Passage Denied

The book of Numbers narrates Israel’s long and eventful voyage through the wilderness that separates Egypt from the southern Levant.Footnote ⁴ In an uninhabited wasteland they are left to themselves and their own internal issues. But in the final stages of their journey, as they draw near to the Promised Land, they come into contact, for the first time, with the kingdoms that occupy the regions surrounding their homeland, and these confrontations with outsiders present unprecedented problems.

The first civilization they face is the southernmost kingdom of Edom, whose inhabitants are identified as the descendants of Esau, the twin brother of Israel’s ancestor, Jacob. Straightaway, Moses sends messengers to their king with the following petition:

Notice that the subject of the petition is not Moses but “your brother Israel.” By removing himself from the picture and recalling his people’s sojourn and suffering in Egypt, Moses, as the fictive author of the petition, showcases his diplomatic savvy and rhetorical skills: the Edomites should understand that the supplicant is not an army on its way to conquer new territories but rather their own kin returning as refugees to their homeland after years of affliction in a foreign land.

Although the Israelites are the Edomites’ own flesh and blood, they do not so much as ask for a drop of water from the Edomites’ wells or a handful of grain from their fields. Even so, this kingdom denies them passage and threatens to take up arms against them. Giving their kin yet another chance to demonstrate compassion, the Israelite messengers insist that their people would keep to the beaten pathway and pay for any water that they or their livestock would drink. “We ask only for passage on foot – it is but a small matter” (Num. 20:19). Their repeated appeal fails to arouse pity, however, and the Edomites now march out with a host of heavily armed troops. “Thus Edom refused to grant Israel passage through their territory, and Israel turned the other way” (Num. 20:21).

In the next encounter with a foreign people, the Israelites do not have the chance to ask for permit of passage. The king of Arad (a city on Judah’s southern frontier) hears about their arrival and immediately attacks them. Before retaliating, the Israelites make a pact with Yhwh that they will not take possession of Canaanite towns in the region if he grants them victory:

This episode resembles the way in which the Amalekites, without prior provocation, attack the Israelites soon after they leave Egypt (Exod. 17:8–16).Footnote ⁷ The difference is that the Amalekites are identified as landless marauders, so that when Israel retaliates, there are no cities to be destroyed, as in the war with Arad, or territory to be conquered, as in the impending conflicts with Sihon and Og. Nevertheless, the commemorative purpose of all the accounts we discuss here is made most explicit in the Amalekite episode, which concludes with Yhwh commanding Moses to “write this as a memorial in a scroll” and with Moses building an altar as a monument to the perpetual war between Yhwh and his enemy. Later, in the book of Deuteronomy, Moses reminds the nation of the Amalekites’ aggression, commanding future generations to “erase the memory of Amalek from under heaven; do not forget!” (Deut. 25:17–19).Footnote ⁸

After the war with Arad, the Israelites voyage onward until they arrive at the Amorite kingdom of Sihon. Before stepping foot in his territory, they request permission to traverse his borders:

This petition is similar to the one they had conveyed to the king of Edom. (The chief difference is that Moses is missing from this account, as in the preceding episode with the king of Arad.Footnote ⁹) Once again, the enemy ruler refuses to grant permission, and he mobilizes “all his people to engage Israel in battle in the wilderness.” As in the case of Arad, his assault is unsuccessful, yet this time the Israelites take possession of his country. The narrator makes it clear that when the Israelites seized land from the Amorites, they did not encroach on Ammonite territory:

As the Israelites venture northwards, they approach the territory of Bashan, and when its king attacks them, he meets the same fate as Sihon:

Finally, the nation arrives in the steppes of Moab near the Jordan River. The encounter with Moab is different from the preceding ones: it is much longer, spanning three chapters (Num. 22–24); the Israelites do not directly petition the Moabites for permission to pass through their territories; and there is no military confrontation.

Having witnessed all that the Israelites had done to the Amorites, and fearing that Israel’s large numbers would “surely lick clean all that is about us as an ox licks up the grass of the field,” the Moabites form a military coalition with the Midianites. Yet instead of coming out to attack the Israelites, the Moabite king, Balak, hires a soothsayer or seer named Balaam to perform rituals of execration and pronounce imprecations on them.

His plans prove futile. Yhwh sends Balaam with messages of reproach for Balak along with awe-inspiring descriptions of Yhwh and his people. Thanks to the deity’s strength, Israel is a fierce lion who feasts upon its prey and a wild ox who devours enemy nations. When the infuriated Balak commands Balaam to try again, the seer’s words only grow more eloquent:

Upon hearing the awe-inspiring description of his enemy, Balak sends Balaam away. As he leaves, he finally delivers the commissioned imprecations; however, he pronounces them not on the Israelites but on the Moabites and other peoples.Footnote ¹³

All the texts just surveyed likely represent supplements to an older, simpler itinerary that traces Israel’s journey from Egypt to Canaan (see the discussion in Part II). Like the battle monuments and war memorials that dot national landscapes, biblical scribes implanted these commemorative accounts across the span of their national narrative. Yet what prompted them to do so? To answer this question, we need to consider a number of other texts.

