_THE BAN_
DEUT. vii.
As in the previous chapter we have had the Mosaic and Deuteronomic
statement of the internal and spiritual means of defending the
Israelite character and faith from the temptations which the
conquest in Canaan would bring with it, in this we have strenuous
provision made against the same evil by external means. The mind
first was to be fortified against the temptation to fall away; then
the external pressure from the example of the peoples they were
to conquer was to be minimised by the practice of the ban. The
first five verses, and the last two deal emphatically with that,
as also does ver. 16, and what lies between is a statement of the
grounds upon which a strict execution of this dreadful measure was
demanded. These, as is usual in Deuteronomy, are dealt with somewhat
discursively; but the command as to the ban, coming as it does
at the beginning, middle, and end, gives this chapter unity, and
suggests that it should be treated under this head as a whole. There
are besides other passages which can most conveniently be discussed
in connection with chapter vii. These are the historic statements
as to the ban having been laid upon the cities of Sihon (Deut. ii.
34) and Og (Deut. iii. 6); the provision for the extirpation of
idolatrous persons and communities (Deut. xiii. 15); and lastly,
that portion of the law of war which treats of the variations in the
execution of the ban which circumstances might demand (Deut. xx.
13-18). These passages, taken together, give an almost exhaustive
statement in regard to the nature and limitations of the Cherem,
or ban, in ancient Israel, a statement much more complete than is
elsewhere to be found; and they consequently suggest, if they do not
demand, a complete investigation of the whole matter.
It is quite clear that the Cherem, or ban, by which a person or
thing, or even a whole people and their property, were devoted to
a god, was not a specially Mosaic ordinance, for it is a custom
known to many half-civilised and some highly civilised nations.
In Livy's account of early Rome we read that Tarquinius, after
defeating the Sabines, burned the spoils of the enemy in a huge
heap, in accordance with a vow to Vulcan, made before advancing into
the Sabine country. The same custom is alluded to in Vergil, _Æn._
viii. 562, and Cæsar, _B.G._ vi. 17, tells us a similar thing of the
Gauls. The Mexican custom of sacrificing all prisoners of war to
the god of war was of the same kind. But the most complete example
of the ban in the Hebrew sense, occurring among a foreign people,
is to be found in the Moabite stone which Mesha, king of Moab,
erected in the ninth century B.C., _i.e._ in the days of Ahab. Of
course Moab and Israel were related peoples, and it might in itself
be possible that Moab during its subjection to Israel had adopted
the ban from Israel. But that is highly improbable, considering how
widespread this custom is, and how deeply its roots are fixed in
human nature. Rather we should take the Moabite ban as an example of
its usual form among the Semitic peoples. "And Chemosh said to me,
Go, take Nebo against Israel. And I went by night and fought against
it from the break of morn until noon, and took it and killed
them all, seven thousand men and boys, and women and girls and
maid-servants, for I had devoted it to 'Ashtor-Chemosh'; and I took
thence the vessels" (so Renan) "of Yahweh, and I dragged them before
Chemosh."[55] The ordinary Semitic word for the ban is _Cherem_. It
denotes a thing separated from or prohibited to common use, and no
doubt it indicated originally merely that which was given over to
the gods, separated for their exclusive use for ever. In this way it
was distinguished from that which was "sanctified" to Yahweh, for
that could be redeemed; devoted things could not.
[55] Driver, _Notes on Hebrew Text of the Books of Samuel_, p. 101,
note.
