46
LIMITS TO EMPIRE When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it. And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee. And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it: And when the LORD thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword: But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the LORD thy God hath given thee. Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations. But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee: That they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the LORD your God (Deut. 20:10-18).
The theocentric framework of these laws of military conquest is God's disinheritance of His enemies. We know from the existence of these laws of warfare that this process of covenantal disinheritance takes place in history. This is not a process confined to the trans-historical realm of the human spirit, although it does include this realm.
This was a land law. These rules of warfare no longer apply because God's exclusive residence in one holy nation no longer applies. The temple is no more. Neither are captives to be brought back into the land as permanent slaves. The annulment of the jubilee land laws by the ministry of Jesus (Luke 4:17-21) has annulled the permanent slaves law (Lev. 25:44-46).(1)
Disinheritance This passage is about disinheritance. First, the disinheritance of God's enemies could be by military action. It could involve their annihilation, as it was supposed to in Canaan, but this was a one-time event, as this passage also indicates. Those cities outside Canaan which made war against Israel would be dealt with differently from those cities inside Canaan which Israel made war against.
Second, disinheritance could be by subordination: a system of tribute, which can be monetary but can also be cultural. We see this in the modern West: a culture which once was confessionally Christian is now becoming increasingly pagan, yet it still sustains itself by drawing upon the ethical and cultural capital of Christianity. (The phrase "drawing down" might be more appropriate, as in drawing down a bank account.) The West pays covenantal tribute to God through its outward conformity to some of the laws of God. But as time goes on, it pays less and less tribute as it substitutes man's word for God's word. The problem it faces today is the same problem that faced a tributary in the ancient Near East: the vassal city that broke treaty with the regional monarch risked war, captivity, or annihilation. When the king's negative sanctions were finally imposed, they could be devastating.
Third, covenantal disinheritance could be by regeneration: bringing assets formerly devoted to other gods under the administration of a covenant-keeper. Ownership of the property does not change, but the legal status of the owner before God changes: from a disinherited son in Adam to an adopted son in Christ. This is the primary means of disinheritance in the New Testament era. It is the covenantal disinheritance of the old Adam and simultaneously the covenantal inheritance of the second Adam, Jesus Christ. It is the reclaiming of the world through the covenantal reclamation of the world's lawful owners. Whatever is under the legal authority of a regenerated individual is thereby brought under the hierarchical administration of Jesus Christ. This comprehensive reclamation project is what has been assigned to Christians by the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20).(2)
The Whole Burnt Offering and Disinheritance The Israelites were told to show no mercy to the nations inside Canaan's boundaries (Deut. 7:16). These nations had practiced such great evil that they had become abominations in the sight of God. "For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee" (Deut. 18:12). The language of Deuteronomy 20:10-18 indicates that every living thing inside the boundaries of Canaan was to be killed: "thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth." With respect to the first city to fall, Jericho, this law applied literally (Josh. 6:15-21). But it did not apply literally to the other cities of Canaan. After the destruction of Jericho, the first city inside Canaan to be defeated, cattle became lawful spoils for the Israelites. "And thou shalt do to Ai and her king as thou didst unto Jericho and her king: only the spoil thereof, and the cattle thereof, shall ye take for a prey unto yourselves: lay thee an ambush for the city behind it" (Josh. 8:2). The word "breatheth" did not apply to Canaan's cattle; it applied only to the human population. "And all the spoil of these cities, and the cattle, the children of Israel took for a prey unto themselves; but every man they smote with the edge of the sword, until they had destroyed them, neither left they any to breathe" (Josh. 11:14).
