The integrated anthology of ancient Israelite writings, the Hebrew Bible, preserves a number of views of war, some of which overlap, while some seem at odds with one another. Again, assigning these various ideologies of war to specific periods in Israelite history or to specific groups in Israelite society is no easy task, but one can, at least, provide an overview of some of the major threads in Israelite thinking about war and speculate about whose views they reflect and how such views may have operated in the complex process of asserting and understanding cultural identity.
The ban
Perhaps the most troubling war ideology in the Hebrew Bible is that of the ban or herem, a term rooted in the sacrificial meaning, “devote to destruction,” and sometimes associated with non-warring contexts (see Lev 27:21, 28). The ban in war is imagined to be commanded by God and requires that all human enemies and sometimes also their animals be slaughtered and often burned in entirety, “a whole burnt offering to God” as Deut 13:16 states overtly. Spoil is often destroyed or set aside for God’s use, unless exception is granted.
There are, in fact, two banning ideologies, the ban which treats the enemy as a sacrifice vowed to God, explicitly or implicitly (see Num 21:2-3; Deut 2:34-35; Josh 6:17-21; 8:2,24-28; 11:11,14, and I Kgs 20:35-43), and the ban which regards the killing as an execution of God’s justice. In the latter version, the enemy is described as unclean, contaminating, and sinful. He must be rooted out (see Deut 7:2-5,23-26 concerning foreign enemies, and 13:12-18 on the idolatrous enemy within Israel). Both versions of the ban may reflect an attempt to rationalize killing in war. God exacts the dead from the Israelites.
This notion that God is pictured to desire the dead as spoils of war is a shocking one to modern readers, to be sure. We have to remember, however, that Israelite religion was a sacrificial religion in which animals were offered up on the altar, part going to the deity, sometimes the whole as in the “whole burnt offering,” to which indeed the ban is compared in Deut 13:16. Blood is a multi-vocalic symbol in the Hebrew Bible, the stuff of the soul, the life-force, splashed upon the altar for purification, daubed upon the right earlobe, right big toe, and right thumb of priestly initiates (Lev 8:22-24). A frequent refrain in the Hebrew Bible declares that all that first emerges from the womb belongs to Yahweh. Most such references quickly make clear that human young are to be redeemed (e. g. Num 3:12; 18:15; Ex 13:2, 13-14), but Ex 22:28 (Hebrew; 22:29 in English Bibles) declares more starkly, “The firstborn ofyour sons shall be given to me.” Perhaps redemption is assumed or cultic service of some kind, but the story of the binding of Isaac suggests that life is God’s to demand or exact even though in this case Yahweh relents. Jephthah’s daughter is not so lucky and is an exchange item in a war vow made by her father to God, victory in exchange for whomever or whatever he sees first upon his return from successful battle, and she becomes the offering (Judg 11:29-40). This myth, probably an etiology for a young woman’s ritual of maturation (for the young virgins go off yearly to the mountains to mourn her “sacrifice,” her becoming a gift to a demanding God) parallels the ban as described clearly in Num 21:2-3, in which the Israelites promise to devote their enemies to destruction if the deity grants them victory:
And Israel vowed a vow to Yahweh, saying,
“If you will give this people into my hand,
I will devote to destruction their towns.”
Relevant in this context is the episode in Joshua 7 in which a man named Achan takes some of the material “devoted to destruction” for himself, and he and his immediate family, believed to be contaminated by (his essentially) having stolen from God, are rounded up, encircled physically and separated socially, and killed. Prophetic interactions with kings, Saul in Samuel 15 and Ahab in 1 Kings 20, also point to this theme of God’s due in battle. In each case, the Israelite political leader sensibly and pragmatically takes animal spoil or spares the captured enemy leader who is worth much more to his captors alive rather than dead, in political status and economic value. Certain prophets, however, regard the enemy, especially the most important enemy, the leader of his people, as God’s booty. He is to be slaughtered under the demands of the ban. Thus in one important thread in the Hebrew Bible, the treatment of enemies in battle is seen in the context of a god who appreciates or demands sacrifice in human terms.
The ban as sacrifice is described in a Moabite Inscription of the ninth century and appears to have been a concept shared by Israel’s neighbors. “Now Kemosh (the Moabite deity) said to me, ‘Go seize Nebo from Israel’ (here we see war from the point of view of one of Israel’s traditional enemies). So I went and fought against it from the break of dawn until noon. I seized it and killed everyone of [it], seven thousand native men, foreign men, native women, foreign women, concubines - for I devoted it (that same hrm root is used here) to ‘Ashtar Kemosh’ ” (lines 14-17, trans. Jackson 1989: 98; see also Albright’s trans. in Pritchard 1969: 321). In the narrative traditions of the Hebrew Bible as well, Moabites are pictured as believing in the efficacy of human sacrifice in the context of war. In 2 Kings 3 the battle goes poorly for his people until the Moabite king slays his own son, “his firstborn son who was to succeed him and offered him as a burnt offering on the wall. And great wrath came upon Israel, so they withdrew from him and returned to their own land” (2 Kgs 3:27). Whose great wrath? Yahweh’s, that of the Moabite god Kemosh, Wrath itself somehow personified? In any event, the devotion of a human being, especially one of high political status and personal value, the king’s nearest kin, turns the tide. Deities appreciate the blood of sacrifice.