In the ancient laws repeated in Lev. xxvii. 28, 29, two classes
of devoted things seem to be referred to. First of all, we have
the things which an individual may devote to God, "whether of man
or beast, or of the field of his possession." The provision made
in regard to them is that they shall not be sold or redeemed, but
shall become in the highest degree sacred to Yahweh. Men so devoted,
therefore, became perpetual slaves at the holy places, and other
kinds of property fell to the priests. In the next verse, 29, we
read, "None devoted which shall be devoted of" (_i.e._ from among)
"men shall be ransomed; he shall surely be put to death," but that
must refer to some other class of men devoted to Yahweh. It is
inconceivable that in Israel individuals could at their own will
devote slaves or children to death. Moreover, if every man devoted
must be killed, the provision of Numb. xviii. 14, according to which
everything devoted in Israel is to be Aaron's, could not be carried
out. Further, there is a difference in expression in the two verses:
in 28 we have things "devoted to Yahweh," in 29 we have simply men
"devoted."[56] There can be little doubt, therefore, that we have
in ver. 29 the case of men condemned for some act for which the
punishment prescribed by the law was the ban (as in Exod. xxii. 19,
"He that sacrificeth unto any god save unto Yahweh only shall be
put to the ban"), or which some legal tribunal considered worthy
of that punishment. In such cases, the object of the ban being
something offensive, something which called out the Divine wrath and
abhorrence, this "devotion" to God meant utter destruction. Just
as _anathēma_, a thing set up in a temple as a votive offering,
became _anathĕma_, an accursed thing, and as _sacer_, originally
meaning sacred, came to mean devoted to destruction, so _Cherem_,
among the Semites, came to have the meaning of a thing devoted to
destruction by the wrath of the national gods. From ancient days it
had been in use, and in Israel it continued to be practised, but
with a new moral and religious purpose which antiquity could know
nothing of. No more conspicuous instance of that transformation
of ancient customs of a doubtful or even evil kind by the spirit
of the religion of Yahweh, which is one of the most remarkable
characteristics of the history of Israel, can be conceived than this
use of the ban for higher ends.
[56] Cf. Dillmann, _Exodus and Leviticus_, p. 634.
As the fundamental idea of the _Cherem_ was the devoting of objects
to a god, it is manifest that the whole inner significance of the
institution would vary with the conception of the Deity. Among the
worshippers of cruel and sanguinary gods, such as the gods of the
heathen Semites were, the ends which this practice was used to
promote would naturally be cruel and sanguinary. Moreover, where
it was thought that the gods could be bought over by acceptable
sacrifices, where they were conceived of as non-moral beings,
whose reasons for favour or anger were equally capricious and
unfathomable, it was inevitable that the _Cherem_ should be mainly
used to bribe these gods to favour and help their peoples. Where
victory seemed easy and within the power of the nation, the spoil
and the inhabitants of a conquered city or country would be taken
by the conquerors for their own use. Where, on the other hand,
victory was difficult and doubtful, an effort would be made to win
the favour of the god, and wring success from him by promising him
all the spoil. The slaughter of the captives would be considered
the highest gratification such sanguinary gods could receive, while
their pride would be held to be gratified by the utter destruction
of the seat of the worship of other gods. Obviously it was in this
way that the Gauls and Germans worked this institution; and the
probability is that the heathen Semites would view the whole matter
from an even lower standpoint. But to true worshippers of Yahweh
such thoughts must have grown abhorrent. From the moment when their
God became the centre and the norm of moral life to Israel, acts
which had no scope but the gratification of a thirst for blood, or
of a petty jealous pride, could not be thought acceptable to Him.
Every institution and custom, therefore, which had no moral element
in it, had either to be swept away, or moralised in the spirit of
the purer faith. Now the ban was not abolished in Israel; but it
was moralised, and turned into a potent and terrible weapon for the
preservation and advancement of true religion.