Jericho was the representative example of God's total wrath against covenant-breakers who follow their religious presuppositions to their ultimate conclusion: death.(3) Jericho came under God's total ban: hormah.(4) This was the equivalent of a whole burnt offering: almost all of it had to be consumed by fire. In the whole burnt offering, all of the beast was consumed on the altar (Lev. 1:9, 13), except for the skin, which went to the officiating priest (Lev. 7:8). Similarly, all of Jericho was burnt except for the precious metals, which went to the tabernacle as firstfruits (Josh. 6:24).(5) Nevertheless, because God wanted His people to reap the inheritance of the Canaanites, He allowed them to confiscate the cattle and precious goods of the other conquered Canaanite cities. This illustrated another important biblical principle of inheritance: "A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children: and the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just" (Prov. 13:22). Canaan's capital, except in Jericho, was part of Israel's lawful inheritance. The Canaanites had accumulated wealth; the Israelites were to inherit all of it. This comprehensive inheritance was to become a model of God's total victory at the end of history. Their failure to exterminate the Canaanites, placing some of them under tribute instead (Josh. 16:10; 17:13), eventually led to the apostasy of Israel and the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities, just as Moses prophesied in this passage (vv. 17-18; cf. 7:1-5; 12:30-31).
The annihilation of every living soul in Canaan was mandatory. "And thou shalt consume all the people which the LORD thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them: neither shalt thou serve their gods; for that will be a snare unto thee" (Deut. 7:16). This was a model of God's final judgment. But it was a model in the same way that Jericho was a model: a one-time event. Jericho was to be totally destroyed, including the animals; this was not true of the other cities of Canaan. Similarly, the Canaanites were to be totally annihilated; this was not true of residents of cities outside Canaan. In this sense, Jericho was to Canaan what Canaan was to cities outside the land: a down payment ("earnest") on God's final judgment -- final disinheritance -- at the end of time. This earnest payment in history on the final disinheritance is matched by the earnest payment in history on the final inheritance. This is surely the case in spiritual affairs.(6) Debates over eschatology are debates over the extent to which these earnest payments in history are also cultural and civilizational, and whether they image the final judgment, i.e., to what extent history is an earnest on eternity.(7)
Mosaic Law vs. Theocratic Empire Those living outside the land were under different Mosaic rules of warfare. Their judgment in history would not have to be final. The Israelites had to offer a peace treaty to any foreign city prior to laying siege to it (v. 10). The theocentric principle here was that God offers a peace treaty to all men who are not yet formally under His authority. If men refuse to submit while this grace period is in force, they are doomed. This period of grace is history.
Once Israel began its siege, history had run out for that city. It would no longer be able to extend the dominion of its gods. The gods of that city were placed under preliminary judgment by the siege. After the defeat, the gods of that city were buried. Some of the women and children would survive, but the city, its gods, and its culture would not. Once the siege began, God's handwriting was figuratively on the city's walls: it had been weighed in the balance and found wanting (Dan. 5:27). Only if Israel was forced to call off the siege was there any short-term hope for that city. If Israel won, the city died. Once the siege began, it was not to be called off until the city was defeated. There might be temporary cease-fire agreements because of Israel's temporary weakness, but once the treaty of tribute was rejected by a city, that city was doomed, according to God's rules of warfare. Once the siege began, there could be no partial surrender, i.e., survival through paying tribute.(8)
Conditional mercy was initially offered to all those inside the walls if they surrendered before the siege began. The men could avoid a death sentence by surrendering, but there was a condition: tribute (v. 11). This is analogous to the restitution penalty owed by a thief. A lying thief who confesses before the trial begins pays a 20 percent penalty to the victim (Lev. 6:5); if he waits until after it begins, he pays double (Ex. 22:4).(9) Prior confession lowers the costs of civil justice; similarly, prior surrender lowers the cost of conflict on both sides of the city's walls, especially for the losing army.
This surrender by the men would bring all those under their authority under the same covenant of surrender. The tributary peace treaty would henceforth apply to all those inside the gates of the city. This treaty secured the survival of the foreign city's culture, for residents were not required to confess faith in God as a condition of the treaty. The Old Covenant principle of circumcision was that every male under the covenantal, household authority of an Israelite had to be circumcised (Gen. 17:12-13). Under the tributary treaty, foreign males did not have to be circumcised; this indicates that their defeat as a city-state did not place them under Abrahamic covenantal authority. They would merely pay tribute to Israel's civil government,(10) as historically defeated sons of Adam, but they would not pay a tithe to Israel's priests.
