The Anti-Elect in the Hebrew Bible

The most difficult problem raised by the concept of election in biblical literature is not the issue of why some are elect and others are not, or of how the elect and non-elect should interact with each other, but rather the notion that certain individuals, families, groups, or nations constitute a category best labeled the “anti-elect.” The anti-elect include those who are viewed as so evil or dangerous that warfare against them may include a call for their annihilation, as well as either the destruction of their livestock and other possessions or the dedication of these items to the deity. Although the statement by Cott with which we opened this article grievously misconstrues the biblical notion of election by erasing the category of the non-elect and assuming that all non-elect people are anti-elect, it forces the reader to acknowledge a set of deeply troubling texts in the Hebrew Bible. While I intend to argue that a variety of factors ameliorate some of the problematic aspects of these texts, they remain troubling for those in the Jewish and Christian traditions.¹⁰

Three groups of people in particular fit my definition of the anti-elect in the Hebrew Bible. These are the Amalekites, the Canaanites, and, less obviously, the Midianites. The last group are clearly on the margins of the category of the anti-elect. They are often portrayed positively in the biblical text, and, according to certain sources, Moses' father-in-law is himself a Midianite (Exod 2:15–22; 18:1; Num 10:29; but compare Num 12:1 and Judg 1:16; 4:11). Other passages number the Midianites among Israel's potential enemies, although not among the anti-elect (Gen 37:36; Judges 6–7). In Numbers 25 and 31, however, the Midianites incur treatment reserved elsewhere for the anti-elect. Thus, in Numbers 31, Israel executes the LORD's vengeance by combatting Midian (Num 31:3), and while all things Midi-anite are not initially destroyed, eventually all humans, except for virgin women, are killed. Furthermore, the treatment of captured animals and plunder resembles the policies of the sacral warfare practiced against the Canaanites. One difference between Israelite policy toward the Midianites, as opposed to the Canaanites, is that the decree of war against the Midianites is phrased as retaliation for a specific Midianite wrong against the Israelites (Num 31:16). This justification for Israelite hostility toward Midian recalls the justification for Israel's enmity toward the Ama-lekites (Deut 25:17–19), a group that will receive attention further below. Still, the evidence for the anti-elect status of the Midianites is inconclusive. Not only does the Bible contain conflicting testimony about the treatment of the Midianites; even the harsh treatment meted out to them in Numbers 31 is not a clear-cut indication that they have joined the anti-elect, for some Midianites are spared. Although the Midianite problem is obviously relevant to the question of Israel's treatment of the anti-elect, a comprehensive discussion of the anti-elect should not be grounded on Israel's response to Midian.

The largest group of texts dealing with a group of anti-elect people are the numerous passages that describe the elimination of the Canaanites. While much of the book of Joshua is devoted to these matters, biblical passages relevant to the Canaanite problem appear in Deuteronomy, Judges, and elsewhere. These texts do pose serious problems for any interpreter who wishes to argue that the models of conduct endorsed by God in the Hebrew Bible should indeed shape our moral universe. Certain mitigating factors, however, must be kept in mind as one seeks to understand these challenging texts. First, it is necessary to note that even the harshest texts are more nuanced and ambiguous than some would concede. Thus, while Joshua 10 implies that all Canaanites were killed in one fell swoop, all Canaanites were not in fact killed. Not only do Rahab and her extended family survive (Joshua 2), but so do the Gibeonites (Joshua 9), as well as other groups (Josh 13:1–7; 16:10; 17:12–13). Furthermore, within the text of Joshua itself the rules of warfare are modified. In Joshua 6, all enemy property is to be destroyed or dedicated to God, but in Josh 8:2, the people are permitted to keep some of the spoils. In fact, Lawson Stone has argued that the redaction history of Joshua 1–12 indicates that later tradents, likely unaware that these accounts were more fiction than fact, were so troubled by this rhetoric that they softened the anti-Canaanite polemic. These tradents added the occasional notice to explain that the Canaanites were only annihilated because they rebelled against God and failed to sue for peace (see Josh 11:19–20).¹¹

Amid these accounts of Israelite behavior toward non-Israelites, it should be noted that an Israelite household, Achan and his family, are treated like the anti-elect once they violate God's rules concerning warfare (Joshua 7). The fact that many Canaanites are not destroyed while some disobedient Israelites are indeed executed supports Lori Rowlett's assertion that the book of Joshua is primarily concerned not to maintain ethnic boundaries but to create communal order by stifling dissent during a period of instability (Joshua 7).¹²

Of course, Joshua is not the only text in the Bible to comment on the problem of the Canaanites. A number of passages in Genesis portray the Canaanites in somewhat more positive terms. These texts may contain an intertextual critique of the book of Joshua's viewpoint by providing an alternative model in which Canaanites live side by side with Israelites.¹³

More important yet is that both textual and archaeological evidence indicate that the Canaanites were probably never purged in a genocidal campaign by Joshua. The early chapters of Judges concede the Israelites' failure to eliminate the native population, and the Deuteronomistic History as well as texts like Hosea and Jeremiah attribute the downfall of both Israel and Judah to the fact that they adopted various forms of illicit worship practiced by the natives they failed to eliminate. The archaeological evidence does not support, nor do any of the theories current among contemporary critical historians accept, the mass destruction of Canaanites by Israelites as advocated repeatedly by Deuteronomy and described frequently in Joshua.¹⁵

