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John W Wenham: The Goodness of God - Chapter 8: The Abominations of the Heathen
John W Wenham: The Goodness of God
An honest look at the moral problems raised by the Bible
such as the destruction of the heathen, the existence of evil
and Jesus teaching about hell.
Tyndale Publishers, pages 119-147.
Chapter 8: The Abominations of the Heathen
The examination of this subject will occupy a long chapter.
It will be necessary to cover a good deal of preliminary
ground before getting to grips with it. We must first
examine the command to dispossess the Canaanites in the
broader context of the whole struggle with heathenism.
We must then gain an adequate idea of the weakness and
perversity of the Israelite people. Only after that shall
we be able to see the matter in perspective and face the
difficulties at all satisfactorily.
THE STRUGGLE WITH HEATHENISM
If the Old Testament narratives are to be taken as a straight
forward record of history, there is no room for doubt that
God intended to 'clear away' the Canaanite peoples, and that
he ordered their utter destruction when defeated in battle
by Israel. Here are the crucial passages:
'When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you
are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many
nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the
Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and
the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than
yourselves, and when the Lord your God gives them over to
you, and you defeat them; then you must utterly destroy them;
you shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to
them. You shall not make marriages with them, giving your
daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your
sons.
'For they would turn away your sons from following me, to
serve other gods; then the anger of the Lord would be kindled
against you, and he would destroy you quickly. But thus shall
you deal with them: you shall break down their altars, and
dash in pieces their pillars, and hew down thdr Asherim, and
burn their graven images with fire.'
'In the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God gives
you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that
breathes, but you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittites
and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the
Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded;
that they may not teach you to do according to all their
abominable practices which they have done in the service of
their gods, and so to sin against the Lord your God.'[1]
These directions are represented as the most solemn commands
of God. If they are in fact so, we have a deep problem to
grapple with. If on the other hand they are merely directions
which Moses wrongly attributed to God, or if they are
directions such as a later generation thought God ought to
have given to Moses, there is no problem at all. It is simply
a case of fallible man misrepresenting God - one more example
of a religious man sincerely believing that by an evil act
he was doing God a service.
If it is argued that we are not meant to take passages like
this literally, but that we are to extract some word of God
from them - say, the need for complete dedication to good and
for implacable opposition to evil - then an end is put to all
sane exegesis. The passage purports to be literal; to take it
in any other way is to throw oneself into a bottomless pit of
subjectivism. It is a species of allegorizing, which relieves
the Bible of all offence while depriving it of all relevance.
If the supposed commands are not history, then there is no
problem. But neither is there hope of the Bible giving answers
to the problems of history.
It is true that our Lord did not directly endorse this
particular act of judgment, as he did the annihilation of
Sodom and Gomorrah and the drowning of Noah's contemporaries,
yet he sets his seal on the book of Deuteronomy in a peculiarly
clear way. Judging by the number of his quotations from it,
it might be regarded as his favourite book.[2]
As C. H. Dodd has shown,[3] our Lord does not quote proof
texts without regard for their context. He is conscious of
the context within which a saying is set, having steeped
his mind in whole passages of Scripture. When he has to
face the great crisis of his temptation, he answers the
Devil three times by quotations from Scripture. The verses
quoted are Deuteronomy 6:13 and 16, and 8:3. The first and
fullest command to slaughter Canaanites comes in chapter 7.
There is no room for doubt that our Lord regarded all three
chapters as equally authoritative.
Endorsement of a more specific kind is to be found at a number
of places in the New Testament, and it will be noted that,
when the occupation of Canaan is referred to, it is thought
of as a work of God, not as a product of the excessive zeal
of man. Stephen speaks of 'the nations which God thrust out
before our fathers'. Paul says, 'The God of this people
Israel ... when he had destroyed seven nations in the land
of Canaan, he gave them their land as an inheritance.' The
writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of the inhabitants
of Canaan who perished as 'those who were disobedient'.
Then by way of solemn warning he takes up the description of
God as 'a consuming fire' which was used by Moses, first in
warning to the Israelites as they prepared to enter the
Promised Land, and then with specific reference to God's
destruction of the Canaanites.[4] Unquestionably the New
Testament view is to take the Old Testament at its face
value. It accepts the view that the whole world was lost
in sin, without God and without hope. Not only was there
no true knowledge of God, but the most debasing features
of society found their focus in false religion. Idolatry
went hand in hand with the blunting or perverting of all
the highest human instincts, and became synonymous with
lust and cruelty and the withering even of the natural
affections. God's purpose was to establish again a knowledge
of himself in the earth. This involved the most relentless
warfare with heathenism.
God's plan was to select a man, and train him to live a life
of faith in a heathen world. Then from his descendants to
make a nation, whose whole people he might train in the
knowledge of himself. At the heart of this purpose was not
only the chosen people, but the promised land. The Lord
promised to his people a land that was inhabited by heathen
nations. He gave it to them. That this was a fact of
history was the most deeply rooted conviction of Old Testament
religion, and it is embraced without question in the New.
The entry into Canaan was only one phase of a long story.
As we trace the varying fortunes of the struggle with
heathenism, we shall see that many of the well-known problems
of the Old Testament fit into place as parts of a coherent
whole. The training of the nation began in the bitter bondage
of Egypt, which prepared the desperate Israelite people to
listen to Moses as a leader. Egypt was itself permeated with
heathen superstitions and dominated by powerful religious
cults. The Exodus deliverance was rightly seen in the Old
Testament as the overthrow of the gods of Eegypt by the God
of Israel. The New Testament similarly sees the destruction
of the first-born and the drowning of the Egyptians as acts
of God wrought for men of faith.[5] In his contest with Moses,
Pharaoh was to become the type of all those who persistently
harden their hearts against the true God. In the early stages,
he is said either to have had a hard heart, or to have made
his heart hard; but there came a time (it would seem) when
he had passed a point of no return. Those who continually
harden their hearts reach a point when they become impervious
to God's Word. God hardens their hearts, and punishments of
warning give way to punishments of destruction.[6]
There may be remorse, as with Esau; there may be regret, as
with Pharaoh; there may be pity for others, as with the rich
man in the parable of Dives and Lazarus; but one of the results
of the refusal to repent is a deepening disinclination to
repent. It is in the same light that we should regard the
reference to evil spirits and to lying spirits sent by God.
Those who persistently wish to believe lies will be allowed
to hear them and will in the end actually believe them to
their own destruction. The penalty for love of error is belief
of error. Those who suppress the truth will eventually be
given up by God to the hideous results of their own sin.[7]
It was part of God's far-reaching plan for mankind to use
this stubborn Egyptian king as a demonstration of the
impotence of idols and of his own saving might.
The remarkable deliverance of Israel was widely recognized
among the heathen peoples as having been given by the Lord
their God. But no sooner had the chosen nation left Egypt
than its very existence was threatened by a dangerous enemy,
the Amalekites. They were not a Canaanite people, but were of
Edomite stock. They are described in one place as 'the first
of the nations' and in another place as 'the sinners'. Amalek
'did not fear God', and attacked Israel at a time when they
were nearly exhausted by the rigours of the journey.[8]
The conduct of war in the Near East throughout most of the
Old Testament period was usually completely without mercy.