There is no evidence from Scripture that such foreign military campaigns were recommended by the prophets. They were legal when governed by Mosaic law, but they were not to become high-priority activities in the life of Israel. The most famous case of a tributary nation to Israel was Moab, which revolted against Israel after Ahab died. But Ahab had been more of a foreign king than an Israelite king, with his priests of rival gods. His son Jehoram was evil, although he destroyed his father's image of Baal (II Ki. 3:2). When Moab revolted against him, Jehoram called the king of Judah to help him subdue Moab. When the king of Judah asked Elisha to bless the campaign, Elisha said it was only for Judah's sake that he would do so (v. 14). The campaign was initially successful, but when the king of Moab sacrificed his oldest son as a burnt offering on the wall of the city, this created indignation against Israel within the ranks of the alliance. The invading army broke up and went home (v. 27).
Survival Through Circumcision
This raises a major question regarding the siege: Could the men of a besieged city escape the final sanction of death by affirming the covenant and becoming circumcised? If they could, this raises the question regarding the creation of a theocratic empire through military expansion. I argue that a foreign city, once placed under siege, could surrender covenantally and thereby escape annihilation. The Mosaic law does not say this explicitly, but it does not authorize the destruction of an Israelite city unless that city had begun to worship foreign gods (Deut. 13:12-15). How could Israel lawfully annihilate a city of circumcised men who had thereby publicly affirmed their covenantal allegiance to God? By mass circumcision, the city would have been incorporated into God's covenant. On what legal basis could the siege be continued? Thus, I see no alternative but to conclude that Israel could have increased its borders through military action, or at least through defensive military action: chasing an invading army all the way home and then laying siege to its cities. There was a way of escape for a besieged city: surrender to the God of Israel through circumcision. Tithes and offerings to God's temple would then be substituted for the original offer of peace: tribute to Israel's civil government. But the city would not be what it had been. The old city, like the old Adam, would have been destroyed. Covenantal absorption into Israel was another way of destroying a foreign city's gods and culture.
Yet God did not tell Israel to extend His covenantal reign by means of war across boundaries, once Canaan had been conquered. The possibility existed that some cities might surrender through conversion, but the Mosaic law did not encourage this. In fact, it discouraged this. Israel faced three major barriers to the creation of a theocratic empire. The first was judicial: a foreign city could stop the creation of such an empire merely by surrendering before the siege began. The second was cultural: if it failed to surrender on these terms, after its defeat it would no longer survive as a city. The women and children who survived the siege were then brought under the authority of Israel's households (v. 14). In both cases, the city avoided becoming part of a theocratic empire. The third barrier was economic: to engage in a siege, Israelites had accept the economic burden of the future victory: supporting large numbers of captive women and children. Furthermore, their wives would have to be willing to go along with this: new wives, new adopted children, new concubines, all of whom would dilute the inheritance of their own children. Israel was polygamous; a foreign war bride, conspicuous for her beauty (Deut. 21:11), would not have been welcomed with open arms by the wife back home. Built into Israel's social system was an unofficial veto of foreign wars. Furthermore, the economies and social systems of the ancient Near East did not support widespread slavery.(11) Without Israel's permanent occupation of foreign cities, where the real estate could be used to fund the women and children taken captive, Israel could not afford to engage in foreign military conquests. The requirement that adult Israelite males attend all three annual feasts placed geographical limits on the extent of the conquest. The farther away a conquered city was from Jerusalem, the more expensive the trips to the annual feasts would be for its Israelite residents.
