‘The unfortunate
Midianites, so far as one can tell from the biblical account, were the victims
of genocide in their own county.’ (Dawkins, 278)
Doom of the Midianites
Prior to entering ‘the Promised Land,’ the
Israelites (in the Book of Numbers)
found themselves encamped ‘among friendly Moabites and Midianites. The former
looked upon the Israelites as deliverers and the latter as relatives’ (O.Brian
224). They here began fraternising unduly with the locals, and were even reported
to have bowed down to local ‘gods’ during a feast. Yahweh got to hear of this
and his ire was - as usual - kindled:
and the
LORD said to Moses, "Take all heads of the people, and hang them up before
the Lord in the Sun, that the fierce anger of the LORD may turn away from
Israel." (Numbers 25:3-5)
Other
translations have ‘Impale them for Yahweh in the sun,’ a very cruel death. It
didn’t happen, because a chance event distracted Yahweh:
And behold, one of the people of Israel came and brought a
Midianite woman to his family, in the sight of Moses and in the sight of the
whole congregation of the people of Israel, while they were weeping at the door
of the tent of meeting. When Phineas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the
priest, saw it, he rose and left the congregation, and took a spear in his
hand and went after the man of Israel into the inner room, and pierced
both of them, the man of Israel and the woman, through her body. Thus the
plague was stayed from the people of Israel.
Now considering that
Moses had had a Midianite wife, Zipporah, one might have supposed that such coupling was OK – but
no, and this sudden murder of two young lovers pleased Yahweh, making further
sacrifices unnecessary:
This
act by Phineas so delighted Yahweh that he gave Phineas, and his descendants,
the priesthood in perpetuity for being the only one with the same zeal as
Yahweh.
We
cannot understand why Jewish psychologists have not commented on this aspect of
the Yahweh personality. Such quick changes in a mood from blind, unreasoning
anger to calm, pleasing action, are well known among students of severe mental
disorders. And the fact that it took another bloody act to distract Yahweh from
his impaling orders must be significant. (O’Brien p.226)
‘To
Utterly Destroy’
This act reminds Yahweh
of a gripe he has against the Midianites and Moses is instructed to ‘avenge the
people of Israel on the Midianites.’ (31:2) They are wiped out, their cities
burnt down, etc. (31:10), however there is a problem because the Israelite army
returns with too many captives. Booty
is brought to Moses but he isn’t pleased! “And Moses was angry with the
officers of the army.” Why was that?
Moses rebuked them: “Have you let all the women
live?”
Just think about that for a minute.
Then Moses instructed:
Now therefore,
kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man
by lying with him. But all the
young girls who have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for
yourselves.
This
is Moses’ direction, not Yahweh’s, suggesting that the diabolical ethics of the
God he has served for so long are beginning to rub off onto him. Moses’
children were racially mixed, ‘a mix of Hebrew-Midianite.’ The gold and shekels plundered from
the Midianite cities get “offered to the Lord” - i.e given to the priests.
To avoid such distressing situations in the future, Yahweh directs that land-theft and city eradication must be performed more thoroughly:
"Say to the people of Israel, When you pass over the Jordan
into the land of Canaan, then you
shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, and destroy
all their figured stones, and destroy all their molten images, and demolish all
their high places; and you shall
take possession of the land and settle in it … But if you do not drive out the
inhabitants of the land from before you, then those of them whom you let remain
shall be as pricks in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they shall
trouble you in the land where you dwell.
And I will
do to you as I thought to do to them."
This
is real ‘do-unto-others-before-they-do-unto-you’ ethics.
Quiz
Question: what’s the difference between God and Satan? Seymour Light
thought hard. Erm, … maybe no satanic being ever gave advice quite so devious and
horrendous as this.
Book of Samuel
In the
Book of Samuel Yahweh is contactable by divination or by a seer, in this case,
Samuel: ‘the word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no frequent
vision.’ (3:1). The people tell Samuel that they want a king, and Yahweh tries
to dissuade them, on the grounds that, can he not be their king? (8:7) That
seems a rather peculiar attitude for a god to take. But they do really want one,
and so a tall young man called Saul is chosen. He’s a good killer-warrior which
is all that Yahweh requires:
When Saul had taken the kingship over Israel, he fought against
all his enemies on every side, against Moab, against the Ammonites, against
Edom, against the kings of Zobah, and against the Philistines; wherever he
turned he put them to the worse. And he did valiantly, and smote the
Amal'ekites, and delivered Israel out of the hands of those who plundered them.
Next
he is told to wipe out the Amalek:
And Samuel said to Saul, "The LORD sent me to anoint you king
over his people Israel; now therefore hearken to the words of the LORD. Thus
says the LORD of hosts, `I will punish what Am'alek did to Israel in opposing
them on the way, when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and smite
Am'alek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill
both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and
ass.'"
-and does so, more or less. Still, Yahweh carps
that this was not the ‘utter destruction’ he had ordered – were not sheep and
cattle still alive, and, worse, was not one of the enemy kings, Agag, taken
prisoner? He demands that Saul be removed
as king, because he had failed in the ‘utter destruction’ mission! Samuel
the prophet is upset and ‘cried to the Lord all night’ (15:11) but to no avail.
Saul pleaded, ‘I have utterly destroyed the Amalekites’ and only brought sheep
‘to sacrifice to the Lord your God.’ He chopped up his hostage King to make amends,
in cold blood - ‘And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal’ – but to no avail, he
had been judged by Yahweh as a failure.
Samuel chose a young
Benjaminite peasant, Saul, who had made some name in tribal warfare and,
presumably, was thought likely to be tractable…The unified kingdom of Israel then
began; in truth it survived but this one reign, Saul's.
In Saul's fate (or in
the account given of it in the later Scriptures) the ominous nature of Judaism,
as it was to be given shape, may be discerned. He was commanded to begin the
holy war by attacking the Amalekites “and utterly destroy all that
they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and
suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.” He destroyed “man and woman, infant and
suckling,” but spared King-Agag and the best of the sheep, oxen, yearlings and
lambs. For this he was excommunicated by Samuel, who secretly chose one David,
of Judah, to be Saul's successor. Thereafter Saul vainly strove by
zeal in “utter destruction” to appease the Levites, and then by attempting
David's life to save his throne. At last he killed himself.
Possibly none of this
happened; it is the account given in the Book of Samuel, which the Levites
produced centuries later. Whether it is true or allegorical, the importance
lies in the plain implication: Jehovah demanded literal obedience when he
commanded “utter destruction,” and mercy or pity were capital offences. This
lesson is driven home in many other depictments of events which were possibly
historical and possibly imaginary