That these narratives have little basis in actual history does not mean that they can be dismissed as unproblematic. Biblical texts that contain a rationale and a program for something akin to genocide still demand a reckoning, even if these ideas were never fully actualized in the biblical period. Such texts continued to enjoy authority in religious communities, and there have been times throughout history when members of those communities have appealed to Scripture for the authority to marginalize, dispossess, and sometimes annihilate certain groups. For example, Henry Bullinger (1504–1575), a Swiss Reformer, cited biblical precedents when justifying the right to fight an all-out war to defend true religion against idolaters: “The magistrate of duty is compelled to make war upon men which are incurable, whom the very judgement of the Lord condemneth and biddeth to kill without mercy. Such were the wars Moses had with the Midianites, and Josue with the Amalechites.”¹⁶

The long shadow cast by the biblical anti-Canaanite polemic on subsequent history cannot be lightened, and a literal, plain-sense reading of these texts indicates that God seems to have endorsed genocide on certain occasions. But it is essential for a biblical scholar to evaluate the biblical text in its own historical context, uncolored by its career in postbiblical history. The question that remains is thus: If these anti-Canaanite texts are more imaginative than historical, as the literary and archaeological evidence suggests, why did ancient Israelite thinkers generate and continue to be preoccupied by such ideas? One explanation is that texts that call on Israel to kill all the Canaanites were likely produced during a period of instability and powerlessness. Thus, some see these texts as a legacy from the time of Josiah's attempted reformation and believe that they were designed to propagate a newly unified sense of identity during a politically insecure period, and are thus addressed to members of the Israelite community whose dissent could threaten a fragile order.¹⁹

Perhaps even more troubling than the anti-Canaanite polemic are the texts that deal with the Amalekites (Exod 17:8–16; Deut 25:17–19; 1 Samuel 15), the enemy whose demonization in biblical literature left a lasting impress on the Jewish religious imagination. While some have compared the anti-Canaanite polemic to certain Nazi policies, no biblical text ever advocated the pursuit and slaughter of Canaanites who lived outside of Canaan or fled its bounds. The condemnation of the Amalekites, however, is phrased in terms of a cosmic battle between Israel's God, YHWH, and Amalek that will last throughout time (Exod 17:14–15). Furthermore, the fact that the evil Haman, the mortal enemy of the Jews in the book of Esther, is textually and genetically linked to Agag, the king of the Amalekites (see Esth 3:1 and Samuel 15:8), may hint that even if this enemy appears outside of the land of Israel, he is to be destroyed. Thus, unlike the anti-Canaanite polemic directed solely against Israel's neighbors in the land, the condemnation of Amalek acquires within biblical tradition an aura that may vaguely recall certain features of genetically based Nazi racism, even though Israel's policy towards Amalek falls far short of Nazi policies and has an altogether different character.

Later streams of Jewish tradition preserve some elements of this troubling idea even while other parts of the tradition attempt to mitigate it.²¹

The recycling of elements of biblical “anti-election” theology, while troubling, also helps to reveal why those elements appeal to the religious imagination and how they function within it. Fundamentally, the idea of Amalek is an attempt to make some theological sense of recurring historical evils. While such theologies are potentially dangerous, they also serve a purpose by helping communities survive and explain troubling historical events. In Judaism, the theological idea that massive historical evils perpetrated by individuals and groups who harbor an irrational hatred of Jews and Judaism are part of a larger cosmic pattern has helped the community make sense of tragedies and thus continue to survive. Christianity, too, has preserved elements of the theology of the anti-elect, which it received through late biblical apocalyptic prophecy, where the elect and the anti-elect are set against each other in mortal struggle on a cosmic scale. In fact, such dualistic apocalyptic notions were absorbed more readily by early Christianity than by rabbinic Judaism, and ancient Christianity in turn appears to have bequeathed this powerful notion to Western civilization, where it remains active even today. Such ideas, while rightfully disturbing, should not simply be dismissed as some primitive holdover. While the notion of the anti-elect contains a demonic potential, it is essential to recognize that the same notion expresses a profound religious yearning for God's justice to prevail over evils so irrational that they seem demonic.

