The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels (19 page)

To a large extent, the lives of Moshe and his patriarchal predecessors must remain opaque to us, almost as opaque as the lives of our dimmest ancestors, the
hominids of prehistory. We know they looked up at the night sky in wonder, wandered ceaselessly with only a vague notion of a destination, and heard the promptings of an inner voice, which they associated with the terrifying marvels of nature. But the harsh and singular specifics of their lives were quite unlike our own, we who can scarcely close our ears to the ceaseless din of modern advertising, who never venture far from the familiar, for whom the night sky, eclipsed by round-the-clock electricity, is no longer a marvel at all.

But in this ending, in the death of Moshe, we can feel a basic human kinship beneath the dramatic differences. The description of the still vigorous old man must recall to us the ancient grandeur of Michelangelo’s Moses, huge-armed, straight-backed, eagle-eyed, who after so many harrowing meetings with God and disappointments with his people can face death without flinching. We, too, shall die without finishing what we began. Each of us has in our life at least one moment of insight, one Mount Sinai—an uncanny, other-worldly, time-stopping experience that somehow succeeds in breaking through the grimy, boisterous present, the insight that, if we let it, will carry us through our life. But like Moshe or Martin Luther King, though we may remember that we “have been to the mountaintop,” we do not enter the Promised Land, but only glimpse it fleetingly. “Nothing that is worth doing,” wrote
Reinhold Niebuhr, “can be achieved in our lifetime, therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; there-we
must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.” That accomplishment is intergenerational may be the deepest of all Hebrew insights.

I
t is
Joshua, Moshe’s young general, who leads the Israelites across the Jordan into the Promised Land with the ark at their head, Joshua first sending his men through the camp with these instructions: “When you see the ark of the covenant of Y
HWH
your God being carried by the levitical priests, you will leave your position and follow it, so that you may know which way to take, since you have never gone this way before.” This is the great moment, the moment of maximum anticipation—to go the way one has never gone before, and yet to go home:

An is not long before Jericho is defeated, its walls collapsing at the sound of Joshua’s trumpets:

Perhaps no one in all history has understood the liberation narrative of Israel as profoundly—and with such affection and joy—as the black slaves of the American South. There is even evidence that something like the destruction of
Jericho may have occurred, since archaeologists have found that several Palestinian towns were flattened about the year 1200
B.C.
, to be succeeded by a new culture that from a material point of view was decidedly inferior—and may represent the Israelite occupation of ruined Canaanite settlements. But Jericho’s ruin apparently preceded Israel’s invasion of Canaan by centuries; and it may be that its ruined walls encouraged the Israelites of a later period to imagine that they had been its conquerors.

The conquest of Canaan, as presented in the Book of Joshua (which brings the Epic of Israel—from founding patriarch to final settlement—to its conclusion) is a grisly business, reminding us of just how primitive a society we have been considering. All the Canaanites—“men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys”—are put to the sword, their settlements burned to the ground, their objects of precious metal set aside as “holy,” “devoted” to the sanctuary of Y
HWH
—that is, priestly booty. The Canaanites, too, are set aside as “devoted”—that is, marked for extermination. As far away from the Jordan valley as prehistoric Scotland, the sacrificial victim, the prisoner of war offered to a god, was called the “Devoted One.” What we have here is human sacrifice under the guise of holy war, compelling us to recognize how powerful a hold the need to scapegoat and to shed blood has on the human heart.

But this legendary “conquest,” described with such bloodthirsty relish in Joshua as an overwhelming victory, was actually a very gradual affair. From its base in Transjordan, the tribes that Moshe had led through the desert migrated into the central hill country
of Canaan, overwhelming its Iron Age settlements when possible, but at other times entering into league with Canaanite villagers, sometimes to overthrow an oppressive tyrant, at other times in mutual protection pacts. Egypt’s Dusty Ones and Moshe’s kvetchers had indeed been toughened by adversity and now presented themselves as impressive warriors whom peaceful farmers had better not tangle with. Cutting a swath of conquest across a small area, these warriors no doubt attracted many new adherents to the religion of their conquering God, adherents who came to see themselves as Israelites, the people of Y
HWH
, the God who could humble even Egypt.

But cultural exchange is seldom a one-way affair. After settling the central highlands and intermingling with the natives, “the Israelites then did what is evil in Y
HWH’S
eyes and served the Baals.” Baal was the Canaanite storm god, who must have seemed rather like Y
HWH
to unlettered Israelites, so what the hell. “To serve the Baals” was to worship one of Baal’s many images, metal bulls and phallic stones erected at various sanctuaries throughout Canaan. Baal’s consort was Astarte, the Canaanite form of the Mesopotamian fertility goddess Ishtar. Astarte (or Astoreth) was also called Asherah, a word that probably means “consort.” The pure religion of Y
HWH
, under the influence of these local superstitions of vegetative, animal, and human fertility, was often to be compromised
and combined with Canaanite cults in unexpected ways. Inscriptions have been discovered dating to the period of the monarchy, a couple of centuries after Joshua, that seem to be prayers to “Y
HWH
and his Asherah,” leading many to the conclusion that the desert religion of Y
HWH
underwent a kind of paganizing syncretism as soon as the hardened Hebrew warriors settled down to the business of farming and herding among their Canaanite neighbors.

The period after Joshua’s invasion is called the period of the Judges—local military leaders who also settled disputes between Israelites in the manner of Moshe’s desert judges. As described in the Book of Judges, this appears to have been a time of continuing settlement and consolidation, in which Israelite warrior-farmers gradually spread out through Canaan in loose tribal confederations till in less than two centuries they occupied most of the Promised Land. In the Books of Joshua and Judges, success is invariably linked to Israel’s faithfulness to Y
HWH
, defeat to their prostituting themselves to “other gods … of the surrounding peoples.”

