Invoking Vengeance

How to read sacred texts? This is not merely a technical question, nor does it apply only to those engaged in the study of Bible. How such text is read and interpreted has a direct impact on events around the world and, especially, the current tragic situation in the Middle East.

As a Jew, my obligation is to concentrate on my own religion and leave the problem of radical interpretations of Islam to others. These days there is a flood of dark and violent messianic assertions made by many on the Jewish religious right trying to justify not merely the vanquishing of Israel’s enemies but their annihilation by using pseudo-biblical sources to bolster their point of view.

Reading the Bible in order to  justify one’s ideological and theological biases (let alone – a thirst for revenge), is one of the most dangerous activities one could undertake, especially during these tumultuous times.

The other day I watched and listened to a study of the book of Samuel, led by a rabbi who employed a solid method of reading the text, asking three questions: What is written? How is it written? Why is it written? Based on the Talmud, the assumption of the rabbi was that what is written in the Bible is a message for the generations. It is eternal. The rabbi quoted the Talmudic aphorism: Man d’ihu za’ir – ihu rav  – that which seems minor – is major. Anything mentioned (or not mentioned) in the Bible is never insignificant.

I have no argument to make with these statements. However, the rabbi then went on to make further statements which were questionable, least among them the traditional rabbinic opinion that the book of Samuel was written by Samuel himself, as was the book of Judges.

To be clear: we do not have any credible information as to who wrote the books of Samuel or Judges, but biblical scholars are quite certain that neither book was actually written by Samuel. Both books were written, using various existing, conflicting texts, many generations after Samuel’s death – perhaps as much as four to five hundred years after the events described in both books.

The rabbi then quoted from the end of the first chapter of the book of Judges, 1:36: “And the border of the Emorite is from Ma’aleh Akrabim, from the rock upwards,” The rabbi asked: “why is that statement made? Considering the book of Numbers states that the Southeast border of the Land of Israel is Ma’aleh Akrabim, southwest of the Dead Sea – why would Judges, 1:36 claim that the border of the Emorite is northwest of it? It should be southeast of that point. And what is ‘the rock’ mentioned in the verse?” The rabbi sees these, seemingly, minor points as a monumental ones.

The rabbi’s conclusion is that the rock mentioned in this verse is the very rock Moses struck in the Torah, resulting in his exclusion from entering the Promised Land. I am moved to ask why the rabbi (who credits a student of his with coming up with the rock’s supposed location) would make such an assertion? To begin with, the Torah narrative is about faith (or lack thereof) – not about the GPS location of the rock. The Torah itself makes no mention of the rock’s location. Am I to understand that the absence of this mention is accidental? Following the rabbi’s own principles (stated earlier), shouldn’t this very absence be instructive?

The rabbi then unveiled the reason behind his assertion of the rock’s location: Moses was forbidden entry into the Promised Land for striking the rock and not heeding God’s instructions. “Imagine,” said the rabbi, basing his claim on Judges, chapter 2, verse 3, “that Moses himself was denied entry into the Promised Land for merely striking a rock – and you, disobedient Children of Israel, who failed to follow God’s instruction to annihilate all the residents of the Land of Canaan will be allowed to stay in the land!?”

Some parenthetical background: Moses was twice instructed concerning bringing water forth from the rock. Once, in Exodus 17:16 and once in Numbers 20:8. In Exodus Moses is explicitly told to strike the rock. In Numbers he is told to speak to the rock – but is not explicitly told not to strike it. Small details matter. This discrepancy has led to endless commentary over the millennia, the most provocative being Chayim Vital’s statement that Moses was like Adam The First – clean of any sin, casting doubt over the reason offered in the Bible for Moses not entering the Promised Land.

With a smile, the rabbi neatly tied all the loose ends together and informed us that the October 7^th massacre happened because we had all fallen asleep. We had neglected, said the rabbi, to heed God’s biblical instruction to rid the Promised Land of all its inhabitants when we first entered it, as we were instructed in the books of Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, and Judges. Had we annihilated all the Canaanite inhabitants we would not have experienced the eventual massacre of October 7^th.

Genocide is, apparently, the rabbi’s simple solution to all our problems. We are only to follow God’s instructions and all will be well. Never mind that God’s instructions in the Bible are multitudinous and very often contradictory. Never mind that we do not know the exact location of the rock or the biblical borders of the Promised Land. Never mind that the Temple in Jerusalem was twice destroyed and we were twice exiled from the Land of Israel and that no new instructions have been given to us concerning our return to our homeland. Never mind that the rabbi’s conclusions are based on a dubious reading of the Bible.

Like this rabbi, I read the complex, ancient text daily. I have read and reread and loved the Bible ever since my grandfather introduced me to it at the age of five. I have never stopped reading it and hope to do so until the day I die. I read it to discover, to be awed and inspired, to find new questions, to examine and challenge myself. Unlike the rabbi, I have never read it in order to justify my anger or my desire for vengeance and I have never sought in the Bible simple solutions for what I know to be complex issues.

Simplicity is the ultimate distillation of truth, not the cleansing and elimination of contradictions and ambiguities. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is anything but simple – it is painful, messy and complicated and has now stretched out for well over a hundred years. Much pain and suffering have been experienced by both Jews and Palestinians over this period. And while we still have not come up with the formula to solve this conflict I am sure of one thing above all: Using scripture to try and justify the violent elimination of one of the aggrieved parties in this conflict not only will not solve the problem – it will be a disaster of untold proportions.

Our humanity, our innate decency, our moral obligation as Jews to pursue justice tirelessly, command us to reject the poisonous words of those who will use the Bible as an instrument of vengeance and death.