'The Annals of the kings of Assyria have a constant refrain
of towns destroyed, dismantled or burnt, levelled as if by
a hurricane, or reduced to a heap of rubble. It was the usual
custom also in biblical wars, from a period of the Judges to
the time of the Maccabees.'[9] There was seldom any idea of
humanity towards a defeated foe. The hope of the attacker
was usually booty or slaves, and it was considered natural
to dispose of an enemy in such a way that there could be no
fear of reprisals.
An attack by the Amalekites, therefore, threatened the
extinction of Israel. If Amalek were defeated, the survivors
would be able to scatter to their well-known haunts and
strongholds in the Negeb. But if Israel were defeated, they
would have no homeland to retreat to. The escaping remnant,
robbed of their flocks and herds, could scarcely have
survived in that inhospitable wilderness. The battle swayed
back and forth while Moses held up his hands in earnest
supplication for the preservation of the people of God. In
the end, Israel survived.
Footnotes:
1. Dt. 7:1-5; cf. Ex. 23:23 ff.; Dt. 20:16-18.
2. It is notoriously difficult to produce simple statistics,
because some quotations are found in more than one book
(e.g., several are in Exodus as well as Deuteronomy) and
because opinions differ as to which constitutes a quotation.
However, the following list of passages, which are regarded
as quotations from Deuteronomy by D. A. Huck (Synopse der
Drei Ersten Evangelien, 8th ed., Tübingen, 1931), gives
a rough idea of the extent of its use by Christ.
Mt. 4:4 Lk. 4:4 Dt. 8:3
Mt. 4:7 Lk. 4:12 Dt. 6:16
Mt. 4:10 Lk. 4:8 Dt. 6:13
Mt. 5:31 Dt. 24:1
Mt. 5:33 Dt. 5:11; 23:22
Mt. 5:38 Dt. 19:21
Mt. 15:4 Dt. 5:16
Mt. 18:16 cf. Jn. 8:17 Dt. 19:15
Mt. 19:7 Mk. 10:4 Dt. 24:1,3
Mt. 19:18, 19a Mk. 10:19 Dt. 5:16-20; 24:14
Mt. 22:24 Mk. 12:19 Lk. 20:28 Dt. 25:5,6
Mk. 12:29 Dt. 6:4
Mt. 22:37 Mk. 12:30 Lk. 10:27 Dt. 6:5
3. C. H. Dodd, According to the Scriptures (London, 1952).
4. Acts 7:45; 13:17ff.; Heb. 11:31; 12:29; Dt.4:24; 9:3.
5. Ex. 12:12; Heb. 11:28,29.
6. Ex. 7:13,14,22; 8:15,19,32; 9:7,12; 10:1,20,27; 11:10; 14:8.
See also Is. 6:10-12; Mt. 13:14,15; Jn. 12:37-40; Acts 28:25-28;
Rom. 9:17,18. In view of the change of language between Ex. 9:7
and 9:12 it seems reasonable to infer a change from voluntary to
involuntary hardening at this stage. The promise that God would
harden Pharaoh's heart, however, dates from before the time of
Moses' encounter with Pharaoh (Ex. 4:21; 7:3). In any case the
eventual divine hardening was envisaged from the beginning.
7. Rom. 1:18-32.
8. Jos. 2:9-11; Nu. 24:20; 1 Sa. 15:18; Ex. 17:8-15; Dt. 25:17-19.
9. R. de Vaux, Ancient Israel (London, 1961), p. 255.
But, as we have seen, Israel did not altogether follow this
custom. At a later date Christianity, though totally unsuccessful
in abolishing war, also succeeded in introducing into it elements
of chivalry and codes of humane conduct.
But God solemnly warned his people of the danger of this
godless nation and gave instructions that they should be
treated like the Canaanites. They were to be placed under
a herem, a solemn ban. This meant that there were to be
no slaves. All human beings were to be killed and all objects
of heathen worship were to be utterly destroyed. In some cases,
as with Jericho or with Achan or with an apostate Israelite
city, it included also the destruction of their possessions,
which meant that there was to be no booty.[1] On several
occasions in the later history Israel did in fact suffer at
the hands of the Amalekites.[2] In the early days of the
monarchy it was for disobedience in not fully applying the
herem that Saul was rejected from kingship.
It is thus in the context of the whole struggle with heathenism
that we are to see this terrible call to drive out the heathen
nations. It is the story of a group of people, few in number[3]
and almost unbelievably weak and fickle in their spiritual
loyalties, battling against mighty forces which were degrading,
seductive and ruthless. For centuries on end the very survival
of the cause of true religion seemed to hang on a thread.
Heathenism is degrading at the best of times, but there is
reason to think that the spiritual condition of the peoples
in and around Canaan at the time of the Israelite occupation
was one of particular filth. Some generations earlier Abraham
had been told that his descendants, after a period of slavery,
would come back to Canaan 'in the fourth generation; for the
iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete'.[4] It is the
normal pattern of cultures that they grow strong in the early
days of vigour and self-discipline, they hold their own with
varying fortune for a time, and then they decline as a result
of their own inner corruption. Or, to put it more biblically,
when iniquity reaches a certain point, judgment begins.
'The Amorites' here seems to be used loosely for the Canaanite
peoples as a whole, and the implication is that at the time
of the Israelite return to the country, the state of these
peoples would be ripe for judgment.
It is difficult from the dry reports of the archaeologists to
form any adequate human picture of the nature of the heathen
cults. In view of the fact that the Israelite invasion did
not lead to their eradication, much useful information as to
their nature can be gleaned from the later periods of the
history. The Old Testament directs its bitterest venom against
Baalism and the cult of Molech. Baalism was a fertility cult,
in which sexual licence was glorified as something religious
and meritorious. There were 'holy' prostitutes, male and female,
for the gratification of the worshippers. Bright describes it
in these terms: 'Canaanite religion presents us with no pretty
picture ... numerous debasing practices, including sacred
prostitution, homosexuality, and various orgiastic rites, were
prevalent.'[5]
G. E. Wright notes the element of cruelty in Canaanite mythology.
Anath, wife of Baal, loved war, and one of her adventures is
described in a poem.
Deciding on a massacre, she smote and slew from seacoast
(west) to sunrise. Filling her temple with men she barred
the doors and hurled at them chairs, tables and footstools.
Soon she waded in blood up to her knees - nay, up to her
neck. 'Her liver swelled with laughter; her heart was full
of joy.' She then washed her hands in gore and proceeded
to other occupations.
Wright then goes on to remark:
The amazing thing about the gods, as they were conceived
in Canaan, is that they had no moral character whatsoever.
In fact, their conduct was on a much lower level than that
of society as a whole, if we can judge from ancient codes
of law. Certainly the brutality of the mythology is far
worse than anything else in the Near East at that time.
Worship of these gods carried with it some of the most
demoralizing practices then in existence. Among them were
child sacrifice, a practice long since discarded in Egypt
and Babylonia, sacred prostitution, and snake-worship on
a scale unknown among other peoples.
