The Ban as Ritual Sacrifice
excerpts from War in the Hebrew Bible
by Susan Niditch (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
For an excellent discussion of the ban and war in the bibilical tradition, read War in the Hebrew Bible by Susan Niditch (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). Two excerpts are below.
...the ban involves the killing of all human beings regardless of age, gender, or military status. In Hazor, Jericho, and Ai, the burning of towns is involved, in the case of Jericho, livestock. In most cases, however, booty is kept for the people's own use and towns are not necessarily razed. It is a mistake, in fact, to regard the cases in which booty is said to be taken or cities said to be spared cases of a partial or broken ban. The ban in the texts cited above [Joshua 6:17-21; 8:2, 24-28; 10:28; 11:11] is properly defined as the devotion of conquered humans to God as in the case of the Mesha Inscription and Numbers 21:2-3. Only this definition explains the ban's emphasis on killing humans. In giving humans to God, the Israelites are not saving the best booty for themselves. To the contrary, the best sacrifice, the biggest sacrifice, is the human life, as confirmed by the tale of Jephthah's daughter. The Israelites keep only lesser animal and inanimate material for themselves, though even these may in some cases be devoted to God as in the Achan incident. (pg. 35)
. . . . .
People and their cultures deal with the horror of having taken human life in various ways. . . . The ban as sacrifice accepts that the slaughter of the enemy in a successful battle is the killing of actual humans like oneself, but treats the deaths as necessary offerings to God, required if the battle is to succeed. But why kill everyone? The ban as sacrifice has a terrifying completeness and fairness about it. Because all has been promised to God, there is no individual decision that need be made about sparing this person or that, no guilt about tactical or surgical strikes that go awry. All people are condemned and the matter is out of one's hands.
Paradoxically, the ban as sacrifice may be viewed as admitting of more respect for the value of human life than other war ideologies that allow for the arbitrary killing of soldiers and civilians. This suggestion puts one in the uncomfortable position of appearing somehow sympathetic to the ban as sacrifice. Any of us, of course, would prefer to face an enemy who held to an ideology of war allowing for mercy, restraint, or haphazard escape, but one is trying to understand and enter into the world-view of those who could espouse such a rigid ideology of war. The ban as sacrifice requires a wider view of a God who appreciates human sacrifice, so those who would partake in the ideology of the ban would presumably have something in common with those who believed in the efficacy of child sacrifice. Such a world-view continues throughout Israel's history as indicated by polemics against child sacrifice and by late texts such as Isaiah 34 that associate God with the sacrifice of dead warriors. (pg. 50-51)
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