From Yahweh to Zion

by Laurent Guyénot

  The war code established by Yahweh makes a distinction between the cities outside and those within the territory given to his people. In the former, “you will put the whole male population to the sword. But the women, children, livestock and whatever the town contains by way of spoil, you may take for yourselves as booty. You will feed on the spoils of the enemies whom Yahweh your God has handed over to you.” In the nearby foreign towns, on the other hand, “you must not spare the life of any living thing,” men and women, young and old, children and babies, and even livestock, “so that they may not teach you to do all the detestable things which they do to honor their gods” (Deuteronomy 20:13–18). So, in Jericho, “They enforced the curse of destruction on everyone in the city: men and women, young and old, including the oxen, the sheep and the donkeys, slaughtering them all” (Joshua 6:21).

  The city of Ai met the same fate. Its inhabitants were all slaughtered, twelve thousand of them, “until not one was left alive and none to flee. […] When Israel had finished killing all the inhabitants of Ai in the open ground, and in the desert where they had pursued them, and when every single one had fallen to the sword, all Israel returned to Ai and slaughtered its remaining population” (8:22–25). Women were not spared. “For booty, Israel took only the cattle and the spoils of this town” (8:27). In the whole land, Joshua “left not one survivor and put every living thing under the curse of destruction, as Yahweh, god of Israel, had commanded” (10:40).

  Likewise for the nomadic tribe of Amalekites, the first enemy the Hebrews faced during the Exodus from Egypt and Canaan. In a cynically paradoxical formulation, Yahweh asked Moses: “Write this down in a book to commemorate it, and repeat it over to Joshua, for I shall blot out all memory of Amalek under heaven” (Exodus 17:14). The idea is repeated in Deuteronomy 25:19: “When Yahweh your God has granted you peace from all the enemies surrounding you, in the country given you by Yahweh your God to own as your heritage, you must blot out the memory of Amalek under heaven. Do not forget.”

  The mission fell to Saul in 1 Samuel 15: “I intend to punish what Amalek did to Israel—laying a trap for him on the way as he was coming up from Egypt. Now, go and crush Amalek; put him under the curse of destruction with all that he possesses. Do not spare him, but kill man and woman, babe and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.” Thus spoke Yahweh Sabaoth, the divinely spiteful, by way of the prophet Samuel. Since Saul spared King Agag “with the best of the sheep and cattle, the fatlings and lambs,” Yahweh repudiates him: “I regret having made Saul king, since he has broken his allegiance to me and not carried out my orders.” Yahweh withdrew Saul’s kingship and Samuel “butchered” Agag (“hewed Agag in pieces,” in the Revised Standard Version, faithfully translating the Hebrew verb shsf).

  Despite this theoretically perfect biblical genocide, the Jews never ceased to identify their enemies with Amalekites. Flavius Josephus, writing for the Romans, recognizes them in the Arabs of Idumea. Later, Amalek came to be associated, like his grandfather Esau, with Rome and therefore, from the fourth century onward, with Christianity. The villain of the book of Esther, Haman, is referred to repeatedly as an Agagite, that is, a descendant of the Amalekite king Agag. That is why the hanging of Haman and his ten sons and the massacre of 75,000 Persians are often conflated in Jewish tradition with the extermination of the Amalekites and the brutal execution of their king. The Torah reading on the morning of Purim is taken from the account of the battle against the Amalekites, which ends with the conclusion that “Yahweh will be at war with Amalek generation after generation” (Exodus 17:16).65

  When the people, under Moses’s guidance, settled temporarily in the country of Moab (or Midian) in Transjordania, some married Moabite women, who “invited them to the sacrifices of their gods” (Numbers 25:2). Such abomination required “the vengeance of Yahweh on Midian.” (The peoples of Moab and Midian seem here conflated). And so, instructed by Yahweh as always, Moses formed an army and ordered them to “put every [Midianite] male to death.” However, the soldiers were guilty of taking “the Midianite women and their little ones captive,” instead of slaughtering them. Moses “was enraged with the officers of the army” and rebuked them: “Why have you spared the life of all the women? They were the very ones who […] caused the Israelites to be unfaithful to Yahweh. […] So kill all the male children and kill all the women who have ever slept with a man; but spare the lives of the young girls who have never slept with a man, and keep them for yourselves.” At the end of the day, “The spoils, the remainder of the booty captured by the soldiers, came to six hundred and seventy-five thousand sheep and goats, seventy-two thousand head of cattle, sixty-one thousand donkeys, and in persons, women who had never slept with a man, thirty-two thousand in all,” not to mention “gold, silver, bronze, iron, tin and lead” (Numbers 31:3–31).