We have no way of knowing for certain when or if the ban was ever carried out by Israelites in actual war settings. The ban, treated as God’s justice, may well be a response by Deuteronomic writers of the seventh century to ancient traditions about devoting enemies for destruction, for such writers regarded Israel as a pristine entity that had become soiled by foreign influences and sin. The ban is thus treated not as a means of providing human offerings to a demanding deity, a notion which in unadorned form would have been anathema to these writers who purposely condemn human sacrifice under any circumstances, but as a way of cleansing Israel from a contamination that separates them from God. According to this line of thought, the enemy left alive could serve as a temptation and a snare, given the temptations posed by their idolatrous practices. Again, we have no way of knowing if the ban was ever enacted or publicly proclaimed as a call to specific battles. The biblical descriptions of the seventh century reforms of Josiah, influenced by Deuteronomic thought, in fact, make no overt reference to the ban. It is rather interesting that in one of the instances in biblical historiography when one would most expect the ban to be mentioned, it is absent. Religious reforms forced upon people often require just such inducements and cleansings if other means of persuasion fail. Perhaps Josiah’s reform was an unusually peaceful transition or perhaps the biblical writers wished to portray it as such implying some writers’ discomfort with the notion of extirpating the internal “Other.” This ideology is perhaps implicit in the coup of Jehu described in 2 Kings 9-10 as a violent change of power in the ninth century northern kingdom. Because the ban is regarded as imposed or expected by God, it appears to come under the heading of just cause and just conduct in Israelite thought, which distances these traditions from modern concepts of just war. The war is not a matter of self-defense and no degree of proportionality applies. It can be argued, however, that these troubling traditions do reveal the Israelites’ discomfort with the violence of war in that the writers attempt to place responsibility for the killing outside Israel’s own hands. God is propitiated by or demands the enemy’s death and/or the enemy deserves to die in a grand plan of divine justice.
The bardic tradition
The bardic tradition, which is preserved in traditional narrative style, glorifies the courage, daring, and skill of warriors. Enemies sometimes engage in stylized duels and taunting behavior, while war is described as men’s sport (e. g. 2 Sam 2:14) in which a code of fair-play operates. Men should fight their equals in skill, for example. In several passages, offense is taken or concern expressed when the combatants are not equally matched in status and experience of war. It is for this reason that Goliath resents the Israelites’ sending forth the young David to engage in single combat with him. Rightfully he shouts, “Am I a dog that you come to me with sticks?” (1 Sam 17:43). Similarly, Abner does not want to fight Asael, younger brother of the rival general Joab, when the lad insists upon engaging him. Abner says, “Turn to your right or left, and seize one of the young men, and take his spoil.” And again, “Turn away from following me; why should I strike you to the ground? How then could I face your brother Joab?” (2 Sam 2:21-22). Thus elements of just conduct emerge, and it could be argued that the bardic tradition preserves a warrior’s code of some kind, however idealized, romanticized or conventionalized in the style of traditional literatures. Spoil is desired and acquired in the bardic tradition, and sometimes leads to conflict among allies. This view of war, so similar to war as described in the epic traditions of other cultures, may have originated in the royal courts of Judah or Israel during the period of the monarchies from the tenth century on, but could also have been prominent in pre-monarchic oral literature, extolling the heroes of old. Like the American war movies of John Wayne, such tales may have encouraged young men to want to fight, helping to define a particular view of manhood.
Tricksterism
Akin to guerrilla warfare, tricksterism is a war ethic of the oppressed who must use deception to improve their lot. Such war tales are a subset of the large fund of trickster tales in narrative portions of the Hebrew Bible, describing the victory of the marginal over the establishment. No guilt is implicit concerning the enemy’s death and no code governs fighting, although the cause is always just from the perspective ofthose out of power. As currently framed in the Book of Judges, a rich repository of such war tales, the success of Israel and her charismatic leaders depends upon God’s mercy to a sinful, backsliding nation. The ideology of tricksterism may be as old as Israel itself and was no doubt available as a justification and explanation for war throughout its difficult history of subjugation. Tales of Samson (Judges 14-15), Ehud (Jud 3:12-30), and Jael (Judges 4-5) exemplify this ideology. One particularly interesting thread in stories of Samson, Ehud, and Jael is the powerfully affective juxtaposition of eroticism and death which Emily Vermeule (1979: 102, 157) has noted also in connection with Homeric battle literature. The conquered or slain warrior is the “woman” raped, subdued, controlled. The Jael tale includes a powerful ironic twist in which the oppressed, now victorious, identify with the feminine who is the one who conquers the male warrior Sisera by means of her womanly wiles. Jael exemplifies what folklorists call the
“the iron fist in the velvet glove,” while the description of the death throes of Sisera in Jud 5:27 richly employs double entendres of battle defeat and sexual seduction (Niditch 1989).