By the Divine appointment the national life of Israel was bound up
with the foundation and progress of true religion. It was in this
people that the seeds of the highest religion were to be planted,
and it was by means of it that all the nations of the earth were
to be blessed. But as the chief means to this end was to be the
higher ethical and religious character of the nation as such, the
preservation of that from depravation and decay became the main
anxiety of the prophets and priests and law-givers of Israel. Just
as in modern days the preservation and defence of the State is
reckoned in every country the supreme law which overrides every
other consideration, so in Israel the preservation of the higher
life was regarded. Rude and half-civilised as Israel was at the
beginning of its career, the Divinely revealed religion had made
men conscious of that which gave this people its unique value both
to God and men. They recognised that its glory and strength lay in
its thought of God, and in the character which this impressed upon
the corporate life, as well as on the life of each individual. As we
have seen, this bred in them a consciousness of a higher calling,
of a higher obligation resting on them than upon others. They
consequently felt the necessity of guarding their special character,
and used the ban as their great weapon to ward off the contagion
of evil, and to give this character room to develop itself. Its
tremendous, even cruel, power was directed in Israel to this end;
it was from this point of view alone that it had value in the eyes
of the fully enlightened man of Israel. Stade in his history (vol.
i., p. 490) holds that this distinction did not exist, that the
Israelite view differed in little, if anything, from that of their
heathen kinsmen, and that the ban resulted from a vow intended to
gratify Yahweh and win His favour by giving Him the booty. But
it is undeniable that in the earliest statement in regard to it
(Exod. xx.) there is a distinct legislative provision that the ban
should be proclaimed and executed irrespective of any vow; and in
the later, but still early, notices of it in Joshua, Judges, and 1
Samuel the command to execute it comes in every case from Yahweh.
In Deuteronomy, again, the ethical purpose of the ban is always
insisted upon, most emphatically perhaps in chap. xx. 17 ff., where
the _Cherem_ is laid down as a regular practice in war against the
heathen inhabitants of Canaan: "But thou shalt utterly destroy them,
... that they teach you not to do after all their abominations,
which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against
Yahweh your God." Whatever hints or appearances there may be in
the Scripture narratives that the lower view still clung to some
minds are not to be taken as indicating the normal and recognised
view. They were, like much else of a similar kind, mere survivals,
becoming more and more shadowy as the history advances, and at last
entirely vanishing away. The new and higher thought which Moses
planted was the rising and prevailing element in the Israelite
consciousness. The lower thought was a decaying reminiscence of
the state of things which the Mosaic revelation had wounded to the
death, but which was slow in dying.
In Israel, therefore, the ban was, on the principles of the higher
religion, legitimate only where the object was to preserve that
religion when gravely endangered. If any object could justify a
measure so cruel and sweeping as the ban, this could, and this
is the only ground upon which the Scriptures defend it. That the
danger was grave and imminent, when Israel entered Canaan, cannot be
doubted. As we have seen, the Israelite tribes were far from being
of one blood or of one faith. There was a huge mixed multitude along
with them; and even among those who had unquestioned title to be
reckoned among Israelites, many were gross, carnal, and slavish in
their conceptions of things. They had not learned thoroughly nor
assimilated the lessons they had been taught. Only the elect among
them had done that; and the danger from contact with races, superior
in culture, and religiously not so far below the position occupied
by the multitude of Israel, was extreme. The nation was born in a
day, but it had been educated only for a generation; it was raw and
ignorant in all that concerned the Yahwistic faith. In fact it was
precisely in the condition in which spiritual disease could be most
easily contracted and would be most deadly. The new religion had not
been securely organised; the customs and habits of the people still
needed to be moulded by it, and could not, consequently, act as the
stay and support of religion as they did at later times. Further,
the people were at the critical moment when they were passing from
one stage of social life to another. At such moments there is
immense danger to the health and character of a nation, for there is
no unity of ideal present to every mind. That which they are moving
away from has not ceased to exert its influence, and that _to_
which they are moving has not asserted itself with all its power.
At such crises in the career of peoples emerging from barbarism,
even physical disease is apt to be deadlier and more prevalent
than it is among either civilised or entirely savage men. The old
Semitic heathenism had not been entirely overcome, and the new and
higher religion had not succeeded in establishing full dominion.