Looking at another aspect of contemporary life he says:
When we examine the world of polytheism more closely, we
find beneath the surface a vast, dark uncomfortable world,
comparable in its complexity to those depths of unconscious
life laid bare by modern psychoanalysis. That is the world
of demons, magic, and divination.[6]
It requires the disciplined skill of a historical novelist to
convey to the imagination what such practices involve. Sholem
Asch has used his skill to portray a Molech sacrifice in an
imagined visit of our Lord to Tyre before the beginning of his
ministry.[7] Molech sacrifices were offered especially in
connection with vows and solemn promises, and children were
sacrificed as the harshest and most binding pledge of the
sanctity of a promise. Even Greek writers were disgusted with
this Phoenician practice, which became a prominent part of
the religion of Carthage, and might well have overspread the
world had Hannibal won the day in Italy. Sholem Asch portrays
the hideous fascination of the rite, with its combination
of solemnity and spectacle, of excitement and horror, or
merry-making and obscenity, in which, as its central act,
a young lad (no baby) is thrown into the red-hot arms of the
god.[8] Such practices could only prove a cancer in the life
of any society, bringing a legacy of callousness and viciousness
and fear, yet exercising a fascination which such a people's
debased moral sense could not resist. A society nurtured in
unwholesome excitement does not know how to live without it.
It is not surprising that the Valley of Hinnom (Ge-henna),
where Molech worship was practiced in the days of Manasseh,
should have provided the Jewish image of hell.[9]
Footnotes:
1. Jos. 6:18-24; 7:24, 25; Dt. 13:13-18.
2. Nu. 14:45; Jdg. 3:13; 6:3; 7:12; 1 Sa. 15.
There is also perhaps a hint that the Amalekites were
unusually cruel (1 Sa. 15:33).
3. Reasons for estimating the fighting force at about 18,000 men
may be seen in the author's 'large Numbers in the Old Testament',
Tyndale Bulletin 18 (1967), pp. 19 ff. This article has
been separately reprinted.
4. Gn 15:16.
5. J. Bright, A History of Israel (London, 1960), pp. 108 f.
6. G. E. Wright and F. V. Filson, The Westminster Historical
Atlas to the Bible (London, 1945), p. 36. G. E. Wright,
The Old Testament against its Environment (London, 1950),
p. 78.
7. Sholem Asch, The Nazarene (London, 1939), pp. 347 ff.
See also C. F. Pfeiffer, Patriarchal Age (Michigan, 1961),
chapter 9.
8. A late Bronze Age temple at Amman of 1400-1250 BC provides the
best proof to date of child sacrifices in this area. J. B. Hennessey
('Excavation of a Late Bronze Age Temple at Amman' (Palestine
Exploration Quarterly (1966), p. 162) writes: 'Two outstanding
features associated with the use of the temple were the enormous
quantities of animal, bird and human bones and the abundant evidence
of fire ... There can be little doubt that the temple was associated
with a fire cult. It had a comparatively short life. The initial
foundation probably dates just before 1400 BC. The latest material
would suggest that the building went out of use sometime during
the thirteenth century BC.' According to an oral report (which I
have not been able to confirm) a large proportion of the bones
around the altar were human, in age from 0 to 16.
9. 2 Ch. 33:6; cf. Lk. 12:5, etc.
These heathen practices were not only degrading and seductive,
they were often backed by ruthless power. The popular picture
of the priests of Baal as ignorant dervishes serving some
primitive and insignificant cult can be shattered by the
sight of a single photograph. The archaeologist normally has
to be content with buried ruins, from which an idea of the
original buildings can be reconstructed only by laborious
processes of deduction. But at Palmyra it is possible to this
day to see the remains of a Baal temple, its glorious columns
rising 68 feet in the air, beautiful in proportions and
beautiful in design. Although, of course, its relation to the
Baalim of Canaan cannot be determined with great precision,
yet merely to see this temple is to open the imagination to
the sort of thing that Elijah was up against. Here was a
religion exceedingly attractive to the sensual nature of
fallen man, unlike the austere simplicity and severe morality
of the Mosaic religion. Here was a religion which won the
devotion of the mightiest in the land, and was popular with
the common people. Ahab, with his ivory palace and his 2,000
chariots, and Jezebel, daughter of the priest-king of Tyre
and Sidon, were immensely wealthy, and she at least was
utterly ruthless, thinking nothing of compelling the people
of Jezreel to commit perjury to effect the murder of Naboth.
She introduced 850 prophets. The true prophets were slain,
the altars of the Lord were broken down, a remnant of faithful
prophets were driven into hiding and Elijah had to flee for
his life. When Elijah lay down and asked that he might die,
he felt that even the revelation of divine power on Mount
Carmel had not only failed to check Jezebel's schemes, but
had goaded her into fresh zeal. He felt helpless against the
might of a pitiless totalitarian regime. The struggle went on
in the reign of Ahab's successor, Ahaziah. Elijah boldly
rebuked him for turning to a Philistine Baal. The king sent
soldiers to capture Elijah, but on two successive occasions
'the fire of God came down from heaven and consumed them',
and Elijah escaped with his life.' It was at a moment when
the cause of true religion was in dire peril that God
repeatedly and dramatically intervened to vindicate his
prophet.
The famous tale of Elisha and the she-bears is a sequel to
the same story. Elisha has sometimes been pictured as a
savage old man, who, becawe he could not take an innocent
joke about his baldness, roundly cursed a number of little
children, in response to which God sent two she-bears who
killed no fewer than forty-two of them. On almost every count
this is a misrepresentation. Elisha was not old; he was in
fact a very young man just starting out on his ministry which
was to last nearly sixty years. He certainly was not savage,
as may be seen from the way in which he intervened to spare
the Syrian army.[2] 'Go up' was presumably said in mockery
of the reported ascension of Elijah - a sneering request
for a repeat performance. The precise connotation of
'baldhead' is not clear, but it was evidently no mere boyish
rudeness. Some take it to refer to a prophetic tonsure, in
which case it was direct ridicule of the prophetic office;
ridicule not merely of Elijah and Elisha, but of the God
whose mouthpiece they claimed to be. Others think that it
has nothing to do with physical baldness (since men in the
Near East usually cover their heads), but that it was a
highly offensive current epithet. 'Little children' (AV)
is certainly misleading. The Hebrew
nearim qetannim
could be 'small boys' (RSV, NEB), though the Revised Version
marginal translation 'young lads' seems to fit the context
better.[3] Seeing there were forty-two of them hurt by the
bears (and one would imagine that many more got away unharmed
than were hurt), it was evidently a great mob of young roughs
deliberately organized for the occasion. To muster so many
from a small town they would presumably have ranged from
grown-up lads to small boys, with the lads in the lead and
the small boys gleefully chanting after them. The text does
not say that any of them were killed. 'Tearing' implies severe
wounds. Whether any of them were fatal or not, we do not know.
