By Rabbi Ben Kamin
OCEANSIDE, California — The Bible warned the soldiers about a captive woman.
I think a lot about a distressed woman in the Bible who has no name, no known community, and not much hope. She is described in the Book of Deuteronomy as “a captive lady,”—she is a prisoner of war. Her legs are chained, her wrists are bleeding from tight ropes cutting into her skin, and her eyes are bulging with terror. The implication is that she is attractive; her predicament is treacherous and quite possibly fatal.
The same Bible that began with light and creation often dwells heavily on the particulars and regulations of war, conquest, and dominion. People sometimes have a hard time with its unforgiving tone in these matters.
When you read the Book of Joshua, for example, you are reading a military commander’s genocidal manual: his Hebrew army is commanded to do nothing less than to completely slaughter and expunge the indigenous peoples of Canaan because the Hebrew God, Yahweh, has chosen to give the land to them. It’s not easy to study this material without shaking your head a bit in disillusionment and skepticism.
At one point in this volume, God wondrously holds the sun in place so that Joshua would have ample time in daylight to finish off the Amorites—one of the Canaanite populations. I don’t ponder the miracle, however; I reflect on the massacre.
But here, in Deuteronomy, the war drums are gratifyingly muffled. The grisly narrative is interrupted with a surprisingly touching intervention on behalf of that female POW. At exactly the moment of her most egregious vulnerability, when the murderous hearts of crazed male soldiers are pounding with suppression and lust, when they have been seduced by their own fears and their cosmic machismo, the Bible reaches out to protect this woman. And it is also saving these dangerously feverish soldiers from their own worst instincts.
The Hebrew soldiers are instructed not to mistreat (that is, rape) the prisoner and they are charged to let her restore her vanity and dignity:
When you go to war against your enemies and the Lord your God delivers them into your hands and you take captives, if you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife. Bring her into your home and have her shave her head, trim her nails and put aside the clothes she was wearing when captured. After she has lived in your house and mourned her father and mother for a full month, then you may go to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife. If you are not pleased with her, let her go. You must not sell her or treat her as a slave, since you have dishonored her.
So, in other words, don’t think of your female captive as an object. Let her clean up, and hand her some fresh clothing. Let her grieve for her lost home. And if you want to have sex with her, you have to marry her. And then if you realize she isn’t for you, do not throw her into the trash of battle. Let her go home to her family. Be a real man.
This is astonishingly progressive stuff that was written over three thousand years ago. It certainly is not found in the military literature of today’s jihadist organizations.
An irony: hardly anybody knows about this little flash of sanity and compassion in the Bible—including the ones who routinely employ it to evangelize and dominate other people. It is not the account of an official “miracle.” Yet is it not miraculous? Doesn’t it touch your heart more than yet another parting sea that drowns Egyptians or a thundering mountain that wreaks lethal havoc on Hebrews?
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Rabbi Kamin is an author and freelance writer based in Oceanside, California. He may be contacted via ben.kamin@sdjewishworld.com. Comments intended for publication in the space below MUST be accompanied by the letter writer’s first and last name and by his/ her city and state of residence (city and country for those outside the United States.)