Case Law Justice

Then they burned the city with fire, and all that was in it. Only the silver and gold, and the articles of bronze and iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the Lord.  Joshua 6:24  NASB

Only – After a hiatus, the Rabbi of Parma and I are back to our joint study of the Hebrew text of Joshua.  Today something interesting came up, something we’ve wrestled with for a while.  In this verse, Joshua allows (commands?) the people to take all the valuable metals from Jericho and put them in the treasury of the Lord.  Seems reasonable.  Why destroy gold and silver and copper and iron?  But there’s a question in the background that doesn’t get much attention. Didn’t God tell Joshua to utterly destroy the entire city?  Of course, in verse 19 Joshua already endorses the retention of valuable things, so maybe God didn’t really mean to destroy everything.  Maybe he meant only to destroy all the living things, and the city, of course.

This isn’t the first time there seems to be an exception to the rule.  When the spies make a commitment to save Rahab and her father’s family, Joshua validates their promise—and even extends it to include a whole lot of other people, all of whom should have perished according to God’s command.  This little alteration of the rule continues until one day Joshua makes a vow with a group of disguised Gibeonites in direct opposition with God’s command.  That little alteration has enormous long-term consequences.  Yet Joshua goes unpunished.

Now skip forward a few hundred years.  King Saul is instructed to exterminate the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15:1-35).  He does essentially what Joshua did in the past.  He saves the best of the conquered people for sacrifices to the Lord.  When Samuel hears of this, the judgment is swift and catastrophic.  Saul loses the Kingdom.  But, wait.  Why would Saul plead a case law occurrence in his defense?  After all, he’s no less a king than Joshua and Joshua made several apparently acceptable choices that seem to violate God’s command.  In the case of this verse, Joshua explicitly saves “the best” for the Lord.  He’s never reprimanded.  He doesn’t lose his position.  So why Saul?  Hebrew justice is all about case law, but here it seems prior cases don’t seem to make any difference.

Here’s the real problem.  What we want are clear, unambiguous rules about  human behavior, especially for kings.  We want to know the limits.  We want unimpeachable rules so that we can safely stay inside the boundaries.  And apparently the Bible doesn’t give them.  What was acceptable for Joshua in the beginning is no longer acceptable in the end, but Joshua is never told that he crossed the line at the beginning.  Furthermore, what appears to be an exception in Joshua’s day is the cause of downfall in Saul’s day.  The rules changed.  Why?  We want to know.

There’s also this: In Psalm 7 David begs God to withdraw His wrath.  What is the occasion of this punishment?  According to the midrash, it is because David showed contempt toward Saul.  In the midrash God addresses David. “Who are you that you dare to curse my anointed one?”  Now we’re really confused.  If Saul’s action is so significant that he loses his role as king, why is God still defending him?  It seems that Hebrew ethics can be summed up in the phrase, “It depends.”

Topical Index: rules, Joshua, Saul, case law, Joshua 6:24