In truth Elisha was somewhat like a diffident ministerial
student straight from college, newly ordained and quite
untried, left alone in a hostile world. Elijah was gone, but
Jezebel was still very much present. Elisha was called to put
his vocation to the test. He set out from the Jordan Valley
for the Northern Kingdom, where his master's enemy still
held sway, doubtless with fear and foreboding in his heart,
yet determined openly to maintain a witness for the Lord.
A prospect which daunted the old warrior Elijah would
certainly daunt this young and gentle man. He chose Bethel
as his starting-point, the town which was notorious as the
centre where Jeroboam had set up the idolatrous calf at the
time when Israel in the North broke away from Judah in the
South. When he arrived, weary in body as well as in heart,
after the long 3,000-ft ascent out of the Rift Valley up to
the mountain ridge, he had an unpleasant surprise. His
coming had been reported, and a hot reception had been
arranged. The lads, prompted no doubt by their elders, who
had no use for Elijah, Elisha or anything they stood for,
sallied forth in truculent mood to let him know the kind of
welcome that Bethel was preparing for him. In those days
life was cheap, and Elisha's life was in grave danger; and,
with the possibility of Elisha's elimination from the struggle,
it was a critical point in the history of mankind - for it
meant that the whole cause of true religion was threatened
with extinction. What was Elisha to do? Just as the apostle
Paul pronounced a curse on those who preached a false gospel,
just as our Lord bade his disciples solemnly to shake off
the dust from their feet against those who would not receive
his teaching, so Elisha solemnly cursed these boys. He did
not pray for angry she-bears, but God saw fit to respond in
this particular way in order that they should learn, even by
painful means, that it is dangerous folly to defy God and his
Word.
The difference between the curse of Elisha and that of the
apostles is that in his case retribution came immediately,
whereas in theirs retribution was promised for the day of
judgment. 'If any one will not receive you or listen to your
words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that
house or town. Truly, I say to you, it shall be more tolerable
on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than
for that town.' Our Lord said that on the day of judgment it
would be himself who would address those on his left hand as
'You cursed'. But in the case of Elisha, as in the case of
Elymas the magician who was struck with blindness, the need
was for an immediate lesson.[4]
No doubt the story of the she-bears was rapidly passed from
mouth to mouth throughout the Northern Kingdom, for Elisha
proceeded with his long ministry unmolested, never again
(as far as we know) having to be the agent of an act of
judgment. As far as Jezebel was concerned, the lesson was
pressed home still further, for she met her deserved end at
the hands of the evil man Jehu, in literal fulfilment of
the grim prophecy of Elijah, who had foretold that as a
reward for the murder of Naboth: 'The dogs shall eat Jezebel
within the bounds of Jezreel.'[5]
It was in such times and in such ways that God raised up and
preserved the line of prophets, who were to lead the battle
against heathenism. The struggle was to be continued by Amos,
Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah and others right into the days of
the Babylonian captivity and beyond. But for the initial
establishment of this 'goodly fellowship of the prophets'
God saw fit to show his hand in special ways.
THE SPIRITUAL WEAKNESS OF ISRAEL
The heathenism from which Israel emerged and against which
it had to struggle bore all the characteristics of its author.
Just as Satan may at one time appear as a roaring lion to
terrify the saints, and at another as an angel of light to
deceive them, so his false religions possessed the same
qualities - now towering above them in pitiless might, now
enticing them with entrancing seductiveness. Over against
the might of heathen idolatry the Bible is at pains to set
with chilling candour the starkness of Israel's physical and
moral weakness. The patriarchs learn the life of faith only
because they are taken bodily out of the city life of Ur and
Haran, and are made to live a self-contained nomadic existence,
separated from their heathen neighbours. Lot, when he gets
involved in city life, is soon in trouble.
The Israelites in Egypt evidently quickly lost the sense of
divine call which had so powerfully moved Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob. It required the agonies of slavery to bring them to
the point where they would follow Moses. In spite of the
spectacular deliverance which brought them out of Egypt,
the people as a whole seem never truly to have embraced his
teachings in their hearts or in their minds. Throughout they
were a 'stiff-necked people', stubborn and rebellious. It is
one long story of trouble. Though Moses himself had a penetrating
understanding of the truths he taught, the people seem to have
understood little. They grumbled at the hardships and hankered
for Egypt again. When Moses' back was turned, even Aaron was
prevailed upon to make them a golden calf to worship. Under
Korah, Dathan and Abiram, Moses had to face a dangerous rebellion.
There is a strange silence concerning the period of some
thirty-eight years when apparently the Israelite headquarters
was established at Kadesh Barnea.[6] of the period between
the return of the spies with their discouraging reports of
the land and the final departure from Kadesh, we know very
little. It seems as though it was necessary for a whole
generation to die off before Moses could start again in
earnest in an attempt to weld the people into a God-fearing
nation. He appears to have had little hold over them. The
law was more honoured in the breach than in the observance.
Circumcision was not practised; not only were the sacrifices
not faithfully observed, but heathen images were made for
worship. It is likely enough that the tribes went their
separate ways to forage for a subsistence in the inhospitable
wilderness. When at last Moses led them forward once more,
they quickly fell a prey to the attractions of Baal worship
on Mount Peor. Moses, acting under God's orders, exercised
the full rigour of his authority and dictated that all who had
'yoked themselves to Baal' be forthwith publicly hanged. At
the same time a devastating plague, which was recognized as
a token of divine wrath, struck the camp.[7]
Such was the background of human frailty against which the
uncompromising commands of Deuteronomy were delivered not
long after in the plains of Moab. It was clear beyond all
possibility of doubt to one who knew the spiritual state
of the people of Israel, that, if they were to live cheek
by jowl with the heathen, they would be incapable of
maintaining their beliefs and standards. And so it proved.
There was an outward allegiance to the Lord under Joshua's
leadership, and Joshua himself faithfully carried out the
command to destroy the inhabitants of the captured cities,
but Joshua was well aware of the shallowness of his people's
loyalty. There were those who still served Akkadian gods, and
there were those who were inclining towards Canaanite deities,[8]
and it was necessary for Joshua to issue a direct challenge
before he died, as to whether they would serve the Lord or
not. When Joshua's generation had died, the rot set in. The
period of the judges was a time of idolatry, anarchy and
disintegration; it was a time of spiritual darkness relieved
only for brief periods when some leader, often with only the
crudest faith, rose to challenge Israel's oppressors in the
name of Israel's God.
It was not till the days of Samuel that there appeared some
hope of a turn for the better. There was a revival of national
consciousness and a desire for national unity, which led to
the establishment of the monarchy. With this revival there
came reminders of the uncompromising nature of the Lord's
demands. Thus Saul was rejected for ignoring Samuel's
call for a complete break with Baalism and for failing to
'blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven'.[9]
There were instances of disobedience being met by sudden death.
With the recovery of the ark from the Philistines, some of the
inhabitants of Bethshemesh presumed to look inside the ark,
and seventy of them died at God's hand. An Israelite, named
Uzzah, presumably intending to be helpful, put out his hand
to steady the ark and was struck dead - for disobeying God-given
regulations. David, who withessed the event, was first angry
and then afraid.[1]
Footnotes:
1. 2 Ki. 1 and see D. J. Wiseman, 'Ahab', The New Bible Dictionary
(London, 1962), p. 20.
