In my last post, I left you with the following question:
Why did God go out of His way to instruct Israel to NOT wipe out their own food resources by destroying the fruit trees when laying siege to the Canaanite cities?
I also mentioned that the person who knows the answer to this can consider that his or her Bible knowledge instantly surpasses 99% of all pastors, preachers and Bible teachers in the world today and I’m NOT even kidding.
Heck, that may even be an understatement.
Well, without any further ado, let’s jump right into the answer, shall we?
The reason why God had to go out of his way to tell Israel to NOT destroy the fruit trees, a seemingly super obvious duh command, is because…
…Israel was operating under the law of HEREM.
“What’s that?” you say?
Alright, let me explain.
First of all, don’t confuse the Hebrew word HEREM with the English word “harem”.
A harem is a social unit comprised of a group of wives and concubines (and their children) owned by a king.
On the other hand, the Law of HEREM means to put under the ban.
This law was not totally unique to Israel.
Here’s the deal.
Since we’re dealing with a Holy War, it is God Himself who is Israel’s Holy Commander-in-Chief.
This means if Israel wins the Holy War, ALL the spoils of war belong to HASHEM and…
…it is the Lord’s prerogative to decide what is to be done with it all.
Here’s another thing.
Since God is NOT a man, He has no use for gold, silver, jewelry, gorgeous fabrics, expensive foods, slaves, servants, sex workers or any of the other things included in the spoils of war.
Hence, if God cannot make physical use of these things, what is to be done with them?
They are to be set aside for God.
In other words, ALL the spoils of war are to be considered HOLY unto the Lord and thus man is forbidden from even touching these items.
So ultimately, what happens?
Well, because they belong to God and He can’t physically use them and neither can man, they are to be destroyed.
And that is why ALL the spoils of war including the women, children and livestock must be utterly laid to waste.
Pretty intense, isn’t it?
A lot of people have a problem with this Law of Herem including many gentile scholars and Rabbis.
Why?
Because these severe instructions conflict with their maple syrupy sensitivities.
They find this Holy War protocol and the Law of Herem so harsh, intolerant and lacking in mercy that they write commentary that twists the plain and clear meaning of what the Scripture says.
That’s right.
BOTH Christian doctrines and Jewish Halakah in order to soften the harshness of what we just read re-interpret and allegorize these passages to soften them up and then they replace them with the more preferred doctrines of “love and mercy” and manmade ideas that don’t really have their origin in Torah.
We’ll talk about this some more the next time we meet.
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