A lot of this talk was inspired by Dr. Kyle Haden, a Franciscan who teaches Scripture and I want to preface this by emphasizing how great this talk is, how I’ve erred in none of it, it is entirely true, beautiful, and insightful and I have all the answers so you should listen closely. And of course, I’m kidding, but I do think it’s pretty good. I wrote this back in March. But it seems a good time to emphasize that indiscriminate murder is really fucking bad. Yes, always. Yes, even then.
If you want something more topical on Israel and Palestine, there is plenty that has been written on history that I think is pretty good over the last ten years. But this isn’t actually that complicated an issue. The slaughter in Israel of citizens was wrong. The history of atrocious treatment of Palestinians is wrong. The current bombing and war continue to be awful. The general discourse on social media right now is pretty terrible and it’s probably a good time to log off if it’s making you angry.
“But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” (1 John, 4:8)
“I will exterminate them and make them a desolation, an object of hissing- ruins for all time (Jeremiah 25:9)
“To you, O Lord, belongs a charitable inclination [hesed]; you indeed repay each individual according to his deeds. Yet if one lacks sufficient merit, God will provide some of his own” (Ps 62:13 and the Jerusalem Talmud)
“I’m looking for a loophole” WC Fields, an atheist, reading the bible on his deathbed
The Story of Jericho
Chapter 6 of Joshua describes the battle of Jericho. The story of the destruction of Jericho has a notable structure to it split roughly into 3 parallel parts.
First, the Lord tells Joshua that He will deliver Jericho if Israel follows a ritual of carrying the Ark of the Covenant around the walls of the city of Jericho. This they should do over seven days, with priests blowing horns during the march on the seventh day. Then the troops shout at the end of the seventh march.
Second, Joshua tells the people of Israel the same thing. Israel should follow a ritual of carrying the Ark of the Covenant around the walls of the city of Jericho. This they should do over seven days, with priests blowing horns during the march on the seventh day. Then the troops shout at the end of the seventh march.
Third, the ritual is carried out. Israel follows a ritual of carrying the Ark of the Covenant around the walls of the city of Jericho. This they do over seven days, with priests blowing horns during the march on the seventh day. Then the troops shout at the end of the seventh march.
From Joshua 6:15 - Joshua 6:25
On the seventh day, beginning at daybreak, they marched around the city seven times in the same manner; on that day only did they march around the city seven times.
The seventh time around, the priests blew the horns and Joshua said to the people, “Now shout, for the LORD has given you the city.
The city and everything in it is under the ban. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are in the house with her are to live, because she hid the messengers we sent.
But be careful not to covet or take anything that is under the ban; otherwise you will bring upon the camp of Israel this ban and the misery of it.
All silver and gold, and the articles of bronze or iron, are holy to the LORD. They shall be put in the treasury of the LORD.”
As the horns blew, the people began to shout. When they heard the sound of the horn, they raised a tremendous shout. The wall collapsed, and the people attacked the city straight ahead and took it.
They observed the ban by putting to the sword all living creatures in the city: men and women, young and old, as well as oxen, sheep and donkeys.
To the two men who had spied out the land, Joshua said, “Go into the prostitute’s house and bring out the woman with all her family, as you swore to her you would do.”
The spies entered and brought out Rahab, with her father, mother, brothers, and all her family; her entire family they led forth and placed outside the camp of Israel.
The city itself they burned with all that was in it; but the silver, gold, and articles of bronze and iron they placed in the treasury of the house of the LORD.
Because Rahab the prostitute had hidden the messengers whom Joshua had sent to reconnoiter Jericho, Joshua let her live, along with her father’s house and all her family, who dwell in the midst of Israel to this day.
