The Morality of the "Ban"

The Book of Joshua is often read as a heroic tale of a nation claiming its promised land. But beneath the Sunday school versions of "Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho" lies one of the most ethically disturbing concepts in religious literature: the Herem, or "The Ban."

What is the Herem?

The Herem was a divine mandate for total annihilation. According to the text, when the Israelites entered a city under the ban, they were commanded to "completely destroy" everything that breathed.

In Joshua 6:21, describing the fall of Jericho, the text is explicit:

"They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys."

This was not just a military conquest; it was a religious ritual. The inhabitants were not killed for tactical reasons, but as a sacrifice to Yahweh. The "moral" failure, according to the Bible, was not the killing of children, but the occasional failure of an Israelite soldier to kill every child or to keep some of the loot for himself.

The Modern Comparison: Genocide

If these events were described in any other context, we would call them by their modern name: genocide. The targeted, systematic destruction of an entire ethnic group, including non-combatants and livestock, meets every international definition of a war crime and a crime against humanity.

Theological apologists often try to justify this by claiming the Canaanites were "wicked" or that the commands were "of their time." But this creates a profound moral paradox: if a command to slaughter infants can be called "good" simply because a god ordered it, then "good" has no meaning.

Textual Reality vs. Historical Fact

There is a silver lining to this dark narrative: archaeological evidence strongly suggests that the mass slaughter described in Joshua never actually happened. As we discussed in our post on the origins of the Israelites, the transition into the highlands was likely gradual and largely internal to Canaan. There is no evidence of a widespread, systemic destruction of cities in the 13th century BCE.

The story of the Herem was likely written centuries later, during a period of intense religious nationalism, as a way to "cleanse" the identity of the people by retroactively creating a hard, violent boundary between themselves and their "polluting" Canaanite ancestors.

Conclusion

The Herem remains a stain on the moral character of the biblical text. Whether or not it happened, the fact that such a command was attributed to the Creator of the Universe reveals the dangerous lengths to which religious nationalism can go. It serves as a reminder that when humans claim to have a divine mandate for violence, the first casualty is always our shared human morality.