Chasam Sofer (Derasha to Simchas Torah page 57b #11) asks why did the goyim object that the Jews took the land away from the Seven Nations by military conquest. After all isn't this the normal way all people take land away from it current inhabitants. So why should the Jews be considered thieves more than any other nation? An explanation is that all the ancient people believed that each people had a spiritual representative in Heaven and who provided them with a homeland. The ancient people believed that G-d was just one of the national spiritual representatives and He was the representative of the Jews. They also firmly believed that G-d did not work in the normal natural manner but rather everything that He did was through miracles in a supernatural way. Consequently when they saw that the Jews were conquering the Land of Israel in a natural manner – rather than through miracles – they accused the Jews of unlawful seizure of the land and said that they were no more than thieves. That is because they knew that G-d only worked through miracles. It was to counter this mistaken understanding that the Torah begins with the story of G-d creating the world. This showed that G-d also works in a natural manner. If the Torah started with the Redemption of Egypt, that would serve to reinforce the mistaken view that G‑d only works through miracles. Therefore now that the Torah begins with Bereishis, the Jews were able to explain that they were not thieves. They conquered the Land of Israel in a normal manner through war, because G‑d wanted a natural conquest of the land rather than a miraculous conquest. However in truth this requirement of a natural conquest was not arbitrary but was the result of the sin of the Golden Calf and the breaking of the Tablets as is well known.
Has anyone considered this as a reason?
ReplyDeleteYes, people believed the "god" had a land and a people for that land. For example, Chemosh for the land of Moab and the Moabites. Yet we see that Sichon conquered a bunch of Moab and no one calls him a thief. So why is Israel accused?
I wonder if it's because of how it was conquered. A proper reading of Sefer Yehoshua and Shoftim shows that our ancestors didn't really conquer much of Israel. They took a part of the highlands, occasionally held a bit of the lowlands but then gave up on them, and never really expanded to the whole Canaan. What's more, they didn't drive out all the inhabitants. Entire towns and districts of Canaanites remained in place. This would be in contract to a proper conquest where they wouldn't come in, massacred all the locals or put them into slavery and taken over the whole territory.
Given that they didn't do it the "proper" way, would they have been seen as thieves interested in just grabbing a big of someone else's territory, not actually in conquering?