Promised Land and Land Theft
The Joshua and Promised Land stories provide powerful images for the poor who defend their land. Nevertheless, these same stories have been used to the contrary. They have been abused to justify slavery and the taking of other people's land. Unfortunately, people have even interpreted these stories as encouraging wars of extermination. They have believed that such wars are morally desirable in order to purify the world of evil.1 Let's look at some of these interpretations.
We can begin with the Crusades. During the Middle Ages, European Christians launched military campaigns to take the Holy Land from the Muslims. Early on, the Crusaders took Jericho. Following the example of Joshua 6, they marched around the city led by clergy carrying sacred banners and pictures of Christian saints. When the walls did not fall down as expected, they attacked and overran the city. Then they massacred the inhabitants. Jews were locked in their synagogue and burned alive. Even some of the Crusaders were horrified by the slaughter.2
The Crusaders could have argued that the Bible was on their side. After all, Joshua commanded that "the city and all that is in it shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction" (6:17). The writer reports that they did just that--killing "by the edge of the sword all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys" (6:21). "They burned down the city, and everything in it" (6:24). For the Crusaders, the Book of Joshua was a blueprint for their military campaigns.
The Crusades occurred a long time ago. We can find stories closer to our own times: the colonial enterprise in the Americas, the establishment of apartheid in South Africa, and the creation of modern Israel.
This page is an excerpt from Joshua and the Promised
Land
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Footnotes
1. Susan Niditch, War in the Hebrew Bible: A Study in the Ethics of Violence (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 77.
2. Robert C. Boling, Joshua: A New Translation with Notes and Commentary, The Anchor Bible (Garden City: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1982), p. 211.