Secondly, the story of the young Midianite girl is still not good evidence that the Torah considers mass slaughter to be morally okay, and it is not good evidence that historical Jewish ethics have considered it okay. But as hard as it is to say, both economic oppression and war are difficult to uproot, in a way that nonmarital sex is not. War is often a necessary evil, and so is economic inequality, even nowadays; the gradual elimination of both, as horrid as it sounds, probably is more pragmatic. I don’t think the mere fact that permission was granted, in the very beginning, is enough to claim that the Torah treats sex more harshly than economic oppression and war. Both, along with violence & militarism in general, are condemned in the Prophets (especially Jeremiah & Isaiah) repeatedly, explicitly and harshly, over and over again, much more so than any of the other societal ills of the time. This is especially significant when one considers that the Torah does not differentiate between general economic inequality on the one hand, and slavery on the other- the laws that regulate treatment of slaves and treatment of workers are grouped together in the same sections of Deuteronomy.
If slaughter and war were morally okay in the Torah’s view, this notion would have continued on into the Prophets & Writings, as well as the Mishna, and it doesn’t. The general idea expressed in these texts is that war is morally vile, but also often necessary. The defeat of the Greeks was barely mentioned in the way the Channukah story was told, to avoid the celebration of militarism. Where would such an attitude towards war have originally derived from?
Your use of the word genocide is not accurate, anyhow. Genocide is the systematic murder of an entire nation or race, and it is militarily one-sided. The Torah does not describe genocides, it describes wars between mutually opposing armies, and the evils of war do not obviate the fact that it is often practically necessary (this includes tribal war practices of the 13th c. BCE). I am not arguing that genocide is justifiable, I am arguing that war is justifiable, and it is important to use correct terminology. If one were to argue that the Jewish laws defining a just war are defective, then that is a separate discussion, but to argue that Judaism is violent by telling a story about the everyday horrors of war is not reasonable. War is condemned far too clearly, frequently and harshly in the Prophets, and the glorification of warrior-culture and hero worship is far too absent from both the Tanakh and commonly accepted history books on Jewish history, to be able to argue that Judaism is okay with even militarism in general, let alone senseless violence.
Genocide is the correct term for what the Jewish people do in Numbers 31. After the war is over, Moses discovers that the military commanders have spared the women and children, and is wroth. Or, from the New International Version:
Moses was angry with the officers of the army—the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds—who returned from the battle. “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the LORD in the Peor incident, so that a plague struck the LORD’s people. Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.
This is meant as a destruction of their ethnicity to prevent them from tainting the Israelites, following commandments such as that in Deuteronomy 7:
When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you— and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.
There are plenty of other passages where the Israelites are described as killing “all the men, women, and children.” Numbers 31 is notable to me because it makes it clear that this was not commonly accepted practice—it was something Moses had to specifically instruct. But really this is also demonstrated by the way that these sort of genocidal injunctions feel the need to spell out that mercy is not to be shown to the women and children.
If you’d rather not use the word genocide, we can of course substitute “killing a girl’s entire family in front of her, then enslaving her,” and multiply it by, in this case, sixteen thousand.
I’ll concede the use of the word genocide, since you’re right: substituting “killing a girl’s entire family in front of her and then enslaving her” sounds just as bad.
The accounts of wars recorded in the books of the Prophets and Writings often describe women and children being killed in war by surrounding nations, such as Babylonia, Persia and Assyria; it was, revoltingly, a common practice. The rule of war laid down in Deuteronomy 20:14 only allows the Jews to kill adult males in the course of war, and forbids the murder of women and children. The exceptions to this rule were the Canaanite nations and the Amalekites; wars against these nations made no exceptions for women and children. This is why Moses needed to give a specific order concerning the Midianites: the Israelite soldiers assumed that the women ought to be spared, in accordance with Deut. 20:14, and Moses basically informed them that the adult women who attempted to sexually engage with Jewish men in pagan rituals should be killed as any other enemy combatants. It should also be noted that Deut. 20:10 requires the Jews to always offer a peace settlement before laying siege or running into battle, including the Canaanites and Amalekites (Numbers 31 describes them doing this with the Midianites), and forbids the killing of any men, women or children if the peace offering is accepted. In the event the offer is turned down, it is still forbidden to surround the entire enemy camp, and anyone who wishes to flee must be allowed to flee unharmed.
I’d be lying if I were to claim to be entirely at peace with all this: I am not. But evidence for the assertion that the Torah views violence and war as okay, rather than something to be diminished gradually, still seems lacking. The hope for the eventual abolition of war, and for peace between nations, is repeated far too frequently and clearly in the Prophets for the assertion to hold, and the assertion clashes with how most Jews have historically felt about unnecessary violence, beyond their very early, formative period of their history.