Pointless Aside
There are a few points of discussion to start with before getting to the central harrowing and discomfiting point of this story. We could discuss the symbolism of numbers such as three and seven. These are two numbers that come up over and over in salvation history and we can recognize them and pay attention to what the author of Joshua was trying to tell us through them. The number three in the bible, thematically represents completeness, wholeness, and, if you like, holiness - as the word whole with a w is related to holy with just an h. Our Triune God of Father, son, and holy spirit is one. The universe was created in three days. In this story, the battle of Jericho is described three times in three parallel cases. There is the command by God, the delivery of command by Joshua to the Israelites, and the carrying out by the Israelites. This completion of God’s will parallels the new Testament, or really any carrying out of God’s will. There are three parts to the story of Jesus, the Incarnation in which God became man, the ministry in which God shares his Word with the disciples, and the final carrying out of God’s will - on the cross, at Pentecost, and in our continued work of the people.
Herem
But the main thing I want to sort of dig deeper into is something much less pleasant. In this story there is the idea of herem. The part of this passage that refers to herem is this
They observed the ban by putting to the sword all living creatures in the city: men and women, young and old, as well as oxen, sheep and donkeys.
Herem, or "the ban," is setting apart for the Lord. It is the idea of giving over to the Lord as sacrifice. But in this case, we could also call it slaughter, genocide, and indiscriminate violence. My conscience, and many people's consciences, I think, rightly reviles at this being a good thing. Even considering this section of scripture I view as potentially dangerous since the violence being justified by God for “greater good” has been used throughout history to sustain violence. Human sacrifice or genocide is one of those evils that simply cannot be justified.
Marcion
So, how do we reconcile this display of violence in scripture? Historically there are a few ways apologetics1 has gone about trying to grapple with this. The first, and most obviously wrong, is that the God of the Old and the God of the New Testament are different, this is known as the Marcion heresy (about the 2nd century). What’s appealing in the Marcion heresy is something that actually is appealing in many forms of heterodox beliefs that have been found dangerous and wrong throughout history. The Marcion heresy ties everything in a neat little good and evil bow. That Jewish God was bad, not like our merciful Christian God. Gnosticism, another dangerous heresy strongly related, is Marcion’s little brother, very little different, where the creator demiurge of the Old Testament is opposed to the loving and forgiving God of Christ and the esoteric knowledge of this God is what saves. Marcion is strongly condemned, and I think it is a heresy present in ideologies like the Nazis of the 20th century. I also think the condemned heresy of Marcion is worth addressing first because I unfortunately think some of the other responses to the violence in Jericho have some of the same basic flawed features of Marcion. In particular, what’s dangerous about the belief in a purely dichotomous good and evil worship is that a person can imagine the other tribe as fundamentally without soul or sacredness that gives them moral worth.
You’ll probably see where I’m going with this eventually but the Marcion and Gnostic heresies in some sense aren’t purely wrong2 in themselves because they are metaphysically mistaken but because they imply dangerous attitudes that can other. They can split into tribes and make people think of an opposite tribe as less than and worth discarding.
Two bible verses as well that stand in contradiction to this interpretation, and also make it hard to stomach the passage of Joshua
“I the Lord do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.” (Malachi 3:6)
"Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever" (Herbews 13:8)
Or if you like, anytime you say the Glory Be you are reflecting on the unending and constant nature of God - quite explicitly contradicting Marcion.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen
Hot take: Irenaeus was an idiot
Now, the first non-condemned response to the violence in Joshua comes from St. Ireneaus again 2nd century who was responding to Marcion. Ireneaus’s view is basically the exact mirror image of Marcion’s instinct. Ireneaus wrote on God’s wrath present in the New Testament in the book of Revelation. The people of Israel should have fully carried out the ban and enacted God’s full wrath on corrupted societies, destroying not just the oppressors and armies of pagans within the walls of Jericho but the women and children as well. His view, and to an extent I agree with this particular part of it, basically holds that communities are stitched together with the righteousness of virtue or the stain of sin. Destroying sin then requires destroying entire communities not just directly murdering the murderers.
Yet, this response doesn’t sit well with my conscience either. The tendency toward wrath in the policies of democracies is something I am deeply concerned about. Irenaeus’s idea that the stain of sin spreads through a community opens up the door to arguments for such policies of erring on the side of wrath. And if you’ll indulge for a moment a young man’s penchant for viewing ethics through the lens of public policy, I’d like to give two examples in the US I would point to of wrath creating bad policy.
