Wednesday, December 17, 2003
Dt 20 - rules of divine war
Deuteronomy 20:1 When you go out to war against your enemies....
If we take (as I wish to) a conservative approach to scriptural authority and insist that the entire canon of scripture is inspired and authoritative, then it is necessary to say that the law of divine warfare that comprises Deuteronomy 20 was either ignored in fact or was a later idealistic schema inserted as a literary device into the narrative of the conquest.
For instance, the law here calls for the annihilation of the Canaanite population:
Deuteronomy 20:16 But as for the towns of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive.
This simply did not happen. One of the clearest proofs of this is the first chapter of Judges which goes into considerable detail about areas where the Canaanites were permitted to continue to live in land occupied by the different tribes. For instance:
(Tanakh) Judges 1:28 And when Israel gained the upper hand, they subjected the Canaanites to forced labor; but they did not dispossess them.
What then is the point? The Deuteronomic law was intended to strengthen our faith in the fundamental belief (1) that God is present as warrior to protect the people -- therefore the warfare is not in to be conducted by either great numbers or by those who lacked faith in God's presence, and (2) that the greatest danger to the people of faith is syncretism with other faiths.
This is the concern of verse 17:
Deuteronomy 20:17 you shall annihilate them -- the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites -- just as the LORD your God has commanded,
But, if the actual setting in life is as the Jewish Study Bible comments suggest: "at a time when ethnic Canaanites would already long have assimilated into the Israelite population", then the question was actually intended as a spiritual one for the Israelite community. What is there in me that has a Hittite spirituality? What is there in me that smacks of Canaanitism? That alien spirituality that is taking me away from the holiness of God needs to be annihilated.
This is how the early Quakers tended to use these texts. Applying the teachings of the New Testament that (Ephesians 6:12) "our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers" they would see their own inward spiritual struggles as God fighting the Canaanite nature in themselves, or in their preaching they would hope to slay it in others.
Much more could be said about what it means to believe vigorously in God's presence among us as warrior.
1. it means we are not to be afraid (even of the terrorists).
2. it means that we allow God to fight and we do not presumptuously take up arms (only pacifists live us to this).
3. it means that the appearance of vastly superior force is irrelevant (and nuclear weapons are the functional equivalent of rejection of God's protection).
4. it means you cannot have military conscription because the law requires anyone who is disheartened to be dismissed.
5. it means that the earth must be protected. This is the emphasis of the final instructions that trees must be preserved.
It is one of the great ironies of modern struggle of the State of Israel against the Palestinian population in the occupied territories that one of the significant weapons of the Israeli settlers has been the uprooting of Palestinian owned olive trees.
Deuteronomy 20:19 you must not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them. Although you may take food from them, you must not cut them down.
Here is the bottom line: When we take God's warfare into our own hands we inevitably become the violators of the law of divine warfare.
Click "comments" to respond or add your thoughts.
If we take (as I wish to) a conservative approach to scriptural authority and insist that the entire canon of scripture is inspired and authoritative, then it is necessary to say that the law of divine warfare that comprises Deuteronomy 20 was either ignored in fact or was a later idealistic schema inserted as a literary device into the narrative of the conquest.
For instance, the law here calls for the annihilation of the Canaanite population:
Deuteronomy 20:16 But as for the towns of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive.
This simply did not happen. One of the clearest proofs of this is the first chapter of Judges which goes into considerable detail about areas where the Canaanites were permitted to continue to live in land occupied by the different tribes. For instance:
(Tanakh) Judges 1:28 And when Israel gained the upper hand, they subjected the Canaanites to forced labor; but they did not dispossess them.
What then is the point? The Deuteronomic law was intended to strengthen our faith in the fundamental belief (1) that God is present as warrior to protect the people -- therefore the warfare is not in to be conducted by either great numbers or by those who lacked faith in God's presence, and (2) that the greatest danger to the people of faith is syncretism with other faiths.
This is the concern of verse 17:
Deuteronomy 20:17 you shall annihilate them -- the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites -- just as the LORD your God has commanded,
But, if the actual setting in life is as the Jewish Study Bible comments suggest: "at a time when ethnic Canaanites would already long have assimilated into the Israelite population", then the question was actually intended as a spiritual one for the Israelite community. What is there in me that has a Hittite spirituality? What is there in me that smacks of Canaanitism? That alien spirituality that is taking me away from the holiness of God needs to be annihilated.
This is how the early Quakers tended to use these texts. Applying the teachings of the New Testament that (Ephesians 6:12) "our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers" they would see their own inward spiritual struggles as God fighting the Canaanite nature in themselves, or in their preaching they would hope to slay it in others.
Much more could be said about what it means to believe vigorously in God's presence among us as warrior.
1. it means we are not to be afraid (even of the terrorists).
2. it means that we allow God to fight and we do not presumptuously take up arms (only pacifists live us to this).
3. it means that the appearance of vastly superior force is irrelevant (and nuclear weapons are the functional equivalent of rejection of God's protection).
4. it means you cannot have military conscription because the law requires anyone who is disheartened to be dismissed.
5. it means that the earth must be protected. This is the emphasis of the final instructions that trees must be preserved.
It is one of the great ironies of modern struggle of the State of Israel against the Palestinian population in the occupied territories that one of the significant weapons of the Israeli settlers has been the uprooting of Palestinian owned olive trees.
Deuteronomy 20:19 you must not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them. Although you may take food from them, you must not cut them down.
Here is the bottom line: When we take God's warfare into our own hands we inevitably become the violators of the law of divine warfare.
Click "comments" to respond or add your thoughts.