In conjunction with this presentation of the major texts and issues that embody the Hebrew Bible's notion of the anti-elect, as well as some of the factors that might mitigate its harshness, it may be of some use to see how postbiblical Jewish thinkers dealt with this disturbing idea. In fact, elements of arguments that I have advanced above were already formulated in texts from antiquity. The following passage from the Wisdom of Solomon demonstrates that by the second century B.C.E., Jewish tradition was troubled by the annihilation of the anti-elect and sought ways to make ethical sense of this idea:

Jewish thinkers continued to wrestle with these troubling texts, and important streams of later Jewish tradition substantially softened the anti-Canaanite and anti-Amalekite polemic. Consider the following statement from the great Jewish philosopher, Moses Maimonides (1135–1204):

Thus Sifre on Deut 20:18 argues that this verse implies that if they do repent, the Canaanites are not to be slain. For the text, see Louis Finkelstein, ed., Sifre on Deuteronomy (New York: JTS, 1993) 238 (

). The standard English translation is Sifre: A Tannaitic Commentary on the Book of Deuteronomy (trans. Reuven Hammer; Yale Judaica Series 24; New Haven: Yale, 1986) §202, p. 218. A similar but more elaborate tradition is found in b. Sot. 35b, which informs us that the Canaanite nations were indeed given full notice because they could read the stones that Joshua erected in the Jordan and be moved to repent. And a similar midrashic idea about Amalek is expressed in b. Sanh. 96b, which reports that the descendants of Haman studied Torah in the academies of Bnei Braq.

None of the above arguments, however, should be taken to indicate that the call for the destruction of the anti-elect is, on a deeper reading, no longer morally and religiously problematic. Even if one could argue decisively that such texts were never actualized in Jewish history, one must acknowledge that the genocidal aspects of these texts do at times bear an uncomfortable resemblance to racialist ideologies, and at times they have been cited to justify group persecutions. While one must not sidestep the truly disturbing nature of these texts, I would argue strongly against taking what some would see as the next logical step, that is, abandoning the concept of Israel's election. As Cott indicates in the quotation with which I opened this essay, some believe that the notion of election inherently and inevitably leads to “the wholesale slaughter of [innocent] people.”

But there are two problems with this assertion. First, it is not at all evident that the anti-Canaanite polemic must of necessity be actualized in history just because it is part of Scripture. This is true both in the biblical period, in which textual and archaeological evidence strongly suggests it was never fully actualized and may not have been actualized at all, as well as in later Jewish tradition, for many Jewish exegetes were morally troubled by the theme of the destruction of the anti-elect and sought to limit its potential for harm. Second, even if the notion of election and the anti-Canaanite polemic are sometimes linked in the biblical text, it is dubious to assert that the anti-Canaanite polemic is either central to the theology of Israel's election or the inexorable consummation of that theology. In a great number of biblical texts, the notion of election recurs without occasioning the call for a holy war against the anti-elect, or anything like it. More importantly, as we will see in the following paragraphs, the same theology of election that sometimes called for the wholesale destruction of the anti-elect elsewhere gave rise to some of the most sensitive ideas concerning the treatment of aliens and foreigners found anywhere in the ancient world. Election did not simply imply that every non-Israelite was doomed for destruction. Far from it. The vast majority of non-Israelites are better labeled the “non-elect,” and they often assumed a very important and positive place in Israel's understanding of the divine economy. It is to this group that we now turn our attention.

The Non-Elect in the Hebrew Bible

The previous section on the anti-elect has demonstrated that harsh treatment was indeed prescribed for some non-Israelites (as well as certain Israelites like Achan in Joshua 7), and that even if some of the relevant passages may be more mythic than historical, the Hebrew Bible contains ideological components that resonate with the modern war crime of genocide. These facts might lead one to assume that ancient Israel's strong sense of group identity led it to mistreat anyone outside the group. Yet this is not at all the case. Rather, the Hebrew Bible presents an exceedingly complex set of views on the way Israelites relate to those who are best referred to as the “non-elect.” This term enables us to identify the large set of individuals, groups, and nations who are neither members of the people of Israel, God's elect, nor are they to be counted among those who are utterly beyond the pale of divine and human mercy in the Israelite imagination, the anti-elect.

The non-elect are treated in a host of passages, sometimes in ways that are troubling, but often in ways that are surprisingly positive. In fact, many non-Israelites serve as moral models to ancient Israel. Furthermore, positive images of the “other” found in certain biblical passages are frequently held up as exemplars for the proper treatment of the “other” today. While the relevant texts vary in their portrayals and descriptions of the legal status of non-elect individuals and groups, there is no warrant for arguing, as do Cott, Schwartz, and other recent writers, that the least exclusivistic of these passages are opposed to or have transcended Israel's particularistic theology of election. Rather, the biblical spectrum of views on the treatment of non-elect outsiders, ranging from the more inclusive to the more exclusive, developed out of and remains deeply connected to Israel's sense of its own election. One cannot take a shortcut through these theological problems by associating election with certain passages that treat the “other” negatively and disassociating it from those that treat the “other” positively. For these are two sides of the same coin. In fact, when one grasps that all of these texts are expressions of Israel's theology of election, it soon becomes clear that many of the more exclusive passages are not as intolerant as they first appear, and many of the more inclusive passages are not as tolerant as many seem to think.

Take, for example, the treatment of individual resident aliens. Often they receive positive treatment, as evidenced in many narrative and legal contexts. But more interesting is that one sometimes finds this to be the case even in places where one might least expect it. Not a few scholars of the various legal corpora in the Hebrew Bible have argued that the priestly groups responsible for large portions of the Pentateuch and Ezekiel 40–48 were highly ethnocentric and intolerant of non-Israelites.²⁷

When an alien (

) resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God. (Lev 19:33–34)

And while Deuteronomy stresses the necessity of annihilating the native inhabitants of the land of Canaan, it, too, includes pointed injunctions to love resident aliens and to guard their rights (Deut 10:19 and 24:17–22). Special protection for resident aliens, in fact, appears in Israel's oldest legal code, the Covenant Code (Exod 22:20 [Eng. 22:21]), where such protection is also linked to Israel's own experience of what it means to be in such a vulnerable position.