Moses’s Conflicting Memory

Numbers constructs memories of the nation’s first encounters with its neighbors, and in Deuteronomy we can witness how later generations of scribes contested them with counter-memories.Footnote ¹⁴ This new account presents Moses, on the eve of both the invasion and his own death, delivering a series of prebattle addresses to the nation. In his first address, the departing leader recounts Israel’s history from Sinai (Horeb) to the present, referring extensively to the events depicted in Numbers. His overarching purpose is to demonstrate that the Israelites had enjoyed Yhwh’s direct assistance up to this point and therefore had no reason to be anxious about their future as they prepared, in his absence, to cross the Jordan and invade Canaan.

As Moses pursues his agenda, his recollection of these events differs, often substantially, from the depiction in Numbers. Whereas the latter presents Israel politely petitioning various peoples for permission to pass through their country, in Deuteronomy Moses claims that Yhwh had actually commanded him to harass and “provoke” (g-r-h, Hitpael) some of these peoples so that they would engage in battle! In introducing this startling new information, Moses reports that he had nevertheless requested permits of passage, as if he was uneasy with Yhwh’s orders. In fact, his rendition of the petitions makes them sound even more polite and peaceable. The reason why they refused Israel passage, he explains to his audience, is that Yhwh had hardened their hearts. Hence, instead of responding hospitably toward Israel, they came out and fought them, only to suffer devastating defeat.

Moses begins his account of these events by describing how the Israelites, when traveling through the Transjordan, had circumvented the Edomites’ territory as long as they could. When describing this encounter, he avoids the name “Edomites,” as if it would evoke negative associations; instead, he refers to them as “the descendants of Esau who live in Seir” and “our brothers/kin.” He also recalls how Yhwh instructed him to avoid anything that might incite their aggression:

In describing how Yhwh eventually instructed the nation to cross Edom’s borders, Moses has nothing to say about a petition for passage or about how the Edomites attacked them, as depicted in Numbers. The impression he leaves is that Israel actually did pass through this country and that the Edomites, “our brothers” (Deut. 2:8), would have provided food and water for them gratis if Israel hadn’t insisted on paying for it.Footnote ¹⁵ The contrast to the account in Numbers couldn’t be starker.

What follows this episode in Moses’s memory are the encounters with the Ammonites and Moabites. As in the case of the Edomites, Yhwh commands Israel not to do anything that would “provoke” a military conflict (Deut. 2:8–23). These instructions take a dramatic turn as the nation approaches the kingdom of Sihon. Moses claims that Yhwh had determined to give Sihon’s territory to Israel and had enjoined him to “begin the conquest” by “provoking” this king to wage war with Israel (Deut. 2:24–25).

The way in which Moses fulfills these orders is to do nothing other than send messengers requesting a permit of passage.Footnote ¹⁶ The words of the petition embellish the version in Numbers; for example, the messengers insist that they would pay for food and water. Moreover, in an attempt to persuade Sihon to grant Israel safe conduct through his territory, Moses appeals to the precedent set by the Edomites and Moabites:

Here, Moses states explicitly that the Edomites, along with the Moabites, granted Israel license to pass through their borders.Footnote ¹⁷

Over the centuries, readers have attempted to harmonize these contradictory accounts. The Samaritan Pentateuch inserted lines from the Numbers account right before Deuteronomy 2:8 so that the Edomite king threatens to assault Israel with the sword; as a result, the verse has to be understood as reporting that Israel passed around Edomite territory instead of crossing through it.Footnote ¹⁸ Medieval Jewish interpreters likewise attempted to demonstrate that the accounts are not conflicting. For example, the Iberian scholar Ibn Ezra (1089–ca.1167), noticing that Deuteronomy 2 avoids the name “Edom,” argued that the “descendants of Esau” permitted Israel passage, while “the king of Edom,” who controlled the “King’s Highway” (Num. 20:17), displayed belligerence. Critical scholarship, especially that of earlier generations, has often explained the contradictions by assigning these contradictory accounts to two separate source documents, each of which has a distinctive understanding of Israel’s history.Footnote ¹⁹

What all these approaches fail to appreciate is how the divergent accounts bear witness to a vigorous scribal contest of memory and counter-memory, in a manner characteristic of the polyphonic war commemoration that we will be exploring throughout this study. As we shall see, the dispute over Israel’s passage through Edom would have had direct ramifications for the ancient readers’ stance toward a southern neighbor that came to occupy vast stretches of ancestral Judean lands after Judah fell to the Babylonians in 587 BCE.

