by David Plotz
Here’s a deathbed scene to remember. After the Ten Commandments, countless intercessions with God to beg for mercy, and the most eloquent proclamations of justice the world has ever known, these are Moses’s very last words: “Your enemies shall come cringing before you, and you shall tread on their backs.” That’s the way to go, Moses—kicking them when they’re down! Then God’s greatest prophet climbs Mount Nebo and dies.
SIX
The Book of Joshua
Why So Many Bible Hookers?
In which Joshua and the Israelites cross the Jordan River, invade the Promised Land, conquer Jericho, and slaughter lots of Canaanites.
chapter 1
fter the death of Moses, Joshua consolidates his power, telling tribal leaders that the invasion of the Promised Land begins in three days.
Joshua also talks to God, who orders him to read the “book of the law” that Moses prepared—the very Torah we’ve just finished reading. He tells Joshua: “You shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to act in accordance with all that is written in it. For then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall be successful.” This instruction marks the beginning of biblical scholarship. Let 3,500 years of argument begin.
chapter 2
Joshua dispatches two spies to Jericho, where they take shelter in the house of the prostitute Rahab. When the king of Jericho catches wind of the spies and confronts Rahab, she hides them on her roof. The danger passes, and she explains to the spies why she’s helping them. She says she has heard of the Lord’s mighty deeds—the Red Sea crossing, the defeat of King Og, etc.—and that these triumphs made the Canaanites’ hearts “melt” with terror. She begs the Israelites to spare her and her family when they conquer Jericho. The spies promise to protect her, and escape back to Joshua.
Back in Exodus, you may remember, God prolonged the ten plagues because He wanted the Israelites to tell stories about His might. The Israelites kept recording God’s triumphs—composing poems and writing down tales that spotlight His greatness. A key purpose of these stories must have been to terrify God’s enemies. That psychological warfare is paying off. Thanks to the stories of God’s awesomeness, the battle for Canaan is half won. The Canaanites already know they’re going to lose. As Rahab says, “There was no courage left in any of us because of you.”
On to bawdier matters. Joshua 2 raises a pressing question: What’s with all the prostitutes? There’s scarcely an unmarried woman in the Bible who isn’t a prostitute, or treated like one. Tamar turns a trick with her father-in-law Judah. The Moabite women whore themselves to the Israelites. The Midianite harlot is murdered by Phinehas. The loose behavior of Jacob’s daughter, Dinah, sparks mass slaughter. And now Rahab. No wonder they call prostitution the oldest profession—it’s the only profession that biblical women seem to have.
I have a rudimentary theory about this. In many tribal cultures, women have been essentially banished from the public sphere in order to control their virtue. We see this today in strict Islamic cultures, where women aren’t even allowed to speak to men other than their husbands and relatives. Throughout the Bible, the Israelites have been obsessed with controlling the sexual behavior of their girls and women. That’s why there are so many laws about female purity, sexual misbehavior, and intermarriage. Presumably because of these sexual constraints, the Israelite women seem to have played no role in public life. Except for Moses’s sister, Miriam (and, in passing, Noa and her sisters), there hasn’t been one woman since Exodus who’s had any public presence. Perhaps we keep hearing about prostitutes because all the other women were locked up in the kitchen.
chapters 3–4
All 2 million Israelites must cross the Jordan River to enter the Promised Land. One man from each tribe stands in the middle of the river. The river stops, all the water piles up in a wall on the upstream side, and the Israelites and the ark cross on dry land. Those of you who have been to Israel are scoffi ng: Big deal! The Jordan “river” is about as deep as my bathtub, and not much wider. The book specifies that the crossing was at flood stage, when the river is somewhat more intimidating. Even so, this is highly unimpressive. More important, why do a kiddie-pool rip-off of the Red Sea crossing? The parallelism reminds us that God has again allowed us to cross into a new world. From the Red Sea crossing came the giving of the laws, the rise of Moses, and the transformation of Israel into a great nation. From the Jordan River crossing will come the conquest of the Promised Land and the fulfillment of God’s covenant.
