A Rabbit Trail - Violence in the Old Testament

Have you been somewhat concerned with the seemingly excessive violence in the Old Testament narratives on the conquest of Canaan? That was a question raised in a recent discussion at Church. As I understand the situation, the standard Evangelical response is that God exercised His sovereign will and executed judgment on an evil people. We moderns then have an objection to the killing of the children. To the objection, the standard Evangelical response has been to refer to the age of accountability doctrine. This response, in my humble opinion, has a sense of incompleteness and intuitively is unsatisfactory. We can, of course, acknowledge God is sovereign and not accountable to His creation, but leaving the response to these points renders Evangelicals open to the secular charge that God is arbitrary and self-contradictory (love and holy war in the same breath). On the one hand Evangelicals can simply ignore the charge as those making the claim are without faith and therefore without understanding. Yet there remains a lingering sense of dissatisfaction as the charge has a rationality about it that must be addressed. Obviously, without response efforts at evangelism become severely undermined.

John Howard Yoder offers a view that appears compelling (his essay "If Abraham is Our Father" in his The Original Revolution) but again that sense of dissatisfaction lingers. Yoder suggests the point of killing or not killing isn't the issue to be taken away from the text, and should not therefore be a focus. Rather as the narrative is part of the grand sweep of God's formation of a people - that is a people who have a deep and abiding trust in God for their survival. I gather this may mean that God took the Hebrews as they were (now isn't that a standard lesson in much of Evangelicalism?), began a process of formation that was ultimately culminating in the fulness of time by Jesus of Nazareth. Within the Hebrew culture, it was either war or slavery (recall of course the Egyptian narrative). The key command was the Hebrew word herem - devoted wholly to Yahweh - the violence of war was inevitable in that culture and for that time, but war now becomes a ritual event, a sacrifice to God if you will, attesting to the power of God and in accordance with His promise to Abraham. So God takes the people as they were then and there and uses the mundate but quite concrete to form them in His direction.

Of course, that charge by those without faith remains as the claim may be extended by the argument that God, in his sovereignty and power could have delivered up Canaan to the Hebrews without wholesale slaughter of the enemies of the Hebrews. There is an underlying truth to that claim as it appears to have been closer to the truth, if the findings of Gordon von Rad are accepted - the conquest was in fact gradual and that large pockets of aliens remained within the Israelite community. And if we read Joshua and Judges closely a gradual, and non-violent, conquest appears most likely. Now this leaves open the question of the veracity of Joshua, however, going back to Yoder - that the focus of these narratives were formation of a people and presenting the message to the people that faithfulness to God results in deliverance - the fact that there seems to be a divergence in the historical record is not of critical concern. That is, the focus of Scripture is not necessarily a historically accurate recitation rather it is the story of God's interaction with His creation as told from the perspective of that creation. I understand this as the various references to God in human form or having human characteristics, but the truth is of course God is not human but spirit. So that tells me the authors sought to relate the story in a manner that was understandable to them and therefore forming story/pictures in the minds of the hearers/readers for their understanding.

I have a sense that the Word, while inspired, was written by men caught within the forces of their particular times and particular culture. So the command of herem may very well have been understood by them, at that time, as including the command to kill all people, livestock, etc., as the only sensible option available to them. But that specific command did not necessarily have to exist for herem to be made. Now this raises a spector of the validity of the text and its inspired status. If we read the Word as a narrative, a bunch of wiki stories if you will, told by people acting under the guidance of the Spirit of God the fact the authors may not have communicated the story clearly is not necessarily destructive of the truthfulness of the text. After all, the Sermon on the Mount goes a long way toward the notion that the commands of God were not understood completely or practiced appropriately by earlier generations. As well Scripture is replete with references to treatment to be given to the aliens among the Hebrews. Thus we may ask how is is possible that the command of herem must have meant wholesale slaughter. I have been told, though I haven't verified it in full as of yet, that there is no express command by God for wholesale slaughter. In reading the Jericho narrative, we see in the vision of Joshua, chapter 5, that no such command was given in the rather precise steps to be taken for Jericho to fall into the hands of the Hebrews. I do see the command made by Joshua to the people after the walls had fallen though readings in Exodus and Deuteronomy are somewhat more problematic on this issue. But once again, it is a matter of how we read the words. The terms death and destruction do not have to result in physical killing. Back to Genesis, the fact that Adam and Eve would die by eating the fruit isn't simply or merely a statement that they would physically die, rather, its key reference is the spiritual death of separation from God.

So is a conclusion possible that God took the Hebrews and progressively formed them - bumps and warts and all that was included in humans - and brought them along a path, filled with a significant number of detours, grumblings and poor judgments by those peoples? Isn't that a truth that remains valid today?