Mosaic Laws for Foreign Wars

[Sam Jer]

In the law of Moses, a whole chapter, Deuteronomy 20, is devoted to the rules of war. After beginning with the procedure before going to battle, the actual rules of engagement come — and they are not exactly what we'd expect. It definitely ain't Geneva Conventions, even if it is closer to it than other nations in this period, anyone doing this today would be charged with crimes against humanity:

1: then proclaim peace unto it. And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee. (vs. 10b-11)
2: And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it (vs. 12)
3: And when the LORD thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword: (vs. 13)
4: But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the LORD thy God hath given thee. (vs. 14)
5: When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them: for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down (for the tree of the field is man's life) to employ them in the siege: Only the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for meat, thou shalt destroy and cut them down; and thou shalt build bulwarks against the city that maketh war with thee, until it be subdued. (vs. 19-20)

This is explicitly not speaking about the commanded destruction of the Canaanites, but just any old war:
Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations.
But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance... (verses 15-16a).

So on the one hand, it tells you to first offer peace, and not destroy the place to the extent you can't even cut off some fruit trees. But then on the other hand, it tells you to kill all the males.
I do not think there are many, at least in western countries, who don't squirm in their seat when reading this.

This whole section raises two big questions:
- Why kill all the males, when you can't even destroy their fig tree?
- To what extent does the general equity of this extend to our day, and how would it apply? (or perhaps, is this moral law? It seems judicial to me)

 

[CasualWestminsterEnjoyer]

Vs. 13, "Thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword" isn't a command to kill all the males. The meaning of v. 13-14 is not "you must kill all the males," but instead, "only males may be killed, not women or children."

Lange's Commentary has the right idea: "the destruction is only of the males who would otherwise threaten Israel with death."

Note how in 2 Samuel 8:2, David does not kill all the Moabite men. ("And he smote Moab, and measured them with a line, casting them down to the ground; even with two lines measured he to put to death, and with one full line to keep alive.") Instead, he spares one third of them. But if Deut. 20:13 were a command to kill all men, he would not have been free to spare any of them.

 

[Sam Jer]

Vs. 13, "Thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword" isn't a command to kill all the males. The meaning of v. 13-14 is not "you must kill all the males," but instead, "only males may be killed, not women or children."

Lange's Commentary has the right idea: "the destruction is only of the males who would otherwise threaten Israel with death."

Note how in 2 Samuel 8:2, David does not kill all the Moabite men. ("And he smote Moab, and measured them with a line, casting them down to the ground; even with two lines measured he to put to death, and with one full line to keep alive.") Instead, he spares one third of them. But if Deut. 20:13 were a command to kill all men, he would not have been free to spare any of them.

Where does Lange say this? Does he interact with the Hebrew grammar of the word זְכוּרָהּ?

 

[CasualWestminsterEnjoyer]

Where does Lange say this? Does he interact with the Hebrew grammar of the word זְכוּרָהּ?

In his commentary on Deut. 20.

He does not interact with the grammar.

However, many examples can be given from the Scripture where, grammatically, something is phrased as a command, but in reality, it is a permission.

For example: in the fourth commandment, "six days shalt thou work" is a permission. It is not a requirement to work all six days of the week, every week. On is at liberty to give a moderate amount of time on other days to recreation, vacation, travel, rest, weddings, funerals, visits, etc.

Deut. 24:1 as well: "let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house." Man was permitted, not required, to divorce his wife, and that on account of the hardness of his heart (Mt. 19:8).

 

[EvanF]

I think vs 13 is equivalent to modern law limiting the targets of military force to combatants. I think this was applied only to the ones who were understood to be the defenders of the city.

The word used, זְכוּרָ֖הּ, need not be interpreted in its maximal sense of every living human with male genitals. It can be interpreted as "all the men" in the sense of all the fighters, which presumably included all the fighting-age men in the besieged city. I also think this passage doesn't necessarily preclude a peaceful resolution of a siege where the city opens to Israel after an initial resistance, it only deals with the military resolution of a siege, which if carried all the way to this point would almost always be a desparate and fervent struggle accompanied often by the absolute destruction and sack of the city among the pagans. Killing only the fighters of a city after overcoming its defenses, in the historical context, would have been understood as a remarkable example of just war, as opposed to a command for atrocity as we think it in our modern context.

I believe the writer/s of Deuteronomy considered this passage to be a defense of Israel's conduct rather than a record of their ruthlessness as we are tempted to see it today.

 

[Sam Jer]

Seems the word only appears in one more context, that being those who need to go up to Jerusalem in the feasts. Which I suppose also excludes the same men (sick, elderly, children) as the word "combatants" does in an ancient city where all the men are expected to be part of the armed forces.

Strong's Hebrew: 2138. זְכוּר (zakur) -- 4 Occurrences

the writer/s of Deuteronomy

huh?

 

[EvanF]

huh?

We know that Moses couldn't have writen the whole book of Deuteronomy during his lifetime, and I don't know who the writer of this particular passage was. It may be that this passage was written down in the time after the conquest of the promised land, and if so the writer wasn't writing so much to convey these rules to the Israelites as to make record of how they were conveyed by Moses with a personal interest in affirming the just conduct of the people under the past judgment of Moses. Recognizing that possibility, I think it seems more likely that this passage was meant, by the writer anyway, as a recognition of what was considered virtuous conduct than as an admonishment to do something the writer considered to be ruthless. Does that make sense?

 

[CasualWestminsterEnjoyer]

We know that Moses couldn't have writen the whole book of Deuteronomy during his lifetime, and I don't know who the writer of this particular passage was. It may be that this passage was written down in the time after the conquest of the promised land, and if so the writer wasn't writing so much to convey these rules to the Israelites as to make record of how they were conveyed by Moses with a personal interest in affirming the just conduct of the people under the past judgment of Moses. Recognizing that possibility, I think it seems more likely that this passage was meant, by the writer anyway, as a recognition of what was considered virtuous conduct than as an admonishment to do something the writer considered to be ruthless. Does that make sense?

Deuteronomy is pretty explicit that chapters 1-33 were spoken by Moses.

The book begins with "These be the words which Moses spake unto all Israel on this side Jordan in the wilderness," and then it is one continuous discourse until chapter 33. Chapter 34 describes Moses' death and it alone was clearly written by Joshua.

 

[EvanF]

Deuteronomy is pretty explicit that chapters 1-33 were spoken by Moses.

The book begins with "These be the words which Moses spake unto all Israel on this side Jordan in the wilderness," and then it is one continuous discourse until chapter 33. Chapter 34 describes Moses' death and it alone was clearly written by Joshua.

Agreed that only 34 necessarily was written by someone else, however, Joshua also wrote down a book which contained all the law of Moses and I don't think it was necessarily a word for word copy of anything Moses wrote down. Joshua writing after Moses would likely have written so as to reveal the justification of something if he had considered it to be especially harsh among Moses judgements.

It's also posible that this passage is exactly as recorded by Moses and stored with the Ark, but whether the writer were Moses or Joshua, it's still unlikely that the writer thought this passage had the appearance of injustice or disproportionality, else it would have been written in a way that revealed the justification . So if we interpret it in a way that makes it seem unjustified, it's probably our interpretation that's wrong.