A Tangent into US Policy
Incarceration
One is the carceral system in the US. We have a third of the population of China, a political regime far better when it comes to civil rights than China, and yet a population imprisoned on a scale that dwarfs China’s prison system. The reason for this isn’t that we value freedom less than China, I am no defender of that regime. China is much more likely than our court system to imprison people for things they shouldn’t be imprisoned for. We have more incarcerated people in the US for the simple reason that when someone does break the law, we punish them for far longer.
How is this connected to democracy’s tendency toward wrath, you might ask? Well, what happens when a bad man is released from prison after serving time and then goes and commits another crime? The story of “released prisoner kills little girl” is the stuff of nightmares for political campaigns. There is no such story for "man released from prison after a brawl goes on to get clean and leads a life that is fine, providing for his family and going to church every week." The political risk is not symmetric in the case of being harsher and being more lenient. But in the latter case many lives were touched even as in the former many lives were shattered. But in a democracy any bad outcome of leniency is more visible, it strikes at the heart, and it feels like the leaders who made that mistake have committed an injustice. While benefits of leniency or harms of harshness are hidden.
Thankfully, I think the issue of incarceration in the United States is actually one that elites in the US have recognized as a problem on both sides of the aisle. There have been Republicans in states like Ohio working on recidivism programs. Public Defenders launched campaigns in California to sit on judgeships in recent elections partly to become judges that have experience giving aid to criminals who often really did do bad crimes and yet really are complicated human beings worthy of the hope of forgiveness. Catholics have of course always been involved in the works of mercy of serving prisoners at all points, from Fr. Greg Boyle who does his best to minister to youth in gangs before they are caught up in the system to Sr. Helen Prejean who has told a prisoner who was scared before being killed by the state to look at her so that the last thing he would see was the face of someone who loved him.
Pro-life Policy not supported by Pro-Life politicians
Another example of tendency toward wrath leading to potential policy failure is the issue of abortion and parental policy generally. One of the most powerful argument against abortion is that the unborn child is innocent and doesn’t deserve to die. And one of the most common responses to that line of reasoning in the United States is that those who are pro-life often don’t support policies that are pro-mother. And as frustrating as I find that line of reasoning personally, it is unfortunately true that public policy in the United States that would benefit poor mothers who might be more at risk of terminating pregnancy is often weak.
One example that I talked about back in 20203 is the Expanded Childcare Tax Credit. This policy was passed in the CARES act on a bipartisan basis, provided money for parents, and cut child poverty by a third. At the end of 2021, Congress failed to renew this expansion and poverty ballooned back up, not to what it was before, but still just about doubled. Why? Well, mostly polls showed the Expanded Childcare Tax Credit was unpopular with Americans because it would potentially provide income to non-working parents. And Joe Manchin, the lone Democratic Senator who has consistently voted against abortion, basically ended the expansion in his request to add work requirements the credit. A requirement that beneficiaries for old disabled people on social security and medicaid, that often get paid out to their adult children, don’t have to deal with. The argument that the Expanded Childcare Tax Credit was bad policy was taken as gospel as well by most Republicans who supposedly favor pro-life policy as well, to my extreme frustration.
So putting public policy back to the side. I think Ireneaus goes too far the other direction in viewing God as a God of wrath and destruction overflowing.
Bishop Barron is an idiot
A more modern aside on Irenaeus, Bishop Robert Barron, who used to be Auxiliary Bishop in Los Angeles reads into Irenaeus what I’m going to call the “pedagogical hypothesis” of violence in Joshua and other passages of the bible. In his podcast, he references Irenaeus’s view of Scripture as pedagogy. This view does exist as a teaching about some other things but he’s wrong to attribute it to teaching on violence of Jericho. Bishop Barron then goes on analogize about how God is just moving the Israelites toward his will. Barron makes a long comparison of a father telling his child about where the sun goes in the evening. First, oh, the sun goes to sleep, and then when the child is a little older, oh the sun starts in the east and sets in the west, and finally explains that we are actually moving and not the sun.
