A FEW GOOD MEN And the officers shall speak further unto the people, and they shall say, What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? let him go and return unto his house, lest his brethren's heart faint as well as his heart (Deut. 20:8).
Deuteronomy 20 deals with military affairs. The laws in this section governed a holy army. This army was covenanted to God. God was the commander-in-chief of this army. This is the theocentric focus of this law. Moses announced this law to the generation of the conquest, but before this generation had marched into battle. He reminded them of the theocentric framework of their assignment. They were soldiers of a living God who is sovereign over history.
The section begins with a call to courage based on God's sovereignty: "When thou goest out to battle against thine enemies, and seest horses, and chariots, and a people more than thou, be not afraid of them: for the LORD thy God is with thee, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt" (v. 1).
This law was not a land law or a seed law. It was not grounded in the Mosaic sacrifices or the tribal system. It was therefore a cross-boundary law: universal. This law governed God's holy army, but the general principle upholding it -- the removal of fearful men from the ranks -- is a universal principle of covenantal warfare.
God's Holy Army This holy army would fight under a dual chain of command: officers and priests. The priests were not merely spiritual cheerleaders whose main task was to supply extra courage to men marching into battle. They actually held a veto over the war. When the army approached the battlefield, a priest was to approach the assembled warriors and announce: "Hear, O Israel, ye approach this day unto battle against your enemies: let not your hearts faint, fear not, and do not tremble, neither be ye terrified because of them; For the LORD your God is he that goeth with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you" (vv. 3-4). A holy army was to be motivated by the words of a holy priesthood. If the priesthood failed to support this military action, refusing to encourage the army by invoking covenantally the name of God, the army could not lawfully obey any order to go into battle. This meant that the priesthood three times had a veto over the entire campaign: before the army marched off to war (Num. 10:8); when the mustered men were to pay their atonement money (Ex. 30:12), which the priests could refuse to accept; and again immediately prior to the engagement.
There has been a debate in the West for over a thousand years about what constitutes righteous warfare. There is no doubt biblically how to answer this definitively. A judicially holy war is a war fought by a nation whose Christian ministers can exercise a lawful veto on the war and who nonetheless have promoted it. If the State imprisons Christian ministers for speaking out against a war, as the U.S. government sometimes did during World War I,(1) then it is not a holy war.(2)
Thinning the Ranks in Advance The goal of this law was to thin the ranks of God's holy army. This is not the normal goal of any military planner. He always wants more men and equipment than he has.(3) But Israel was told to trust in God, not in military strength. David, a warrior, wrote: "Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God" (Ps. 20:7). Isaiah wrote: "Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help; and stay on horses, and trust in chariots, because they are many; and in horsemen, because they are very strong; but they look not unto the Holy One of Israel, neither seek the LORD!" (Isa. 31:1). This outlook reflected Israel's theory of holy warfare. God told the nation that He would be with them in righteous military undertakings. Their faith would be tested by their willingness to thin the ranks by means of exemptions. The very smallness of the army was to increase the nation's faith in the coming victory. What would normally be regarded as a negative sanction was in fact a positive sanction.
This Israelite practice rested on a psychological premise: a fearful man is not much of a warrior. Also, an Israelite who did not trust God's promise to be with His people in holy warfare was surely not very holy. He would not see the army as uniquely protected by God and set apart for victory. No warrior wants to fight alongside of a fearful man. He wants to know that his flanks are covered in the line. A fearful man who holds back thereby exposes those on either side of him to added risk. Furthermore, a fearful man has not internalized the opening words of this passage: "When thou goest out to battle against thine enemies, and seest horses, and chariots, and a people more than thou, be not afraid of them: for the LORD thy God is with thee, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt" (v. 1). His doubts call into question the army's corporate commitment to these words. God made provision for such a fear-burdened man to excuse himself and return home before the battle began.
There is always fear in battle: fear of the enemy, fear of senior officers, and fear of being labeled a coward. Different men respond differently to these fears. God told Israel not to fear the enemy. If a man feared the enemy, he was asked by an officer to go home.
The authority of the Israelite warrior to walk away from a war meant that the rulers had to be very careful in deciding what was worth fighting for. The priests held a veto on the decision of a civil ruler to take the nation into war. The individual warrior could not veto the war, but he could veto his participation in it. He could "vote with his feet." This placed a very serious limitation on political rulers. The rulers were to confine their military affairs to defensive wars and holy wars. The holy status of a war would be determined by the priesthood, not by the State. Any war begun by the ruler apart from the priests would not have the Ark of the Covenant present on the battlefield. The senior civil ruler could not demand that any holy warrior accompany him on his march into battle. It would be his war, not the army of the Lord's war. He might persuade others to go into battle for the sake of spoils, but that would make his army a mercenary army. The motivation of mercenaries is personal gain. Mercenary armies are notoriously less successful than citizen armies defending their homelands. These restrictions on civil rulers meant that Israel could not become an empire while obeying God's law. Its rulers could not easily extend their military power beyond the original boundaries of the nation.