Admittedly, the omission of any reference to the Edomites’ animosity makes good sense given the rhetorical purposes of Moses’s address in Deuteronomy: Israel should not be anxious about the impending campaign in Canaan, because their presence intimidates their enemies. Moses describes the encounter with the Edomites to prove his point, suggesting that this people feared Israel and hence did not come out against them. However, this rhetorical purpose does not explain why Yhwh instructs Israel to provoke war with some peoples and to avoid conflict with others. Nor does it account for the different image of the Edomites in Deuteronomy: while Numbers polemicizes against the Edomites, Deuteronomy argues in their favor.

Commemoration and Legislation

The authors of Deuteronomy embedded a lengthy law code (chaps. 12–26) in Moses’s prebattle addresses, and a section of this code bears directly on our interest in war commemoration:

The lines cited here are an excerpt from a section of rules regulating membership in the “Congregation [qâhâl] of Yhwh.” The rules are consistent with the positive attitude toward the Edomites in Moses’s prebattle address, while assuming that at least some would be inclined to “abhor” them. In proscribing contempt for this people and permitting membership to their third-generation descendants, Deuteronomy appeals here to a fraternal ethic without saying anything about Israel being granted passage through their territory or provisioned in transit.

This omission is all the more noteworthy since the preceding lines refer precisely to these expectations of hospitality as the reason for excluding Ammonites and Moabites from the Congregation of Yhwh. The book of Numbers has nothing to say about these two peoples denying Israel rights to cross their territory. Likewise, in Deuteronomy 2 Moses recalls that the Israelites went out of their way to skirt its borders and were ordered by Yhwh not to provoke a conflict with them.Footnote ²¹

While the qâhâl regulations in Deuteronomy 23 most likely did not originate in complete isolation from the narrative in Numbers, it’s difficult to discern a clear sequence of composition.Footnote ²² Read against the backdrop of the laws in Deuteronomy 23, the episode in Numbers suggests that the Edomites not only failed to provision their kin with bread and water, even when Israel promised to pay for it; they also waged war against them. The reader should draw a conclusion: if the Ammonites and Moabites are to be banned from the qâhâl for an infraction of hospitality, the nation should rethink its fraternal stance toward the Edomites, who were not only inhospitable but outright hostile. This polemical posture directly undermines Deuteronomy’s explicit injunction: “Do not abhor the Edomite, for he is your kin.”Footnote ²³

A late addition to the book of Ezra-Nehemiah reveals how some circles in the postexilic period applied Deuteronomy 23 to issues of their time:

This paragraph has been prefaced to Nehemiah’s memoirs, which describe the measures he took as governor to safeguard Judah from deleterious alliances with its neighbor, such as intermarriage with Ammonites and Moabites (Neh. 13:23, see also 13:28). The first thing Nehemiah recounts is how he forced Tobiah, a Transjordanian leader identified several times as an Ammonite, to relinquish his property within the precincts of Jerusalem’s temple. Against the backdrop of the paragraph cited above, Tobiah’s expulsion is to be understood not as a conflict between two personalities on Judah’s political stage but as one piece of a larger reform undertaken by the entire community after studying “the Book of Moses” and learning about the Ammonites’ and Moabites’ inhospitable conduct at a crucial moment in the nation’s history.Footnote ²⁴

David in the Wilderness

To challenge clear-cut rulings such as those in Deuteronomy 23, one had to creatively fabricate more favorable memories of Israel’s neighbors. An example of this memory-making is found in the book of Samuel. When the insurgent Absalom seizes his father’s throne, he forces David and his supporters to evacuate the capital and seek refuge in the Transjordan. Famished and fatigued, they are eventually met by a delegation of three Transjordanian dignitaries, one of whom is an Ammonite prince. The delegation brings the refugees not just bread and water (as in Deut. 23:4–9; Neh. 13:1–3) but also an extraordinary assortment of fine viands (wheat, barley, meal, parched grain, beans, lentils, honey and curds, lamb, and cheese) along with precious gifts (2 Sam. 17:27–29). The depiction of these exiles as “famished” and “fatigued,” trekking through the “wilderness,” brings to mind the Pentateuchal passages we just surveyed. Thus, Moses commands Israel to blot out the memory of the Amalekites – the landless marauders who attacked the nation right after the exodus – because they “surprised you on the march, when you were famished and fatigued, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear” (Deut. 25:18, emphasis added).

The parallels in language, scenario, and commemorative function are obvious. By appealing to a competing memory of hospitality, one related to the greatest figure in Judah’s history during his trials and tribulations, scribes could make a case for a more inclusive policy toward neighboring populations: Perhaps the Ammonites, along with the Moabites, had failed to provide bread and water to the nation as it passed its borders, but when Judah’s beloved king and his followers were wandering in the wilderness, it was the leaders of Transjordanian kingdoms who brought them not only bread and water but all manner of costly comestibles.Footnote ²⁵

In my books on King David, I compare this episode to the many memories of representative individuals and groups providing succor to David and his men during his rise to power and then later when he is exiled from Jerusalem. The narrative of David’s wilderness wanderings has much in common with the account of the exodus conquest (e.g., the itinerary framework). While one relates to a pivotal period in the formation of the nation, the other relates to a pivotal period in the formation of the state. Their sequence in the national narrative reflects the primacy that the biblical narrative attaches to the people rather than the palace.

