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On this episode of The Bible Rules, war.

In the ancient world, a daily event.

You are all soldiers all the time.

The constant struggle for land, food, and security cause brutal conflict.

Leave nothing that breathes alive.

And The Bible Rules provide a gripping play -by -play of war's devastation.

did shock and awe before we ever did shock and awe.

Every bloody aspect of the reality of war covered in this biblical battle

manual. You want to make them from running out of the city begging for

What was the ancient world really like?

The answer may be hidden in thousands of rules and commandments in the Bible.

Some are shocking.

Some mysterious.

All reveal lost details about the world that was.

The past is now.

The Bible is one of the best -known books in the world. Most people have

of its Ten Commandments. But what many don't know is it actually contains

2 ,000 rules and laws that the ancients lived by, providing an unexpected portal

into the ancient world.

We kick off our investigation with a surprising rule that you wouldn't think

belongs in a war manual.

If you besiege a town for a long time, making war against it in order to take

it, you must not destroy its trees by wielding an axe against them.

So in one of the war laws of the lunar army, Israel is commanded to not cut

fruit trees.

A very weird law indeed.

What is behind it?

Why, amid all the devastation that war wreaks on the land, was God so concerned

with preserving trees?

A clue to the origins of this rule might lie in Israel's own experience of siege

warfare. Jerusalem was besieged in around 701, and the Assyrian king,

Sennacherib, probably did destroy all of the trees around the city.

The Assyrians, one of Israel's greatest foes, cut Jerusalem's trees down to make

ladders and weapons.

But they had another reason, too.

You want to make it impossible for these people to feed themselves?

You want to starve them out.

You want to make them come running out of the city begging for mercy.

And one way to do that would be to destroy the natural resources.

The destruction of their fruit trees would have been a disaster not easily

forgotten by the Israelites.

Because they lived in a desert climate, vegetation was often difficult to

cultivate and maintain.

In desert terrain, life was right on the edge.

Agriculture in antiquity had an almost quasi -sacred status.

So, if their own precious trees had been destroyed, why were the Israelites

instructed by God not to do the same to their enemy?

Could this law be one of the earliest examples of what we know as

conservationism? The law is Baal Tashchit, which means that wanton

is prohibited.

There's really no need to be cutting down trees just for the sake of

somebody.

Imagine a people at war and thinking about the trees. We are struggling for

territory, but let's keep the trees so that the next one can have fruit.

But while this rule may appear to be compassionate, there's also a very

practical self -interest at its heart.

The fruit trees are very precious items.

An olive tree takes several years before it starts producing olives. It's not

something you can go out the next year and plant.

And although this battle rule was written over 2 ,000 years ago, its

significance still resonates today.

In the modern age, you'll remember an incident in the West Bank when the

Israelis first began to put up the wall.

That separated them from the Palestinians. The wall ran through a

olive grove, and the Israelis cut down the olive trees. There was an

immediate uproar throughout the entire Middle East. You didn't do this.

While this rule about trees calls for respectful consideration of the land

during wartime, this next one seems to command the exact opposite.

But as for the towns of these people that the Lord your God is giving you as

inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive.

In other words, there are specific lands that God wanted for his people. The

Israelites were not only to invade them, but also to destroy every living thing

they found there.

The ancients were no strangers to the devastation wrought by bitter conflict.

War is a constant state of affairs, a fact of life for everyone.

You are all soldiers all the time, always ready to be sent out in combat

someplace or other. You're not talking about well -formed nations. You've got

tribal people who are contesting always whose land belongs to whom.

and vying for supremacy.

People were constantly being conquered or defending themselves.

War and violence were part of the everyday reality of people in the

world.

But the level of destruction this rule promotes is unusual.

To crack this biblical code, we need to go back to the story of the Exodus.

Moses has led the Israelites out of Egypt through the barren desert to Mount

Sinai. Deprived of their own land, the Israelites are searching for territory.

The place they set their sights on is a land called Canaan. But the Canaanites

didn't share the Israelites' faith.

It appears to be a command of the deity who says to Moses in regard to the war

in Canaan, go up upon the land that I have given you for your inheritance and

leave nothing that breathes alive.

Well, that's a pretty clear condemnation of everyone who doesn't share the...

monotheistic faith. The Hebrew God commands his followers to punish the

Canaanites for their pagan beliefs.