  And we would be in error if we believed that the message of the prophets, most of whom were priests, softens the violence of the historical books: “For this is the Day of Lord Yahweh Sabaoth, a day of vengeance when he takes revenge on his foes: The sword will devour until gorged, until drunk with their blood,” foresees Jeremiah as reprisals against Babylon. For Yahweh promises through him “an end of all the nations where I have driven you,” which includes Egypt (Jeremiah 46:10–28). “Yahweh’s sword is gorged with blood, it is greasy with fat,” says Isaiah, on the occasion of “a great slaughter in the land of Edom” (Isaiah 34:6).

  Zechariah prophesies that Yahweh will fight “all the nations” allied against Israel. In a single day, the whole earth will become a desert, with the exception of Jerusalem, which will “stand high in her place.” Zechariah seems to have envisioned what God could do with nuclear weapons: “And this is the plague with which Yahweh will strike all the nations who have fought against Jerusalem; their flesh will rot while they are still standing on their feet; their eyes will rot in their sockets; their tongues will rot in their mouths.” It is only after the carnage that the world will finally find peace, providing they worship Yahweh; then “the wealth of all the surrounding nations will be heaped together: gold, silver, clothing, in vast quantity. […] After this, all the survivors of all the nations which have attacked Jerusalem will come up year after year to worship the King, Yahweh Sabaoth, and to keep the feast of Shelters. Should one of the races of the world fail to come up to Jerusalem to worship the King, Yahweh Sabaoth, there will be no rain for that one” (Zechariah 14).

  The prophetic dream of Israel—nightmare of the nations—is very clearly a supremacist and imperial project. There is indeed, in Isaiah, the hope of world peace, when the peoples of the earth “will hammer their swords into ploughshares and their spears into sickles. Nation will not lift sword against nation, no longer will they learn how to make war” (Isaiah 2:4). But that day will only come when all nations pay homage to Zion. In those glorious days, says Yahweh to his people in Second Isaiah, kings “will fall prostrate before you, faces to the ground, and lick the dust at your feet,” whereas Israel’s oppressors will “eat their own flesh [and] will be as drunk on their own blood” (49:23–26); “For the nation and kingdom that will not serve you will perish, and the nations will be utterly destroyed” (60:12); “Strangers will come forward to feed your flocks, foreigners be your ploughmen and vinedressers; but you will be called ‘priests of Yahweh’ and be addressed as ‘ministers of our God.’ You will feed on the wealth of nations, you will supplant them in their glory” (61:5–6); “You will suck the milk of nations, you will suck the wealth of kings” (60:16).

  Certainly all these past and future genocides perpetrated in the name of Yahweh are imaginary, but the psychological effect produced by their accumulation ad nauseam on the chosen people is not, especially since some are commemorated ritually. It is to celebrate the massacre of seventy-five thousand Persians slaughtered by the Jews in one day that Mordecai, the secondary hero of the book of Esther, “a man held in respect among the Jews, esteemed by thousands of his brothers, a m
an who sought the good of his people and cared for the welfare of his entire race” (10:3), establishes Purim, a month before Easter. Emmanuel Levinas would have us believe that “Jewish consciousness, formed precisely through contact with this moral hardness, has learned the absolute horror of blood.”66 It’s a bit like claiming that the virtual violence of video games will eventually make our children less violent. Was it not on the day of Purim, February 25th, 1994, that Baruch Goldstein massacred with a submachine gun twenty-nine pious Muslims at the tomb of Abraham? Has his grave not become a place of pilgrimage for Orthodox Jews?67

  The Plunder of the Nations

  “Feeding on the wealth of the nations” is the destiny of the Jewish nation, says the prophet (Isaiah 61:6). It is also the way it was first created, for plundering is the essence of the conquest of Canaan, according to Deuteronomy 6:10–12: “When Yahweh has brought you into the country which he swore to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that he would give you, with great and prosperous cities you have not built, with houses full of good things you have not provided, with wells you have not dug, with vineyards and olive trees you have not planted, and then, when you have eaten as much as you want, be careful you do not forget Yahweh who has brought you out of Egypt, out of the place of slave-labor.”