In one of the most dramatic episodes in David’s rise to power, Nabal the Calebite refuses to provide succor to David and his troops: “Should I take my bread and water, and the meat I have slaughtered for my shearers, and give it to men coming from who knows where?” (1 Sam. 25:11). As David mounts an attack on Nabal’s house, his wife Abigail saves the day by sending a generous supply of assorted foods to the warlord and his men: two hundred loaves of bread, two pithoi of wine, five dressed sheep, five seahs of parched corn, a hundred raisin cakes, and two hundred cakes of pressed figs. Like the actions of Jacob when he confronts Esau and his troops (discussed in Chapter 2), Abigail sends the donkeys bearing these gifts before her arrival. When she intercepts David on the warpath, she utters an eloquent speech (longer than that of any woman in the biblical narratives), in which she calls her husband a “wretched fellow” and mocks his name.

In Part IV, we will explore the similar account of Jael, who directly defies her Kenite husband’s politics. She does so, however, not by feeding a future king but by assassinating a Canaanite general, who, under the rule of the king of Hazor, attacks Israel right before it attempts to establish the first king of its own.

War Memories as Casus Belli

The scribes who invented memories of the nation’s earliest encounters with neighboring peoples understood that these memories had direct implications for a whole host of political issues. Thus, they could influence the postexilic community’s posture toward individuals in their midst, as we saw in Nehemiah’s account. Or they could have an impact on larger territorial disputes, and even provide the casus belli for a military confrontation, as we will see now in two texts.

In the account of Jephthah from the book of Judges, the memories and counter-memories found in the books of Numbers and Deuteronomy play a key role in prebattle negotiations with the Ammonites. As they prepare for war, Jephthah and the Ammonite king argue at length about the course of events leading up to their conflict. Jephthah demands an explanation for the Ammonites’ bellicosity, and in response, the foreign ruler claims that Israel, on its way from Canaan to Egypt, seized a large portion of their territory – “from the Arnon to the Jabbok and the Jordan.” Jephthah contests the claim with a detailed review of those events in Israel’s early history:

Jephthah is the son of a harlot and, after being banished from his home, becomes a warlord with a band of marauders. Later, when the Ammonites attack Gilead, he is summoned back to his place of origin, and there he manages to rise to the highest seat of authority. What’s remarkable about his story is that its authors depict him as a social outcast and bandit who not only displays firsthand knowledge of Israel’s written history but also synthesizes competing perspectives in these texts with the expertise of an experienced scribe.

Jephthah’s understanding of his people’s history follows the contours of the account in Numbers while integrating aspects of the (revisionist) view articulated by Moses in his own eve-of-battle address in Deuteronomy.Footnote ²⁶ The warlord modifies the Numbers narrative on certain points (e.g., he adds a petition for passage sent to, and rejected by, “the Moabite king”). He also fleshes out the underlying rationale as he makes a case against the Ammonites. For example, Numbers cites older poetic sources to prove that Israel took possession only of Amorite lands and did not (directly) expropriate Moabite territories (Num. 21:14–15, 26–30). Although Jephthah’s response to the Ammonite king confuses the Ammonites with the Moabites in several respects (e.g., he identifies Chemosh as the national deity of the Ammonites rather than the Moabites), he makes sophisticated use of the Numbers narrative to argue that Israel, during the days of the exodus, had not traversed the Ammonite country and had conquered only territories belonging to the Amorites. On this point, Jephthah reinforces the position that Moses sets forth in his speech in Deuteronomy – namely, that the nation had circumvented the Ammonites (Deut. 2:37).Footnote ²⁷

The exchange with the Ammonite king sheds light on the larger political issues (with the Moabites!) that informed the composition of the conquest accounts in Numbers. The authors of the Jephthah account were less interested in justifications for war than matters related to the borders of Israelite possessions in the Gilead. Their debate on the legitimacy of Israel’s claims to conquered lands continues long after the downfall of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah: the rabbis argued, in keeping with the apologetic thrust of the biblical texts, that (portions of) Ammonite and Moabite territory could be conquered by the generation of the exodus because the Amorite ruler Sihon had already wrested it from these neighbors (b. Gittin 38a).

Another example of memories serving as a casus belli is found in the book of Samuel, where the prophet approaches King Saul and declares to him Yhwh’s instructions:

The account of Saul’s war against the Amalekites illustrates Deuteronomy’s injunctions to “remember what Amalek did to you on the road from Egypt” and to be sure “to not forget to blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven” (Deut. 25:17–19; see also Exod. 17:14, 16). The account goes on to present Saul warning the Kenites, who live among the Amalekites, to remove themselves from the line of fire. The king grants special protection to this people because they, in contrast to the Amalekites, had showed hospitality (ḥesed) to the Israelites when they were coming out of Egypt. In Part IV, we will revisit this text and attempt to discern what its authors may have been referring to.