They are to visit God's justice against the Canaanites and wipe them out so that

the Canaanites don't pollute Israel.

Perhaps for that reason, this Bible rule mandates a very specific level of

destruction. The Israelite soldiers are fighting a holy war and they should give

no quarter to the enemy.

There is an idea in the Bible of divinely commanded genocide.

The idea that you are supposed to wipe out not only every man, woman, and

but every living thing, and then burn the city to the ground.

But what happened if you failed to annihilate every living thing?

As King Saul discovered, the punishment was severe.

After winning one battle, he tried to keep some animals alive.

But God's representative, the prophet Samuel, found out.

He says, what is this bleeding of sheep and lowing of cattle in my ears?

And Saul says, oh, I was just saving the best stuff to sacrifice to the Lord.

As a result, he loses his kingship.

God dethrones him because he failed to do a ritual genocide.

As we dig deeper into this biblical war manual, we uncover a rule that deals

with the more practical aspects of combat.

What to do with the spoils. But we're not talking about silver or gold. It may

be hard to believe, but there's a rule in the Bible for how to treat a prisoner

of war.

Suppose you see among the captives a beautiful woman whom you desire.

Bring her home to your house. She shall shave her head and shall remain in your

house a full month.

After that, you may go into her and be her husband.

With a population depleted by warfare, women of childbearing age were a

commodity. So this rule gives instructions about how to deal with a

prize. But there's more to it than meets the eye.

One of those rules where the head was to be shaved. Why would that be the case?

And the answer would be to establish her as a foreigner.

And remember, her society was much smaller and closer then. And as her hair

grew, she would be gradually accepted. They would know how to behave towards

her. But why would they have to wait a month?

Greek philosopher Philo of Alexandria thought this rule clearly demonstrated

moral superiority of the Bible.

The woman...

Family has been destroyed in war.

She's lost her city.

If she was married, she lost a husband, children.

In any case, she lost parents.

So Philo thinks waiting 30 days is an exceptional gesture of

mercy and kindness.

Well, what must the other people have been thinking about this time? Two days

enough? I can't get over the idea that this looks like real...

generosity of spirit to save 30 days. But if we delve a little deeper, we find

that this rule may serve a far more practical purpose.

It's an ancient paternity test.

The most important thing is to wait for the month before you can declare her

wife to make sure that she was not pregnant.

To make sure that she was not carrying the child of another man, especially if

she was taken from an enemy camp, you wouldn't want it to bring into your own

camp the child of an enemy. Guys are always concerned about this. As the

say, motherhood is certain. Paternity is always doubtful.

Waging war in the ancient world was how you gain not just land and security, but

also money, food, and yes, even women.

These were the rewards of war that made the constant risk of imminent death

worthwhile. For the average soldier to lay claim on his portion of the spoils,

he needed physical evidence of his contribution to the cause.

Sometimes that meant capturing a beautiful woman. Other times it meant

of the kill.

Graphic evidence.

16 severed hands were found in one small grave.

in order to prove that you had slain an enemy of course you had to chop off his

right hand present the hand and then you would be given a reward of a small

amount of gold the payment was awarded only for the right hand which is the

that holds the weapon

As our investigation continues, we uncover ancient rules which focus on

outside of war.

If I have a premeditation to commit homicide, then not only are you entitled

seek my life in return, but according to Genesis 9, you must.

But as we'll see, the biblical justice system had an unexpected loophole for

those hoping to get away with murder.

Digging into the Bible rules, we often uncover troubling facts about the

world, as in the rule about the beautiful captive, which cast female

of war as mere possessions.

Life for women could be very harsh.

There was a time where a woman had no rights at all. And if a man decided he

wanted to kill her, he could kill her. And because he was a man, he wouldn't

held responsible at all. If he wanted to just send her away, he could send her

away. A man was able to divorce his wife by simply writing her a note or

putting her stuff outside the tent, and that constituted divorce.

But sometimes the Bible took a big step forward towards a better arrangement

between the sexes, like in this next rule on divorce.

The elders will take the man and punish him.

Because this man has given an Israelite virgin a bad name.

She shall continue to be his wife. He must not divorce her as long as he

This rule says that any man who tries to divorce his wife by saying that she was

not a virgin when they married and is found to be lying about it is suitably

punished and loses his right to divorce her for the rest of his life.

It seems reasonable to us now, but in the ancient world, giving a woman even

this small amount of justice was unheard of.