2. 2 Ki. 2:23 f.; 6:1-23.
3. In this passage they are in fact called nearim qetannim and also eeladim. The (singular) words na'ar
and yeled both have a wide range of meanings. Both are used of
Moses aged three months (Ex. 2:6).
na'ar is used most often for 'youths', sometimes for professional soldiers (R. de Vaux, Ancient Israel, pp. 220 f.). na'ar
is used of Ishmael at the age of 14 and of Joseph at 17 (Gn. 21:12; 37:2).
The addition of qaton ('small' or 'young') does not seem to make
for much greater precision. When Samuel went to anoint David, he and his
older brothers are all nearim and David
is the 'young' na'ar (1 Sa. 16:11), although he had already served
for a time as an armour-bearer. (It is hoped to discuss 1 Samuel 15-18,
which includes Saul's supposed failure to recognize his former armour-bearer,
in a later publication.) Solomon in the humility of prayer speaks of himself
as a 'young' na'ar (1 Ki. 3:7). Naaman's flesh after washing was
like the flesh of a 'young' na'ar (2 Ki. 5:14).
yeled ranges from baby Moses to the contemporaries of Rehoboam at
the time of his accession when he was 41 years old (1 Ki. 12:8; 14:21).
The meaning of both expressions must therefore be determined by the
demands of the context.
4. Mt. 10:14,15; cf. Mk. 6:11; Lk. 9:5; 10:11; Acts 13:51; Mt. 25:41; Acts 13:11.
5. 1 Ki.21:23; 2 Ki. 9:30-37
6. Nu. 20:1; 33:36
7. Jos. 5:5; Am. 5:25 f.; Acts 7:42 f.; Nu. 25. It has been
conjectured that part of the reason for the severity of the
treatment of the Canaanites may have been physical. A society
riddled with disease, having itself built up a strong resistance,
may be catastrophically dangerous to an immigrant population.
H. Zinsser, Rats, Lice and Historye (New York, 1960),
gives numerous startling examples of this. Be this as it may,
the primary reason for avoiding contamination is clearly spiritual.
8. Jos. 24:14,15.
9. 1 Sa. 7:3; Dt. 25:19; 1 Sa. 15:23; 28:18. The grisly account
tells us that 'Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord'
(1 Sa. 15:33). The word translated 'hewed in pieces' is obscure.
There is certainly no need to suppose that he was tortured before
being killed. Nonetheless it seems at first sight a very unpleasant
incident. It comes as a salutary shock, therefore, to find at the
central point of the narrative the substance of an Old Testament
quotation which our Lord used more than once. The whole passage
is concerned with Saul's attitude of heart towards God, and is
summarized in the saying: 'To obey is better than sacrifice'
(1 Sa. 15:22). This in turn is taken up by Hosea (6:6) and reproduced
in the form: 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice' (RV). The Hebrew
word hesed, translated 'mercy', is a rich Old Testament term
with a range of meanings including 'solidarity', 'devotion', 'loyalty',
'steadfast love', 'kindness', 'grace'. In the context it is clear
that by 'mercy' Hosea meant 'loyal devotion', which manifests itself
in separation from false gods and obedience to the Lord from the heart.
Our Lord takes up the quotation of Hosea and applies it to situations
where a right attitude of heart is contrasted with merely formal
correctness (Mt. 9:13; 12:7). This is not of course a direct endorsement
of 1 Sa. 15 by our Lord, but he must have been fully aware of this
memorable passage when he adopted the saying for his own use.
It is clear from the account in 1 Chronicles that the whole
incident deeply impressed David with the need for obedience
to God's commands. We are not told the full circumstances, but
we know enough to get a good idea of the real significance of
the event. It was a critical moment in the training of the
Israelite nation. National observance of the law of Moses had
been virtually impossible and had almost disappeared during
the time of the judges. Now, under David, was the chance to
begin again. As so often in the formative stages of the history
of the chosen people, God accompanied the new beginning with
a sharp warning. The Mosaic regulations were elaborately framed
to emphasize the yawning gulf between a holy God and an unholy
people. The ark was to stand in the holy of holies, where God's
presence was manifested. The holy of holies was to be entered
only once a year, by a high priest specially set apart, after
special sacrifices and purifications. If ever the ark had to
be moved, it was never to be touched or looked upon by any but
the priests on pain of death, but was to be fitted with shafts
and carefully covered over. Then it was to be carried on the
shoulders, not of ordinary Israelites, but of Levites.[2]
Now David knew much of the joy of communion with God, but he
evidently had a very imperfect realization of his holiness,
and when it came to the re-establishment of the Mosaic order
he ignored the God-given way. Not long before Israel had tried
to use the ark in a magical way. Magic tries to manipulate
supernatural powers, whereas true piety puts itself into the
hands of God to be used according to his will. The Israelites
had brought the ark into the battle in order to make use of
God for their own ends. God's response was to allow them to
be defeated by the heathen Philistines and the ark to be
captured. But the lesson of obedience had not been learnt.
Uzzah was presumably a Levite, but neither he nor David had
given serious attention to the injunctions of the divine law.
Instead they copied the example of the Philistines and put the
ark upon a new cart. Not unjustly (since Uzzah had infringed
a divine regulation, and since, in any case, all men, being
transgressors of God's law, deserve to die and are heading
for death), yet unexpectedly, God strikes Uzzah down. There
is no suggestion that this meant eternal death and Uzzah
himself had no suffering, yet it was a shocking thing to those
who saw it or heard about it and a terrible thing for his
family. David and the whole nation spent three months in
digesting the lesson. When the ark was finally brought to
Jerusalem, it was carried on the shoulders of the Levites,
and sacrifices were offered.[3] At least some dent had been
made in Israel's perennial disregard for God's law.
The intensity of David's devotion to the Lord had raised the
spiritual life of the people to a new high-water mark, but,
in spite of a promising start, Solomon threw away all that
had been gained. 'He loved many foreign women', and 'his wives
turned away his heart after other gods'.[4] The heathen
abominations came back in a flood. After his death the kingdom
was divided, and Jeroboam established the idolatrous centres
of worship at Dan and Bethel, to keep his people from visiting
Jerusalem.
Century after century the struggle went on, with a persecuted
minority battling against the incorrigible perversity of the
mass of the people. It required the Babylonian captivity to
work a decisive and lasting change of outlook. But even when
they had returned from captivity the struggle was by no means
over, though they had at least come to a national recognition
of the Lord as the one true God and to a national repudiation
of idolatry. No-one can pretend that the spiritual life of
Jewry was even then at a very high level. It had taken the
best part of a thousand years of failure and suffering to
teach the people of Moses to heed the Shema; 'Hear,
O Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord.' Such was the rate
of learning of those who thought that they could safely
fraternize with their Canasnite neighbours.
THE REALITY OF TEMPORAL JUDGMENT
It is worth looking again at the precise terms of the commands
given regarding the Canaanites. The primary concern throughout
is the total ejection of their evil religions from the land.