A similar complexity surrounds the status of certain foreign nations that Israel might be expected to treat in the harshest possible manner. For example, it seems quite logical that a nation like Egypt, which enslaved and oppressed the Israelites for a long period of time, would be treated with special contempt. But, surprisingly, one finds in Deut 23:8–9 (Eng. 7–8) a call for the Israelites to recognize that the Egyptians once played host to the Israelites and thus deserve a minimal level of kindness in return. Similarly, the book of Deuteronomy warns Israelites to respect the borders of Edom, Ammon, and Moab, nations that were not infrequently Israel's enemies or the allies of her enemies (2 Kings 3; Psalms 83 and 137; Obadiah 1), because Israel's God had assigned these lands to them (Deut 2:1–20).²⁸

Clearly, the texts that deal with the non-elect are far from systematic; biblical books that from our modern Western viewpoint are at times quite positive towards certain aliens and foreigners seem quite regressive in other ways. While such tensions can sometimes be attributed to a divergence in the sources behind the current text, in other examples a single source tenders divergent opinions. Thus, the priestly author of the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17–26), while showing intense deference to the rights of resident aliens as indicated by the command to love them (19:33–34), makes clear that distinctions remain between true Israelites and resident aliens (25:39–48). Similarly, within Ezekiel 40–48, a set of exilic or early postexilic priestly additions to the book of Ezekiel that many see as relatively unified, one finds a passage that inveighs against the admission of foreigners to the Temple precincts (Ezek 44:5–9), while yet another provides for the allotment of land to resident aliens and their treatment as natives (47:21–22). And yet again in Ezra, a postexilic text generally viewed as among the least tolerant and most exclusive books in the Hebrew Bible,²⁹

Readers of the Hebrew Bible must consider a number of particulars if they hope to gain a fair understanding of how foreigners and aliens were treated within its world. First, several different Hebrew terms are applied to non-Israelites, and even a single Hebrew word may carry distinct meanings in different contexts, or may change in meaning over the long historical period during which the biblical text assumed its canonical form. Aside from the word

, frequently translated as “resident alien,” the following terms also occur:

, “temporary resident” (Gen 23:4; Lev 25:35; Num 35:15);

, “strange person,” which can denote either a non-priest (Num 3:10, 38), a non-Levite (Num 1:51; 18:4), or more generally a non-Israelite (Isaiah 1:7; Jer 5:19);

Actually, this word has quite a number of meanings, not all of which are relevant to the points argued here. For a full study, see L. A. Snijders, “The Meaning of

in the Old Testament: An Exegetical Study,” OTS 10 (1954) 1–154.

or

, “foreigner” (Deut 17:15; Exod 12:43). In addition, many other non-Israelites are identified by their ethnicity. Some are more closely related to Israel through geography, (imagined) ancestry, or shared rites such as circumcision (Gen 17:25; Jer 9:24–25 [Eng. 25–26]), while others remain much more distant kin in the Israelite imagination.

There is a growing body of literature on both the alien in Israel as well as on the question of how ancient Israel as well as rabbinic Judaism dealt with those wishing to attach themselves to the people of Israel. On the alien in the biblical period, see the following works: Douglas, “The Stranger in the Bible”; Thomas Horner, “Changing Concepts of the ‘Stranger’ in the Old Testament,” Anglican Theological Review 42 (1960) 49–53; Christiana van Houten, The Alien in Israelite Law (JSOTSup 107; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991); D. Kellermann, “

,” TDOT 2:439–49; T. J. Meek, “The Translation of Gēr in the Hexateuch and its Bearing on the Documentary Hypothesis,” JBL 49 (1930) 172–80; Jacob Milgrom, “Religious Conversion and the Revolt Model for the Foundation of Israel,” JBL 101 (1982) 169–76; idem, “Excursus 34: The ‘Ger,’” in Numbers: The JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: JPS, 1990) 398–402; Saul Olyan, “Generating ‘Self’ and ‘Other’: The Polarity of Israelite/Alien,” ch. 3 in idem, Rites and Rank: Hierarchy in Biblical Representations of Cult (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Rolf Rendtorff, “The Gēr in the Priestly Laws of the Pentateuch,” in Ethnicity and the Bible (ed. Mark Brett; Leiden: Brill, 1996) 77–87; and Frank Spina, “Israelites as gērîm, ‘Sojourners’ in Social and Historical Context,” in The Word of the Lord Shall Go Forth: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman in Celebration of his Sixtieth Birthday (ed. Carol Myers and M. O'Connor; ASOR Special Volume Series 1; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1983) 321–35. On the shift that took place between the biblical and rabbinic periods, see Shaye J. D. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Berke-ley: University of California Press, 1999); Robert Goldenberg, The Nations That Know Thee Not: Ancient Jewish Attitudes Towards Other Religions (New York: NYU Press, 1998); David Novak, The Image of the Non-Jew in Judaism: An Historical and Constructive Study of the Noahide Laws (Toronto Studies in Theology 14; New York: Edwin Mellen, 1983); and Lawrence H. Schiffman, Who Was a Jew?: Rabbinic and Halakhic Perspectives on the Jewish Christian Schism (Hoboken, N.J.: Ktav, 1985).