So now to have a command that says, He can't just send her away.

She has the right to stay alive.

That's a step up from being sent away or killed.

So while it wasn't exactly the beginning of the feminist movement, for its time,

this rule was quite advanced.

So what this forces us to do is to realize that in the ancient world, they

beginning a journey, a journey that would eventually lead to equality for

The rules of the Bible serve as a portal to reveal not only the brutality and

violence of the ancient world, but also the more moderate tearing side of our

shared past.

This next rule shows us how over 2 ,000 years ago, a justice system was

beginning to take shape.

You shall set apart three cities in the land that the Lord your God is giving

you to possess so that any homicide can flee to one of them.

At first glance, this rule might not make sense. Why would the Bible allow

someone to get away with murder?

Cracking the rules code starts with actual ancient towns called cities of

refuge. Cities of refuge in the Bible describe places where someone could

go if they accidentally killed someone else.

But what made accidental killers so special that they got their own cities?

In the ancient world, there were blood feuds.

So if I killed your brother, you could come after me and demand a life for a

life. And in fact, you were supposed to if I intentionally went and killed your

brother. Then not only are you entitled to seek my life in return, but according

to Genesis 9, you must.

So the Bible commands that you seek revenge for a premeditated murder.

As a result, if you had committed involuntary manslaughter, you were now

great risk because the brothers and uncles of the person who died are going

come after you. So they created cities of refuge.

In effect, this rule was balancing out a very black and white ancient mentality,

which said no matter the circumstance, if blood is spilled, there must be more

blood spilled to atone for it.

The rule here allowed for a much needed gray area.

If there's an accident that I cause and it causes the death of your brother, I

am not a homicidal murderer.

I am a manslaughter.

And if I'm a manslaughterer, you still want to seek my life. I've still caused

the death of your brother.

But I have a right to go to a city of refuge and live out the rest of my days

without your blood vengeance taking place.

But this enforced exile was still very much a punishment.

Once a manslaughterer made it to a city of refuge, he was safe from those

seeking revenge but could not leave the town.

This was a life sentence.

So... Effectually, the city of refuge is like a prison. It's a place of

incarceration. And it does limit the amount of blood that's going to be shed.

But there was one escape clause from the manslaughterer's imprisonment. If the

high priest of the town died, he would be free to go.

The rule is that a manslaughterer lives in the city of refuge until the death of

the high priest.

The death of the high priest was seen as a general atonement, an expiation of

the sin that was committed.

The biblical rules on war and justice cover a wide range of ideas, from total

annihilation on the battlefield to an appropriate sentence for manslaughter.

These rules provide a portal to the battlefields of the ancient world, and

this next one, the portal opens again, putting us right on the front lines of

conflict.

When you go to war against your enemies and see horses and chariots and an army

larger than your own, you shall not be afraid of them.

This rule makes specific mention of a major player in ancient warfare, the

chariot. But where did chariots come from, and why would they have been a

for fear?

Chariots seem to have evolved over time.

Different inventions, different innovations are made in different

So, for instance, in ancient Turkey with the Hittites, we've got a two -person

chariot that may become, over time, a three -person chariot.

Much like today's sports cars, chariots were constantly being redesigned and

improved upon to create the perfect balance of strength, speed, and

One of the most important design innovations was made by the Egyptians

something called a U -joint.

The U -joint.

which is where the pole between the two horses connects to the chariot. Instead

of it being hard connected, it was tied with rawhide so that it could move, flex

with the movement of the horses.

And that meant you could move much more quickly and a lot more freely, which in

ancient warfare could be the key to victory.

Chariots tilted the field of battle quite a bit when they came in. And just

one might imagine, when a new weapon is introduced, it can really change the

battlefield. And so whoever's got the new weaponry is probably going to win

day.

But as we were about to find out, sometimes victory came in the most

way. Take these 300 people who were picked last for their team in high

and they're the ones who massacre thousands of Midianites.

As we decode the biblical rules on war and violence, we uncover one that makes

specific reference to a major player in ancient warfare, the chariot.

When you go to war against your enemies and see horses and chariots and an army

larger than your own, you shall not be afraid of them.

The first Israelite king known to use chariots in battle was Solomon. And as

testament to how critical this machine was to ancient warfare, a cluster of the

cities where Solomon's bloodiest battles took place became known as chariot

cities. Which were cities scattered throughout the land of Israel that

key approaches to the land and to protect it from invasion.