The issue of geography posed a major problem for the Mosaic law. The festival laws would have to be reworked if the theocratic kingdom expanded; otherwise, theocratic expansion would have been impossible. How could Jews residing in a distant city have attended the festivals every year? They couldn't. The larger the theocratic empire grew, the more impossible it would have been for all of the faithful to have walked to Jerusalem, let alone to have lodged there for a week. It seems likely that sometime after the Babylonian captivity, from which comparatively few Jews returned to Israel, the synagogue system replaced annual attendance at Passover. The Mosaic law's festival requirements no longer were enforced rigorously on faithful men as a condition of covenantal faithfulness. There was no longer a holy army in Israel; the nation was under the administration of foreign pluralistic empires.
I have argued in my commentary on Numbers that missionary activity always superseded the requirement that every Israelite male appear at Passover annually, let alone the other two annual feasts. Righteousness was more important than ritual precision in Mosaic Israel (I Chron. 30:18-20).(12) Consider Paul's absence from the feasts. He stayed in Corinth for a year and a half, teaching in the synagogue (Acts 18:8-11). The author of Acts records that "we sailed away from Philippi after the days of unleavened bread, and came unto them to Troas in five days; where we abode seven days" (Acts 20:6). They had not been in Jerusalem for the Passover. They did not make it back to Jerusalem in time for the second Passover celebration for those who had been on journeys (Num. 9:11). Paul did try to get back to Jerusalem by Pentecost (Acts 20:16). Nevertheless, in front of the Jewish assembly, Paul announced: "Men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day" (Acts 23:1). No one called his assertion a lie on the basis of his failure to attend Passover that year.
Public Theology
Israel's theology was public as no other ancient religion's theology ever was. Foreign residents living inside Israel were invited to go to a central city every seventh year and hear the reading of the law (Deut. 31:10-12). Foreigners would have been in contact with their home cities, especially if they were involved in trade inside Israel. There would have been widespread international dissemination of knowledge regarding Israel's legal order. Any foreign city that was unwise enough to goad Israel into an attack would have known in advance about Israel's rules of siege warfare. Foreign rulers would have known two things: 1) it was suicide not to surrender before a siege began; 2) it was very expensive for Israel to lay a siege, both for time lost and the costs of assimilating the captives.
This system of constrained warfare would have created incentives for foreign rulers to find ways other than military invasion to get what they wanted out of Israel's rulers. Israel would be unlikely to attack a foreign city without extreme provocation, such as an invasion of Israel's territory. This fact would have tended to place a protective barrier around Israel's borders in times of its military strength, yet at the same time, Israel's military strength would not have become a major threat to foreign nations. Israel was under restrictions -- military, marital, economic, and geographical-ritual -- that would keep it a defensive power only. This meant that Israel's military strength would have promoted foreign trade rather than foreign wars. Israel would have been too dangerous to invade militarily, yet too restricted by the Mosaic law to invade on its own initiative. Israel was the original incarnation of President Theodore Roosevelt's famous rule of American foreign policy: "Speak softly and carry a big stick."(13)
This meant that in times when Israel was mighty, these laws reduced the likelihood that Israel would engage in a systematic program of territorial conquest. It was too difficult for Israel to retain captured territory. Israelites were required to keep separate from gentiles. Their food laws and other laws of ritual cleanliness forced this separation. Foreign cities were not places where Israelites who kept the Mosaic law would normally want to dwell. They might retain their separate identity as a captive people who were allowed to live under their own rules and leaders in ghettos, which most of them did from the Babylonian captivity until the nineteenth century, but they could not easily rule in foreign cities without breaking the Mosaic holiness laws, let alone the far more rigorous rabbinic holiness laws. Interaction with local gentiles was too restricted. So, their empire, if any, would have to be based on a system of tribute, not local law enforcement by resident Israelites. It would have been an empire of trade and taxes. Such far-flung empires are difficult to maintain without a strong military presence, or the threat of military reprisals, in the captive lands.(14) This kind of foreign military presence was made difficult by the festival laws. It took their captivity outside the land to restructure the laws of the festivals. It took life in a foreign ghetto and submission to the civil laws of other gods. This restructuring was not the product of an Israelite empire; it was the product of non-Israelite empires.
