr.33:1-6).

Would issues of genocide or rape, the Israelite versions of which the authors explore in chs. 8-12 and appendixes A through C [genocide] and chs.5-6 [rape]) have bothered Israelite readers? No. They would not have been on their ethical radar.

“The exilic question of justice was at the big-picture, story-line level: Was God just in driving us—the exilic literary Canaanites(L)—out of the Promised Land as he did the original Canaanites(E) in Joshua’s day? Admittedly, exilic and postexilic authors had difficulty with the evil of the Assyrians and Babylonians (people more evil than the evil Israelites) whom God was using as his holy warriors to do his bidding. Nevertheless, it seems settled in exilic theology that Yahweh was just in driving Israel out of the land. Again, the traditional answers—God is holy, idolatry, evil of the literary Canaanites (past and present), pollution of sacred space—answer this question rather well.”

W/O note that the same readers who cheer on David against Goliath seldom if ever speak negatively about David as a warrior. But God does (1 Chr.22:7-8; 28:3). That negative perspective reflects Yahweh’s view on Israel’s war actions. Yahweh, therefore, confesses that he accommodates himself to his peoples’ war-making, he draws on his hip waders (as it were), reluctantly wading into/working with the sewer water of Israel’s war actions, and not just that of Assyria and Babylon.

Even though the traditional answers the biblical tradition give on Israel’s war-making in their ancient context do not help us with our modern concerns, they do frame the big picture of the biblical story which gives us a clear framework within which to pursue our issues.