God is going to clear away the seven nations. Israel must make
no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. In particular,
they are not to marry with them, for this will turn them away
to serve other gods. The Baal altars and pillars and the Asherim
are to be totally destroyed. God keeps covenant with those who
love him, and requites to their face those who hate him, by
destroying them. 'Not because of your righteousness or the
uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their
land; but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord
your God is driving them out.'[5] It is to be noted that these
commands are to be thought of, not primarily in terms of one
nation against another, but in terms of those who love God
against those who hate him. As in the days before the Flood
and before the destruction of Sodom there was a way of escape
for those who sought the true God, so now there is room within
the company of Israel for those who are not Israelites by race.
There are the noteworthy examples of Rahab (who by faith gave
friendly welcome to the spies) and Ruth the Moabitess, who were
both ancestresses of Jesus. There was the 'mixed multitude' who
came out of Egypt with the Israelites. There was Hobab, the son
of the priest of Midian, who was invited to join the Israelites.[6]
Job, who dwelt in the land of Uz, was regarded as an example of
blameless piety. In the very context which we are discussing,
special injunctions are given for the care of the sojourner.
He is to observe the same laws, and he is to be received in
love as one of themselves: 'The stranger who sojourns with you
shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love
him as yourself.' There is certainly no obstacle to the
individual repentance of a Canaanite, nor even presumably to
migration, since the conquest was to be little by little. The
one indispensable requisite is that the centres of idolatry
must be eradicated from the Promised Land, and the people are
to be taught to 'utterly detest and abhor' their abominations.
Against the Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites and other more
distant nations there was to be no such policy of extermination.[8]
Christians would find no great difficulty with the overthrow
of the Canaanites had it taken place at the hands of their
heathen neighbours. It is a commonplace of history that
civilizations grow weak through their inner corruptions, and
it is part of the continuing providence of God that such should
be swept away. It is a judgment of God which is readily understood
and accepted. It is no more than the desert of those who have
become slaves of evil practices. There is possibly a hint that
this process was at work in Canaan. The Israelites were told
concerning the Canaanites, 'The Lord your God will send hornets
among them ... and throw them into great confusion, until they
are destroyed.' J. Garstang believed that 'the hornet' was the
Egyptian Empire, which first of all dominated and disarmed the
area, and then left the nations unprotected.[9] Be that as it may,
part of the judgment at least was in this case put into the hands
of God's people. It was not left to godless nations to destroy
each other under the silent, over-ruling permission of God. It
was a direct injunction of God to one relatively God-fearing
nation to drive out seven particularly evil nations.
Footnotes:
1. 1 Sa. 6:19; 2 Sa. 6:6-9; 1 Ch. 13:5-14.
2. Nu. 4:5,15,19,20.
3. 1 Sa. 4; 6:7 f.; 1 Ch. 15:11-28.
4. 1 Ki. 11:1-8.
5. Dt. 7:1-11; 9:5.
6. Heb.11:31; Ex.12:38; Nu. 11:4; 10:29-33.
7. Dt. 10:18,19; Ex.20:10; Lv. 24:16,22; 19:34.
8. Ex.23:30; Dt. 7:26; 2:5,9,19; 20:10.
9. Dt. 7:20-23; cf. Ex. 23:28; Jos. 24:12. J. Garstang,
Joshua-Judges (London, 1931), pp.112 ff., 258 ff.
The distinction between the permissive will of God and the
expressed will of God is important, but it cannot rightly be
used to cut all the knots in the mysteries of providence. Israel
suffered what she deserved when the Lord permitted the haughty
Assyrians to act unwittingly as 'the rod of my anger'
against her.[1] It would have been perfectly just if God had
expressly directed some nation wittingly to wield the rod of
chastisement against her. Just as it is a moral, if singularly
unpleasant, calling to be a state executioner, so it could
be a moral, though very unpleasant, duty for one nation to
inflict God's chastisement upon another. Everything turns upon
the reality and certainty of the divine calling to do the
deed. If we are to believe the records of the Pentateuch,
the command given through Moses was inescapably clear in
itself, and the credentials of Moses were demonstrated
repeatedly and with immense force. The only question which
remains is the probable effect on Israel of carrying out
such a command. The hangman's job might have a most undesirable
effect on a morbid or sadistic nature. Would Israel suffer
morally, in the execution of such a duty? The answer must
surely depend on the spirit in which it was carried out. If
it was done for material gain or in love of cruelty, the results
would be appalling. If it was done with an intense realization
of the holiness of God, and of the horror both of their own
sins and of those of their enemies, it could serve as an
indelible lesson.
That this was the spirit enjoined by God is emphasized again
and again. The judgment was upon sin, not upon enemy nations
as such. If one is tempted to suspect that the Old Testament
merely rationalized Israel's need for living space, it is well
to remember that in fact God kept his people waiting for
400 years till the time for judgment on Canaan was ripe and
that (when completely helpless) he rescued them from slavery.
Their occupation of the land was no matter for nationalistic
pride, it was the Lord's doing. And the Lord's commands were
every bit as severe with regard to erring Israelites as they
were to the Canaanites. When Achan sought material profit from
the conquest of Jericho, he and his family and his animals and
his tent and his ill-gotten gains were all stoned and burnt.[2]
The inclusion of women and children in such judgments is
sometimes regarded as the refinement of cruelty. Yet, not only
is the family principle itself biblical, but in this case it
might also have proved practical and humane. As far as the
heathen were concerned, the danger from female devotees of Baal
(as was evidenced by the daughters of Moab on the threshold
of the Promised Land[3] and later by Jezebel) was quite as
great as that from the men; and what sort of society would
it be for either the women or the children, if (as would have
been almost inevitable) they were reduced to the status of
foreign slaves and were left with no menfolk of their own
nationality to give them support?
The stoning of Achan was no isolated case. The death penalty,
as we have seen, was prescribed for a whole series of sins:
Molech worship, spiritualism, adultery, sex relations within
the prohibited degrees, homosexual acts. Anyone who tried to
entice Israel to follow other gods was to be stoned; any
city that was drawn away by such teaching was to be utterly
destroyed, with all its inhabitants and all its spoil. It was
to be offered as a whole burnt-offering to the Lord, and never
to be rebuilt. A man found gathering sticks on the sabbath
was stoned, as was also one who blasphemed the name of the
Lord. Not only were the laws severe, but God's own treatment
of his people when they disobeyed was relentless in its
severity, as the whole book of Judges bears witness. 'They
forsook the Lord, and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth.
