Torah reading: Deuteronomy 3:23 to 7:11.
First Haftarah of Consolation: Isaiah 40:1-26.
Given that I have a penchant for seeking out challenges, I’m going to focus in on an excerpt from Deuteronomy 7 which is undoubtedly one of the most problematic, and controversial, passages in the entire Hebrew Bible.
When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you—and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire. For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession. (Deuteronomy 7:1-6)
How can we possibly come to terms with such a cruel, bloodthirsty command, which rivals the atrocities of the Holocaust, Rwanda, or Bosnia? True, many scholars contend that the book of Deuteronomy was not written down in its current form until centuries after the events it describes, and some argue that this bloody conquest of Canaan never occurred at all. However, whether this command was invented by God or by humans is perhaps less relevant than its existence within the sacred scriptures of two religions. How can we reconcile the horror of the genocide it commands with the idea that Abraham's descendants are to be a "blessing" to other nations? If, to use a common expression, "a tree can be known by its fruits", how could such violent “roots” give rise to such wonderful "fruits" of love, mercy and acceptance?
(Follow me beneath the tangly tree roots for some discussion.)
Biblical commentators and theologians have sought to give various justifications for this passage. One of the most common is that the Canaanites (who are said to have practiced, among other things, child sacrifice), “deserved it”: they were so brutal and sinful that they simply had to be wiped out. Yet God's command, in its utter brutality, orders the destruction of all people in the Canaanite nations: children included. Slaughtering children seems an odd way to save them from the horrors of human sacrifice (and what about those adults who had never participated in such rituals?) Closely related is the argument that Israel “had” to massacre these tribes in order to avoid becoming “contaminated” by their unsavory religious practices. Yet even assuming this was the case, why is worshipping a God who demands wholesale genocidal slaughter any better than worshipping a God who demands child sacrifice?
Others argue that the Israelite practice of “total destruction” was simply standard practice for the time. Iron Age society was brutal and violent; “everyone” was doing it. Yet in his excellent book Laying Down the Sword, scholar Philip Jenkins argues that this is not the case. Though most societies of the time engaged in warfare (some religiously inspired), most successful battles were followed by extensive looting of the vanquished: of livestock and goods, of men or children as slaves and women as sexual slaves. Perhaps it’s debatable whether destruction or enslavement is a worse fate, but the command to wipe out “everything that breathes” is unique to the Jewish people. Everyone wasn’t doing it -- and therein, I think, lies an important clue. For the Jewish tradition is unique in another important way as well.
More than anything, the Hebrew Scriptures are characterized by passion. The writers of these stories were not simply dutiful servants of their God; rather, they were on fire with ardent zeal for Yahweh and his Law. This devotion was good insofar that it drove them to promote justice, mercy, compassion, human rights, trust, love and faithfulness -- all good things, that uniquely characterize the ancient Jewish law, religion and worldview. However, I believe their passion also drove the Biblical writers to cross a dangerous line: from zealousness into extremist intolerance.
For our devotion to a cause can all too easily lead us to commit horrendous acts in the name of that very cause. Nietzsche (who lived long before the ideologically motivated purges of communist China and Russia or the CIA-sponsored coups of democratically elected regimes in Latin America, in the name of democracy) had it right: “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster.” Our disgust at inhuman, evil atrocities can all too easily lead us to become the very thing we despise...or something even worse.
Cassidy S. Dale has written an interesting online book called “The Knight and the Gardener.” He argues that many people in our world can be characterized as falling into two camps: the “Knights” (who view their task in life as a dramatic, sometimes violent or bloody, struggle to eradicate “evil” from the world) and the “Gardeners” (who view their task in life as a slow, calm, process of nurturing goodness and creativity.) Much of Hebrew law appears to be characterized by a “Gardener” mindset: the emphasis on compassion for the widow, the foreigner, and the slave (not to mention respect for the land itself, shown in the fiftieth-year Jubilee!) Yet, in Deuteronomy and Joshua, the “Knights” appear to have taken over, and the results are bloody.
In the end, the best advice from today’s reading may be Deuteronomy 5:32: “So be careful to do what the Lord your God has commanded you; do not turn aside to the right or to the left.” To me (though undoubtedly not to the Deuteronomists!) this calls for balance and moderation. Let us avoid the twin extremes of too easily giving up our ethical convictions and religious/ethnic identities, or allowing them to drag us into hatred and conflict. Religious or not, we would all do well to heed this advice.
Shabbat Shalom!