Morality & Ethics

Of all the harsh behavior in warfare known from the ancient Near East, Deuteronomy’s requirement that Israel slaughter all the inhabitants of Canaan is unique. In all likelihood, the law sought to suppress Israel’s inclination to idolatry.

In the ancient world, as now, indiscriminate violence and mass killing in war is explained as a struggle to defend “our” way of life against those who threaten to destroy it.

Using biblical quotes, imagery, and rhetorical devices, Martin Luther King Jr. envisions the hopeful future of African American people in the United States in the voice of a biblical prophet.

Deuteronomy’s law of the beautiful captive woman protects the non-Israelite woman taken in war from rape and from being re-enslaved after marriage. At the same time, it discourages the man from marrying her, in order to preserve the interests of the Israelite family.

The Torah is often used to highlight various ethical values while its many ethically problematic commandments are ignored or explained away. Is there a way to treat the Torah as a moral authority while honestly confronting the ethical issues it raises?

Before his death, David commands Solomon to kill two men: Joab, his loyal general, and Shimei, his enemy, whom he had sworn not to kill.

If an Israelite wishes to marry a woman taken captive in war, she becomes part of the Israelite polity and is protected from future re-enslavement. Uncomfortable with the Torah’s permitting this marriage, the rabbis declare it to be a compromise to man’s “evil impulse,” an idea reminiscent of Jesus’ claim that the Torah allows divorce as a compromise to humanity’s “hard heart.”

In the Priestly Torah and the Holiness School

Using Source Criticism to Disentangle a Moral Problem in the Torah

The rabbis claim that a “subverted” or “apostate” city, which Deuteronomy 13:13-18 condemns to destruction, “never was and never will be” (t. San. 14:1). Yet the account in Judges 19-21 of the destruction or ḥerem of Gibeah, its inhabitants, animals, and property, suggests that such “internal ḥerem” was an Israelite practice, and that Gibeah is being presented as a subverted city.

Morally problematic halachot remain on the books despite rabbinic attempts to transform or reinterpret them. How do we relate to these texts as Torah from Sinai, coming from God?

Using the martial idiom “taking a mother on her young,” Deuteronomy forbids taking eggs and chicks without first shooing the mother bird. Is the concern cruelty to animals?

A Historical-Critical Reading 

The Bible already expresses ambivalence about Hebrew slavery, the rabbis expand upon it and Maimonides takes the next step, applying the negative evaluation of slavery even to non-Israelites.

The Torah and Bavli vs. the Prophets and Yerushalmi

A Time-Honored Tradition

The anomalous and paradoxical nature of the twelfth curse – Deuteronomy 27:26.

The Torah describes a practice of declaring people cherem, which means that the person, and—in some cases—his family, would be annihilated, and his possessions donated to the Temple. The rabbis were unhappy with this law and used their homiletical approach to “obliterate” it.

Tanakh as Beyond the Sum of Its Parts

On the 13-14th of Adar, the Jews kill 75,800 people in Shushan and the provinces, including women and children (Esther 9:6, 15–16).

Are the Torah’s laws perfect or do they reflect biblical times and can adapt as society develops? The punishment of a rapist is a good test case for thinking about morally problematic biblical laws.