If the Abel-Shittim area east of the Jordan River had a newspaper in 1400 BCE, the headlines one day might have read: Joshua defeats Canaanites at Jericho. Israelites burn the whole city.
The Israelites storm Jericho with the Ark of the Covenant.
Jean Fouquet, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Joshua’s march into the Promised Land had just began. However, the second battle at Ai did not go so well for the Israelites. It is hard for me to say because I was not at Joshua’s war councils. But I would assume that most Israelite leaders of the time were familiar with Deuteronomy Chapter 20:10, “When you march up to attack a city, make peace…If they refuse to make peace and they engage in battle lay siege to the city. When the Lord your God delivers it into your hands, put it to the sword all men in it. As for the women and children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourself.”
But, if you read down to verse 16 it says if “God is giving you an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them–Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites–as the Lord your God has commanded you.” It doesn’t look like the verse mentions Palestinians. Not being familiar with Middle East ethnic descent and genealogy, I will not speculate on any sort of Biblical DNA connection to today’s Palestinians.
However, according to the National Institute of Health’s Pubmed National Center for Biotechnical Information, “Archaeologic and genetic data support that both Jews and Palestinians came from the ancient Canaanites, who extensively mixed with Egyptians, Mesopotamian, and Anatolian peoples in ancient times. Thus, Palestinian-Jewish rivalry is based in cultural and religious, but not in genetic, differences.” Talk about an ancient melting pot.
But keep away from the devoted things, so that you will not bring about your own destruction by taking any of them. Otherwise you will make the camp of Israel liable to destruction and bring trouble on it.
Joshua 6:18 New International Version
It appears to me that the God of the Old Testament had some serious issues with the Israelites of that era. Take the Ten Commandments. The first two deal with God. He flat told the them I didn’t bring you out of the clutches of Egyptian deities, so don’t think about having other gods before me. And don’t let me catch you dancing around idols and wearing amulets. I think this is why God instructed them to what may be called devoted destruction. Basically, don’t be carrying back any of that junk from your conquered people. In Exodus 20:20 God tells Moses, “Whoever sacrifices to any god other than the Lord must be destroyed.” Maybe it is a short jog from carrying off idolitory war booty to finding yourself on the wrong side of the First and Second commandment.
For instance, Saul, the chosen King of Israel, ran afoul of God. In 1 Samuel 15 Saul was told to “attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”
But Saul did not listen to his marching orders from God. He spared Agag, king of the Amalekites and took with him the “best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves and lambs—everything that was good. These they (the Israelites) were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed.”
After the battle the prophet Samuel shows up in Saul’s camp. He ask Saul about “all this bleating of sheep in my ears? What is this lowing of cattle that I hear?” Saul like any good leader caught not following orders, blamed it on his underlings, his soldiers.
Samuel, however, was having none of it. He said, “Let me tell you what the Lord told me last night…he sent you on a mission, saying, ‘Go and completely destroy those wicked people, the Amalekites; wage war against them until you have wiped them out.’ Why did you not obey the Lord?”
Saul was not talking his way out this. In fact, he may have done his best Flip Wilson imitation, if Flip was around at that time, saying the “Devil made me do it.”
Let’s fast forward to the present day. There is nothing flip about what is happening in Gaza. The death and destruction could easily be compared to the Romans salting Carthage; or some of the bombing campaigns of World War II; or what is taking place is parts of the Ukraine. It is easy to say that this all started with hang gliding terrorist flying into Israel on October 7. But did it?
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is calling for new elections in Israel to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Schumer says, “The world has changed — radically — since then, and the Israeli people are being stifled right now by a governing vision that is stuck in the past.”
Schumer might be right, although, he did not indicate how far in the past. According to the highest elected Jewish official in the United States government, Netanyahu is allowing “his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel ” But is his he?
I don’t know that much about Netanyahu’s right wing religious leaning government. But if the Zionists are as dedicated to God as some of our Evangelicals here in America, they may be more worried about running afoul of God then world opinion. Especially when Hamas is preaching “From the River to the Sea.”
God sent them into the Promised Land and a multitude of people from Joshua’ time to now have run them out what they believe is rightly theirs. The long Biblical story of this area has the Jews going up against some of the strongest empires in history: Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and Romans to name some of the ancients they battled. And now Hamas.
I am not condoning or defending Israel’s actions in Gaza; but from an Old Testament point of view it does not surprise me.
*As little as I know about the Bible I know even less about the Koran and Islamic writings and history. So this blog may sound one sided. I am sure if it were the Israelis being pushed into the sea we could find numerous Islamic writings that would religiously justify Palestinians’ actions if the tables were reversed.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
mystoryorhistory 