  Gentiles, Canaanites, or others are no different from their belongings in Yahweh’s eyes, and can therefore become the property of Hebrews. “The male and female slaves you have will come from the nations around you; from these you may purchase male and female slaves. As slaves, you may also purchase the children of aliens resident among you, and also members of their families living with you who have been born on your soil; and they will become your property, and you may leave them as a legacy to your sons after you as their perpetual possession. These you may have for slaves; but you will not oppress your brother-Israelites” (Leviticus 25:44–46). Note that, from the historian’s point of view, the prohibition proves the practice (there is no need to legislate on something that doesn’t exist), and the story of Joseph illustrates that a Jew sold as slave by other Jews was not inconceivable.

  While waiting for the fulfillment of their imperial destiny, the chosen people can, even more effectively, exercise their incomparable mastery of monetary mechanisms. One of the revolutionary contributions of biblical religion in the world is the transformation of money from a means of exchange to a means of power and even war. In every civilization that has reached the stage of monetary trade, lending at interest, which makes money a commodity in itself, was seen as a moral perversion and a social danger. Aristotle condemns usury in his Politics as the “most unnatural” activity because it gives money the ability to produce itself out of nothing, and thereby take on a quasi-spiritual, supernatural character. Around the same time, Deuteronomy prohibited the practice, but only between Jews: “You may demand interest on a loan to a foreigner, but you must not demand interest from your brother” (23:21).68 During the Jubilee, every seven years, any creditor must remit his Jewish neighbor’s debt. But not the stranger’s: “A foreigner you may exploit, but you must remit whatever claim you have on your brother” (15:3). As far as we know, the Yahwist priests were the first to conceive of enslaving entire nations through debt: “If Yahweh your God blesses you as he has promised, you will be creditors to many nations but debtors to none; you will rule over many nations, and be ruled by none” (15:6).

  The story of Joseph bringing the Egyptian peasants into debt bondage confirms that the enrichment of Jews by Gentile debt is a biblical ideal. This story is deeply immoral, but quite central in the saga of the chosen people; it guarantees divine blessing on all abuses of power practiced against foreigners. It also illustrates a lesson that Jews have effectively applied throughout their history, from medieval Europe to eighteenth century Russia: the ability to grab money through a monopoly on lending at interest is greatly increased if one first receives from the state authority to collect taxes. The lesson is repeated in the similar story that Flavius Josephus situates in the Hellenistic period (already mentioned in our previous chapter). “As difficult as it may be for the modern reader to accept,” remarks Lawrence Wills, “we actually have before us hero legends concerning tax farmers, as if we were reading the Robin Hood legend told from the Sheriff of Nottingham’s perspective.”69

  The story of Joseph, like those of Esther and Daniel, offer as Jewish heroes characters who have reached the rank of kings’ advisers and intermediaries in the oppression of peoples; the heroes make use of such positions to promote their community. The court Jews mentioned in the Bible most often occupy the functions of cupbearer or eunuch, that is, purveyors of wine and women. Second Kings 20:18 informs us that some Judeans served as “eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon,” eunuchs being generally attached to the harem. “How often,” remarks Heinrich Graetz, “have these guardians of the harem, these servants of their master’s whims, become in turn masters of their master.”70 If there is one thing possible to a guardian of the harem, it is to introduce the woman of his choice into the prince’s bed, as did Mordecai, “attached to the Chancellery” with “two royal eunuchs,” with Esther, his niece and perhaps spouse (Esther 2:21).

