Destruction of Israel's Enemies

(Deuteronomy 7:1 - 7:26)
"When Jehovah your god brings you into the land you are about to enter and occupy, ahead of your arrival he will clear out many nations, the Hethites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, seven peoples that are more numerous and more powerful than you are.  When Jehovah your god delivers these nations into your hands and you have defeated them, you must, as a divine sacrifice, utterly destroy them.  Make no treaties with them.  Show no mercy to them.  You must not intermarry with them, giving your daughters in marriage to their sons, or taking their daughters for your sons’ brides, for their children would lead your children away from me to worship other gods.  The anger of Jehovah then would flare up and he would immediately destroy you.  This is how you should treat them: tear down their altars, smash their sacred pillars, cut down their Asherah poles, and burn their carved idols.

"For you are a people sacred to Jehovah your god.  Of all the people on earth, Jehovah has chosen you to be his cherished possession.  He did not chose you and single you out as the object of his favor because you were the most populous nation, for indeed you are the least.  It is because he loved you and to keep the oath he swore to your forefathers that Jehovah used his might to bring you out of the land of slavery and free you from the power of the Pharaoh, the ruler of Egypt.  Know, therefore, that Jehovah your god is the only god, a faithful god who keeps his pact and shows his favor to the thousandth generation of those who love him and keep his commandments.  But he exacts retribution upon those who reject him by destroying them.  He will not be lenient to those who oppose him, but will pay them back -- personally.  Therefore, take care to follow the commandments, the laws, and decrees I am giving you here today.

"If you listen to these laws, follow and obey them, then Jehovah your god will keep the pact he made with you and show you his favor, as he swore to your forefathers.  He will love you, bless you, and grant you many children.  In the land he swore to your forefathers he would give you, he will bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your fields, your grain, wine, and olive oil, and increase your herds with calves and your flocks with lambs and kids.  You will be blessed above all peoples.  Among your people or among your livestock there will no male who is impotent or female who is infertile.  And Jehovah will protect you from all sickness.  He will not allow you to suffer from any of the horrible diseases you knew in Egypt, but instead he will inflict them upon those who hate you.

"You must destroy all the nations Jehovah your god delivers into your hands.  Show them no mercy.  Worship not their gods, for they will lead you to destruction.  If, in your mind, you say to yourself, 'How can we drive out these nations, for they are more powerful than we are?'  you must remember what Jehovah your god did to the Pharaoh and to all Egypt.  Then you won't be afraid.  For you personally witnessed the terrors Jehovah your god inflicted upon them, the miracles and the wonders, and the power and the might by which Jehovah your god brought you out of Egypt.  Jehovah your god will do the same to all the people you now fear.  He will even dispatch his aerial warships to harass and root out those survivors who have hidden themselves from you, and he will destroy them as well.  Therefore, do not look in dread upon these nations, for Jehovah your god is here with you, and he is a mighty and a fearsome god.

"Jehovah your god will drive out those nations before you -- but gradually.  You must not expel them all at once, for that would allow the wild animals to propagate too quickly for you to handle.  But Jehovah your god will deliver them your hands.  He will wage war upon them vigorously until they are completely destroyed.  He will hand over to you their kings, whose names you will erase from the memory of man.  No one will be able to oppose you; you will destroy them all.  You must burn their idols.  Don't desire to possess the gold and silver that adorns them.  Don't take any of it for yourselves, for it will lead to your ruin.  It is an abomination to Jehovah your god!  Do not bring it into your homes, or else you, like it, will be marked for sacrificial destruction.  You must totally abhor and reject such things, for they are devoted to utter destruction as a divine sacrifice."

Notes
1. The Hethites (definitely not the Hittites as most translations refer to them) were a tribe of Canaanites, presumably the descendants of Canaan’s son Heth.  The Girgashites were also Canaanites and inhabited lands near the Sea of Galilee.  The Amorites, probably not Canaanites, have been discussed, they inhabiting lands east of the Jordan.  Their kingdoms, those of Og and Sihon, have already been destroyed by the Israelites.   The Canaanites referred to are probably those who lived south of Phoenicia, in the northwest portion of the Promised Land.  The  Perizzites lived in the hill country west and north of the Dead Sea.  The term was also used to describe anyone who was villager, rather than a nomad.  The Hivites, probably Canaanites, lived mostly in the north. but had settlements as far south as Jerusalem.  The Jebusites, who were either Canaanite or related to the Amorites, inhabited land around Jerusalem, and their original capital, Jebus, may have been Jerusalem.  It cannot escape notice that the ethnic composition of pre-Israelite Holy Land was exceedingly complex.  It is also very ambiguous, with nearly every people or tribe mentioned in the Bible the subject of conflicting theories as to their origin and racial derivation and to their identification with historically established nations.

2. Jehovah demands not only the destruction of Israel's enemies, but total genocide -- no half measures, no diplomatic solution permitting coexistence, no quarter, no mercy given.   Those inhabiting the territory granted to the Israelites are not to be merely expelled, but wiped out.  They are not allowed to have freedom of religion or the right to intermarry with the Israelites -- more than that, they are not allowed to exist or even to be remembered after their death.  (Jehovah's human rights record makes Hitler and Stalin look like choir boys.  Even the Nazis tried to expel the Jews before resorting to their extermination by gas chamber.) 