If you take a map of those 12 chariot cities and superimpose it on modern

Israel, you'll see that most of the modern Israeli army's defensive

are in the exact same place.

But chariots were not the only means to strike fear into your enemy's heart. An

ancient soldier had a whole arsenal of weapons at his disposal.

As early warfare was largely hand -to -hand combat, weapons were designed to

brutally effective at close quarters. And the most common weapon was the mace.

Which would have been a rounded rock attached by leather thongs to a stick

used to bash your brains in.

But around 2500 BC, the helmet was invented, and the protection it offered

rendered the mace useless.

And point of fact, it was very effective.

With a helmet, it becomes impossible to kill or even render someone unconscious

with the mace. The result is, that drove the mace from the battlefield.

Not much later, a new weapon developed, which was a game changer.

It was called the Penetrating Axe.

A penetrating axe is a small axe, maybe two feet long, in which the head

is not only pointed, but cast as one piece into a socket so that it could be

fixed with two rivets to the axe handle.

Now you could deliver enough force with a single arm by narrowing the edge of

the axe. That would then pierce both the helmet and the armor. So now you had a

revolution.

This revolutionary development happened during an overall boom period for

weapons in the ancient world that had a lasting effect.

That set of weapons that were developed between roughly 3200 BC and maybe

1800 BC in Sumeria gradually spread through the Middle East and remained the

basic weapons of all armies for at least 2 ,000 years.

For a long, long time,

warfare remains the same. And then a new weapon comes in, and it changes

everything.

And that's pretty much how the history of warfare has gone. It's really largely

a history of weaponry. Superior weaponry could certainly help you win the day in

the ancient world, but the size of your army was equally important.

Now look closely at that final line. It urges a warrior to be fearless, not only

when facing superior weaponry, but even when outnumbered.

The idea is that victory is God's will, and nothing can change that outcome.

There's a telling story from the book of Judges where God is so convinced he's

going to win, he actually reduces the size of General Gideon's army before

into battle.

God says, there are too many troops that you have. You have to get rid of some.

So Gideon tells some of them to go home. God says, no, there are still too many

troops. Gideon has some more of them go home.

And then God says, nope.

Still too many. And God had a very curious way of selecting those who were

fight for him. I want you to go and make your men drink from the stream there.

And the ones who cup the water in their hands, like regular people, tell them to

go home. The ones who bend down and lap up the water like dogs, those are the

ones who are going to fight with you. Take these 300 people who were picked

for their team in high school, and they're the ones who massacre thousands

Midianites.

At all times, war takes a heavy toll, even long after the battle is over.

So perhaps this Bible rule is meant to help and harden soldiers facing the

gruesome tests of combat.

In wartime, it gave a kind of psychological support to people, even

of these horrific...

Encounters, bloodied and killed and slaughtered all over the place.

Just the solidarity, the expectation that what you were doing was right.

Moral encouragement helped to establish a band of brothers amongst the ranks.

You band together, you fight together, you die together. People are quite

capable of doing dangerous things as part of a group, if only because they

want to let their fellows down.

And thus, in the Bible, that's what you see. I'm not crazy.

We're all crazy.

This solidarity might have provided a crucial support system to an ancient

warrior. Recent research indicates that soldiers then, like today, suffered from

post -traumatic stress disorder.

He might come back morally wounded. He might come back physically wounded if

he's gone off to war. He might come back scarred for life.

In our own time, studies show that post -traumatic stress disorder has affected

up to 20 % of soldiers coming back from the recent wars in the Middle East.

soldiers fighting battles back then suffered in the same way perhaps even

so the life of a soldier day -to -day combat was so brutal modern military

research says the closer you get to the victim the more traumatic the experience

in more recent warfare when the person you're shooting at is 500 yards away you

lose the immediacy of having killed someone

In antiquity, you saw the victim that you slew with your own hand. If you kill

someone at what used to call knife range, now you see the real terror of

you have done.

There's even evidence to suggest that the ancient world's most storied

Alexander the Great, also suffered from PTSD.

After 13 years of war, he suffered from almost every symptom of post -traumatic

stress.

that we now know is related to that syndrome from explosive anger violence

cruelty alcoholism depression and at least two suicide attempts he may have

conquered the world but at what cost he completely lost control and the ability

to inhibit his own emotions by the time alexander died he was clearly clinically

insane

Looking at this rule as mere words on a page, we can easily overlook the deep

toll it took on those who waged war in the ancient world and those soldiers

still fighting today. There are unintended and unexpected consequences

warfare.