chapter 5
As soon as the Israelites have crossed the Jordan, God orders Joshua to “make fl int knives and circumcise the Israelites.” Apparently circumcisions were suspended during the wilderness years. (I’m guessing they were canceled owing to a shortage of bagels and lox.) Anyway, Joshua and his aides proceed to circumcise all the Israelite men—that’s a cool million of them. And these aren’t kids, either; they’re grown men. Ouch! The Lord is delighted and says the mass surgery has “rolled away the disgrace of Egypt.” The Israelites name the spot where they’re camped the “Hill of the Foreskins.” (Now that’s a place I don’t want to visit next time I’m in Israel. Can you imagine going there with kids? Jacob, don’t pick that up! No, Rachel, you can’t keep that “ring” you found.)
The Israelites eat their last meal of manna. Imagine the rejoicing.
chapter 6
According to the song:
Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, Jericho, Jericho
Joshua fought the battle of Jericho
And the walls came tumbling down.
But Joshua didn’t fight the battle of Jericho, because there was no battle of Jericho. Joshua has the Israelites circle the city once a day for six days. On the seventh day, they circle Jericho seven times, with seven priests blowing seven rams’ horns. At the end of the final circuit, Jericho’s walls collapse in a heap. The Israelites charge and sack the city without a fight, killing every living thing—all the people and animals—except the prostitute Rahab and her family.
chapter 7
Now that Jericho’s down, I figured the rest of the conquest would be easy. But it stalls. The Israelites dispatch an undersized army to the next city, Ai. Ai repels the 3,000 Israelites, and kills thirty-six of them. The hearts of the Israelites “melted and turned to water”— a phrase that the book of Joshua has used several times already, but only to describe a routed enemy. A devastated Joshua tears his clothes in mourning, and tries to figure out what went wrong. (Don’t you wish our leaders took war as seriously?) Joshua wails to God: Why did you bring us all the way to the Promised Land if you were just going to destroy us? God, with thrilling directness, orders Joshua to be a man. “Stand up! Why have you fallen on your face?” God informs Joshua that they lost the battle because an Israelite stole devotional objects belonging to God. Joshua can redeem Israel only by rooting out and punishing the thief.
The rest of the chapter unfolds like Shirley Jackson’s famous short story “The Lottery.” (In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Jackson modeled “The Lottery” on Joshua.) Slowly, with an ominous, telescoping rhythm, Joshua seeks the criminal. He surveys all the tribes, and selects Judah. He examines every clan of Judah, and picks out the Zerahites. He quizzes every family in the clan, and settles on the Zabdis. He goes one by one through the Zabdi household, and finally fi ngers the young man Achan as the thief. Joshua’s interrogation of Achan is gently, horribly devastating. Listen to Joshua’s ingratiating, but arm-twisting, language:
“My son, give glory to the Lord God of Israel and make confession
to Him. Tell me now what you have done; do not hide it from
me.”
Achan instantly confesses to stealing silver, gold, and cloth, and tells Joshua where to find them. Joshua’s men collect the loot, and offer it back to God. Good cop Joshua disappears, to be replaced by the ruthless avenger. Joshua tells Achan, with what sounds like a line from a Schwarzenegger movie: “Why did you bring t
rouble on us? The Lord is bringing trouble on you today.” The Israelites stone Achan to death and then burn his body. They also incinerate his family, and heap all their bodies with stones. (Another nasty collective punishment.) What’s troubling about this episode—or, if you’re a very observant Jew, what may be compelling about it—is the notion that the fate of Israel hangs on the behavior of one person. The sin of a single insignificant man is enough to shatter God’s covenant with Israel and stop the conquest of the Promised Land. The implication of the story is that when any of us steals, cheats, lies, kills, or commits adultery, we are not mere sinners or simple criminals. We are Achan, threatening to ruin our families, our tribe, our city, and our nation.