A city in the ancient Near East, with its local gods, could become an empire only through the pluralism of idols. Israel alone could survive as a nation apart from a homeland without succumbing to pluralism, for Israel's God claimed universality and exclusivity. Such a claim negated the possibility of a common pantheon of idols. But Israel could not become an empire because of the Mosaic laws of ritual separation; it could at most survive as a ghetto subculture in foreign lands.(15)
Women and Children The siege law required that women and children be spared after the fall of the foreign city. All of the men were to be killed. There could be no mercy for male heads of household. Their execution would have automatically placed the surviving women and children under the Mosaic covenant. There was no way for widows and orphans to build a society. The children needed protection. Their mothers were in no position to provide this.(16) The law did not allow defenseless survivors to be left behind by the Israelite army, to fend for themselves or die.
The text says that all the males were to be slain. Did this mean only the adults? Or were male children slain, too? Consider Israel's defeat of the Midianites, which took place outside Canaan. "And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD. Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves" (Num. 31:15-18). There is no textual reason to believe that this Deuteronomic law exempted boys. There would not be a resentful group of adult foreign males a generation later, all seeking revenge for the deaths of their fathers.
The outcome of the siege had disinherited that society. Without any surviving male leadership, there could be no transfer of covenantal civil authority to the next generation. The war had destroyed generational continuity. Thus, all of the captives had to be integrated into Israel. This meant either adoption, including marriage, or enslavement on a massive scale. Deuteronomy 21:10-14 sets forth the laws of marital adoption for foreign military widows. Those who became permanent slaves (Lev. 25:44-46) and those who became wives were brought under the household authority of their new husbands. In lieu of being circumcised, the prospective wives first had to shave their heads (Deut. 21:12). This was a sign of their enforced transfer of authority from their old households to new ones. It marked a covenantal transformation. This transformation was not necessarily confessional; it was geographical and institutional. The woman was removed from her surroundings and taken back to Israel (v. 12), where she was to mourn her father (dead) and mother (dead or taken captive) -- but not her late husband -- for a month (v. 13). Her former gods had perished in the total defeat of her city and the death of her husband and father. These gods had no jurisdiction apart from the city that had been built in their name.
By carrying women and children back to Israel, the warriors either enslaved or adopted the survivors. In both instances, the survivors came under the jurisdiction of an Israelite household. The survivors would henceforth live under a hierarchy that confessed the God of Moses. There was no religious pluralism allowed in any Israelite household (Deut. 13:6-11). Thus, warfare was a form of evangelism through household subordination. The victorious warriors had no choice in this matter. They were not allowed to kill defenseless women and children. To leave them behind to starve in a city without husbands would have been a form of impersonal execution. Such a deserted city would have become a target for invasion, rape, and enslavement to other cities' gods. This was not allowed. If women and children were to be enslaved, the God of the Bible would be the master of their new households. Thus, counting the costs of warfare meant counting the costs of victory.
Immigration and Assimilation The gods of the fallen city had been definitively disinherited, but traces of their cultural influence would survive in the captives' outlook and practices. Foreign war brides and older children would bring memories and habits formed under the covenantal administration of idols. Many aspects of this covenantal legacy would have to be modified or completely overcome. This would not be an overnight transformation.
The primary means of breaking these habits was language. Immigrants had to learn a new tongue. Cultures are maintained and developed through language. The final death of a culture occurs only when no one is left who speaks its language and confesses its doctrines. The immigrant must think in new patterns and categories. He must learn a new grammar and vocabulary. The subtle transformation of a person's thought takes place through language. The immigrant speaks with an accent; young children raised in a new society do not. The mark of their assimilation is their lack of an accent. But accents are more than inflections of the tongue; they are ways of thinking and acting. The goal of assimilation was to remove every trace of foreign accents in the cultural-confessional sense. In this sense, assimilation meant conversion.
