Warfare 1 - Deuteronomy 20

It’s really interesting to reflect on the perspective of a Hebrew soldier facing the task of invading a land of people to expel them. TB says that the census of 600,000+ eligible men of fighting age was literal and some of the other articles that I’ve read say that as well, while some say that it was figurative. But the general consensus is that regardless of the actual number, the armies of those living in Canaan outnumbered those in Israel, so they were at an inherent disadvantage from the beginning. TB says, “On the one hand the Lord acknowledges that Israel WILL be going up against armed forces which are both larger than Israel’s AND which have technological superiority (chariots). However verse 1 tells Israel to recall whap happened in Egypt. Israel not only had no weapons, but it had no army. Israel had no ability to free or protect itself from Egypt; God simply brought a superior power to its knees in supernatural ways. Therefore since God is with Israel, and it is God’s holy war in the first place, Israel has nothing to fear from the vast armies they will face.” The people of Egypt experienced the miracles that God cited here when they weren’t asked for, meaning God came to them and said “hey I’m going to do this thing for you.” The contrast here is that now Israel will be going to these places and asking for God to perform these miracles at their request, which is different. The question for me is how do you know when to request that God work miracles in your favor? Does the Spirit tell you when it’s time to ask? Do you just ask and hope for the best? If you just hope for the best, that’s tough to build military strategy on. Is it a Nephi circumstance where you go and do what the Lord has commanded and then just move forward as directed? That seems more reasonable.

Maybe it’s because I don’t hold priesthood authority, that I’ve never had to call on it to provide priesthood blessings or bless the sacrament or anything like that. Maybe if I had done that before that would make more sense to me. I’m going to have to think about that. There was an IG video that I saw the other day that fits here and it was basically just a guy quoting Deuteronomy 11:25 which says, “There shall no man be able to stand before you: for the Lord your God shall lay the fear of you and the dead of your upon all the land that ye shall tread upon, as he hath said unto you.” The promises, it’s hard to hold on to the promises when it seems like they take so long to get answered and when the stakes are so high.

The IM quotes a Bible scholar giving 10 principles contained in the Mosaic code related to warfare. I’m not going to go through all of them, just highlight a few of the points that I thought were interesting. One interesting point has to do with what chapter 20 covers later and that is the exceptions to military service. We’ll go over them later but the overarching theme is “the family has a priority over warfare.” There’s a part about a military camp needing cleanliness and I liked that because I was the field sanitation person in my unit when I was in the army so I oversaw a lot of these principles, such as where to put the latrine, which is discussed in chapter 23. Another point that I think is unique to scriptural warfare is “it is not enough for the cause to be holy: not only the cause, but the people of the cause, must be holy, both spiritually and physically.” I’ve thought a lot about this topic especially in the context of the Book of Mormon because in Alma, Captain Moroni has no success in his military objectives because the Nephite people are wicked and have basically overthrown the government. It wasn’t until the people and government were corrected and repented that victory could be achieved. I have wondered what the requirement is, do the soldiers have to be righteous or the people or both and what happens if the soldiers are righteous and the people are not or vice versa?

Another interesting point had to do with these Canaanite battles specifically in that “the Cannaites against whom Israel waged war were under judicial sentence of death by God. They were spiritually and morally degenerate… Thus, God ordered all the Canaanites to be killed, both because they were under God’s death sentence, and to avoid the contamination of Israel.” This was the case for the 7 groups of people that the Hebrews were commanded to kill, but other groups “of better calibre” the command on who to kill, who to offer surrender to, etc. was different, “clearly indicating the difference in national character between Canaanites and other peoples.” The IM cites religious prostitution as a main indicator of their wickedness, but I contest it had to be much worse than that. Don’t get me wrong, I know violations of the law of chastity are serious, but honestly, it has been part of the human experience from the beginning of time and all cultures and peoples took part in this, so I can’t imagine that consensual sex between adults as a religious institution was enough to condemn hundreds of thousands of women and children to death. What almost certainly was also happening was rape and child sacrifice. Think about Sodom and Gomorrah, people like to point to the story about the angels and say that that means that gay is bad, but if you look at that story and think that the worst part of it is that men were the target of male sexual desire then you totally look over the gang rape that was almost certainly the more wicked part. So again, was it just consensual sex between adults who weren’t married to each other that was so egregious? Almost certainly not. And not to mention that all the other groups of people who were not all destroyed were almost certainly engaged in the same type of religious sexual immorality as well. There was more to it, I’m sure of it. Therefore, God’s command to kill everyone in that group of people was specific to them and they were past the point of this life benefiting them spiritually because of their immense wickedness. TB says, “It is interesting to note that it was NOT the belief system of the Canaanites that was the real problem; rather it was their abominable ritual practices that God so detested. That all of these 7 nations worshipped the astronomical bodies as their gods and goddesses was not counted against them as necessarily fatal because back in Deuteronomy 4 we saw that God actually ASSIGNED worship of the stars, moon, and sun to them> Rather the problem was the sexual perversion, the sacrifice of human children, drinking blood, and all other manner of infectious behaviors that the Lord could not tolerate to exist anywhere hear His set-apart people.”

Another interesting point is “the normal purpose of warfare is defensive; hence, Israel was forbidden the use of more than a limited number of horses, since horses were the offensive weapon of ancient warfare.” Interesting for us to consider this principle when pondering our own country’s “pre-emptive” wars that we are and historically have been engaged in. Now, yes we are in an international world, etc. but what are we really doing and is it in line with God’s warfare principles? Another interesting point from the IM and that is covered in this chapter later is what trees can be cut down and for what purposes. The IM says, “war is not to be waged against the earth, but against men. But, even more centrally, life must go on, and the fruit tree and the vineyard represent at all times an inheritance from the part and a heritage for the future: they are not to be destroyed. Other trees can be cut down, but only as needed to ‘build bulwarks against the city.’ Wanton destruction is not permitted.” This will be important when the command comes later on which places to kill animals, etc. What’s interesting to me about this concept is that I was just talking to my son and ex-husband about this topic being discussed in the Quran about warfare and one of the rules is that plants, animals, water, land and other natural resources must not be harmed during warfare. I thought that it was an interesting crossover between the two books and really were counter to the thinking at the time and even now, military tactics to take a place, poison the water, kill the animals. It not only serves as as military strategy to cut supply lines but also can give the soldiers a sense of permission to just destroy anything and everything that they want and that mentality dives down a sick rabbit hole quickly. This is controlled violence, purposeful warfare, because ultimately everything and everyone belongs to God and that creation must be respected and only destroyed at God’s command, which is very contrary to the thinking of today’s military in all countries.

The last interesting point had to do with the spoils of war. The IM notes that the spoils of war, or the “law of booty” (which is funny to see written out in church material) says that the spoils of war was to essentially pay the soldiers, give them a pension so they could live and support their families after their service, and to “defray the costs of the war,” and it was a “penalty imposed on an enemy as penalty for their offense.” This chapter discusses this aspect too, mainly making sure that they pay the proper portion of the spoils as tithing but we’ll discuss this later, because I don’t have all the details about it right now.