Torah reading: Deuteronomy 3:23 to 7:11.
First Haftarah of Consolation: Isaiah 40:1-26.
Given that I have a penchant for seeking out challenges, I’m going to focus in on an excerpt from Deuteronomy 7 which is undoubtedly one of the most problematic, and controversial, passages in the entire Hebrew Bible.
When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you—and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire. For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession. (Deuteronomy 7:1-6)How can we possibly come to terms with such a cruel, bloodthirsty command, which rivals the atrocities of the Holocaust, Rwanda, or Bosnia? True, many scholars contend that the book of Deuteronomy was not written down in its current form until centuries after the events it describes, and some argue that this bloody conquest of Canaan never occurred at all. However, whether this command was invented by God or by humans is perhaps less relevant than its existence within the sacred scriptures of two religions. How can we reconcile the horror of the genocide it commands with the idea that Abraham's descendants are to be a "blessing" to other nations? If, to use a common expression, "a tree can be known by its fruits", how could such violent “roots” give rise to such wonderful "fruits" of love, mercy and acceptance?
(Follow me beneath the tangly tree roots for some discussion.)