Between her legs he knelt, he fell, he lay Between her legs he knelt, he fell,
Where he knelt, there he fell despoiled.
The language has a rhythmic, intoning, repetitive quality, capturing, as Robert Alter has noted, Sisera’s death in slow motion, falling, lower, lower, dying (1985: 45). Each image equates the act of dying with sex (Zakovitch 1981; Alter 1985: 43-49; Niditch 1989). To be sure, the terms “to kneel” and “to fall” are used in contexts of defeat and death in the Hebrew Bible (see, for example, Ps 20:8; v. 9 in Hebrew). “To lie with one’s ancestors” is simply to die, but these terms are also associated with overt sexual contexts. Job defends himself to those who accuse him of sin and impropriety by saying,
If my heart has been enticed by a woman,
And at my neighbor’s door I have lain in wait,
Let my wife “grind” for another (note the sexual euphemism here), upon her may others kneel.
“To lie” is also used in sexual contexts, frequently in those dealing with incest, rape, and a variety of unsanctioned sorts of relationship. The term I translate “despoiled” is usually associated with the destruction of enemies and in such contexts might be translated more generally as “deal violently with” (e. g. Isa 15:1; 23:1; Jer 47:4), but in Jer 4:30 the root is used in an erotic metaphor as Jeremiah compares the unfaithful Israel to a sleazy harlot, beautifying herself for her lovers. Finally the opening phrase “between her legs,” erotic enough if simply translated without explanation, becomes more erotic once one realizes that the legs or feet are used in ancient Israel as a euphemism for genitals (Deut 28:57; Ezek 16:25; Isa 7:20; Judg 3:24; 1 Sam 24:3). War is thus eroticized. In the ideology of tricksterism, war is about liberation from oppression, but as always it is also about power, and the sexual language serves this theme exquisitely.
Expediency
This ideology suggests that any degree of cruelty is acceptable in order to achieve victory in battle. War is hell. War is business as usual; naked aggression and brutal conquest are the activities ofkings, including the great hero David (2 Sam 5:7-8; 8:2).
He defeated the Moabites and, making them lie down on the ground, he measured them with a cord; he measured two lengths of a cord for those who would be put to death, and one length for those who were to be spared.
Coldly and arbitrarily, David claims for himself the power of life and death, striking down survivors with the potent weapon of inducing fear.
At this time Menachem struck Tiphsah and all that was in it...; because it did not open (to him) he ripped open all its pregnant women (2 Kgs 15:16).
The Danite founding myth of Judges can be read to suggest that it was good that the Laishians, targets of Danite conquest, were a quiet, peaceful, and unsuspecting people, the better to conquer their land and eliminate them (Jud 18:7,10, 27). Victory results in spoil, enslavement of enemies, and the paying of tribute by the losing state. Others’ lands are there to be conquered. This pragmatic ideology of war was common in the ancient Near East and possibly best relates to the ways in which actual wars were fought throughout israel’s history.
Non-participation
Rooted in biblical traditions that describe God’s capacity to save Israel through miracles, the ideology of non-participation suggests that Israel need not fight wars itself, for God who redeemed the helpless israelite slaves in Egypt will rescue his people again. This ideology, reflected, for example, in 2 Chronicles 20, is the closest concept to pacifism found in the israelite tradition because human beings need not fight, but of course Yahweh himself is often expected or pictured to kill the enemy with the utmost violence and bloodshed. in 2 chronicles 20, a huge contingent of enemy soldiers is arrayed against a vulnerable Judah. The king Jehoshaphat responds not with the bravado of the bardic ideology, nor with the pragmatic preparations of the ideology of expediency, nor does he plan a clever strategy of tricksterism. Instead, as the text reports, “He was scared and gave himself over to seek the Lord” (2 Chron 20:3). God loves the weak. He appreciates their obeisance and their prayer, and revels in their admitted inadequacies. The people join Jehoshaphat in humble prayer and confession of sin, and in return God sends a prophecy: “It is not for you to fight. Station yourselves and stand still and see the victory of the Lord for you” (2 Chron 20:17). To be sure, victory is always ultimately in divine hands, and Israelites are frequently enjoined to reduce the number of human soldiers in order to enhance God’s victory in holy war (e. g. the case of Gideon’s “lappers” in Judges 7; the dismissal of certain categories of able bodied fighters in Deuteronomy 20), but in 2 Chronicles 20 and comparable material the divine role is so absolute as to totally exclude humans from fighting. Such an ideology thus offers the powerless an alternative to ethics of war that involve overt human aggression and seems to have been popular with the post-monarchic, fifth century writers of 1 and 2 Chronicles.
World History