So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he
gave them over to plunderers, who plundered them; and he
sold them into the power of their enemies round about, so
that they could no longer withstand their enemies. Whenever
they marched out, the hand of the Lord was against them for
evil, as the Lord had warned, and as the Lord had sworn to
them; and they were in sore straits.'[4]
It would be hard to conceive of any system better calculated
to bring home the limitless chasm which separates the worship
of the true God and the worship of an evil being excogitated
from the minds of sinful men. Israel was taught that it is
the difference between life and death - between finding one's
true end and missing it, the difference (as we should say)
between heaven and hell. Such gods are no gods, but deluders
and debasers of their worshippers. A lost world, without God
and without hope, desperately needed the true God. But how
could the world learn till Israel had first learnt? God's
dealings are terrible. But is there any reason to think that
Israel could have learnt her lessons with less severe
treatment? Indeed, when we view God's providential treatment of
the world as a whole, is there any reason to think that mankind
generally could have learnt its lessons better with less severe
judgments?
Put this way, the credibility of the whole Old Testament scheme
of things takes on a different light.
Yet the nagging doubt keeps returning. Can so dreadful a plan
really be right? Is there a flaw in the reasoning somewhere?
When analysed, this doubt seems to resolve itself into four
questions. 1. Can we really square this teaching with that of
Christ? 2. Can we really be sure that it was a command of God
and not simply a shrewdly calculated policy of Moses? 3. Could
not such teaching be used as an argument for the propagation
of the faith today by means of the sword? 4. Could it not be
used as an argument for harshness in society and ruth lessness
in war- making by the modern state?
But to bring these doubts out into the open is largely to answer
them. As we have already seen, our Lord does not minimize the
severity of God's judgment; he underlines it. He does not
repudiate the idea of material force, saying of the Flood in
Noah's day which 'swept them all away', 'So will be the coming
of the Son of man'; and of those who are not ready at his coming
that they will be sent where men 'weep and gnash their teeth'.
He does not question the judgment on the people of Sodom, when
'fire and sulphur rained from heaven and destroyed them all';
to him it is a warning which we are to remember.[5] There may
be difficulty in squaring the teaching of Deuteronomy with that
of some Jesus of modern invention. But as far as the Jesus of
the Gospels is concerned, there is an inescapable and indeed
a fearful consistency between them, for (as we have seen) the
judgments of hell as portrayed by Jesus are more terrible even
than the judgments of Deuteronomy.
Nagging doubts about the historicity of the records can be laid
to rest only by much careful, prayerful and honest thought,
culminating in a decision. Careful thought must be given to the
question, 'Has the history of the Old Testament been proved
to be inaccurate?' It is not of course possible to prove the
Old Testament to be historically accurate throughout (only a
small proportion of generally accepted conclusions concerning
ancient history are demonstratively proved). Belief in the
entire truth of the Old Testament can be derived only from a
belief in revelation and inspiration. The student who wishes
honestly to face the challenge of modern biblical criticism
must ask the negative question, 'Is the Bible's inaccuracy
proved beyond reasonable doubt?' When anti-supernatural
presuppositions are laid aside, it is our conviction that
close examination of the facts does not create even a presumptive
case against the Bible, certainly not a demonstrative one. There
is no proof either way.[6] When this is realized, a stage has
been reached where the decision has to be made whether or not
to trust Christ as a teacher. When the die is cast the results
are inevitable. Christ accepted the history of the Old Testament
and Christ loved the book of Deuteronomy. Doubts will be laid
to rest in proportion to our ability to trust him.
Perhaps the horror of the misuse of these scriptures causes
the most persistent uneasiness. They have been misused in the
past, and they may be misused again. But this objection, though
very searching, is not really valid. Of course the Devil can
cite Scripture for his purpose. He did so during our Lord's
temptation,[7] and he has done so all down the history of the
church. 'Cursed be every one who hangs on a tree' must have
been a goad in the mind of Saul the persecutor, as he thought
of the Christian's belief in a crucified Messiah. Thinking to
make himself a eunuch for the kingdom of God's sake, Origen is
said to have castrated himself. Christians have persecuted
unbelievers into the church, because our Lord said 'Compel them
to come in'. The great churches and the little sects have all
erred. Every heresy and every malpractice have their text. People
will sit in filth for a lifetime on the tops of poles, they will
climb mountains to await the Second Coming, they will indulge
in wild orgies, they will set up fanatical commonwealths, they
will smell out innocent people and burn them as witches or
heretics, they will argue the flatness of the earth - every
kind of wickedness and folly will seek to justify itself from
Scripture. Yet this is no argument against the truth of Scripture,
nor against its entire wholesomeness when rightly understood.
It is part of God's training for his church that she should
learn in love and humility to know his mind from the Scriptures.
It is part of his training also that she should at times be
allowed, through pride and malice, to taste the bitterness of
the misinterpretation of her holy book. It is clear enough that
the training of Israel in the Old Testament and the evangelization
of the world in the New are two totally different things. Israel
was to be established as a self-contained nation in a single
country. The church was to be drawn out of every nation to act
as a centre of witness in every country. Her weapons were not
to be carnal. She was to preach the Word, and to bear her witness
by patient suffering. It is unthinkable that any Christian group
could rightly claim to have received a direct, specific command
to slaughter their enemies without mercy; this alone justified
the Israelites in their actions.
Misuse of the Bible has not, of course, been the prerogative of
the lunatic fringe of the Christian church. Living Christianity
is a force of truth and love which influences the whole of a man's
life and all his relationships. Inevitably and inescapably a
Christian group has a social (and eventually a political) power
directly proportional to its spiritual power. No matter how
other-worldly the emphasis of the movement and how averse in
theory to any partnership between church and state, it cannot
(if genuine) remain passive in face of social injustice, when
it alone has the power effectively to challenge it. So the
Quakers worked to reform the prisons, the Methodists built up
the trades unions, the Clapham sect fought slavery, Shaftesbury
battled against the horrors of the Industrial Revolution, the
Salvation Army worked among the drop-outs and the Pentecostalists
among the drug addicts. But involvement in the real world means
a partial Christianizing of society, bringing with it an outward
approval of Christian ideals. At this stage selfishness and
avarice are still the primary motives in society, but selfishness
and avarice will seek every possible means to disguise themselves
in respectable Christian clothing. If the Bible is regarded as
authoritative it will be ransacked to produce evidence for evil
practices. It will not be a balanced statement of the whole
teaching of the Bible on a topic, but it will consist of
one-sided (and often misinterpreted) extracts. It will be
cymcal rationalization.
In this way, because of the hardness of men's hearts, the
toleration of a very humane form of slavery in the Old Testament
was used to justify the barbarities of the West Indian slave
traffic. The biblical emphasis on the freedom and responsibility
of the individual was used to justify the callousness of
unbridled capitalism. Little attention was paid to the
denunciation of prophets such as Isaiah, who said:
'Woe to those who join house to house,
who add field to field
until there is no more room.'
Nor to the law which required that every fifty years lands
acquired by the richer families were to be returned to their
original owners.[8] The Bible's recognition of governmental
authority was used to justify uncritical acceptance of
gross inequalities of privilege and wealth - little heed
was paid either to the egalitarian ideals of the holy nation
redeemed from a common slavery, or to the denunciations
of the rich in both Testaments. The recognition of the
significance of race and nationhood in a fallen world has
been used to justify the domination of tiny white minorities
over their black neighbours.[9] Selected texts have been used
to exaggerate and polarize differences of belief between
Catholics and Protestants, so promoting fear and hatred
between communities, in disregard of the profound truths which
they have in common and of our Lord's exhortations to his
followers to love one another. The quite special case of
Israel's dispossession of the Canaanites has been used to
justify lack of love towards the heathen, resulting in
missionary torpor and military rigour by so-called Christian
nations, in defiance of the whole New Testament and in disregard
even of the Old Testament's concern for other nations. This is
the supreme example of the Devil citing Scripture for his own
purposes.