Just prior to the battle, there was to be a deliberate thinning of the ranks. The officers were to offer their men a way of escape. There were four ways out of the ranks: two were explicitly economic; one was marital; one was psychological. If a man had built a new home, planted a new vineyard, married a new wife, or was afraid, he could return home (Deut. 20:5-8). The classic biblical case of deliberately thinning the ranks was Gideon's series of screening devices (Jud. 7:3-8). The first screening device was fear. This was the most effective device; 22,000 Israelites voluntarily departed (v. 3). They swallowed their shame and went home. They probably knew that to fight while afraid was contrary to the Mosaic law. Fearful men were not allowed to serve. Fear, not small numbers, threatened the success of the military venture. They chose not to violate His law. It was better to acknowledge their fear publicly and go home than to break God's law and fight in fear.
The commander of Israel's army was not to rely on numbers. The army had to be numbered prior to a war because each man owed blood money -- an atonement payment -- to the priests (Ex. 30:12).(4) This numbering was not to be used as a way for the commander to assess the likelihood of success in a military venture. Success on the battlefield, this passage informs us, was entirely dependent on God. This formal procedure of thinning the ranks was the way of affirming meaningful faith in God's presence with the nation in holy warfare.
Rational Calculation and Cowardice This law made Israel's army different from any army in history. In all other armies, senior military commanders have had to devise ways to keep their troops in line.(5) They have used the negative sanctions of shame, fear of superior officers, harsh discipline, and ultimately the threat of the firing squad or its equivalent to keep the ranks from breaking and running under fire. These sanctions are designed to offset the self-interested soldier's rational desire to run.
Consider the decision-making process of a soldier under fire. He makes a cost-benefit analysis based on how his decision will affect him. The question here is the degree to which individual self-interest either supports or undermines a military formation. Here is a fundamental fact of infantry tactics: there is greater risk of being killed from behind while fleeing in open terrain than of being killed while standing and fighting, since the attacking troops are afraid of dying. Active resistance makes attackers less offensive-minded, less committed to destroying all those resisting them. Fleeing opponents reduce the risk to their attackers, i.e., lowers the cost of attacking. (This was especially true when infantry faced chariots.) With any scarce economic resource, the lower the cost, the more will be demanded. The lower the cost of attacking your enemy, the more you will be willing to do it, other things being equal. Nevertheless, defensive resistance is not the least dangerous decision. The least dangerous decision, apart from negative sanctions imposed by your own forces, is to run away early while your comrades are still fighting. They keep the enemy at bay; meanwhile, you distance yourself from danger.
Here are a soldier's options. First, if the line breaks and runs, he will be left standing nearly alone -- a standing duck, so to speak. This is the most dangerous option. We can call this the Uriah option. "And it came to pass in the morning, that David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah. And he wrote in the letter, saying, Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retire ye from him, that he may be smitten, and die" (I Sam. 11:14-15). The more courageous the soldier, the more likely that he will die if his comrades flee. A brave man with cowards on his flanks will soon be a dead man. Second, if he runs early, he reduces his risk of dying during this encounter, whether or not his comrades run away later. The sooner he runs, the better for him: those who stay in the ranks longer before running are more likely to be cut down by the initial wave of charging troops. The attackers will be busy slaughtering those close at hand. Defense takes time; meanwhile, he keeps running. Third, he stands his ground until he sees his comrades running; then he tries to run faster than they do.
The least dangerous decision is to run early. The next-safe decision is to stand and fight, but only if all of your colleagues are standing and fighting. Your safety depends on the decisions of others in the line, just as theirs depends on you. Your survival therefore depends on your ability to time your flight so that you run away just slightly ahead of your colleagues. In a line that is about to break, your survival depends on your speed: deciding when to run and how fast you can run compared to your comrades. The next most dangerous decision is to run late and slow. The most dangerous decision is to stand and fight after your comrades have run. The cowardly early runner is least at risk. The brave man who stands his ground alone is most at risk. The others are in between.
The safety of the soldier therefore depends on the willingness of his colleagues to stand and fight, or march forward and fight, with him or without him. Some members of his unit predictably will die, whether it wins or loses. Immediate self-interest motivates each man to run away fast and early.(6) The more fearful his comrades, the sooner he had better start running.(7) The slower he runs, the earlier he must begin running.