Discipline was the second major area or transformation. This would have manifested itself most continually in work. The immigrant's daily schedules would have changed, although in an agricultural economy with a low division of labor, most of life's basic tasks would have been familiar across national borders. There would be different ways of getting things done, but the same sorts of things would have to get done as had to get done in the old country. By working differently, people adapt to new environments. The cause-and-effect pattern of work -- planting and reaping -- is a major form of discipline, to which are added the institutional carrot and stick. The institutional sanctions of work -- "We do it this way!" -- would have been the major area of discipline for most people. The longer the work day, the more disciplined the environment.
The third area of transformation was dietary. The newcomers would be forced to change the eating habits of a lifetime -- a discontinuity so great that few people can ever achieve it voluntarily, as evidenced by myriads of diet plans that produce only handfuls of permanently thin people in the West. The newcomers' diets would remind them daily that they were in a new land and living a new way of life. The clean-unclean distinctions in Israel would have forced the newcomers to regard some of their familiar delicacies as abominations -- abominations that testified to theological and moral abominations in the world they had left behind. Their former way of life could not be manifested at mealtime. Most of their former foods would have been present in Israel, but not the meat-based specialties. The taste of food is governed by preparation. Men express their cultures through taste. Things would never taste the same again. Like the sense of smell, we cannot remember what things taste like until we actually place them in our mouths. New tastes, especially for children, would daily block out old memories.
Celebration and liturgy were also important. Play and formal worship are not full-time endeavors. They are scheduled for certain special times. They mark a society.(17) But in an agricultural society, the law and its sanctions are more readily assimilated through work than through play or liturgy.
The subtle nuances of a culture reflect mental habits and outlooks that are identifiable. Work, eating, celebration, and formal worship are the primary activities of life, especially in an economy with a low division of labor. The newcomers would have to learn a new language, learn to enjoy new foods, learn new songs, and learn new confessions and laws. Language and work -- word and deed -- would have encompassed most of the daily life of the immigrant. It was here that the assimilation process would have been most comprehensive and rapid.
Evangelism After the Captivity The development of a theocratic empire was virtually impossible for Israel under the Mosaic law. The annual festivals would have limited the geographical scope of the empire. The festivals made impossible the full-time occupation of distant foreign cities. Only after the return from Babylon, when Israel no longer was an armed holy army, could dispersion of the Israelite population take place. Evangelism by word and deed was to replace evangelism by post-war enslavement.
The fact that attendance at the annual festivals was no longer enforced by excommunication after the return from Babylon is prima facie evidence that the required festivals had something to do with Israel as a holy army. Annual attendance was no longer enforced because it was no longer required. This indicates that the mandatory nature of the festivals was God's deliberate restraint on the creation of an empire. When that threat disappeared in history, so did the requirement of attendance at each of the festivals. Israel could then evangelize by word and deed. Evangelism was clearly more important than the original Mosaic requirement of annual attendance. Until Israel sheathed its sword, it could not evangelize the world. This judicial alteration has been formalized by the New Covenant: "And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest's, and smote off his ear. Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword" (Matt. 26:51-52).
The laws mandating the annual festivals were suspended during the Babylonian captivity and then permanently modified after the partial return of the remnant of Israel to the land. We do not know what the new laws of the festivals were, but we know that the rigorous Mosaic festival laws were no longer enforced. This lack of enforcement made possible evangelism through the Jews' resettlement. The religious pluralism of the pagan empires made possible Israel's evangelization of gentiles, for it opened the gates of every city to citizens of every other city. To take advantage of this opportunity, God silently accepted the priesthood's revocation of mandatory attendance at each annual feast. He did not bring negative sanctions against either the priests or the nation based on individuals' non-attendance at some of the festivals.
