Honoring the Death of Soldiers

The day was already being treated as such in various sectors since 1940.

The core of this piece is based on my larger, academic article, Jacob L. Wright, “Making a Name for Oneself: Martial Valor, Heroic Death, and Procreation in the Hebrew Bible,”Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 36 (2011): 131-163.

See discussion in, J.M.C.T. de Vaan, Ich bin eine Schwertklinge des Königs. Die Sprache des Bel-ibni (AOAT, 242; Neukirchen–Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag), 265-269. The Akkadian šumu, used here and in the next quote, is cognate with the Hebrew word שֵׁם, both of which mean “name.”

In The War that Killed Achilles (New York: Viking, 2009), Caroline Alexander shows how the Greek hero the Trojan War in Homer’s Iliad must choose between a heroic life that is short and glorious, or a long and obscure existence in his Greek homeland.

The speech provided the inspiration for many others in history, including Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. In The Invention of Athens (Boston: MIT Press, 1986), Nicole Loraux studies such funeral orations that were delivered each year to celebrate the war-dead. She illustrates how the death of the individual citizen-soldier became an occasion to articulate values to which all citizens should aspire; chief among them was the willingness to lay down his life for his country.

The Christian tradition of martyrdom stands in line with these ideals of noble death. Just as the death of Greek and ancient Near Eastern heroes was held up as a model of valorous heroic behavior, Jesus’s sacrificial death offered the paragon for Christian martyrs (and later for soldiers in Christian Europe) to emulate. In addition to earning an honored name among their survivors, the martyrs died in confidence that they would inherit eternal life. For more on Christian martyrdom in general, see Candida R. Moss, Ancient Christian Martyrdom: Diverse Practices, Theologies, and Traditions (New Haven: Yale, 2012).

See, for example, Jacob L. Wright, “The Commemoration of Defeat and the Formation of a Nation in the Hebrew Bible,”Prooftexts 29.3 (2009): 433-472.

Thus, the phrase “spurning death” makes it into the memorial prayer for fallen soldiers, Av HaRahamim: “who spurned their souls to die sanctifying the name [of God]” (שֶׁחֵרְפוּ נַפְשָׁם לָמוּת עַל קְדֻשַּׁת הַשֵּׁם).

When the war against the Philistines is lost, he petitions his arms-bearer for the coup de grâce. Saul’s death could have provided an opportunity to extol a noble death. Instead, the text includes this humiliating episode:

^{שמואל א לא:ח} וַיְהִי מִמָּחֳרָת וַיָּבֹאוּ פְלִשְׁתִּים לְפַשֵּׁט אֶת הַחֲלָלִים וַיִּמְצְאוּ אֶת שָׁאוּל וְאֶת שְׁלֹשֶׁת בָּנָיו נֹפְלִים בְּהַר הַגִּלְבֹּעַ. ^לא:ט וַיִּכְרְתוּ אֶת רֹאשׁוֹ וַיַּפְשִׁיטוּ אֶת כֵּלָיו וַיְשַׁלְּחוּ בְאֶרֶץ פְּלִשְׁתִּים סָבִיב לְבַשֵּׂר בֵּית עֲצַבֵּיהֶם וְאֶת הָעָם. ^לא:יוַיָּשִׂמוּ אֶת כֵּלָיו בֵּית עַשְׁתָּרוֹת וְאֶת גְּוִיָּתוֹ תָּקְעוּ בְּחוֹמַת בֵּית שָׁן.

^{1 Sam 31:8} The next day the Philistines came to strip the slain, and they found Saul and his three sons lying on Mount Gilboa. ^31:9 They cut off his head and stripped him of his armor, and they sent them throughout the land of the Philistines, to spread the news in the temples of their idols and among the people. ^31:10 They placed his armor in the temple of Ashtaroth, and they impaled his body on the wall of Beth-shan.

There is some debate about whether this report is historical or apocryphal.