chapter 9
Until Joshua, the Israelites’ battles have all had an aura of inevitability. In earlier books, we knew that the Israelites were going to rout the enemy because God was leading them, or that they were going to be routed because they had displeased the Lord. The Bible ignored the human element—the general’s strategy, the enemy’s tactics, etc.—because the divine will was all that mattered. But in Joshua the outcome is uncertain, because God leaves the work up to His people. The result is a thrilling series of stories about strategy, deceit, and intimidation—lessons in biblical game theory. For example, when Joshua seeks revenge against Ai, he dupes the enemy army with a fake retreat, drawing it into a fatal ambush. Later, it’s Joshua who’s outfoxed. The Gibeonites—who are Joshua’s next target—hear about Jericho and Ai, and they’re understandably terrifi ed. How can they save themselves from Joshua’s exterminating army? The Gibeonites dress up in tattered clothing and appear at the Israelite camp, pretending to be ambassadors from a “very far country.” They tell Joshua they’ve heard about the Israelites’ grand victories and want to make a peace treaty. As evidence of their long journey, they display moldy bread, worn-out wineskins, and ragged clothes. Joshua falls for their deceit and “guarantees their lives” in a treaty. Three days later, the Israelites realize they’ve been scammed by the neighboring Gibeonites. They can’t carry out the usual sack, murder, and obliteration, because they’ve sworn an oath to safeguard the Gibeonites. Joshua lets the Gibeonites live, but he indentures them as servants, assigning them to gather wood and draw water for their Israelite masters.
The moment when Joshua discovers that the Gibeonites have bamboozled him is astonishing, because it suggests that Joshua is extraordinarily obtuse. Joshua asks them, apparently in earnest, “Why did you deceive us, saying ‘we are very far from you,’ while in fact you are living among us?” To which the Gibeonites respond, sensibly: Uh, because you exterminate your enemies! Is Joshua serious when he asks this question? Is he so lacking in empathy that he doesn’t understand why the Gibeonites would try to save their own skins?
chapter 10
A grim business. Five Ammonite kings unite against the the Israelites. Joshua gets wind of their plans, marches his army all night, and surprises the enemy. The Israelites rout them in the field, and then God finishes them off, sending a brutal hailstorm that kills more Ammonites than the fighting did.
After the victory, the Israelites capture the five fleeing Ammonite kings. Joshua drags the monarchs before him and orders his generals, “Put your feet on the neck of these kings.” As they stand on the kings’ throats, Joshua tells his commanders, “Do not be afraid or dismayed: Be strong and courageous; for thus the Lord will do to all the enemies against whom you fight.” Then, Joshua himself executes the kings and hangs their bodies in the trees. This episode is so proudly barbaric that it’s painful to read. It’s clear that we readers are supposed to take the Israelites’ side here—they’re conquering the Promised Land, they’re God’s Chosen People, the Ammonites are vile idolaters, etc.—but I find the unapologetic savagery unbearable.
This probably reveals a profound weakness in me, but I imagined myself—in the way one always imagines oneself inside a book—not as one of my own ancestors, the victorious Israelite generals, but as a heathen king with a boot on my neck, moments from a brutal death.
Joshua and the Israelites have been doing nothing but killing in this book—killing by the thousands, killing women, killing children, killing animals—but it is the death of these five men, who aren’t even innocents, that arouses the most revulsion. There’s an obvious reason for this, one Stalin understood: “A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.” All the other killings in Joshua are mass killings. This is the only time the book of Joshua gives us death in a tight close-up, and it’s appalling.
The rest of the chapter is gruesome, but in the statistical way. Joshua sweeps from city to city across southern Canaan, sacking them one after another:
Joshua took Makkedah on that day, and struck it and its king
with the edge of the sword; he utterly destroyed every person in it;
he left no one remaining. . . . Then Joshua passed on . . . to
Libnah. . . . He struck it with the edge of the sword, and every
person in it; he left no one remaining in it. . . .