Contact with the Canaanites in almost any shape would under such
circumstances be like the introduction of a contagious disease, and
at almost any price it had to be avoided. The customs of the world
at that time, and of the Semitic nations in particular, offered this
terribly effective weapon of the "ban," and for this higher purpose
it was accepted; and it was enforced with a stringency which nothing
would justify short of the fact that life or death to the great hope
of mankind was involved in it.
But it may be and should be asked, Would any circumstances justify
Christian men, or a Christian nation, in entering upon a war of
extermination now? and if not, how can a war of extermination
against the Canaanities have been sanctioned by God? In answer to
the first question, it must be said that, while circumstances can be
conceived under which the extermination of a race would certainly
be carried out by nations called Christian, it is hardly possible
to imagine Christian men taking part in such a massacre. Even the
supposed command of God could not induce them to do so.[57] It would
be so contrary to all that they have learned of God's will, both
as regards themselves and others, that they would hesitate. Almost
certainly they would decide that they were bound to be faithful to
what God had revealed of Himself; they would feel that He could not
wish to blunt their moral sense and undo what He had done for them,
and they would put aside the command as a temptation. But the case
with the Israelites was altogether different. The question is not,
how could God destroy a whole people? Were it only that, there would
be little difficulty. Everywhere in His action through nature God
is ruthless enough against sin. Vice and sin are every day bringing
men and women and innocent children to death, and to suffering
worse than death. For that every believer in God holds the Divine
law responsible. And when the Divine command was laid upon the
Israelites to do, more speedily, and in a more awe-inspiring way,
what Canaanite vices were already doing, there can be no difficulty
except in so far as the effect upon the Israelites is concerned.
It is by death, inflicted as the punishment of vice, and sparing
neither woman nor child, that nations have, as a rule, been blotted
out; and, except to the confused thinker, so far as the Divine
action is concerned there is no difference between such cases and
this of the Canaanites. The real question is, Can a living, personal
God deliberately set to men a task which can only lower them in the
scale of humanity--brutalise them, in fact? No, is of course the
only possible answer; therefore a supposed Divine command coming
to us to do such things would rightly be suspected. We could not,
we feel sure, be called upon by God to slay the innocent with the
guilty, to overwhelm in one common punishment individual beings who
have each of them an inalienable claim to justice at our hands. But
the Israelites had not and could not have the feeling we have on
the subject. The feeling for the individual did not exist in early
times. The clan, the tribe, the nation was everything, and the
individual nothing. Consequently there was not existent in the world
that keen feeling in regard to individual rights, which dominates us
so completely that we can with difficulty conceive any other view.
In this world the early Israelite scarcely perceived the individual
man, and beyond this world he knew of no certain career for him.
He consequently dealt with him only as part of his clan or tribe.
His tribe suffered for him and he for his tribe, and in early penal
law the two could hardly be separated. Indeed it may almost be said
that, when the individual suffered for his own sin, the satisfaction
felt by the wronged was rather due to the tribe having suffered so
much loss in the individual's death than to the retribution which
fell upon him. Moreover war was the constant employment of all, and
death by violence the most common of all forms of death. Manners and
feelings were both rude, and the pains as well as the pleasures of
civilised and Christian men lay largely beyond their horizon. There
was consequently no danger of doing violence to nobler feelings or
of leaving a sting in the conscience by calling such men to such
work. The stage of moral development they had reached did not forbid
it, and the work therefore might be given them of God.
[57] Mozley's _Lectures on the Old Testament_, p. 102.