Thus, just as the denial of passage could precipitate military aggression, the contested memories and commemoration of these events could serve as a casus belli. Throughout history, states have justified their decisions to go to war by appealing to memories of prior, unwarranted aggression. Many kingdoms of the ancient Near East stored detailed documentation concerning relations with competing powers, and even if these records related to events from centuries before, they came in handy when rulers sought a (legitimate) reason for declaring war or establishing an alliance.Footnote ²⁸

Notably, the biblical memories of Israel’s relations with other peoples continued to exert their political and didactic force long after the demise of its kingdoms. The reason for this is that, as we shall see throughout our study, the architects of these memories have consciously crafted them for the needs of a larger audience than the rulers of states.

Permits of Passage in an Age of Empires

During the most formative period in the Bible’s history, the practice of independent armies requesting passage through the territories of third parties was already long passé. In the final years of their existence, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were vassals to suzerain powers in Mesopotamia and Egypt. As in the case of the Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin with which we began this chapter, kings from the ancient Near East required their vassals, by means of verbal oaths and written treaties, not only to allow troops to traverse their territories but also to provision them with food and supply their own soldiers to serve on the campaign. Failure to do so was promptly punished, as was any effort to aid and abet enemy forces by permitting them to cross one’s borders – the crime committed by the Duke.

As these imperial powers evolved and subjugated surrounding kingdoms, they created an administrative system consisting of satrapies and provinces whose governors they directly appointed. In his memoirs from the fifth century BCE, the Judean governor Nehemiah tells how he and his retinue made their way from the Persian court to the province of Judah, not only with imperial cavalry and soldiers but also with royal letters (a “passport” or “orders of safe conduct”) that charged other provincial governors to grant him passage until he arrived in his homeland (Neh. 2:7–9). From both Greco-Roman sources and recently discovered cuneiform documents from Mesopotamia, we know much about the network of roads connecting all points of the expansive Persian Empire (with stations and depots strategically located along the routes), and we’ve even recovered some of the actual authorizations and receipts for the food provisions that were paid to the armies and emissaries who traveled these routes.Footnote ²⁹

Such were the conditions of the Pax Persica, which stand in direct continuity with the administrative innovations introduced by Assyria (the Pax Assyriaca) and which continued to the days of the Roman emperors (the Pax Romana). It was in this age of empires that our biblical texts were being composed. The geopolitical structure instituted by these superpowers was, however, ill-suited to the biblical project of war commemoration, which explains why our scribes invested their imagination in a world of petty states that jockeyed for control long before imperial powers (re-)emerged to make their influence felt across the southern Levant.

Israel’s First Homecoming

The book of Genesis addresses issues posed by the Edomites through the proxy of their ancestor Esau, the twin brother of Jacob/Israel. Already in utero, the relationship between the two boys is characterized by strife and rivalry, and when Jacob, with the help of his mother, purloins the paternal birthright due to Esau, he must flee to save his own skin. During their years of separation, Esau becomes a mighty warrior, while Jacob grows into a wealthy patriarch, with many children, servants, and livestock.

Eventually, Jacob decides to move his family back to the land of his birth. As he prepares for his homecoming, he sends servants ahead to greet his brother in the hopes of gaining his favor (Gen. 32:4–6). The entreaty communicated to Esau resembles the one Moses sends to the Edomite king (Num. 20:14–17), recounting developments over a period in which Jacob/Israel and Esau/Edom had become separated. The petition falls on deaf ears, and just as the Edomite king arms his people to fight the Israelites during the days of Moses, Esau musters a band of 400 warriors and marches out to confront Jacob’s clan.

Jacob responds to Esau’s aggression by separating his camp (maḥaneh, a term with military connotations) into two divisions and attempting to placate Esau’s anger with a gift (minḥāh) of his flocks. (Throughout the story, the authors play with the Hebrew terms “camp” and “gift,” which differ only in the order of two consonants.) During the night, Jacob engages in a wrestling match with a mysterious stranger, and the contest transforms the patriarch as he prepares to meet his brother. His competitor changes his name from Jacob to Israel, who subsequently declares that “I’ve seen God face to face, and my life is rescued” (Gen. 32:31).

When Jacob meets Esau the next morning, he bows seven times. The respect he shows his brother provokes a change of heart. Esau runs and embraces Jacob, falling on his neck and kissing him amidst mutual tears. “Accept this gift from me,” Jacob insists, “for I have seen your face as I have seen the face of God, and you have received me favorably” (Gen. 33:10). After reluctantly accepting a portion of the flock Jacob offers him, Esau volunteers to escort Jacob’s clan to their destination. In the end, Jacob diplomatically turns down the offer, and the brothers part ways on peaceful terms.