Setting aside for one moment that the Church historically was wrong about the metaphysics of the cosmos and rather famously imprisoned Galileo for saying that the earth moves. Um, I hate this analogy so much. It infantilizes the Israelite people who definitely had among them, as any society did, those who could very well recognize that murder is wrong4. It also erases references throughout the Old Testament of real negative consequences for Israel not enacting complete bans, including in particular King Saul. And it sounds an awful lot more like the Marcion or Gnostic heresy to me, where we are getting a get out of jail free card that the Israelites, not to mention Midianites and people of Jericho, didn’t get because they didn’t have access to the mystical truth of Jesus Christ.
Augustine and Aquinas
Augustine (4th century) and later Aquinas (in the 13th) have a further refinement of Irenaeus that again gets a little bit closer to being ok to me. They took Irenaeus’s view that the overflowing wrath of God is real and present in the old and the new but then the claim is that it is God’s judgment, not ours, that can be placed. That God is one of forgiveness and purity and that we can only take such actions in pure and clear direction by God, with I think implicit argument that such a clear direction seems unlikely in modern times. God is the creator and sole king of all life on earth.
This also has the benefit of a deeper reading of the text where the walking around Jericho for 3 days constitutes an act of communion with God. The people of Israel must purify themselves to become authentic instruments of God. This calls to mind to me the actions of a Martin Luther King5. As he says in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, every time King went out to take direct action against an injustice, he would first direct those around him to engage in a sort of ritualized purity making. Gandhi, though not a Christian, was an inspiration to King for this sort of cultivation of virtue before political action.
But King and Gandhi, in very direct contrast to the story of Joshua, were non-violent. And to me Augustine and Aquinas just don’t satisfy the central issue that the conscience cries out at the very idea of murdering women, children, and animals6. Prophets would rage against nations that burned children as sacrifice. The prophets and Christ would claim God desires Mercy, not sacrifice.
Genocide is Wrong
So, in the end I’m left with very few scholars left that offer anything in the way of satisfying answers to the central dilemma of the battle of Jericho. Does this mean I stand here in judgement of God? No. Does it mean I have decided some parts of the bible are better than others? Well, yeah. But it doesn’t mean I deny that this is inspired text. I think there is a way of understanding the bible as inspired, but also written by flawed human beings often after the fact who maybe didn’t have their head on straight sometimes. I, in the end, don’t find any nuance in the idea that genocide is wrong, genocide is wrong. To me this is first principle. So I’ll end with a quote from Dei Verbum, document from Vatican II
“However, since God speaks in Sacred Scripture through men in human fashion, the interpreter of Sacred Scripture, in order to see clearly what God wanted to communicate to us, should carefully investigate what meaning the sacred writers really intended, and what God wanted to manifest by means of their words.”
I use the word pejoratively
What I’m saying here, in a sense, is that believing wrong things isn’t “intrinsically” evil, only evil insofar as its consequences are evil but of course the people who like to use the term intrinsically evil would be the exact people who would get mad at me for using it in this context, so i’m just smuggling the concept in.
Not on this blog, in person.
Seriously, like most of the prophets
If you are wondering where the Gandhi or MLK figures are in Palestine doing peaceful protest against Israel’s violence. They’re dead or in prison. The iron wall failed - by Jonathan M. Katz - The Racket
Yeah, I snuck that in there.
I was taught--I think--the pedagogical hypothesis, that people become ready for a truer version of morality over time, that they take simple but wrong views and reflective experiences can correct--remorse is one such experience. I don't think it's a bad view, given the ways that science has shown us the deep similarity in all humans when we are inclined to see people as other and make up stories about other groups, to essentialize, etc. We can learn more and correct our views, and see the arbitrary nature of group membership and also how much humans are charged by our environment. So when we are secure and have our needs met, we tend to be more cooperative, in cultures where reciprocity is essential, we are more inclined to this. A pedagogical view of humans seems like it fits the facts, in a lot of ways. Of course that knowledge if human equality and value of others is very fragile and we can lose it. But the stories don't necessarily tell us one thing but can be understood from different angles.