Despite the overall success of the settlement, the Israelites are never without enemies, especially the growing menace of the Philistines, the Sea People, who after the collapse of Mycene sailed across the Mediterranean and began to occupy coastal towns such as Gaza, then inland towns such as Gath. Their encroachments brought them uncomfortably close to the Israelites, who sometimes found themselves living in Philistine towns under the boot of these enemies, whose name will come to mean “crude and uncultivated” and will serve as the basis for the word “Palestine.” (The
story of Samson, the magnificent Israelite strongman who harried the Philistines, belongs to this period.) At last, the Israelites reach the conclusion that what they need is someone to give them visible unity, someone capable of uniting them in greater emotional cohesion—a king.

But Y
HWH
is their king. Since the days of the
qahal
, the desert assembly of the pilgrim people, Israel’s political understanding has been that they are the gathering of God’s people, led by his handpicked spokesmen and answerable to no earthly king, a sort of theocratic democracy. “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you,” God advises the reluctant
Samuel, his prophet and priest, whom the people have asked for a king. “It is not you they have rejected but me, not wishing me to reign over them anymore. They are now doing to you exactly what they have done to me since the day I brought them out of Egypt until now, deserting me and serving other gods.”

God is prepared to accept a monarchy, provided the people understand what they are getting themselves into. Samuel gives the people Y
HWH’S
warnings: “This is what the king who is to reign over you will do. He will take your sons and direct them to his chariotry and cavalry, and they will run in front of his chariot. He will use them as leaders of a thousand and leaders of fifty; he will make them plough his fields and gather in his harvest and make his weapons of war and the gear for his chariots. He will take your daughters as perfumers, cooks, and bakers. He will take the best of your fields, your vineyards and your olive groves and give them to his officials. He will take the best of your servants, men and
women, of your oxen and your donkeys, and make them work for him. He will tithe your flocks and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry aloud because of the king you have chosen for yourselves, but on that day Y
HWH
will not hear you.”

Y
HWH’S
percipient warnings, illuminating the unavoidable reality that when human beings invest one man with special power they simultaneously divest themselves, no longer resonate with the people. Because of their fear of the Philistines and other neighboring enemies they are willing to alter their constitution permanently. “No! We are determined to have a king,” they cry, “so that we can be like other nations, with our own king to rule us and lead us and fight our battles.”

Y
HWH’S
choice is Saul, “a handsome man in the prime of life,” someone capable of symbolizing the people’s aspirations. “Of all the Israelites there was no one more handsome than he,” states the Book of Samuel. “He stood head and shoulders taller than anyone else.” Samuel anoints Saul, who is confirmed by the whole people. The ceremony of divine anointing (or deputizing), followed by popular confirmation, will become the pattern for the Israelite monarchy. The anointing by a priest or prophet is meant to signify that this man is Y
HWH’S
choice, the confirmation by the assembly of the people that he is also the popular choice. In this way, Israel’s new monarchic constitution is to retain a democratic aspect, suggestive of the medieval maxim
“Vox populi, vox Dei”
(“What the people approve, God approves”). This same procedure will be copied by the early church in its
election of bishops (but because power adheres to the powerful, confirmation by the people has fallen into disuse).

Saul proves himself an outstanding general, making war not only on the Philistines but on Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Amalekites, and all of Israel’s neighboring enemies, for “whichever way he turned, he was victorious.” But then Saul disobeys Y
HWH
, first by offering sacrifice in
Samuel’s absence, then by sparing the Amalekite king and the most precious Amalekite booty from “the curse of destruction”—that is, from universal extermination, one of Y
HWH’S
less pretty injunctions. There probably lies behind these stories a tug-of-war for ultimate power between the old prophet and the young king. But the upshot is that Saul loses the favor of Y
HWH
, who “regrets having made Saul king.”

Then Y
HWH
says to Samuel, “Fill your horn with oil and go. I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem, for I have found myself a king from among his sons.” At Bethlehem Samuel meets seven of Jesse’s sons, but Y
HWH
warns him to take no notice of their striking appearance or height, suggestive that they would all make fitting successors to Saul: “God does not see as human beings see; they look at appearances but Y
HWH
looks at the heart.”

“Are these all the sons you have?” asks Samuel of Jesse.

“There is still one left, the youngest; he is looking after the sheep.”

“Send for him.”

When the youngest arrives—barely beyond childhood but “ruddy, and withal of a beautiful countenance, and
goodly to look to,” according to King James—Samuel knows that this shepherd boy is God’s unlikely choice. “At this, Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him, surrounded by his brothers; and the spirit of Y
HWH
seized on David from that day onwards.”

Ruach Y
HWH
—YHWH’S
spirit, or, more literally, his wind or breath—is as unpredictable as wind itself. On whom it will alight no one can say. And as with Y
HWH’S
other choices—of wily Avraham, dissembling Yaakov, tongue-tied Moshe, the carping Chosen People themselves—his election is always a surprise. But most surprising of all is what the man on whom this Spirit alights will have to say. The modern word
charisma
, taken from the Greek for “grace” or “divinely conferred gift,” exactly describes what the Israelites expected from their leaders: a kind of inner glow, perceptible in a man’s physical demeanor, that captures the observer’s imagination and converts him to a partisan. But, more than his appearance, the charismatic’s divine inspiration is proven by the words he speaks. In Israel’s history, these words had always related to immediate need—as prophetic road maps to direct the people. Now, with the permanent settlement of the ex-nomads and the establishment of the monarchy, inspiration can take a new turn—as poetry.