Christiana van Houten has made a plausible case that the biblical term

slowly evolved as it moved from its earliest uses in Exodus through its later uses in Deu-teronomy and Leviticus:

Foreign figures who are treated with great respect include, among others: Melchizedek, king of Salem (Gen 14:17–20); the pharaoh who ruled during Joseph's lifetime; the daughter of the succeeding pharaoh, who saves Moses's life (Exod 2:5–10), as well as the next pharaoh's advisors, who recognize God's power in the plagues (Exod 8:19; 9:20; 10:7); Jael, wife of Heber the Kenite, who kills Israel's enemy Sisera (Judges 4); Hiram, king of Tyre, who facilitates Solomon's construction of the Jerusalem Temple (1 Kings 5); the Queen of Sheba, who testifies to Solomon's wisdom and Israel's great fortune (1 Kings 10); the widow from Zarephath, who shelters Elijah (1 Kings 17); Job, the wise and righteous man from the East; Cyrus, king of Persia, who conquers Babylon and decrees the return of the exiled Judeans to their land (Isa 45:1–4; 2 Chron 36:22–23); the non-Israelite sailors in Jonah's boat who pray, sacrifice, and make vows to the Lord (Jon 1:14–16); and also the inhabitants of Nineveh, moved to sincere repentance by Jonah's words (Jonah 3). And as already noted, sometimes foreign individuals, clans, or groups are closely attached to or even merged with the people of Israel. Among these are such well-known figures as Rahab the Canaanite (Joshua 2); Ruth the Moabitess; Jethro, Reuel, or Hobab the Midianite, who becomes Moses' father-in-law (Exod 2:16–22; 18:1–12; Num 10:29–32; Judg 1:16); and other, perhaps less familiar, figures such as Uriah the Hittite (2 Samuel 11–12) and Naaman, the Aramean general, who worships the God of Israel though remaining a resident of Aram (2 Kings 5).

All of these texts belie the widespread assumption that Israel's sense of its own election inherently led Israelites to express contempt for the non-elect peoples. Indeed, a number of texts in the Hebrew Bible appear to be challenging Israel to recognize that the non-elect often have much to teach the elect about how one should act in the world and serve God. Moreover, several of these characters are juxtaposed to Israelites who are shown to be sorely lacking. Thus, Naaman is set against Gehazi, Elisha's greedy and disobedient servant; the intoxicated Uriah is implied to have more sexual self-control than does the sober King David; and Abimelech, king of Gerar, appears to be more pious and God-fearing than Abraham (Genesis 20). Through these contrasts, the narrators of the Hebrew Bible call into question the idea that one can enjoy the status of the elect without fulfilling the responsibilities of the elect, or that the non-elect cannot act in accord with God's will.

Some of these texts also raise the complicated question of conversion. It is difficult to discern whether it was possible for a non-Israelite to join the people of Israel in the biblical period, because the terms involved in such an analysis are themselves slippery and problematic. Clearly, it would be wrong to speak of conversion to Israelite religion as an open possibility for much of the biblical period.³³

Thus, the Hebrew Bible tends to use the root

(lwh), meaning something like “to attach oneself” to or “to ally oneself” with Israel, in the passages that describe the closest thing to conver-sion in the biblical period (Isa 14:1; 56:3, 6; Zech. 2:15; Esth 9:27).

A related issue is whether such assimilation was easier for foreign women seeking to join ancient Israel than it was for foreign men. While rabbinic Judaism eventually developed a matrilineal system in which the mother determined the religion of the child, there is substantial evidence that, in ancient Israel, the religion of the father and husband may have been determinative for the status of the family unit as a whole. Thus, the patriarchs all marry Mesopotamian spouses; Judah marries a Canaanite woman (Gen 38:2); Joseph, an Egyptian named Asenath (Gen 41:45); and Moses, a Midianite or Cushite woman (Exodus 2, 18; Numbers 12). All of these women attain Israelite credentials simply by marrying an Israelite man. Later, Ruth the Moabitess marries an Israelite man and gives birth to King David's ancestor, in spite of the prohibition in Deut 23:4–7 (Eng. 3–6). Furthermore, the legislation in Deut 21:10–14 permits Israelites to take brides from among the women captured in war; and in the account of the blasphemer in Lev 24:10–23, he is introduced as the son of an Israelite woman and an Egyptian man. That this individual is oddly referred to as the son of an Israelite woman may indicate that he was not considered an Israelite, his religious status being determined by his Egyptian father.