  The Levitic Tyranny

  The first victims of Yahweh’s violence are the chosen people themselves. Deuteronomy orders the stoning of any parent, son, brother, or wife who “tries secretly to seduce you, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods,’ unknown to you or your ancestors before you, gods of the peoples surrounding you. […] you must show him no pity, you must not spare him or conceal his guilt. No, you must kill him, your hand must strike the first blow in putting him to death and the hands of the rest of the people following. You must stone him to death, since he has tried to divert you from Yahweh your God” (13:7–11). Worse still, if “in one of the towns which Yahweh your God has given you for a home, there are men, scoundrels from your own stock, who have led their fellow-citizens astray, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods,’ hitherto unknown to you […], you must put the inhabitants of that town to the sword; you must lay it under the curse of destruction—the town and everything in it. You must pile up all its loot in the public square and burn the town and all its loot, offering it all to Yahweh your God. It is to be a ruin for all time, and never rebuilt.” For that is “what is right in the eyes of Yahweh your God” (13:13–19).

  When some Jews beyond the control of Moses ate with the Moabites, joined in their religious cults, and took women from among them, “Yahweh said to Moses, ‘Take all the leaders of the people. Impale them facing the sun, for Yahweh, to deflect his burning anger from Israel’” (Numbers 25:4). When a Hebrew had the gall to appear before Moses with his Midianite wife, Phinehas, grandson of Aaron, “seized a lance, followed the Israelite into the alcove, and there ran them both through, the Israelite and the woman, through the stomach.” Yahweh congratulated him for having “the same zeal as I have,” and, as a reward, gave “to him and his descendants after him, […] the priesthood for ever” that is, “the right to perform the ritual of expiation for the Israelites” (25:11–13). Is it not extraordinary that the founding of the Aaronic priesthood (reclaimed by Ezra and the high priests he installed in power) is thus based on a double murder blessed by Yahweh?

  The overarching theme of the Bible is the relationship between Yahweh and his people. But according to a critical reading, the Bible is actually the history of the relationship between the priestly elite speaking for Yahweh and the Jewish people, who are sometimes submissive, and sometimes rebellious to authority. The Bible itself shows that it is the priests that prevented the Jewish people from establishing any form of alliance with the surrounding peoples, and pushed them to genocidal violence against their neighbors. In the tragedy of Shechem summarized above (Genesis 34:1–29), it is Levi, embodying the priestly authority, who incites the massacre, while Jacob condemns it. Prophets, who claim to have a direct line with God, are priests or spokesmen of priests.

&nbs
p; The power of the Levitical elites over the people is based on a system of interpretation of national history that is formidably infallible: whenever misfortune strikes, it is always the fault of the people (or the king) who did not obey God’s law (and its priestly guarantors) with enough fervor. After the destruction of Israel by the Assyrian army, the priests base their authority over the kingdom of Judea by proclaiming that Yahweh deprived Israel of victory because the Israelites had betrayed his alliance by “sacrificing on all the high places in the manner of the nations which Yahweh had expelled before them,” and “worshiping idols” (2 Kings 17:11–12). The Assyrian army itself is “the rod of my anger” (Isaiah 10.5). The argument is the same after the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon. The national tragedy does not imply a superiority of the foreign gods over Yahweh, which would encourage their adoption. Rather, it is Yahweh himself who used the Babylonians, after the Assyrians, to punish the people who betrayed him. The only remedy for disaster: strengthened loyalty to Yahweh.

  The Yahwist lesson is always the same. Each time the Hebrews begin to sympathize with other nations to the point of mingling with their religious life (social life being inseparable from worship), Yahweh punishes them by sending against them … other nations. The hand of friendship held out by others is a death trap. He whose friendship you seek is your worst enemy. This principle in Yahwist ideology encloses the Jewish people in a cognitive vicious circle, preventing them from learning the only sensible lesson from their experience: that contacts promote cultural understanding between peoples, while refusal of contact generates hostility. According to the Bible, the chosen people have obligations only toward Yahweh, never toward their neighbors. And when those neighbors are hostile, their complaints are irrelevant, since ultimately it is always Yahweh who sends them against his people when he has decided to punish them. For two thousand years, Jews have been constantly reminded by their elites that the persecutions they suffer are not the result of offensive behavior against Gentiles, but rather their efforts to live with them in harmony—efforts that amount to infidelity to God and to their vocation as “a people apart.”