Tribalism in The Old Testament; Deuteronomy 7, 20

Tribalism

The God of the Bible is very tribal.  The God of the Old Testament is concerned with the well-being of only the faithful among the Jewish people.  In Deuteronomy, other people and cultures are to be swept away with little mercy.  Women prisoners of war are to be forced into marriage with their captors; cities are to be razed, children to be slaughtered – all for the greater glory of God.

Deuteronomy 7 describes the conquests to come.

“The Lord your God will bring you into the land that you are going to occupy, and he will drive many nations out of it. As you advance, he will drive out seven nations larger and more powerful than you: the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 2 When the Lord your God places these people in your power and you defeat them, you must put them all to death.

Deuteronomy 20 continues.

10 “When you go to attack a city, first give its people a chance to surrender. 11 If they open the gates and surrender, they are all to become your slaves and do forced labor for you. 12 But if the people of that city will not surrender, but choose to fight, surround it with your army. 13 Then, when the Lord your God lets you capture the city, kill every man in it. 14 You may, however, take for yourselves the women, the children, the livestock, and everything else in the city. You may use everything that belongs to your enemies. The Lord has given it to you. 15 That is how you are to deal with those cities that are far away from the land you will settle in.

16 “But when you capture cities in the land that the Lord your God is giving you, kill everyone. 17 Completely destroy all the people: the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, as the Lord ordered you to do.  18 Kill them, so that they will not make you sin against the Lord by teaching you to do all the disgusting things that they do in the worship of their gods.

Many other passages in the Old Testament deal with war against neighboring tribes, and in particular, wars of conquest and genocide “in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”  There are too many passages to include in a blog post.  But the essence of the passages is that the other people have no right to live, no right to their lands and the cities they have built, no right to live peacefully in their own homes.  Does the behavior of the Old Testament God pass the test of reason and justice?

The words of Deuteronomy are disturbingly close to the Muslim fundamentalist ideas and practices of the Islamic State.  The ethic expressed in the bible calls on other cultures to submit to the Israelites and the Jewish God or be crushed.  The script is the same, whether we are considering the Israelites, Alexander the Great, the Romans or the Mongol hordes.  The God of the Old Testament operates on the same level – submit or die.