After the return from Babylon, Israel's evangelism -- proselytizing -- involved the establishment of local synagogues throughout the cities of the successive empires. There was no longer any holy army in Israel; therefore, its troops would no longer march to Jerusalem three times a year. With no army, there was no way for Jews to besiege a city. Therefore, the laws of the siege treaty were silently annulled. Instead, Jews invaded foreign cities through trade, relocation, and synagogue-building. They penetrated enemy strongholds by means of the new pluralism of the empires: Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman. Cities would henceforth be penetrated by walking through the gates. The saving message of the God of Abraham could be preached openly. With economic footholds inside foreign cities, there was no longer any need to threaten annihilation of a foreign city's army should the city not surrender in advance of the siege by agreeing to pay tribute. Israel no longer had either the military power or the ecclesiastical need to issue such a threat. Evangelism by trade, preaching, and synagogue-building replaced evangelism by siege, enslavement, and war-bride adoption. The New Testament church inherited these post-Babylonian techniques of evangelism. The Mosaic laws authorizing the siege treaty had long since been annulled by the Babylonian captivity and its aftermath. The old laws were not formally annulled because God ceased to add to His written word under the Old Covenant. But accepted practices in Jesus' day indicate the extent of the changes.(18)
Conclusion A foreign war was to be a rare occurrence in the life of Mosaic Israel. The costs of such warfare, which included the costs of victory, were high. The benefits, apart from tribute, were low. Warfare could be Israel's means of evangelizing the survivors of a siege, but this would not have included males. It was only partial evangelism. The foreign war was a form of inheritance/disinheritance. The city itself would have to be destroyed unless left intact for other nations to inherit, since the festival laws made occupation by Israel unlikely. The wives and children of the disinherited city would become part of the inheritance of Israel. But this living inheritance had to be capitalized to make it productive: by providing training, food, shelter, and even adoption through marriage. There were high costs for warrior families in the assimilation process. Slavery was not a widespread institution in the ancient Near East, unlike classical Greece and Rome.
The creation of pluralistic pagan empires made possible the peaceful extension of God's kingdom in history. Their pluralism gave equal access to all submissive religions. In these covenantal conflicts among competing religions, biblical religion triumphed. The cacophony of competing religious and philosophical claims, coupled with the breakdown of classical ethics and philosophy, eventually undermined the moral confession of the Roman empire, and in so doing, undermined the civil authority of Rome.(19) Christian civilization, with its non-pluralistic confession, replaced Rome's pluralism in the West. A new empire came into existence in the fourth century and lasted for a thousand years until the Renaissance's revival of classical religion's occultism, art, and philosophy, followed by the Enlightenment's revival of religious pluralism.
This revival of paganism's religious pluralism represents a revival of the civil religion of the Near Eastern and European empires: "all nations under god" -- the god of the centralized bureaucratic State. Its promised new world order challenges Christ's new world order. It cannot succeed: "And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever. Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure" (Dan. 2:44-45).
If a besieged city visibly converted to God through circumcision, would its inhabitants then have been required to march to the festivals? Only if its adult males became citizens of Israel, meaning that they became eligible to join Israel's holy army. They could not become eligible to serve as judges if they did not make these annual marches. If proselytes who lived outside the land were not part of Israel's holy army, then they were not required to attend the annual feasts. This was the case of Jews living outside the land during and after the captivity. This meant that Israel could not create an empire through military action. Cities outside the land that converted to faith in the God of Abraham did not thereby become a part of Israel's army or of Israel's civil structure. They could not subsequently march against other cities and thereby pull national Israel into a conflict far from its original borders. These proselyte cities would pay their tithes to the Levites, but they could not legally extend Israel's authority beyond the boundaries of the land which God had promised Abraham. They could extend God's authority, but not national Israel's. The lure of empire had to be resisted, and the great disincentive was the distance from the official festival city.
Footnotes:
1. Gary North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1994), ch. 31.
2. Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., The Greatness of the Great Commission: The Christian Enterprise in a Fallen World (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990).
