Genocide in the Hebrew Bible

Some events depicted in the Hebrew Bible's narrative which involve violence and warfare are considered by some academics and commenters to amount to genocide, most notably the conflicts with the Midianites as well as the Canaanites. Various interpretations have been given of these passages throughout history, with some who consider that God has commanded the Israelites to destroy some nations, often referred to as Amalek.

In contrast, some scholars have disputed describing certain biblical acts as amounting to genocide, arguing that such a label is anachronistic. Other scholars have concluded that biblical descriptions of violence are few and mostly hyperbolic, based on comparisons to the literary styles of Israel's neighbouring cultures. In mainstream scholarship, the historicity of biblical accounts to certain events is questionable.

Critics of Christianity and Judaism have often cited the passages to prove that the biblical god is a malevolent being.^{[neutrality is disputed]} Still others have invoked the passage to incite genocide or ethnic cleansing against religious or ethnic minorities, such as was done during the Rwandan genocide.^{[neutrality is disputed]} A reference to the commandment by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the Gaza war was cited as proof of genocide in the Gaza strip in South Africa's genocide case against Israel.

Biblical text

When the Israelites arrive in the Promised Land, they are commanded to annihilate "the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites" who already lived there, to avoid being tempted into idolatry.^[1] Deuteronomy 20:16–17 reads "From the cities of these peoples which YHWH your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not let anything that breathes remain alive. You shall surely annihilate them (haḥărēm taḥărîmēm) ... just as YHWH your God has commanded you so that they may not teach you to do any of the abominations that they do for their gods, and you thus sin against YHWH your God".^[2] Joshua is depicted as carrying out these commands.^[3]

In Exodus 17, Amalek is introduced as a partially nomadic group that attacked the Israelites following their departure from Egypt. Moses defeats Amalek by a miraculous victory.^[4] In 1 Samuel 15:3, Israelite king Saul is told by God via the prophet Samuel: "Now go, attack Amalek, and proscribe [kill and dedicate to YHWH] all that belongs to him. Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses!"^[5] Saul's failure to be sufficiently harsh with Amalek is portrayed as leading to his downfall.^[6]

Analysis

Many^{[neutrality is disputed]} scholars interpret the book of Joshua as referring to what would now be considered genocide.^[7] T. M. Lemos argues that the genocides commanded by God resemble some modern genocides in that they are committed as part of a struggle for land and other resources.^[8] Although scholars reject parts of the biblical stories as factual history it could still be concluded^{[neutrality is disputed]} theologically, that God commanded genocide.^[6] However, this has been criticised by some biblical scholars who argue that such a description is anachronistic.^[9]

Other scholars have compared the violent language in the Hebrew Bible to that of texts from other cultures in the Ancient Near East and concluded the biblical language is hyperbolic, with John H. Walton noting:

The rhetoric of ancient Near Eastern conquest accounts often employed hyperbolic language to describe the complete annihilation of enemies, but this was not meant to be taken literally. It was a common way of expressing total victory and the removal of a threat to the land and people.^[10]

Walton compares the Israelites to Assyria and Babylon, noting that the other nations would carry away and destroy the gods of the enemies they conquered to prevent people of finding something to rally around to stage another rebellion but noting that in Israel's context this was done to prevent the Israelites from embracing idolatry.^[11] Egyptologist and biblical scholar Kenneth Kitchen concurred that "the type of rhetoric in question was a regular feature of military reports in the second and first millennia" by citing comparisons between Egyptian texts and also the Mesha Stele as extrabiblical examples of hyperbolic military reports.^[12] Historian Philip Jenkins (quoting Phyllis Trible) says the Bible is filled with "texts of terror" but he also asserts these texts are not to be taken literally. Jenkins says eighth century BCE historians added them to embellish their ancestral history and get readers' attention.^[13]

Paul Copan argues that the ḥerem commands were hyperbolic since the passages contain merisms such as "man and woman"^[14] and Near Easterners valued "bravado and exaggeration" when reporting warfare.^[15]^[16] Kluger believes this is an earnest attempt to absolve the Israelites, and their God, of moral responsibility. Nonetheless, she argues Copan's interpretation still "normalizes mass violence" and "hostility towards targeted groups".^[17] However, according to David Clines (and contrary to his own assumptions), only 3.3% of words in the entire Hebrew Bible relate to violence (with even less being attributed to God), stating:

I repeat the statistics of words for violence I mentioned at the beginning of the paper: so far I have identified 10,033 occurrences of words for violence, of which 1,865 are in reference to the deity (18.6%). Speaking personally as a pacifist, I suppose I would prefer it if there were no references to violence in the Hebrew Bible at all. And I can admit that when I began this research I expected to be somewhat shocked by what I would uncover. But now that I am so far along in the research, I find the question arising in my mind is, But is it a big number? Let us recall that the Hebrew Bible contains some 303,500 words. The 10,033 occurrences are therefore 3.3% of the whole Hebrew Bible. Is that a big number? And does it seem such a big number if we put the result in this way: almost 97% of the Hebrew Bible is non-violent (in the senses I have described in this paper)?^[18]

Religious Interpretations

Jewish

Some Jewish scholars including Maimonides argued that the commandment to destroy Amalek was still active. Rashi wrote that "the throne of God is incomplete as long as one of Amalek’s descendants is alive", endorsing the persecution of Amalek across many generations.^[4]^{[neutrality is disputed]} Anyone who is perceived as being an enemy of the Jewish people by Orthodox Jews may be branded as Amalek.^[4]

Christian

Christian Hofreiter writes that for Christians, the plain meaning of the Bible and modern ethical beliefs give rise to five contradictory premises: "(1) God is good. (2) The Bible is true. (3) Genocide is atrocious. (4) According to the Bible, God commanded and commended genocide. (5) A good being, let alone the supremely good Being, would never command or commend an atrocity."^[19] Of early Christians, Marcion was most bothered by this dilemma, but his proposed resolution—denying that the God of the Old Testament was the same as the Christian God—was soon condemned as heretical by the Great Church.^[20] Origen argued both that the texts were metaphorical and that they represented a different stage of development than the modern Christian church which was not an earthly kingdom.^[21] Augustine suggested resolving the perceived contradiction through divine command theory—whatever God wills is good, thus (3) is false.^[22]^{[neutrality is disputed]} Some more modern interpretations reject the historicity of the biblical accounts without rejecting any of Hofreiter's five propositions.^[23]^{[neutrality is disputed]}

Criticism of Judaism and Christianity

Although these verses were not a major feature of ancient pagan criticisms of Judaism and Christianity, some pagans highlighted these verses and they also argued, in Hofreiter's words, "if (2) is true, then (4) is also true; however, if (4) is true, then (1) is false because (3) and (5) are true; if, however, (1) is false, then Christianity is false". Christians at the time believed in biblical inerrancy and therefore (2) being false would have also invalidated their interpretation of Christianity.^[20]^{[neutrality is disputed]} The genocide in the Hebrew Bible has been cited by some irreligious critics as a reason for rejecting Christianity, leading to apologetic defenses of the biblical Israelites.^[24]

Historical References

The memory of Biblical conflicts was evoked multiple times on different occasions to justify violence against enemies.

Medieval Era

When instigating the First Crusade, Pope Urban II considered Muslims to be Amalek, and believed that the Crusaders as the successors of Israel were obligated to destroy them.^[4]

Early Modern Period

During the Reformation, Martin Luther often harbored negative attitudes towards Jews, and at one point had referred to them as Amalek on the basis of alleged collective responsibility of the death of Jesus.^[4]

Calvinists who were anti-Catholic often referred to of Catholics as Amalek.^[4]

In the colonization of North America by the United States, White Settlers considered Native American tribes to be equivalent to Amalek when justifying the displacement from their Lands in hopes of fulfilling the ideal of Manifest Destiny.^[4]^{[neutrality is disputed]}

20th-21st Centuries

Middle East

In the 1947-1949 Palestine War, some Yishuv and Israeli-Jewish leaders justified Palestinian expulsion and flight by considering Palestinians as Amalek for violently hindering the Zionist movement's efforts in the Jewish migration and settlement in Historic Palestine.^[25]^{[neutrality is disputed]}

In the Gaza war many Israeli figures proposed arrangements and statements calling for the "transfer" of Palestinians from Gaza as well as Israeli settlement in Gaza, have been characterized as an incitement to genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in the light of Israel's military campaign which caused an existential humanitarian crisis in Gaza through extensive airstrikes that plausibly can amount to a current genocide.^[26] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's reference to Palestinians as Amalek was cited in South Africa's genocide case against Israel.^[27]

Rwanda

Some perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide dehumanized the Tutsis by referring to them as Amalek.^[28]