3. Since Jehovah demands that Israel's enemies be completely wiped out, it is odd that he also insists that they not intermarry with the Israelites.  How could they have the opportunity to do so, since the enemy peoples are to be all dead by the time Israel settles in their land?  And why should Jehovah be worried that the Israelites would worship their enemies' gods when they will have already destroyed all their places of worship?

4. The Asherah is a Semitic mother goddess also known as Ashtaroth.  She was a very important goddess, widely worshiped in the ancient Middle East.  The wooden poles mentioned were phallic, fertility symbols connected with her worship.  (Maypoles come to mind.) 

5. Jehovah can fulfill his commitment to settle the Israelites on the land he has promised them, but how can he make good on his promise that no Israelite man will be impotent, no Israelite woman will be infertile, nor will any of their livestock and, moreover, that no one will ever become sick -- if they are faithful to him?  This spawns the most dangerous and destructive fallacy of the ignorant, that illness or physical infirmity is a punishment for sins.  Anything bad happening to a person is caused by his immorality or the insufficiency of his worship.  Anyone who becomes ill or is incapable of having children is suspected of being a sinner or else remiss in fulfilling his religious duties.  Every misfortune that befalls a person is a punishment from God.  This irrational belief has been astonishingly persistent and pervasive, and the evil resulting from it can hardly be underestimated.

6. Jehovah assures Moses that he will destroy even the enemies who have gone into hiding with what is literally translated as "hornets" (the Hebrew word tsirah).  Some have rendered this literally, other translators have reasoned it is meant figuratively and have used the word "terror" or “panic” or something similar.  Neither makes sense.  That God, after destroying enemy armies, would hunt down the stragglers with swarms of hornets is more than unlikely, it's positively silly, even granted that Middle Eastern hornets are pretty nasty.  If Jehovah were God and had the power to control the minds of the insects and make them attack Israel's enemies (and stop them from attacking Israelites), why would he bother to use so crude and ineffective a weapon?   Why not send down fire from the sky or open up the earth to swallow his enemies, or, for that matter, simply uncreate what he wants to destroy?  As we have seen, Jehovah is more likely a humanoid from an advanced civilization, probably extraterrestrial, and his means and methods of conducting war, though puzzling to those of the 2nd Millennium BC, are perhaps not beyond the comprehension of us in the 3rd Millennium AD.  What the Bible authors call "hornets" could be combat aircraft rather than insects.  To the ancient or the primitive wouldn't a helicopter resemble a hornet, with a tail and a sting?  It is possible that the airship that guided the Israelites and hovered over their camp day and night was large enough to contain other, smaller craft, such as those used for warfare, such as those that might resemble hornets.  Modern sightings of UFOs have frequently described large, even massively large, "mother" ships that are cigar shaped.  (The "cloud" hovering above the Israelites was always referred to as a "pillar.")  Since Jehovah is seen as fighting alongside the Israelites, it seems likely his contribution involved providing what we would call air support.

7. Jehovah qualifies his "absolute destruction to Israel's enemies," by saying it will be done gradually and not in one fell swoop.  The reason given is that the resultant, empty land will be taken over by wild animals.  Surely the Middle East, even the ancient Middle East, is not a part of the world customarily overrun by wild animals.  What would the animals be that would hinder humans from occupying empty territory?  And what would be the delay on the part of the Israelites in taking over the land once it was vacated?  This makes no sense.  Jehovah makes a lot of boasts and promises he can't really fulfill, and then offers lame alibis to excuse the limitation of his powers.

8. The Israelites, in burning the idols of their enemies, are forbidden to plunder the gold and silver from them.  Why wouldn't the gold and silver be melted down and used for some other purpose; surely precious metals are fungible.  But perhaps Jehovah is correct in discouraging in his people the lust for gold and silver.

9. Jehovah explains how he has chosen the Israelites to be his people.  This was not because they were strong or populous, but he does not tell us why it is he has chosen them -- or why he freed them from their bondage in Egypt.  Jehovah constantly deplores their faithlessness and castigates their character.  He has little trust in them.  He conducted or ordered several purges of the disobedient.  He has been tempted to wipe them out more than once and did indeed cause all the adults to die out at the end of their 40-year exodus.  He continually has to threaten them so that they will do what he wants of them.  So what it is about the Israelites that makes him love them? Perhaps Jehovah became the god of an obscure people such as the Israelites because all the jobs for “gods” were taken.  He chose them because beggars can't be choosers.  Egypt didn't need another god and every people the Israelites come in contact with have their own national gods.  No positions as a national god for an important people available!  And Jehovah seems to be an outcast among the gods.  He hates them all and is in fierce competition with them.  (There is probably some back story here.) Jehovah, the Jehovah of Moses, insinuated the role of Israel's god by claiming to be the Jehovah known to Abraham, but who had not been seen for generations.  That the Jehovah of Moses is so insistent and so defensive about his position confirms the suspicion, the likelihood, that he is in fact an impostor -- but an acceptable one who fulfills his role as a god.  (And he may have had an advantage over other gods that were absentee deities.)