Old Testament Holy War
Old Testament holy war was based on the rule of law - God's law. Then, and now, holy war was a struggle between the forces of good and evil. The ancient Jewish law of war codified in the Book of Deuteronomy made no meaningful distinction between combatants and non-combatants; in holy war ethnic and religious background distinguished friend from foe.
The commitment of the early Jews to the rule of law was more a matter of religious faith than political philosophy. Unlike the founding fathers who wrote the US Constitution and who took special pains to separate the church from the state, ancient Jews saw God as the source of their law and inseparable from military and political events. War was God's way of delivering the Promised Land to His chosen people. For Old Testament Jews, God's wars were Just Wars, and anyone between them and the Promised Land was an enemy who deserved no quarter. The holy end justified any means. With God on their side, might made right.
Chapter 20 of the Book of Deuteronomy sets forth the law regarding treatment of women and children in besieged towns. It makes a distinction between those in far distant towns and those nearby: the former might be taken as slaves as the booty of war,1 but the latter were to be slaughtered without mercy.2 Only fruit trees were to be spared the sword, simply because they were not human.3
The story of Joshua and the battle of Jericho, reported in Chapter 6 of the Book of Joshua, is an application of the ancient Jewish law of war. After barricading and laying siege to Jericho, 'Yahweh [God] said to Joshua, "Now I am delivering Jericho and its King into your hands"'.4 After quietly marching around Jericho for six days, on the seventh day a blast of trumpets and a war cry brought down the walls and the victorious Jewish army rushed into the town. 'They enforced a ban on everything in the town: men and women, young and old, even the oxen and sheep and donkeys, massacring them all'.5
The mixture of religion and law which characterized Old Testament warfare may seem brutally archaic, but the same Middle East where God first became a warrior over 3,000 years ago remains a hotbed of militant religious fundamentalism.
The spread of Islamic fundamentalism and the cry for Islamic holy war (Jihad) is based on the same premise as the Jewish holy war that continued from the time of Moses to the creation of a Jewish state in 1948. That premise is that aggressive war is God's way of rewarding His chosen people - a means of divine justice. But that premise is entirely at odds with modern concepts of Just War and human rights.The merciless dictates of Jewish and Islamic law illustrate the danger of a rule of law without human rights. Christianity provided, in theory at least, a moral alternative. The teachings of Christ, based on agape (love), required respect for human dignity and compassion for the suffering, even of one's enemy. For medieval Christian warriors, values such as mercy and noblesse oblige were incorporated into the code of conduct known as chivalry. As a legal and moral code, it provided a colorful chapter in the history of military legitimacy. As the essence of honor for the warrior, chivalry remains imbued in the traditional values of the Professional Army Ethic.