The substratum of this account from Genesis may predate the episode with the Edomites in the book of Numbers, yet over time it has evolved into a complex counter-memory to the hostility portrayed in Numbers: long before the days of the exodus, when the Edomite king harassed the Israelites as they were making their way to their homeland, Esau had called off his troops and offered to deploy them to help Jacob’s clan find safe passage to this same land. As one side in this tug-of-war-commemoration, the story of Esau’s rapprochement with and solicitude for Jacob in Genesis affirms the possibility that fraternal relations between Israel and Edom could be reestablished in the present.Footnote ¹

Memories of Edomite Aggression

The tale of these fraternal twins is a study of opposites. “Esau was a skillful hunter and a man of the field, while Jacob was a mild man, one who dwells in tents” (Gen. 25:27).Footnote ² Although the brothers ultimately part in peace, Esau’s pugnacious character mirrors the bellicose proclivities attributed to the Edomites in a number of biblical texts. Thus, the book of Samuel portrays a figure named “Doeg the Edomite” perpetrating a massacre at the town of Nob on King Saul’s behalf (1 Sam. 22:9–23). Describing how an Edomite took sides against the beloved hero David and contributed to the destruction of an Israelite town, this tale would have incensed readers who were already inclined to think of the Edomites as an especially violent and vicious people.Footnote ³

The books of Samuel and Kings present Saul and David subjugating the Edomites (1 Sam. 14:47; 2 Sam. 8:13–14). After David’s death, “Yhwh raised an adversary against Solomon, the Edomite Hadad, who was of the royal family of Edom” (1 Kings 11:14–22). Later, the Edomites break away and establish a king of their own. In retaliation, the Judean kingdom sends chariot divisions against them, but the campaign is unsuccessful. “Thus Edom has rebelled against Judah’s sovereignty until the present day” (2 Kings 8:20–22; see also 2 Kings 14:7 and 16:6). Judean resentment resounds throughout these records of Edom’s rise.Footnote ⁴

In an oracle from the book of Amos, Yhwh promises to reestablish “the fallen booth of David,” which will seize territory from the Edomites and “all the other nations called by my [i.e., Yhwh’s] name” (Amos 9:12).Footnote ⁵ This same work begins with a series of oracles against the nations, in which Edom is harshly censured for participating in the trade of war captives. “Edom pursued his brother with the sword, repressed all pity [alternatively: “destroyed wombs”], maintained his anger perpetually, and preserved his fury forever” (Amos 1:6–12).Footnote ⁶

Pronouncements of judgment upon Edom, similar to that in Amos, appear repeatedly in prophetic writings, often as retribution for Judah’s/Zion’s fate.Footnote ⁷ For example, Ezekiel proclaims:

Unwarranted brutality in wartime is a common theme in the broadsides against the Edomites.Footnote ⁸ Psalm 137, an appeal not to forget Jerusalem, accuses the Edomites of taking pleasure in the rape of the city during the days of the Babylonian conquest:

The short book of Obadiah consists of a single pronouncement of divine judgment on Edom, and the imprecation is vindicated, once again, by appealing to the memory of Edomite actions against their own kin in wartime:

Edom’s lack of brotherly love manifested itself concretely in their purloining of Jerusalem’s wealth, their glee on the “day of Judah’s calamity” (a play on “Edom”), and their slaughter/betrayal of war refugees.Footnote ¹⁰

The Politics of Scapegoating

Thus far, we’ve seen how biblical scribes reproached the Edomites by constructing memories of their unbrotherly behavior in wartime. These memories reflect deep misgivings toward Edom, an attitude to which Deuteronomy responds with its injunction not to abhor Edomite kin. The fervor of these exchanges begs the question: What is it about this population that elicited such a vigorous volley of texts?

The Edomites must have long occupied the attention of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, but the increased attention they receive in advanced stages of the Bible’s composition history must be appreciated against the backdrop of events in years directly before and after the Babylonian conquest. During this period, Judah surrendered much of its southern territory (beginning just north of Hebron) to the Edomites/Idumeans. Several documents found at Arad in the south of Judah, which probably date to 598/597 BCE, refer to Edomite incursions into the region and the crimes perpetrated by this population against Judah at a time of weakness.Footnote ¹¹

While the memories of Edom’s wartime transgressions likely have a basis in historical realities, they appear to have been embellished and inflated for the sake of polemic. It’s noteworthy that the Babylonian sources and the oldest biblical depictions of the demolition refer only to the Babylonians and fail to mention Edomite involvement. The book of Jeremiah, moreover, reports that Judeans had sought refuge in a number of places, including Edom, whence they returned after hearing that the king of Babylon had taken measures to repopulate Judah.Footnote ¹² Why then do so many of the biblical texts we have just surveyed accuse the Edomites of betraying Judah?