3. "But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death" (Prov. 8:36).
4. James B. Jordan, Judges: God's War Against Humanism (Tyler, Texas: Geneva Ministries, 1985), pp. 10-11.
5. Achan had secretly appropriated some precious goods in Jericho. For this, he and his family was executed. This was also the equivalent of a whole burnt offering. Everything under his jurisdiction was burned at God's command (Josh. 7:15). This included even the precious metals that would otherwise have gone to the tabernacle (v. 24). The men were killed by stoning; then their remains were burned (v. 25). This points to the execution as a whole burnt offering: the animal had to be slain before it was placed on the altar. The remains of Jericho were a whole burnt offering; Achan had covenanted with Jericho by preserving the remnants of Jericho's capital. On the execution of Achan, see Gary North, Boundaries and Dominion: The Economics of Leviticus (computer edition; Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1994), Appendix A: "Sacrilege and Sanctions."
6. "That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him: In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ. In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory" (Eph. 1:10-14; emphasis added).
7. Gary North, Millennialism and Social Theory (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990).
8. Biblically, God began His final siege of Satan's city of man at Calvary. The church now lays siege to the city of man in history, for the latter represents the gates of hell. "And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (Matt. 16:18). The imagery of hell is that of a city under siege whose walls cannot indefinitely hold off the attackers. Because of the failure of the church constantly to maintain this siege, the city of man is occasionally offered temporary cease-fires. But once begun, Christianity's siege against the city of man can never be called off. If it is incompletely sustained because of the Christians' sin and weakness, it will later be strengthened. There is now no tributary peace treaty possible for the city of man, which refused to surrender while Christ walked the earth. The city of man will never be offered another opportunity to surrender and survive through paying tribute. Only one thing can bring relief: surrender through conversion, which is another way to destroy the city of man. The city's final annihilation takes place after the final judgment (Rev. 20:14-15). Sin retards the ability of the church to complete the operation in history. Nevertheless, the city of man will be visibly subdued in the final days, only to launch one final counter-attack (Rev. 20:7-9). Like Germany's Battle of the Bulge in late 1944, this counter-attack will fail.
9. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990), pp. 624-29.
10. Solomon collected tribute as tax money (I Ki. 4:6; 5:13-15).
11. Isaac Mendelsohn, Slavery In the Ancient Near East (New York: Oxford University Press, 1949), p. 119.
12. Gary North, Sanctions and Dominion: An Economic Commentary on Numbers (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1997), p. 122.
13. His aggressive foreign policy belied his words: America spoke loudly under his administration (1901-1909).
14. The British Empire was the greatest exception to this rule in the history of man. But if every British official had been forced to return to London every year to attend the equivalent of Passover, it is highly unlikely that the British Empire would have survived long.
15. Only in nineteenth-century Europe and the United States did Jews at last escape life in the ghetto, entering into a world of Protestant religious pluralism, two centuries after Protestantism had faded as a theocratic ideal. In this world, few men spoke authoritatively in civil affairs in the name of a supernatural god, and those few who did, such as Holland's Abraham Kuyper, asked only for equal access for confessional Christians to State subsidies and privileges, such as tuition-free, State-certified education. The gods of modernism have reigned nearly supreme in this culture, and Judaism went liberal and humanistic with unprecedented speed. By the mid-twentieth century, Reform Judaism could accurately be described as "Unitarianism, but with better business connections."
16. This is why widows, orphans, and strangers were the three groups repeatedly identified in the Mosaic law as deserving of legal protection and special consideration.
17. Modern Western society is so heavily entertainment-oriented and so minimally liturgical that entertainment has virtually replaced liturgy in the lives of millions of people. Not without cause is the television set referred to as the one-eyed god.
18. A major one: the absence of family members at the Last Supper.
19. Charles Norris Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture: A Study of Thought and Action from Augustus to Augustine (New York: Oxford University Press, [1944] 1957).
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