Secondly, the story of the young Midianite girl is still not good evidence that the Torah considers mass slaughter to be morally okay, and it is not good evidence that historical Jewish ethics have considered it okay. But as hard as it is to say, both economic oppression and war are difficult to uproot, in a way that nonmarital sex is not. War is often a necessary evil, and so is economic inequality, even nowadays; the gradual elimination of both, as horrid as it sounds, probably is more pragmatic. I don’t think the mere fact that permission was granted, in the very beginning, is enough to claim that the Torah treats sex more harshly than economic oppression and war. Both, along with violence & militarism in general, are condemned in the Prophets (especially Jeremiah & Isaiah) repeatedly, explicitly and harshly, over and over again, much more so than any of the other societal ills of the time. This is especially significant when one considers that the Torah does not differentiate between general economic inequality on the one hand, and slavery on the other- the laws that regulate treatment of slaves and treatment of workers are grouped together in the same sections of Deuteronomy.
If slaughter and war were morally okay in the Torah’s view, this notion would have continued on into the Prophets & Writings, as well as the Mishna, and it doesn’t. The general idea expressed in these texts is that war is morally vile, but also often necessary. The defeat of the Greeks was barely mentioned in the way the Channukah story was told, to avoid the celebration of militarism. Where would such an attitude towards war have originally derived from?
Your use of the word genocide is not accurate, anyhow. Genocide is the systematic murder of an entire nation or race, and it is militarily one-sided. The Torah does not describe genocides, it describes wars between mutually opposing armies, and the evils of war do not obviate the fact that it is often practically necessary (this includes tribal war practices of the 13th c. BCE). I am not arguing that genocide is justifiable, I am arguing that war is justifiable, and it is important to use correct terminology. If one were to argue that the Jewish laws defining a just war are defective, then that is a separate discussion, but to argue that Judaism is violent by telling a story about the everyday horrors of war is not reasonable. War is condemned far too clearly, frequently and harshly in the Prophets, and the glorification of warrior-culture and hero worship is far too absent from both the Tanakh and commonly accepted history books on Jewish history, to be able to argue that Judaism is okay with even militarism in general, let alone senseless violence.
Thank you for continuing to engage.
Genocide is the correct term for what the Jewish people do in Numbers 31. After the war is over, Moses discovers that the military commanders have spared the women and children, and is wroth. Or, from the New International Version:
This is meant as a destruction of their ethnicity to prevent them from tainting the Israelites, following commandments such as that in Deuteronomy 7:
There are plenty of other passages where the Israelites are described as killing “all the men, women, and children.” Numbers 31 is notable to me because it makes it clear that this was not commonly accepted practice—it was something Moses had to specifically instruct. But really this is also demonstrated by the way that these sort of genocidal injunctions feel the need to spell out that mercy is not to be shown to the women and children.
If you’d rather not use the word genocide, we can of course substitute “killing a girl’s entire family in front of her, then enslaving her,” and multiply it by, in this case, sixteen thousand.
I’ll concede the use of the word genocide, since you’re right: substituting “killing a girl’s entire family in front of her and then enslaving her” sounds just as bad.
The accounts of wars recorded in the books of the Prophets and Writings often describe women and children being killed in war by surrounding nations, such as Babylonia, Persia and Assyria; it was, revoltingly, a common practice. The rule of war laid down in Deuteronomy 20:14 only allows the Jews to kill adult males in the course of war, and forbids the murder of women and children. The exceptions to this rule were the Canaanite nations and the Amalekites; wars against these nations made no exceptions for women and children. This is why Moses needed to give a specific order concerning the Midianites: the Israelite soldiers assumed that the women ought to be spared, in accordance with Deut. 20:14, and Moses basically informed them that the adult women who attempted to sexually engage with Jewish men in pagan rituals should be killed as any other enemy combatants. It should also be noted that Deut. 20:10 requires the Jews to always offer a peace settlement before laying siege or running into battle, including the Canaanites and Amalekites (Numbers 31 describes them doing this with the Midianites), and forbids the killing of any men, women or children if the peace offering is accepted. In the event the offer is turned down, it is still forbidden to surround the entire enemy camp, and anyone who wishes to flee must be allowed to flee unharmed.
I’d be lying if I were to claim to be entirely at peace with all this: I am not. But evidence for the assertion that the Torah views violence and war as okay, rather than something to be diminished gradually, still seems lacking. The hope for the eventual abolition of war, and for peace between nations, is repeated far too frequently and clearly in the Prophets for the assertion to hold, and the assertion clashes with how most Jews have historically felt about unnecessary violence, beyond their very early, formative period of their history.