The objection can be raised that there are a number of texts that condemn the practice of Israelite men marrying foreign women, including 1 Kings 11, Proverbs 1–9, Ezra 9–10, and Nehemiah 13. There are many possible explanations for the tensions between texts that appear to condone or endorse marrying foreign women and those that unconditionally condemn the practice. One solution is that these divergent passages come from different times, and that authors of earlier texts were, on the whole, more open to the assimilation of foreign women than were the authors of later texts. Another possibility is that these tensions reveal a heated religio-political debate about Israelite identity, a clash between those who advocated a more liberal view of Israelite identity and those who advocated a stricter construction. One unusual nuance is that the book of Deuteronomy contains some of the strongest prohibitions against foreign marriage (Deut 7:1–6; 23:4–9 [Eng. 3–8]), and yet this same book permits marriage between Israelite men and captive women (21:10–14). One might argue that Deuteronomy never intended that this latter legislation be applied to the Canaanites who are singled out for destruction in Deuteronomy 7, but rather to enemies living outside Canaan. But it is harder to believe that the author would not have envisioned marriages between Israelites and Ammonite and Moabite captives, given the frequent battles between these peoples and Israel. The rabbis resolved the possible contradiction between the laws of Deuteronomy that prohibit marriage to an Ammonite or a Moabite (Deut 23:4–7 [Eng. 3–6]) and the narrative of Ruth's marriage to Boaz (Ruth 4) by arguing that the text in Deuteronomy 23 applied only to males, inasmuch as it uses the masculine grammatical form.³⁶

Yet another explanation for the apparent tensions over the legitimacy of marriage between Israelites and non-Canaanite foreign women is that while the authors of Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History recognized the legal right of Israelite men to take foreign captives as brides and thus developed regulations for the practice, they also had serious reservations about taking foreign brides in other circumstances, particularly in the case of politically motivated marriages between Israelite kings and foreign women. This would explain the prohibition against the king who would “multiply wives” (Deut 17:17), as well as the criticism directed towards Solomon, who did just that (1 Kings 11). After all, in the minds of the authors of Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History, it was precisely this custom of sealing foreign alliances by marriage, a custom espoused by Ahab (1 Kgs 16:31–33) as well as by Solomon, that led to the cardinal sin of cultic syncretism.³⁸

On the relation between the image of the “Strange/Foreign Woman” in Proverbs 1–9 and the attempts by Ezra and Nehemiah to redefine the boundaries of communal identity for political, social, and economic reasons, see Harold C. Washington, “The Strange Woman (

) of Proverbs 1–9 and Post-Exilic Judean Society,” in Second Temple Studies, Vol. 2: Temple and Community in the Persian Period (ed. Tamara Eshkenazi and Kent Richards; JSOTSup 175; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994) 217–42; and Joseph Blenkinsopp, “The Social Context of the ‘Outsider Woman’ in Proverbs 1–9,” Biblica 72 (1991) 457–73. On the social situation behind the conflict over intermarriage in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, see Daniel L. Smith-Christopher, “The Mixed Marriage Crisis in Ezra 9–10 and Nehemiah 13: A Study of the Sociology of the Post-Exilic Judean Community,” in Second Temple Studies, Vol. 2, 243–65; and Tamara Eshkenazi and Eleanore Judd, “Marriage to a Stranger in Ezra 9–10,” in Second Temple Studies, Vol. 2, 266–85.

In any case, it should now be clear that the biblical evidence for the treatment of aliens and foreigners in ancient Israel is highly complicated and requires more nuanced treatment than it usually receives. Reckoning with this complexity is made more difficult by the frequent scholarly propensity to place the relevant texts into a simplistic schema that values each text in proportion to its conformity to our Western notions of pluralism. Thus, as noted above, it is now quite commonplace in the critical literature to find assertions that texts like Ezra 9–10 and Nehemiah 13 represent the most ethnocentric passages in the Hebrew Bible. These texts are frequently associated with a Second Temple priestly party affiliated with the groups that produced the final editions of Leviticus and Ezekiel. Texts such as Isaiah 56 and Ruth supposedly represent a more inclusive strand of the tradition. And between these poles lies Deuteronomy, which contains both tolerant and intolerant passages.

Such schemata tend to distort the texts and thus do a disservice to those seeking to understand each passage within its context. Texts such as Isaiah 56 and Ruth may be more inclusive than Ezra and Nehemiah, but they are far from universalistic or non-ethnocentric.⁴⁰

Indeed, Ezekiel 40–48, a text often aligned with Ezra and Nehemiah as advocat-ing a narrow definition of Israelite identity in contrast to the “more tolerant” Isaiah 56, may in fact embody the broader definition of Israel. As H. G. M. Williamson notes, the book of Ezekiel as a whole sees Israel as the union of many factions: those who went into exile and those who stayed behind, those from Judah and those from the North. This “view of Israel as the single people of God”⁴³

Just as some contemporary scholars exaggerate the inclusive tendencies of texts like Third Isaiah, so do some scholars misrepresent texts like Ezra and Nehemiah, evaluating them in the harshest possible terms and displaying little sympathy for those confronting the historical situation described in the texts. Thus, D. J. A. Clines is “outraged at Ezra's insistence on racial purity, so uncongenial to modern liberal thoughts.”⁴⁴

