This series explores the way the relationship between God and ‘God’s people’ changes and evolves throughout the Scriptures. Last time, we saw how Moses marked a transition away from Abraham’s personal (but also private) relationship to a new kind of relationship, marked by the characteristics Integral theorists refer to as the ‘red’ mythical-literal meme: warring gods, law codes, and tribalism. Moses was a transitional figure because while he was clearly the leader of the Hebrews during the Exodus (with Joshua completing the job after his death), this national leadership role disappears once the people enter the land, and the people govern themselves within their own tribes. So it’s worth looking at what the biblical record tells us about this period and the relationship between God and people it describes.
One of the other names for the red, mythical-literal stage is ‘Power Gods,’ and this is very apt for this period in the twelve tribes’ history. The Book of Joshua frames the Hebrews’ settlement of Canaan in terms of a holy war, with YHWH literally leading his people into battle on their quest to conquer the land he had promised them. In one representative passage, midway through the conquest, YHWH provides Joshua with a list of the remaining peoples to be conquered and concludes: “I will myself drive them out from before the Israelites; only allot the land to Israel for an inheritance, as I have commanded you” (Joshua 13.6).
Thankfully, there is nothing in the archaeology (or the subsequent books of the Bible for that matter) to suggest the Hebrew settlement of Canaan was anything like what these stories tell us. Even according to the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, the Israelites were always living in and around other people groups, so the divinely commanded genocide described by Joshua did not happen. So Joshua is valuable less as a historical record than as a theological document: It tells us how the people thought of YHWH, his relationship to them, and to the gods of their neighbours.
And they understood it almost entirely in terms of brute strength: YHWH was worth worshiping because he had shown his power in the overthrow of the Egyptians. This is a constant refrain in the Old Testament; for example, in Exodus 15, Moses leads the people in The Song of the Sea, one of the oldest pieces of extant Hebrew literature, which begins:
I will sing to YHWH, for he has triumphed gloriously;
horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.
YHWH is my strength and my might,
and he has become my salvation;
this is my God, and I will praise him,
my father’s God, and I will exalt him.
YHWH is a warrior;
YHWH is his name. (Exodus 15.1-3)
We see this mentality also in the (much later) Psalm 135, in which YHWH’s humiliation of Egypt is combined with his defeat of Canaanite kings:
For I know that YHWH is great;
our Lord is above all gods. […]
He it was who struck down the firstborn of Egypt,
both human beings and animals;
he sent signs and wonders into your midst, O Egypt,
against Pharaoh and all his servants.
He struck down many nations
and killed mighty kings—
Sihon, king of the Amorites,
and Og, king of Bashan,
and all the kingdoms of Canaan—
and gave their land as a heritage,
a heritage to his people Israel. (Psalm 135.5, 8-12)
The Bible also puts this sentiment into God’s mouth as the rationale for why the Israelites should listen to him:
Now the angel of YHWH went up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, ‘I brought you up from Egypt, and brought you into the land that I had promised to your ancestors. I said, “I will never break my covenant with you. For your part, do not make a covenant with the inhabitants of this land; tear down their altars.” But you have not obeyed my command.’ (Judges 2.1-2)
Even Israel’s enemies think of things within this same paradigm. Rahab greets Israel’s envoys by saying:
For we have heard how YHWH dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites that were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed. (Joshua 2.10)
This is in other words, a brutal world helmed by brutal warrior gods. Might equals right, with no moral qualms.
The point of Joshua and Judges is that YHWH is the strongest of these gods. One of the clearest (and most comedic) stories about this comes from 1 Samuel 5: The Philistines have disastrously captured the Ark of YHWH and put it inside a temple of their god Dagon, only to find that come morning, the statue of Dagon is lying prostrate before the Ark, with his arms broken off. Or again, much later in the biblical history, there’s the infamous showdown between Elijah and the priests of Baal in which the gods’ representatives are challenged to call down lightning to light a fire (1 Kings 18.19-40). With this in mind, it’s interesting to note that the very first historical and archaeological evidence we have for YHWH worship associates him with raiding and pillaging: This is a warrior god through and through.
The other important characteristic of this early Israelite period for our purposes is its devolved, tribal polity. Unlike the religious sensibilities described above, which were shared with their neighbours, Israel’s politics set it apart in the region, whose peoples had all moved on from pastoral tribalism to the new political technology of monarchy. To over-simplify the story, Jacob’s sons each became the patriarch of a tribe within the larger people of Israel. When they arrived in Canaan, each tribe (except for Levi) was allotted a certain territory to settle. As we see in the Book of Judges, this made early Israel a very loose confederation, and its tribes are often shown to be in conflict with each other. There is no centralized government, but at times of national crisis, God would raise up a leader who would have enough power and charisma to rally the tribes around him (or her, thanks to Deborah!) and defeat the enemy. The Deuteronomistic History (the shared editorial perspective of books like Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings) frames the lack of centralized government as an intentional feature of early Israelite polity designed to highlight their dependence on YHWH alone rather than human strength. It does this primarily in the Book of Judges, in two ways. First, there is a common refrain in the book introducing stories with “In those days there was no king in Israel.” And more importantly, the stories of the book share a common chiastic structure:
A1. The people forget YHWH and do evil
B1. The people are ‘given in to the hands of’ their enemies
C1. The people remember YHWH and call out to him for help
D. YHWH raises up a leader, known as a ‘judge’
C2. The “Spirit of YHWH” comes upon the judge
B2. The judge leads the people to defeat the enemy with YHWH’s help
A2. Peace is restored
We might think of how the Bible understands this early Israelite history in terms of a “charismatic theocracy,” in which the people govern themselves according to their own traditions until God raises up a special charismatic leader in times of crisis to defeat their enemies.
While the Old Testament’s editors looked back at this set up with nostalgia, the people were not happy with it. Next time we’ll look at the shift from tribal confederacy to monarchy, and the changes in the relationship between God and Israel that it set in motion.
Matthew Root 