References

^ Kelley 2016, p. 30.
^ Lemos 2016, p. 27.
^ Kelley 2016, pp. 30–31.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Kugler 2021.
^ Brettler, Marc Zvi (25 March 2024). "Destroying Amalek". University of Minnesota. Retrieved 24 September 2024. Text also available here at Duke University Center of Jewish Studies
^ ^a ^b Kelley 2016, p. 31.
^ Lemos 2016, pp. 27–28.
^ Lemos 2016, p. 46.
^ Hinlicky, Paul R.; Reno, R.; Jenson, Robert; Wilken, Robert; Radner, Ephraim; Root, Michael; Sumner, George (2021). "Rahab, confessing YHWH, tricks her king, saving Joshua's spies and her own family 2:1–24". Joshua (Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible). Baker Publishing Group. p. unpaginated. ISBN 978-1-4934-3113-7. Retrieved 28 December 2024. anachronistic imposition of the contemporary notion of genocide on Joshua by pointing to the cultural-religious matrix of herem rather than to the modern racial-biological-genetic matrix of genocide
^ Walton, J. H. (2017). The lost world of the Israelite conquest : covenant, retribution, and the fate of the Canaanites. IVP Academic. p.16
^ Walton, J. H. (2017). The lost world of the Israelite conquest : covenant, retribution, and the fate of the Canaanites. IVP Academic, p.191
^ Kitchen, Kenneth A. (2003), On the Reliability of the Old Testament. Eerdmans. p. 97.
^ Jenkins, Philip (2011). Laying Down the Sword; Why We Can't Ignore The Bible's Violent Verses. HarperCollins. p. 8.
^ Copan, Paul (2011). Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament God. Baker Books. pp. 175–176. ISBN 978-0801072758.
^ Copan, Paul (Fall 2010). "How Could God Command Killing the Canaanites?". Enrichment Journal: 138–143.
^ Copan, Paul (2022). Is God a Vindictive Bully? Reconciling Portrayals of God in the Old and New Testaments. Baker Academic. p. 205. ISBN 978-1540964557.
^ Kugler 2020.
^ Clines, David J.A. (2020). "Chapter 2 The Ubiquitous Language of Violence in the Hebrew Bible". Violence in the Hebrew Bible. Brill. p. 23-41.
^ Hofreiter 2018, p. 247.
^ ^a ^b Hofreiter 2018, p. 248.
^ Hofreiter 2018, pp. 248–249.
^ Hofreiter 2018, p. 249.
^ Hofreiter 2018, pp. 249–250.
^ Kelley 2016, p. 35.
^ Rabinovich, Silvana (2022). "Victims and Victimizers 2: Amalek, the Canaanites, and the Nakbah". Biblical Figures in Israel's Colonial Political Theology. New Approaches to Religion and Power. Springer International Publishing. pp. 87–113. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-03822-8_6. ISBN 978-3-031-03821-1.
^ El-Affendi, Abdelwahab (18 January 2024). "The Futility of Genocide Studies After Gaza". Journal of Genocide Research: 1–7. doi:10.1080/14623528.2024.2305525.
^ "Why a biblical story is central to South Africa's ICJ case against Israel". ABC News. 30 January 2024. Retrieved 20 September 2024.
^ van 't Spijker, Gerard (2017). "Focused on Reconciliation: Rwandan Protestant Theology After the Genocide". Transformation. 34 (1): 66–74. doi:10.1177/0265378816631250. ISSN 0265-3788. JSTOR 90008946.

Sources

Flannery, Frances (2021). ""I will be an enemy to your enemies": the genocidal ideal in the Hebrew Bible and its legacy". Religion and Violence in Western Traditions: Selected Studies. Routledge Studies in Religion. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-000-40908-6.
Hofreiter, Christian (2018). Making Sense of Old Testament Genocide: Christian Interpretations of Herem Passages. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-881090-2.
Jacobs, Steven Leonard (2021). The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Mass Atrocity, and Genocide. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-000-47190-8.
Kelley, Shawn (2016). "Genocide, the Bible, and Biblical Scholarship". Brill Research Perspectives in Biblical Interpretation. 1 (3). Brill: 1–71. doi:10.1163/24057657-12340003. ISSN 2405-7649.
Kugler, Gili (2021). "Metaphysical Hatred and Sacred Genocide: The Questionable Role of Amalek in Biblical Literature". Journal of Genocide Research. 23 (1): 1–16. doi:10.1080/14623528.2020.1827781.
Lemos, T. M. (2016). "Dispossessing Nations: Population Growth, Scarcity, and Genocide in Ancient Israel and Twentieth-Century Rwanda". Ritual Violence in the Hebrew Bible. Oxford University Press. pp. 27–66. ISBN 978-0-19-024958-8.
Alkhouri, Yousef Kamal (2024-11-21). "Which Gospel? The Militarization of Sacred Texts in Israel's Genocide in Gaza". International Journal of Public Theology. 18 (4): 488–508. doi:10.1163/15697320-20241612. ISSN 1569-7320. Archived from the original on 2024-12-15. Retrieved 2025-01-03.