To Lacshish. . . . He took it on the second day, and struck it
with the edge of the sword, and every person in it. . . .
Gezer. . . . Joshua struck him and his people, leaving him no
survivors. . . .
To Eglon. . . . [They] struck it with the edge of the sword, and
every person in it he utterly destroyed that day.
I don’t know how anyone could read this book without despair. Joshua is a genocidal brute, and God is unfathomably cruel. It doesn’t matter that God has promised this land to Israel: no god can justify such smug, wanton murder.
Unfortunately, this is not the kind of moral problem that can be solved by saying: well, it’s OK because it never really happened. It’s bad whether it’s real or made-up. If the book is true, and the Israelites did conquer genocidally, why was God so unfathomably cruel? And if the book isn’t true and the conquest didn’t happen like this, why did the Israelites tell these stories so enthusiastically? Why were they so proud of even fi ctional brutality?
chapters 13–19
Though the Israelites seem to have killed everyone around, they actually haven’t managed to conquer the entire Promised Land. There’s a lot of unannexed territory, particularly in the plains, where the enemy is armed with fearsome metal chariots. But Joshua’s getting old, and everyone seems sick of fighting, so the war winds down and the distribution of land begins. Joshua divides all the land of Israel among the tribes—there are seven chapters of property records.
chapter 22
Here’s a fascinating, tense moment. With the Promised Land under control, Joshua allows the tribes of Gad, Reuben, and Manasseh to cross back to the eastern side of the Jordan, where they will settle. Back on the east side, the three tribes build a huge altar. The tribes in the Promised Land hear about this altar. Because the only permitted altar is the one in the tabernacle, they suspect that the three trans- Jordan tribes have abandoned Yahweh for Baal or some other false god. The tribes in the Promised Land prepare for a holy war to crush the idolators. They dispatch Phinehas—the hotheaded priest who murdered the Midianite harlot—to rebuke the tribes that built the altar. The leaders of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh inform him that there has been a terrible misunderstanding. They didn’t build the altar for real sacrifices. It’s just for show. It’s a “copy” of the real altar. Because they’re on the far side of the Jordan, away from the ark and tabernacle, they want to make sure that their kids remember the Lord. This stand-in altar will remind their children to love God. The other tribes accept the explanation and stand down. They even thank the altar builders for their attention to God.
This is a very important moment for Judaism, and perhaps for all religions, because it marks the end of Judaism as a faith bounded by place. From now on, it can go anywhere. All religions, I suspect, begin with a central sacred place or object, but can grow only when they accept a stand-in for the holy of holies, when t
hey allow the semisacred to take the place of the sacred. The crucifix in churches is an example, and so is the ark in all synagogues. The moment when a religion creates its first copy is, in some sense, the moment when it starts being a religion. Until now, God has literally been with all the Israelites. He travels with them in the tabernacle. He lives with them. Now that the tribes are scattering across Israel, they face the problem of how to keep God with them everywhere. On the west side of the Jordan, they will abide near the tabernacle and thus hold onto their direct connection to God. But the trans-Jordan tribes need to create a substitute for that tabernacle ( just as all Jews had to create a substitute after the Temple was destroyed 2,000 years ago). This altar by the riverside marks the birth of Judaism as a worldwide religion: from now on, the Israelites can travel away from the tabernacle, because they can create a copy. They can take God wherever they go. And so can we.
chapter 24
Sometimes, the most fascinating parts of the Bible are the bits that have been left out. Remember the story of Dinah, which caused me to start reading the Bible? The final verses of Joshua remind us of that story, but listen to what they don’t say. Joshua dies at age 110 and is buried. The bones of Joseph, which have been carried all the way from Egypt, are also buried in the Promised Land “in the portion of ground that Jacob had bought from the children of Hamor, the father of Shechem, for 100 pieces of money.” What isn’t mentioned is that Jacob bought the land from the children of Hamor before Jacob’s sons tricked and murdered them.
SEVEN
The Book of Judges
The Meathead and the Left-Handed Assassin