When they sleep at night, you hear people cry. You hear people moan. You

others grab their comrades and hold them and tell them it's okay. You hear

people have nightmares.

We're struggling with this in our culture today.

We want to make our warriors into heroes.

And in so doing, we don't let them tell the truth about their pain.

But in the ancient world, the dirty work of war still needed to be done. And as

we'll reveal, to be victorious, it was important to stay on God's right side.

The God of Israel is called the cloud rider.

The earth quakes, the sky fills with clouds, and then the clouds drip rain.

The storm is coming.

The Bible rules can be seen as a manual for ancient warfare, assigning everyone

a special rule, including the high priest.

Before you engage in battle, the priest shall come forward and speak to the

troops and shall say to them, Do not lose heart or be afraid, for it is the

your God who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies.

And certainly in Israel, right up until the time of Alexander the Great, priests

accompanied the army, where in order to bless the army, they would take a female

dog, cleave it in two, move the legs to either side, and the army would march in

between in a way of being purified before going into battle.

And elsewhere in the ancient world, the priest had a more significant role than

giving the pre -war speech.

In Rome, for example, it was the priest who actually authorized the battle.

The Romans had a doctrine of a just war.

And when you attacked an enemy, you had to have approval by

priests who were called fishalor, that the allies in Latin. And they even had

their own way of kicking off the combat. When they decided that the war was

legitimate and approved by the gods.

They would cast a spear into the enemy territory that you were now about to

invade, and this justified the invasion.

Clerical involvement is still very much a part of modern warfare.

Right through World War I in the Russian army, every battalion had a priest.

That performed all kinds of religious rituals before the men went into battle.

American armies now still go into battle with priests or chaplains along with

them.

But let's look at this rule about the high priest more closely. It

points out that the Hebrew god is among the soldiers, a fellow warrior fighting

the enemy right beside them. It's a striking concept.

There's a common image of the storm god marching out to battle for his people.

Now, in Hebrew, the god of Israel is called Hokei Vakavot, which means the

rider.

And he's marching forth from his mountain.

The earth quakes, the sky fills with clouds, and the clouds drip rain.

And God goes straight to the front lines to take the enemy head on. In a way,

God marches in front in the form of his tabernacle, which is kind of his battle

chariot. And with God at the head of their army, this rule shows how the

Israelites were setting themselves apart from other nations in the ancient

world. In the ancient world.

My God and your God, if we're enemies, are probably not the same God. And so if

you defeat me, then I have to worship your God alongside mine and perhaps

acknowledge that your God is more powerful. One of the things that

the Israelites is their refusal to worship other gods, or at least their

official refusal to worship other gods.

There's a legendary story from ancient Rome that embodies just how powerful

God's influence in war could be.

The time, 312 AD, to place the banks of the river Tiber just outside Rome.

Two Roman emperors, Constantine and Maxentius, are vying for supremacy and

to square off in battle.

On the eve before the battle, Constantine has a vision that eventually

the course of human history.

One of the more interesting aspects of Constantine was, of course, the famous

vision.

that he has at the Milvern Bridge.

He had seen, I believe it was a fiery cross in the sky, which said, In

this sign, you will conquer.

The legend goes that the image so impressed Constantine that upon winning

battle, he immediately pledged his faith to the Christian God, and the Roman

Empire began a slow conversion to that faith.

That's the story of his conversion and the story of his decision to impose a

and very different religion on Rome.

Very different indeed. In converting the Roman Empire to Christianity,

Constantine elevated the religion from a small sect to the faith of an empire.

The vision at the Milvian Bridge was the first step towards making Christianity

a major religion in the world, today practiced by more than 2 billion people.

So this rule touches on modern issues that still resonate today.

When we read the Bible and believe in God, we believe he is on our side,

fighting our battles and helping us to win.

You see it in sports events. You'll see athletes, when they win a game or if

they get a home run, they look up and they think, thanks, as if God had

something to do with it.

god is on our side and it's a natural tendency whether or not it's always a

helpful one i'm not so sure because there's always an opposing team there's

always someone therefore who god wasn't on their side if on a national scale

we're going to wage war

Deep in our narrative as a nation, we believe that we are a God -fearing

And we have to know that it is validated, verified by not just

human rationale, but by a divine edict. In the case of modern warfare

or sports, everybody's worshiping the same God. And so the question is, whose

side is this one God on?