When we raise the question of the exact nature of the historical situation faced by Ezra and Nehemiah, it becomes clear that statements like Clines's and Lüdemann's fail to reckon with how enigmatic these texts are and how little scholars actually know about their contexts. For example, scholars remain divided over whether the so-called intermarriage crises that Ezra and Nehemiah faced were in fact identical. Nehemiah 13 is more likely dealing with the threat of intermarriage between Israelites and foreigners; Nehemiah himself is disturbed to find Tobiah “the Ammonite” living in the Temple compound while Israelites are indeed marrying women from Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab (Neh 2:10; 13:1–14, 23–31).⁴⁶

The case of Ezra is more ambiguous primarily because of questions surround-ing the meaning of Ezra 9:1–2 and 10:44. Determining the precise significance of Ezra 9:1–2 is difficult for a number of reasons. To begin with, these verses are themselves attempting to make sense of a variety of possibly conflicting pieces of biblical legislation (Deut 23:4–9 [Eng. 3–8]; Deut 7:1–6; and possibly Leviticus 18:2; 19:19; and Isa 6:13) by combining them in a new way that likely subverts at least the plain meaning of Deut 23:8–9 (Eng. 7–8).

in Hebrew; 10:14, 17, 18, 44), probably indicates that Ezra is also dealing with intermarriage between Israelites and foreigners.

These difficulties are compounded by the ambiguity of the last verse in the book of Ezra (10:44), which appears to describe how those Judean men who were supposed to separate themselves from their foreign wives and children actually responded to Ezra's pleas. Unfortunately, this verse is so cryptic that interpreters continue to disagree over its meaning. Some argue that it signals Ezra's success in driving out these unwanted women, while others claim that in spite of Ezra's efforts, the verse reveals that his plan was never implemented.⁵⁰

These literary and historical uncertainties frustrate the interpreter. It is well-nigh impossible to draw moral and theological conclusions about the positions reflected in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah without a clear picture of their socio-historical situation. For example, scholars have long disagreed about whether Ezra indeed reached Judah before Nehemiah did, as the canon asserts. In fact, matters are so murky that some wonder whether “Ezra is indeed a historical person and not merely a fictional priestly double of Nehemiah.”⁵¹

This very lack of knowledge has enabled certain other scholars to paint a much more sympathetic portrait of Ezra and Nehemiah as they confronted the intermarriage crisis. For example, Joseph Blenkinsopp points out that economic factors may very well have aroused Nehemiah's concern over marriages between priests and non-Judean families. He observes that because “daughters could in certain circumstances inherit, exogamous marriage could lead to alienation of family property.”⁵²

All of the reconstructions presented above—even those that are less critical of or indeed quite sympathetic towards figures like Ezra and Nehemiah—share one curious feature. Each implies that while Ezra's actions may be justified by a socio-logical explanation, they were less than ideal solutions to the problems he faced. This comes through quite strongly in Williamson, who makes a valiant effort to rationalize Ezra's actions but ends up labeling them as racist.⁵⁶

It is indeed likely that during the Second Temple period, the question of who represented the “true Israel” sparked fierce debates. But it is unlikely that any party to those conversations would have denied that the concept of “Israel” was grounded in familial and corporeal realities. As I have discussed above, the question of whether it was possible for non-Israelites to join Israel is best phrased not in terms of religious conversion, but of adoption into a tribe. The question of membership in the “true Israel,” rather, was reformulated to include issues of behavior and practice. Was a genealogical connection to the Jewish people sufficient to make one part of the elect? Or, was only a smaller subset of those born to Israel—that is, those who were properly observant and pleasing to God—truly elect?⁵⁸

Those who wished to limit membership in the people of Israel either by exclud-ing individuals of Israelite birth who were thought to have fallen away into sin, or by preventing outsiders from assimilating through marriage or some other means, did not necessarily act out of malice towards those excluded from Israel.⁶⁰

It is true that Christians, on the basis of certain prophetic texts that speak of a possible change in the relationship between Israel and the nations in the eschaton,⁶¹

Thus Jerome, in discussing the New Testament prohibition against Christians marrying heathens (2 Cor 6:14–7:1), actually cites Ezra's exclusivism as a positive exemplar: “And Ezra checked an offence of this kind against God by making his countrymen put away their wives.”⁶²

It is crucial to note that even though Ezra and Nehemiah compare the foreign wives to the sinful anti-elect, they never call for the death of those women nor of the husbands who betrothed them. But the Theodosian Code does. It is less surprising that ancient Christianity moved in this virulently intolerant manner insofar as its constitution of the “other,” unlike the earlier biblical and later rabbinic understandings, usually assimilated all of the non-elect to the category of the anti-elect. And I maintain that this classical Christian propensity to reduce the theological landscape to the binary opposition of elect versus anti-elect, along with the modern Christian tendency to ignore how particularistic and exclusivistic early Christianity really was, has continuing effects. It has led many Christian and secular critics to mis-represent Israel's treatment of the “other” and to malign the concept of election in ancient Israel and in Judaism. Once one grants that “non-elect” is not equivalent to “anti-elect” in the conceptual world of the Hebrew Bible, it is possible to see that Ezra's and Nehemiah's exclusion of foreign women is not at all a judgment that such women are damned. Rather, as correctly noted by Blenkinsopp, these marriage policies were an attempt “to maintain the characteristic way of life, the religious traditions, even the language of a community, against the threat of assimilation.”⁶⁵

