Essay su Deuteronomio 20:78

As an example of Deuteronomy’s thinking and often humane approach, the rules of war have a reasoned tone compared even to the contemporary world. Many of them occur elsewhere in the ancient Near East. The first four verses stress the frequently appearing idea that God fights on the Israelites’ behalf. From there vv.5–7 help to maintain the values of an agricultural society by keeping new builders, new planters, and newlyweds at home for a while. Added to this are considerations of troop morale (vv.8–9), offers of peaceful surrender terms (10–11), and the end results of siege as commonly portrayed in the ancient world (12–14). A different outcome is to be striven for in the case of the native Canaanites, who are to be wiped out, that Israel not be led astray into their “abominable” practices (16–18). The latter passage, especially since it is followed by an ecologically compassionate one about fruit trees, seems genocidal and hence morally unacceptable today. Clearly it stems from a zealous time and strong feelings; whether it was carried out as described we do not know. Medieval Jews solved the problem of moral sensibilities for themselves by defining the Canaanites as long dead with no contemporary successors. But the troubling nature of the text remains.