The book of Samuel problematizes this point in its portrait of Uriah’s death along with many others in Israel. This is the only place in the entire Bible in which the nation’s victory incurs casualties. The account stands out in this regard because its authors were penning a polemic against David as a symbol of self-serving statist power. The antihero stays back in the comforts of Jerusalem and sends the nation’s troops to die in his quest to conquer an illustrious royal city. The account communicates a momentous message: The state’s lust for triumph devours the lives of the nation’s most devoted members.

A furlough for the purpose of procreation might have served the interests of the state. But these laws do not offer practical guidelines for military organization so much as set forth an ideal social ethos and the concrete legal consequences that flow from it. The spirit of the war laws is consistent with many other sections of the Deuteronomic code: The concerns of the nation, and the families that constitute it, take precedence over the state and its drive for expansion and triumph. And this explains why the code omits any reference to the king waging war, while at the same time commanding the king to study the Torah (see Deut 17:14-20).

Editor’s note: For more on this, see David Glatt-Gilad, “Jehoiachin’s Exile and the Division of Judah,” TheTorah.com(2017).

The Harvard biblical scholar Jon D. Levenson notes that the failure to produce a male child is a “threat that is the functional equivalent to death as we think of it” (Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life [New Haven: Yale, 2006, pp. 114-115]). This message can be heard when a “wise woman” (אִשָּׁה חֲכָמָה) petitions King David to save the life of her one remaining son. His execution would “extinguish the only coal left to me, leaving my husband without a name and survivor on the earth” (וְכִבּוּ אֶת גַּחַלְתִּי אֲשֶׁר נִשְׁאָרָה לְבִלְתִּי (שום) [שִׂים] לְאִישִׁי שֵׁם וּשְׁאֵרִית עַל פְּנֵי הָאֲדָמָה; 2 Sam 14:7). This ethos is not uniquely biblical. In the world of the ancient Near East, it was imperative for families to have at least one son. The male heir played a critical role in caring for his parents in their old age, giving them a proper burial, tending to their graves, and paying tribute to their names in ritual performance. The expression “making a name” refers most concretely to procreation, since the son also bore the family name.

Throughout history, states have often promoted procreation in preparation for war. Yet procreation in the Bible is not about manning the armies of a kingdom. Otherwise, the Bible wouldn’t so deliberately repudiate heroic death. It is rather focused on growing the population of a decimated and small people trying to rebuild their ranks.

This feeling is reflected well in the latter half of the book of Daniel, which deals with this period of persecution (before the Hasmonean revolt). For more on this, see Lawrence M. Wills,“The Lead Up to Chanukah in the Book of Daniel,”TheTorah.com (2015); Michael Segal, “Daniel’s Vision of the Four Beasts: The Prehistory of Chanukah,” TheTorah.com(2017).

Translations are from Lawrence Schiffman, Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture, vol. 3 (eds. Louis H. Feldman, James L. Kugel and Lawrence H. Schiffman; Philadelphia: JPS, 2013), 2799.

Contrast Judah’s repudiation of fleeing from death with Deuteronomy’s final pre-battle exhortation:

^{דברים כ:ח} וְיָסְפוּ הַשֹּׁטְרִים לְדַבֵּר אֶל הָעָם וְאָמְרוּ מִי הָאִישׁ הַיָּרֵא וְרַךְ הַלֵּבָב יֵלֵךְ וְיָשֹׁב לְבֵיתוֹ וְלֹא יִמַּס אֶת לְבַב אֶחָיו כִּלְבָבוֹ.

^{Deut 20:8} The officials shall go on addressing the troops and say, “Is there anyone afraid and disheartened? Let him go back to his home, lest the courage of his comrades flag like his.”

This is the opposite of a motivational speech telling soldiers to be prepared to die for their country. It does not question their honor, in Judah’s terms, but simply sends them home to go about their lives.

See, e.g., Eleazer’s suicidal attack on a war elephant that he thought carried the king (1 Macc 6:43-47) and Simon’s speech (1 Macc 13:3-6) in which he refers to how all his brothers “perished for the sake of Israel” (13:4).