To keep God on your side, you had to follow the rules of the Bible, or the

could be devastating.

It could reduce the population of a city drastically. We're talking about huge

numbers here.

Yet another portal into the past is about to open.

What was war like in the ancient world?

What did a soldier's daily life in war look and feel like? There are clues

throughout the rules of the Bible.

Like in this next rule, which forbids something you can't even control, and

which you'd probably be a little embarrassed to admit to.

If one of you becomes unclean because of a nocturnal emission, then he shall go

outside the camp. He will not come within the camp.

Why would God care if a soldier engaged in battle had a wet dream?

Something that is defiling, like emissions, impurities on the skin, any

things are considered to be defiling because they render a person impure.

And as we've already discovered, while fighting a war on God's behalf, a

needed to conform to specific spiritual standards.

The Israelite warriors, they're to be in a state of ritual purity when they go

into battle. They're to be clean.

It's almost as though they are to present themselves for warfare the same

that they would present themselves for worship at the temple or the tabernacle.

So what would you have to do if that embarrassing thing happened in the

of the night?

They need to wash, they need to change their clothes, and then they're made

again. Their impurity that they contract from coming into contact with sexual

emissions or substances isn't sinful.

It's not immoral. It simply renders them unfit to approach the holy.

And since the battle is another arena touched by the holiness of God, a

needs to be pure while fighting, so pure that he can't even have sex.

You could not have sex while you were engaged in a holy war.

In the story of David and Bathsheba, after David has gotten Bathsheba

he sends for her husband, Uriah, who's out on the battlefield in a holy war.

and wants to get him to go home and sleep with Bathsheba so that the child

will eventually be born will be thought to be Uriah's. But Uriah refuses

because, in effect, he is engaged in a holy war and will not have sex with his

wife.

We're beginning to sketch out what it meant to be a Hebrew soldier engaged in

holy war.

Was the Bible shaping a different kind of warrior? And how did they match up to

other soldiers fighting wars elsewhere in the ancient world?

In ancient Greece, a good warrior would have to show arete, which means

literally excellence, but not just on the field of battle, but he had to be an

excellent civic citizen. He had to be an excellent father.

The code was to be kind to everybody.

A mindset formed thousands of years ago in the ancient world, which has helped

to shape the modern warrior.

And that Greek concept, by the way.

permeates Western society all the way down to the modern time.

So a butcher is not a good warrior. In our army, a man who kills

indiscriminately, as happened in a few instances in Afghanistan, is punished.

They say how a nation fights its wars reveals a lot about that nation. The

of the Bible create not just a mindset, but a series of practical guidelines to

help the ancient Israelites win wars.

like this next one, which deals with latrine duty.

You shall have a designated area outside the camp. You shall have a trowel. When

you relieve yourself outside, you shall dig a hole with it and then cover up

your excrement.

It's funny to think there's a rule like this in the Bible, but it was actually

an unprecedented and very valuable military tactic.

Disease represents a much more likely cause of casualties than enemy

fire. The Israelites have the first example that we know of in history of

hygiene, which is to say that you will defecate out and urinate outside the

camp, and even then you will cover it with a special paddle.

This simple rule would have helped to keep the Israelite army healthy and

probably saved many lives.

The vast majority of people who died in conflicts did not die from violence.

Anytime you got a large number of people together, sanitary conditions went

south. Clean water was very hard to provide. It was very hard, for instance,

keep people from drinking out of rivers, even if those rivers were being used as

sewers.

Surprisingly, this rule was later abandoned as a military tactic, with

consequences. By the time you get to the Middle Ages, any attempt at hygiene in

a field camp had disappeared completely.

And as a consequence, the armies of the Middle Ages, right up to the Civil War,

been decimated by disease with simple things like troops urinating in the

from which drinking water was drawn, defecating near the chow hall, all kinds

rather obvious things that the armies of antiquity seemed to be pretty good at

avoiding. But what was unavoidable about war in the ancient world was the

devastation it caused to whole cities.

This rule may have helped an army stay alive while in battle, but what did the

aftermath look like? War took a major toll. It could reduce the population of

city drastically. Even a city like Athens lost unbelievable percentages of

population. Ten percent.

Serious loss. Can you imagine? We're talking about the United States losing

maybe 20 million.