In several insightful studies, Juan Manuel Tebes interprets the biblical polemics against Edom from the perspective of “stab-in-the-back” myths (Dolchstoßlegende) that emerged in Germany after 1918. According to this scapegoating notion, culpability for military defeat is assigned to others, such as “Bolshevist Jews,” who were accused of acts of double-crossing and betrayal. According to Tebes, “Someone had to be responsible for [Judah’s] terrible defeat. As in similar post-war defeated societies, minority groups inside the society, such as members of other ethnic communities or followers of different religions, were singled out as the cause of the national downfall. Late Iron Age Judah housed several foreign peoples, but only one upon whom could be placed the burden of guilt: the Edomites.”Footnote ¹³

While this scapegoating interpretation is certainly suggestive, there’s a problem with it: none of the biblical texts claim that Judah lost the war with Babylon because Edom betrayed them. Making the marginalized Other responsible for one’s own defeat is essential to the stab-in-the-back notion, and that’s simply not the case in the biblical memories of Edom. In constructing these memories, scribes were engaging in a form of war commemoration on display throughout the biblical corpus. (Thus, as we saw in Chapter 1, a series of Pentateuchal passages cast aspersions on Israel’s neighbors by fabricating memories of their aggression during their first encounters.) Though undeniably political and polemical, the memories of Edom do not engage in scapegoating.

Indeed, what’s really remarkable is the consistency with which biblical narratives, prophecies, laments, etc. assign culpability to their own communities. By interpreting defeat as divine punishment for the nation’s wrongdoing, these texts make the trauma of imperial subjugation the springboard for inventing a new form of peoplehood capable of withstanding the loss of their political sovereignty.Footnote ¹⁴

While taking umbrage at the failure of their kin to display brotherly love at vulnerable moments in the nation’s history, the biblical scribes refrained from making the Edomites responsible for their defeat. In contrast to the strategy adopted by many German intellectuals after 1918, these scribes did not nurture a new national identity with claims that things would have turned out much differently were it not for a minority in their midst. While they malign the memory of the Edomites, they also hold their polemics in check: “Do not abhor the Edomite, for he is your brother.”

Judean Irredentism

Their pain, our gain. Though most likely exaggerated in biblical texts, the Edomite reaction to Judah’s downfall in 587 BCE would have been positive (just as Judah was likely jubilant after Israel’s downfall in 722 BCE). What prompted Edom’s elation was less a deep-seated enmity between the two peoples than the prospect of territorial aggrandizement: the collapse of Judah’s kingdom under Babylonian domination permitted Edomite encroachment on ancestral Judean lands.

Edom’s territorial expansion provoked an “irredentist” posture in many Judean circles. (The term originated among the nineteenth-century Italian irredentista who sought to “redeem” to their homeland all Italian-speaking districts under Austro-Hungarian rule.) Thus, the punishment Obadiah envisions for Edom’s war crimes is forfeiture of their territories to the exiles who live there. The “House of Jacob will take possession of those who dispossessed them,” and these territories are referred to as “the towns of the Negeb” and “Mount Esau” (Obad. vv. 17–20). The same irredentist perspective informs the book of 1 Esdras (an alternative version of Ezra-Nehemiah from the late Hellenistic period). In this history, the Persian king Darius decrees that “the Idumeans [Edomites] are to give up the villages of the Jews that they held,” after he had just been reminded of his vow to rebuild Jerusalem and its temple that “the Edomites burned when Judah was laid waste by the Chaldeans” (1 Esd. 4:45, 50).Footnote ¹⁵

The epigraphic record from both pre-exilic times and the Persian-Hellenistic period reflects conditions of Edomites moving into the Negeb and northward, settling in what had been part of southern Judah. The territory came to be known as “Idumea.” Just as Edomites/Idumeans were integrated into Judean society (as reflected in the figure of Doeg from the book of Samuel), many Judeans lived in Idumea.Footnote ¹⁶ For the late fifth and especially the fourth century BCE, we have almost two thousand Aramaic ostraca (short texts inscribed on pottery shards) from this region, which attest to generally harmonious relations, if not a symbiosis, between these populations. Even so, the memory of Judah’s past sovereignty in the region would have endured, feeding irredentist longings and provoking the kind of accusatory salvos that we find in our biblical texts.Footnote ¹⁷

Although these texts refer to the Edomites’ behavior during the destruction of Judah by the Babylonians, many were written in the Persian and Hellenistic periods, when anti-Edomite animus escalated. (Thus, the book of Judith, which is clearly a Hellenistic work, tells how the Edomites formed an alliance with other peoples in the Levant against the Israelites and betrayed them to their enemies.Footnote ¹⁸) In the second century BCE, the irredentist aspirations were realized: as Judah began to regain its native military strength, the Maccabees undertook campaigns against “the descendants of Esau” and reconquered what had become Idumean territories.Footnote ¹⁹

Implications for the Documentary Hypothesis

Our survey of biblical texts related to the Edomites has direct implications for theories of the Pentateuch’s formation. It seems highly improbable that one and the same source would have told about the happy reunion between Jacob and Esau (Gen. 32–33) and then later depicted the Edomites taking up arms against Israel when they requested passage through their lands (Num. 20). It wouldn’t be surprising if one massive and complex work like the Pentateuch has competing views. We naturally assume that it, like any other ancient saga, is the product of a plurality of authors and incorporates earlier sources with discordant attitudes and conflicting perspectives. Yet what is less disturbing in a complex work like the Pentateuch becomes much more conspicuous and irritating when two texts with very different attitudes, as in the case of Genesis 32–33, and Numbers 20, are assigned to a single shorter document (such as the “Elohist”).