But the grounds for the action were immeasurably raised. Instead
of being left on the heathen level, "the usage was utilised so as
to harmonise with the principles of their religion, and to satisfy
its needs. It became a mode of secluding and rendering harmless
anything which peculiarly imperilled the religious life of either
an individual or the community, such objects being withdrawn from
society at large, and presented to the sanctuary, which had power,
if needful, to authorise their destruction."[58] The Deuteronomic
command is not given shamefacedly. The interests at stake are too
great for that. Israel is utterly to smite the Canaanite nations,
to put them to the ban, to make no covenant with them nor to
intermarry with them. "Thus shall ye deal with them: ye shall break
down their altars, and dash in pieces their obelisks, and hew down
their Asherim, and burn their graven images with fire." There is a
fierce, curt energy about the words which impresses the reader with
the vigour needed to defend the true religion. The danger was seen
to be great, and this tremendous weapon of the ban was to be wielded
with unsparing rigour, if Israel was to be true to its highest
call. "For," ver. 6 goes on to say, "thou art a holy people unto
Yahweh thy God; Yahweh thy God hath chosen thee to be a peculiar
people unto Himself, out of all peoples that are upon the face of
the earth." They were the elect of God; they were a holy people,
a people separated unto their God, and the Divine blessing was to
come upon all nations through them if they remained true. Their
separateness must therefore be maintained. As a people marked out
by the love of God, they could not share in the common life of the
world as it then was. They could not lift the Canaanites to their
level by mingling with them. So they would only obscure, nay, in
so far as this rigorous command was not carried out, they did all
but fatally obscure, the higher elements of national and personal
life which they had received. They were too recently converted to
be the people of Yahweh, too weak in their own faith, to be able
to do anything but stand in this austere and repellent attitude
towards the world. Centuries passed before they could relax without
danger. It may even be said that until the coming of our Lord they
dared not take up any other than this separatist position, though
as the ages passed and the prophetic influence grew, the yearning
after a gathering in of the Gentiles, and the promise of it in the
Messianic day, became more markedly prominent. Only when men could
look forward to being made perfect in Jesus Christ did they receive
the command to go unreservedly out into the world, for only then had
they an anchor which no storm in the world could drag.
[58] Driver, _Notes on the Hebrew Text of the Books of Samuel_, p.
101.
But we must be careful not to exaggerate the separation called for
here. It does not authorise anything like the fierce, intolerant
thirst for conquest and domination which was the very keynote of
Islam.[59] In Deut. ii. 5, 6, 19, the lands of Edom, Moab, and Ammon
are said to be Yahweh's gift to these peoples in the same way as
Canaan was to Israel. Nor did the law ever authorise the bitter
and contemptuous feeling with which Pharisaic Israelites often
regarded all men beyond the pale of Judaism. There was no general
prohibition against friendly intercourse with other peoples. It was
against those only, whose presence in Canaan would have frustrated
the establishment of the theocracy, and whose influence would have
been destructive of it when established, that the "ban" was decreed.
When war arose between Israel and cities farther off than those of
Canaan, they were not to be put to the "ban." Though they were to be
hardly treated according to our ideas, they were to suffer only the
fate of cities stormed in those days, for the danger of corruption
was proportionately diminished (Deut. xx. 17) by their distance.
The right of other peoples to their lands was to be respected, and
friendly intercourse might be entered on with them. But the right
of Israel to the free and unhindered development to which it had
been called by Yahweh was the supreme law. The suspicion of danger
to that was to make things otherwise harmless, or even useful, to be
abhorred. If men are to live nearer to God than others, they must
sacrifice much to the higher call.
[59] Riehm, _Old Testament Theology_, p. 98.
To press home this, to induce Israel to respond to this demand, to
convince them anew of their obligation to go any length to keep
their position as a people holy to Yahweh, our chapter urges a
variety of reasons. The first (vv. 7-11) is that the history and
grounds of their election exhibit the character of Yahweh in such a
way as to heighten their sense of their privileges and the danger
of losing them. He had chosen them, only because of His own love to
them; and having chosen them and sworn to their fathers, He is true
to His covenant. He brought them out of the house of bondage, and
has led them until now. In Yahweh they had a spiritual ideal, whose
characteristics were love and faithfulness. But though He loves He
can be wrathful, and though He has made a covenant with Israel,
it must be fulfilled in accordance with righteousness. In dealing
with such a God they must beware of thinking that their election
is irrespective of moral conditions, or that His love is mere good
nature. He can and does smite the enemies of good, for anger is
always possible where love is. It is only with good nature that
anger is not compatible, just as warm and self-sacrificing affection
also is. Those who turn away from Him, therefore, He requites
immediately to their face, as surely as "He keepeth covenant and
mercy with them that love Him and keep His commandments." All the
blessed and intimate relations which He has opened up with them, and
in which their safety and their glory lie, can be dissolved by sin.