Footnotes:
1. Is. 10:5.
2. Jos. 7.
3. Nu. 25.
4. Dt. 13; Nu. 15:36; Lv. 24:10-23; Jdg. 2:13-15.
5. Mt. 24:37-51; Lk. 17:26-32.
6. The author has a book in preparation on the historicity of the
Old Testament.
7. Ps. 91:11,12; Mt.4:6; Lk.4:10,11.
8. Is. 5:8; Lv. 25.
9. The Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11, which follows immediately
on the catalogue of nations in the previous chapter, seems to show
that the differentiation of language (which may not have been
instantaneous) and the rise of separated tribes and nations is part
of God's plan for the preservation of the human race. The barriers
between peoples are like the groynes on the sea-shore which prevent
the tides sweeping the beach away and eating into the land. The
Nimrods (Gn. 10:8-10) of this world who would set up world-wide
tyrannies are continually thwarted by human abhorrence of domination
by a foreigner.
Special laws governing foreigner in the land of Israel (Dt. 15:3; 23:20)
have been seen by some as justifying racial discrimination. But the
distinction in this case is not between those of different race, but
between those who belong permanently to the community and those who
do not. As we have seen, a foreign slave may become part of the
community and share its covenant privileges. But a foreign trader who
is temporarily resident and who has no permanent stake in the welfare
of the community obviously cannot claim all the privileges of the
covenant people.
It would be idle to pretend that it is easy for the Christian
always to know what is the right course. The church qua
church can certainly never rightly take up arms for the
propagation of the gospel. The state on the other hand has a
duty to protect its citizens from both internal and external
dangers, and may become involved in revolution or war. The
church's weapon is the cross, but the state's weapon is the
sword - and the Christian, with duties to both, will find
inescapable tensions and difficulties of conscience. Problems
of political and international action are immensely complicated
and it would be unreasonable to expect often to find neat
Christian answers. Where Christianity is strong, it is
particularly difficult to disentangle religion and politics.
In the Middle Ages when the Muslim pincers began to close on
Europe, resistance was a matter of political survival, but
inevitably the ensuing conflicts with the Turks were seen as
wars of religion. The survival of Christianity was secured in
Europe, but at the expense of great damage to the Christian
image. Similar problems face the modern world as militant
atheist states face countries which have not yet formally
discarded their Christian tradition. The Christian's duty to
the state is perplexing, involving judgments precariously based
on fragmentary knowledge; it means that his loyalty to his
country can never be uncritical or absolute. But his duty to
the gospel is clear: his best energies must be thrown into
uplifting the cross of Christ on both sides of every political
divide.
Some perhaps will still want to argue that a return to a belief
in the severity of God must tend towards a harsh and cruel
society. It is indeed sadly true that nations and groups,
loudly vocal in their profession of Christian orthodoxy, have
often been guilty in the past and are still guilty today of
ruthlessness and oppression. Two things need to be said about
this. The first - not by way of exoneration, but in the
interests of fairness and realism - is to note the difficulty
of the position of the well-intentioned statesman or politician.
A national leader, be he Protestant (as in, say, South Africa),
Catholic (as in Spain) or Orthodox (as in Greece), Muslim
(as in Pakistan), Hindu (as in India) or Marxist (as in the
USSR), will from time to time be faced (particularly if his
regime is precariously based) with grim options, all of which
are undesirable. He may see that the use of force is necessary
if the society is to be held together and decide to use it,
knowing that relatively innocent people will get hurt. Or he
may have on his hands seemingly insoluble problems of race,
in which the ideal of a harmonious multi-cultural society or
of a single and more or less homogeneous community seems
equally unobtainable. The politician is caught up in the
corporate sin of humanity, and in practice the highest criterion
he can invoke in matters of public concern is enlightened
self-interest. The spectator who does not carry the burden of
direct responsibility needs to be charitable in his judgments
and to accept his share of blame for the evils of political
decisions. It seems unrealistic to imagine that the presence
of a minority of (very sinful) Christians in a less-than
semi-Christian society should be expected to produce a situation
where strife and violence cease. Nevertheless a leaven of people
with a high sense of justice and a genuine love for God may
exert an influence out of all proportion to their numbers,
occasionally preventing strife and often mitigating its miseries.
Secondly, it is erroneous to think that a truly godly severity,
which comes from a recognition of the exceeding sinfulness of
sin, especially one's own, can ever be divorced from love,
which comes from a knowledge of that sin's forgiveness.
Sadism can rationalize itself as exemplifying
biblical severity, but in fact cruelty and love are mutually
exclusive, whereas godly severity and godly love are complementary.
The just exercise of authority does not make for a harsh society.
It makes for a stable society, where there is little incentive
to crime. It is injustice and laxness of authority which breed
first violence and then callousness. Severity proceeding from
love is neither excessive nor is it usually resented. It
provides the framework for a caring society. It has yet to be
proved that a society can work without an element of severity.
Authority, backed ultimately by sanctions, is necessary for
any society. Permissiveness, or the removal of sanctions, is a
short-term luxury which lives on the capital built up in times
of discipline. It ill-behoves a society which is in danger of
disintegrating to decry authority and its sanctions simply
because authority is capable of abuse. A severity which gains
its inspiration from the severity of Christ's teaching is
wholesome and neither harsh nor cruel.
The danger of the misuse of the Bible to justify cruelty or to
promote evil for political ends is real, but it does not in
fact make the severity of God's dealings with the Canaanites
incredible. The severity of God's dealings as he trained his
people in the principles of holiness becomes intelligible when
we see what was at stake. It was nothing less than the salvation
of the world. The Chosen People was the precious casket in which
was to be placed a priceless jewel: the Messiah of Israel and
the Saviour of men. Against this people Satan directed his
fiercest attacks, and to the preservation of this people in
righteousness God directed his fiercest defence. The battle
was real and bloody. Humanly speaking their very survival seemed
in doubt. Yet God kept them and prepared them for the coming of
Christ. Since his coming the task has been a different one,
calling for different methods, but the battle is as real and
as bloody as ever before. The battle for souls is relentless and,
for many, entry into the kingdom is through great tribulation.
For many, quite literally the martyr spirit is still needed.
There are many tightly knit, fanatical communities in which
to become a Christian may still be to take one's life in one's
hands. For many others, in a society conditioned by materialist
vices and materialist values, to become a Christian means a
costly surrender. It is only through suffering that the kingdom
of God goes forward. It is still only the few who find the
narrow way of life, while the many take the broad road to
destruction. It is those who know most of the fierceness of
the struggle who best understand the fierceness of God's
commands. Christ fed his soul upon the book of Deuteronomy;
we need not fear to do the same.