Ancient views of military scouts, cowardice, and divine retribution

 

For June 20, 2020

Shelach  Numbers Chapters 13-15

By Irv Jacobs, MD

Irv Jacobs

LA JOLLA, California –I have chosen three passages from this week’s parsha, for comparison with ancient non-Israelite practices, from what I could find in internet sources.

I. Numbers 13:2. “Send men to scout the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelite people: send one man from each of the ancestral tribes…”

Scouting of an enemy’ prior to battle goes back far in ancient times. Sun Tzu (544–496 BC), a Chinese general, who wrote “The Art of War,” devoted an entire chapter to this.

In Mesopotamia, armies understood the importance of reconnoitering before battle, via scouts. Sometimes armies were divided into columns, marching before and behind each other. Vanguard assignments could march faster, serving as scouts–and more. [1]

The Macedonian armies of Philip II and Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE) carried skirmishing equipment for scouts (prodomoi), who advanced ahead of the army on the march, serving also in a shock role. [2]

The Roman army is notoriously cited for scouting failures during the early years of the Second Punic War (218-201 BCE) against General Hannibal of Carthage. An example was behavior in their rout/ambush in the Battle of Lake Trasimene. Hannibal burnt torches in a divergent place from his troops, which led the Roman army, without further exam, to a wasteful attack on nobody. This led to ambush and huge Roman losses. Arrogance, emotion, and impatience by Roman General Flaminius played a large part in his humiliating defeat. In contrast, Hannibal used scouts effectively. Rome earned further humiliations in disasters at three other battles in those early years of the War. [3]

Rome later got its act together, with a new general, and finally prevailed in the latter years of that long Second Punic War.

II. Numbers 14:2-4 “All…Israelites railed against Moses and Aaron, ‘If only we had died in the land of Egypt…Why is the Lord taking us…to fall by the sword?…Let us head back to Egypt.”

Cowardice in war is well known from ancient times, described by Greece’s Homer, with its punishments. [4]

However, sometimes the opposite attitude found a voice. Cicero of Rome established himself as the city’s leading barrister. “…early in his career he proved himself an able mouthpiece for the aristocracy by successfully pleading the cases of ‘large numbers of young men of illustrious and noble families accused of ill discipline and cowardice in war.” [5] Sound familiar?

In his book, “Cowardice: A Brief History” (2014,) Chris Walsh dwells heavily on military cowardice. “Ancient military tacticians…understood that one cowardly soldier jeopardized the entire…operation, if he refused to hold his position. But soldiers, being human, often challenged military authority by malingering, deserting, and committing acts of self-injury as ways to avoid battle…Punishment…could be severe…” [6]

III.Numbers 14:11-12 “”And the Lord said…How long will this people spurn me…I will strike them with a pestilence and disown them…”

A recent study suggests that formation of complex societies were a first requisite before people believed in a higher power, and in turn that the higher power could punish them.

Scientists analyzed the relationship between social complexity and moralizing gods in 414 societies, spanning the past 10,000 years from 30 regions of the globe. They examined 51 measures of ‘supernatural’ enforcement of morality. They found that belief in moralizing gods generally followed increases in social complexity, usually after a population reached over 1,000,000 persons. In small societies, everyone knows everyone else, and each keeps an eye on the others. Bigger societies are more anonymous, so one may not know whom to trust. [7]

The Egyptian sun god Ra judged the fate of people in the afterlife according to how well they followed the code of “what is right.”

The Bible is full of Divine Retribution, from the Great Flood to Numbers 25, in which a plague is produced for whoredom with the Moabites. The New Testament followed with its own examples, e.g. John 3:36 “…whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.”

Greek mythology relates the story of the enraged goddess Hera, after her husband Zeus impregnated a mortal woman. She exacted divine retribution on children born of such affairs. Also, Medusa was turned into her monstrous form, for her vanity.

Buddhism denies divine retribution, indeed denies a creator deity, yet accepts the theory of karma, which posits punishment-like effects, such as rebirths in realms of torment, as consequence of wrongful actions. [8]

NOTES

[1] Warfare in the Ancient Near East to 1600 BC, William J. Hamblin, Routledge, 2006
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/Prodromoi
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lake_Trasimene
[4] War in History, Courage and Cowardice in Wartime, Vol. 20, No. 1, Jan 2013, pp. 4-6, Sage Publications, Ltd.
[5] The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A Peoples History of Ancient Rome, Michael Parenti, 2004
[6] Cowardice: A Brief History, Chris Walsh, 2014
[7] When Ancient Societies Hit a Million People, Vengeful Gods Appeared, Charles Q. Choi, Live Science, March 20, 2019
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_retribution

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Irv Jacobs is a retired medical doctor who delights in Torah analysis.  He often delivers a drosh at Congregation Beth El in La Jolla, and at his chavurah.