They are, therefore, to strike fiercely at temptation, to regard
neither their own lives nor the lives of others when that has to be
put out of the way, to smite and spare not, for the very love of God.
A second reason why they should obey the Divine commands, as in
other matters, so in this terrible thing, is this. If they be
willing and obedient, then God will bless them in temporal ways as
well as with spiritual blessings. Even for their earthly prosperity
a loyal attitude to Yahweh would prove decisive. "Thou shalt be
blessed above all peoples; there shall not be a male or female
barren among you, or among your cattle. And Yahweh will take away
from thee all sickness, and He will put none of the evil diseases
of Egypt which thou knowest upon thee; but will lay them upon all
them that hate thee." The same promises are renewed in more detail
and with greater emphasis in the speech contained in chapters
xxviii. and xxix. There the significance of such a view, and the
difficulties involved in it for us, will be fully discussed. Here it
will be sufficient to note that the profit of obedience is brought
in to induce Israel to enforce the "ban" most rigorously.
The last verses of our chapter, vv. 17-26, set before Israel a third
incitement and encouragement. Yahweh, who had proved His might
and His favour for them by His mighty deeds in Egypt, would be
among them, to make them stronger than their mightiest foes (ver.
21): "Thou shalt not be affrighted at them, for Yahweh thy God is
in the midst of thee, a great God and a terrible." The previous
inducements to obey Yahweh their God and be true to Him were founded
on His character and on His acts. He was merciful; but He could be
terrible, and He would reward the faithful with prosperity. Now His
people are encouraged to go forward because His presence will go
with them. In the conflicts which obedience to Him would provoke,
He would be with them to sustain them, whatever stress might come
upon them. Step by step they would drive out those very peoples whom
they had dreaded so when the spies brought back their report of the
land. The terror of their God would fall upon all these nations. A
great God and a terrible He would prove Himself to be, and with Him
in their midst they might go forth boldly to execute the ban upon
the Canaanites. The sins and vices of these peoples had brought this
upon them; their horrible worship left an indelible stain wherever
its shadow fell. Israel, led and directed by Yahweh Himself, was to
fall upon them as the scourge of God.
Notwithstanding the Divine urgency, the command to destroy the
Canaanites and their idols was not carried out. After a victory
or two the enemy began to submit. Glad to be rid of the toils of
war, Israel settled down among the people of the land. All central
control would seem to have disappeared. The Canaanite worship and
the Canaanite customs attracted and fascinated the people, and
enemy after enemy broke in upon them and triumphed over them. The
half-idolatrous masses were led away into depraved forms of worship,
and for a time it looked as if the work of Moses would be utterly
undone. Had the purer faith he taught them not been revived, Israel
would probably not have survived the period of the Judges. As it
was, they just survived; but by their lapse the leavening of the
whole of the nation with the pure principles of Yahweh-worship had
been stopped. Instead of being cured, the idolatrous inclinations
they had brought with them from the pre-Mosaic time had been revived
and strengthened. Multitudes, while calling Yahweh their God, had
sunk almost to the Canaanite level in their worship, and during the
whole period of their existence as a nation Israel as a whole never
again rose clear of half-heathen conceptions of their God. The
prophets taught and threatened them in vain, until at last ruin fell
upon them and the Divine threats of punishment were fulfilled.