People in war. We're talking about huge numbers here.

Huge numbers of dead.

Thousands of rotting corpses.

Think of it. The visual effect of it. The stench of it.

How did the ancients deal with it? When it comes to body disposal, the Bible is

the go -to manual.

The ancient world was an inherently violent place even outside the

The justice system could be harsh and unforgiving.

if a crime was committed death was often the inevitable result and bodies had to

be disposed of when someone is convicted of a crime punishable by death and is

executed and you hang him on a tree his corpse must not remain all night upon

the tree you shall bury him that same day translation if you execute a

by hanging him on a tree you need to take the body down immediately and bury

but in ancient rome they did things very differently the body would hang there

for a long time and the entire ugly decomposition process would be a kind of

ultimate statement don't you dare defy the authority of the emperor or this is

what will happen to you a dead body hanging from a tree certainly sends a

powerful message and think of it the visual effect of it the stench of it the

remains of it and maggots and the whole ugly side of it

As we've seen before, this code of ethics which emerges from the rules of

Bible is focused on making the new Hebrew believers different from their

neighbors.

There's a sense in that command that we don't want to

excessively glory in gore.

That, okay, the violence has been done.

Let's get the body down. Let's get the body buried because we don't want to go

too far with this thing.

Digging deeper into the rule unpeels more layers of the ancient mindset.

How a civilization grapples with and handles their dead offers insight on how

they actually lived.

Death is the ultimate impurifier in the Israelite biblical code. In fact, the

highest form of impurity is a dead corpse. The idea that a person is still

somehow there.

in their body. And in fact, the term in priestly law that sometimes occurs for a

corpse is a nefesh, which means a life or a presence or a being.

There's this lingering identity.

There's this leftover personhood that's still stuck to the corpse, which is why

it's so important to bury them so its volatile, dangerous quality doesn't mess

with you.

As our investigation concludes, we shift to perhaps the most memorable but also

misunderstood axiom from the ancient world.

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

Anyone who maims another shall suffer the same injury in return.

Fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth.

When the writers of the Bible were developing their code of ethics, they

always breaking new ground. Many of their laws, including this one, were

borrowed from their neighbors.

It's the kind of thing that once you hear it, you can't forget.

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, which is in the Bible, occurs

any part of the Bible was ever written in the Code of Hammurabi.

Hammurabi was the first ruler of the Babylonian Empire, and his rules covered

lot of ground. The Law Code of Hammurabi has about 272 or so laws.

which cover almost every aspect you can think of in terms of human society and

culture. Most of the ancient societies, the Hittites and the Canaanites and the

Babylonians, had law codes.

It's not at all surprising that the Israelites got them also.

While an eye for an eye strikes us as very harsh, for its time it was

a revolutionary step towards social justice.

An eye for an eye is designed to bring balance to crimes.

Punishments should fit the crime.

It does remove arbitrariness, and it also places limits on what the avenger

blood can do to those from whom he seeks compensation.

Up until the time of Hammurabi in ancient Sumer, the punishments for crime

determined by who you were.

The interesting point about Hammurabi's code was that for the first time in

Middle Eastern history, we find the idea of a code which applies equally to all.

So this eye for an eye Bible rule marks a critical point in the evolution of

social justice.

It may sound harsh to us reading those words.

But the writers of the Bible were, in fact, sowing the seeds for the justice

system we have in place today.

When viewed together, the Bible rules on war, crime, and punishment make an

overall mosaic.

Some pieces strike us as backwards and bizarre, written for an ancient time we

no longer relate to. But others still very much resonate today and offer

into our own nature, which we share with our ancient ancestors.

The management of violence.

is one of the primary functions of government and religion. And in

most parts of the world, ancient world and today's world, they work on the

assumption that you need to use violence to manage violence.

That violence is so powerful, the only thing powerful enough to deter people is

a threat of violence.

If you are a child in the ancient Near East, you learn the stories of

maybe on a scroll in one hand, and you learn how to wield a spear with your

other hand.

And just as we have evolved from when the Bible rules were first written down,

maybe 2 ,000 years from now, we'll look back at our own time differently.

Now we're appalled by child soldiers who are 14 or 15, but we're not appalled by

17 or 19 -year -olds who go to war.

And someday I wonder,

if we'll become equally repulsed by the idea of sending anyone off to die in the

name of our gods or our national symbols and so on.