In sum, while Christian scholars have every right to argue that later Christianity devised a solution to the problem of intermarriage with foreigners superior to that implemented by Ezra, they can do so with integrity only if they acknowledge the following four points. First, Rabbinic Judaism itself found a similar way to convert spouses who were seeking to join the people of God. Second, ancient Christianity shunned the unconverted “other” in ways different from, but highly analogous to, those found in texts like Ezra and Nehemiah. Third, Christianity, while appearing to be highly open and tolerant, harbored a strong tendency to assimilate all nonbelievers to the category of the anti-elect, who would remain damned unless they converted, thus eliminating the highly tolerant biblical and later Jewish⁶⁶

The Continuing Value of Election

In these arguments, I have demonstrated that the treatment of the anti-elect and the non-elect is vastly more complex than the many scholars who vilify the language surrounding the treatment of the “other” in ancient Israel have imagined. Further-more, I have argued that the theological language current in early Christianity when discussing issues of community identity is no less problematic from the standpoint of modern tolerance, inasmuch as the concept of God's particularistic election of a group of people remains at the core of Christian as well as of Jewish theology. As Jon D. Levenson has written, “Each community claims to be Israel and to give its members a unique and otherwise unavailable opportunity for participation in divine sonship.”⁶⁷

An attempt to articulate a theology of election in more affirmative terms must begin by noting that the Hebrew Bible itself proposes a number of different theological explanations for this most unusual idea. Some texts view election as instrumental and connect Israel's chosenness to a larger divine plan or purpose. Thus, election is frequently associated with some type of service. One set of texts sees the fulfillment of Israel's election in her covenantal obedience (e.g., Exod 19:4–6). In other passages, God elects Israel to fulfill a greater teleological purpose in the world as a whole. In such a schema, the elect mediate a blessing to the non-elect (e.g., Gen 12:2–3), or Israel serves as a witness to God's unity and purpose (e.g., Isa 43:10), or the chosen become an exemplar that will attract the non-elect to God (Isa 14:1–2; Zech 8:20–23). In many of these texts, Israel plays a pivotal and salutary role in relation to the other nations of the world. Yet one should not ignore the fact that other texts offer other explanations for Israel's election. Deut 9:4–9, for example, grounds Israel's election in promissory and oddly negative terms: God bestows gracious treatment on an undeserving Israel because of a debt owed to the patriarchs, and also because the Israelites are less evil than the Canaanites. Perhaps the most unusual rationale for Israel's favored status is that proposed in Deut 7:7–8:

Now, one might interject that while it may be true that various biblical texts advocate the idea that God arbitrarily favors some over others, this type of theology is simply an expression of raw ethnocentrism and thus has no positive role to play in modern theological discourse. But is it really accurate to say that this notion of election can be reduced to simple ethnocentrism? Or, might closer examination disclose a deeper theological rationale behind this seemingly arbitrary and unfair idea? Perhaps this troubling idea does have something positive to say to the non-elect of the world. After all, is it not true that no human lover relates to his or her beloved in the same way that he or she relates to all other people in the world? And does one love other families as much as one's own? Even within a family, it is unlikely that a parent could have an identical relationship with each of his or her children, or that each child should relate in an identical fashion to both parents. The Hebrew Bible's assertion of God's special love for Israel suggests that God relates to humans in a much more profound and intimate way than the notion that God has a generic and equal love for all humans implies. This is precisely the point made by Michael Wyschogrod in The Body of Faith, a penetrating theological reflection on Israel's bodily election:

If God's love is like human love in any way whatsoever, then it is unlikely that God has an identical love for all nations and all individuals. While this theological idea may seem arbitrary and unfair, it may also be taken as a sign of God's close and merciful relationship towards humanity as a whole, and of his profoundly personal character. Thus, even the notion of God's mysterious love for Israel, far from being simply a blunt assertion of unbridled ethnocentrism, is ultimately an outgrowth of Israel's conception of how God lovingly interacts with the larger world, including the non-elect.

Concluding Reflections

My intent has been to show that the ancient Israelite notion of election was considerably more subtle and complex than its contemporary despisers recognize. In particular, great mischief results when scholars and preachers conflate this understanding of election with the Christian category of salvation, implying that the non-elect are damned. Just as damaging is the equation of the election of Israel with modern racialism—a gross anachronism that cannot withstand critical scrutiny. Both Jewish and Christian believers need to continue to wrestle with the idea of election in all its fullness rather than to surrender to the temptation to discard it or empty it of its theological power by eliminating its particularism. One must measure the loss that would be sustained by discarding such a central idea—central to both Judaism and Christianity—against the gain to be had by disposing of it. After all, all great human ideas and institutions have at times become distorted and contributed to serious evils. But these same ideas may lead to blessings that are just as powerful, if not more so. It is essential to critique such ideas in a thoughtful and judicious fashion so as to avoid carelessly and needlessly harming or completely destroying what may actually be among the most treasured parts of the human religious imagination.