Many contemporary defenders of the Documentary Hypothesis are especially emphatic about the independence of the older sources, insisting that their authors were not familiar with each other’s work.Footnote ²⁰ One might then attempt to attribute Genesis 32–33, to one source and Numbers 20, to a different one. Yet it beggars belief to suppose that the accounts emerged in isolation from each other, as they bear many marks of cross-pollination: Both are about a voyage of Jacob/Israel to their homeland. Both present the protagonists (Moses and Jacob) sending messages to the other party, recounting events after an earlier point of separation (Jacob’s departure from his family; Israel’s sojourn in Egypt). Both Esau and the Edomite king come out against Jacob/Israel with troops prepared to inflict injury. Yet Esau, in contrast to the Edomite king, eventually offers to assign his warriors to guard Jacob’s clan until they arrive at their destination.

If these texts are ascribed to the same document, one might attempt to understand them as being etiological, reporting that the ancestors of Israel and Edom once got along but that their descendants were inclined to cross swords. The problem with this solution is that it fails to take seriously the various and profound ways in which Genesis differs from the narrative in Exodus-Joshua: Genesis offers a modus vivendi with outsiders, and it depicts Egypt extending generous hospitality to Jacob’s family when they migrate as refugees from famine-stricken Canaan. In glaring contrast to Genesis, the narrative in Exodus-Joshua begins with Egypt pursuing a program of genocide against Israel. The same antipathy characterizes relations between Israel and most other peoples in these books. Time and again, the nation is forbidden to enter into treaties with Canaan’s inhabitants; it is to give them no quarter as it takes possession of their land. Genesis articulates both a vision of, and concrete strategies for, peaceful coexistence that couldn’t be more at odds with the general animus toward outsiders in Exodus-Joshua.Footnote ²¹

Contesting Memories

The tale of Jacob’s rapprochement with Esau is a complex account with an ideological agenda. Symbolically, it treats Israel’s relations with the Other, personified in the patriarch’s twin brother. Yet it also relates to a particular population. If Esau and Jacob could “kiss and make up” after years of enmity, then a future reconciliation with Edom is possible. Numbers 20, on the other hand, rejects this conciliatory stance with a counter-memory in which the Edomites fail to display fraternal solicitude. Their behavior at a critical moment in Israel’s history – and their failure to comply with standard conventions of wartime – justifies belligerence toward them in the present, in keeping with the rationale treated in Chapter 1 under the rubric “War Memories as Casus Belli.”Footnote ²²

Perhaps some scholars will persist in the effort to press these rival memories into the confines of a single source or demonstrate that they belong to different sources that were drafted without any knowledge of each other. But such endeavors prove to be misguided when confronted with the abundance and heterogeneity of the texts related to the Edomites’ wartime conduct throughout Israel’s history, as well as the many analogous war memories for other neighbors examined in this book.

A more tenable approach takes seriously the extent to which texts gradually accumulate layers of editorial accretions, reflecting the perspectives and concerns of different times and places.Footnote ²³ Thus, it seems likely that the portion of the account in Numbers 20 that overlaps with Genesis 32–33, telling how, after sojourning in a foreign land, the Edomites’ kin are now voyaging back to their homeland (Num. 20:14b–16, 18–19), represents a late scribal supplement. If so, the account of the Israelites’ petition to the Edomite king would provide a perfect form-critical parallel to the petition they make to Sihon in the following chapter (Num. 21:21–23).

Though it’s much less tidy, this mode of supplementation reflects more faithfully the often contradictory and cluttered character of demotic war commemoration and other decentralized forms of social discourse. Such contestation of memories is well attested in contexts where cultural-political expressions are not monopolized by a single power. While examples abound in modernity, in antiquity we can witness a “war of memories” not only in the biblical corpus but also in the ancient Aegean world, whose competing states vied for status, membership, and honor in a larger political community. What’s remarkable about biblical war commemoration is that while it, too, presupposes a political community larger than its two member states (Israel and Judah), it flourishes among anonymous scribes in the period following the downfall of these states (in 722 BCE and 587 BCE, respectively).Footnote ²⁴

We don’t know much about the social location of these scribes, but three facts are indisputable: 1) there were many of them; 2) they often did not share the same perspective; and 3) they created a corpus of texts that palpably, even if only partially, preserves their plurality.