Nostalgia To Die For

Deuteronomy 2:24-37

Moses's greatest hits collection reaches the track about the battle of Jabaz.  Remember how God told you to offer King Sihon money for food, drink, and safe passage through his land.  And remember when he said no how I helped you slaughter his people, including the women and children?  However, even though we took his land for ourselves, we were careful not to take any Ammorite land.

This feels like celebration talk: serious reminiscing reminding the troops of great victory.  However, it's hard to stomach the celebration of mass killing; especially when that killing involves women and children.

Rob Bell discusses the violence in the old testament as being natural- as they are stories told through oral tradition in a culture where violence is the norm and as these stories are retold, I wonder how much of the tales are justification for violence in the name of God.  I wrestle with how much perspective comes into play in biblical texts- and I wonder what the detail is included for.  Was it there to remind the people of the potential of the bloodthirstiness of their God?  Or was it there to frame their history in a way that made them look more humane.  This same kind of thinking influences how Americans talk about the first Thanksgiving- or westward expansion.

The same question arises when thinking about the detail of steering clear of Ammorite land.  Moses emphasizes...remember, we didn't go anywhere near it.  Perhaps, this was in case any Ammorites had their own version of the story.  This would document that the Israelites weren't involved in whatever could possibly be pinned on them.

Context seems so central to these stories- but that context is often hard to crack thousands of years later and thousands of miles away.