There is no question about it: in an offensive war, where your nation is not being invaded, the safest thing to do is run toward home. This is why the Mosaic law screened out those who were the most likely troops to run when attacked. Fear is like a forest fire. One way to contain forest fires before they begin is to cut down and remove highly inflammable trees that might catch fire and serve as conduits for the flames.
Cowardice is a military evil second only to treason -- worse even than disobeying a lawful order. Cowardice threatens every military tactic. Senior commanders employ tactics that persuade most troops to stand and fight most of the time. Military training instills the fear of suffering shame by imposing negative sanctions based on shame: the first man to run is branded as an unjustifiable coward. Military formations have been designed to keep men from running.(8) If everyone runs, the collective guilt is spread around. So, it is initial flight which must be stopped, and the means of stopping it is to threaten negative sanctions. The smaller the number of those who run, the greater is the individual responsibility and individual punishment on those who run. "They won't court martial us all if we run as a unit," thinks the soldier, "but they may court martial me if I run and the others hold the line." The more fearful the individual, the more likely he will run. The more fearful he knows his comrades to be, the sooner he will run. The sight of a man running away can set off a chain reaction along the line. So, the most effective way to keep men from running is to increase their courage rather than threaten them with shame. That was why God required Israel's commanders to let fearful men go home early. They "ran" before the war began.
Israel's Motivation Israel's army was to operate in terms of the expectation of the positive sanction of victory rather than the negative sanction of defeat. Negative formal sanctions to overcome fear were less necessary in Israel's holy army because those who were afraid were asked to leave before the war began. Tactically, this meant a smaller but a more determined army. A commander knew the operational size of his battlefield forces before he went into battle. His forces expected victory, so they were less willing to run. Those who walked into battle expected to walk home victorious. The familiar negative sanctions to reduce the likelihood of flight under fire were less necessary.
An opposing commander was probably unaware of this aspect of Israel's tactics. A frontal assault on the line normally reduces most units' will to resist. But Israel's front lines would be different. Any foreign commander launching an assault on Israel's holy army in the expectation that normal defensive fear would work to his advantage would receive a lesson in defensive resistance. Israel's troops would be far less likely to break and run. The offensive army would suffer higher casualties than normal.
By fielding a smaller army of more determined troops, God would gain the glory. This is why he told Gideon to thin the ranks (Jud. 7:2). A smaller army was a better fighting force, man for man, than any rival army because of the Mosaic policy of allowing fearful men to go home before the battle began. The Israelite commander could better calculate the responses of his troops because the fear-ridden troops had gone home. This meant that the traditional problem for military tactics -- how to keep non-rugged individualism from undermining the formation -- was far less of a problem for Israel.
Conclusion The text makes it clear that the goal of sending the fearful man home was to keep fear from spreading in the ranks: "Let him go and return unto his house, lest his brethren's heart faint as well as his heart" (v. 8). By removing the faint-hearted from the ranks before the battle began, the officers were able to minimize the spread of fear on the battlefield. They thereby increased the confidence of those under their authority. This increased the likelihood of victory . . . for a few good men and the God they represented.
In a defensive war, it is far easier for the military to gain volunteers. Men know that their lives, their families, and their property are at stake. They are more likely to preserve their circumstances by joining the military than by fighting alone when the invaders arrive in force. In defensive wars, conscription is not necessary. In offensive wars, it is not legal.
Footonotes:
1. H. C. Peterson and Gilbert C. Fite, Opponents of War, 1917-1918 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, [1957] 1968), ch. 11: "Disciplining the Clergy."
2. In the American Civil War (1861-65), both sides claimed to be fighting to defend Christian civilization. But in late 1864, after Atlanta fell to Northern troops, some of the South's ministers began to call the moral legitimacy of the war into question. They began to preach about defeat as a sign of God's judgment against slavery. Richard E. Berringer, et al., Why the South Lost the Civil War (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986), ch. 14.
3. This is the fundamental law of scarcity: "At zero price, there will be greater demand than supply."
4. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990), ch. 32.
5. Even the phrase "in line" suggests a military image: a line of troops that will not break and run under fire.
6. David Friedman, Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life (New York: HarperBusiness, 1996), p. 7.
7. This is why esprit de corps is so important for an army. Men in arms must learn to trust their colleagues, and their colleagues must be worthy of this trust. The braver your comrades are, the safer you are. This is why an army must strive to eliminate the presence of cowards and to reduce the level of cowardice in all the other members. This is why armies award medals and activate firing squads.
8. Ibid., p. 8.
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