Those Resilient Heathens

Number 8 of 17 in the *Twilight Zone* series:

by Farrell Till

In an earlier column, we noted the amazing resilience of the Egyptian livestock during the infamous plagues that Moses rained down on Egypt. The plague of murrain, which the Bible described as "very grievous" (Ex. 9:3), killed "all the livestock of the Egyptians" (v:5), yet when the plague of hail came only days later, it "struck down everything that was in the open field throughout all the land of Egypt, both human and animals" (9:25). And so the story continued. A plague would come and strike both man and beast, sometimes specifying that all beasts were struck down, as well as their food supply, yet when the final plague came, some of the amazingly resilient livestock of Egypt were still alive to be killed in the plague against the firstborn (Ex. 11:5; 12:29). And even then the wonders didn't cease. Pharaoh was able to muster an army of "six hundred picked chariots and all the other chariots of Egypt," as well as other horsemen (14:6-28), to try to stop the Israelite exodus. Where but in the Twilight Zone of inerrant biblical history could anything so amazing happen?

As incredibly resilient as these Egyptian animals were, their ability to recover quickly from obliteration doesn't even compare to the resilience of some heathen nations mentioned in the Bible. In an attack on the Midianites, the Israelite soldiers killed every adult male (Num. 31:7) and, after taking the civilian population captive, killed every male child and non virgin female (v:17) but kept the virgin girls alive "for [them]selves" (v:18). Now if this story happened exactly as recorded, the Midianite nation, by necessity, ceased to exist on that day, yet we read in Judges 6:2 that, because of their disobedience, Yahweh gave the Israelites into "the hand of Midian [for] seven years." So these Midianites who had once been completely destroyed by the Israelites somehow managed to bounce back in just a few years to become a nation powerful enough to subdue Israel. They are mentioned several times thereafter in the book of Judges (7:1-7, 23-25; 8:1).

The Midianite nation wasn't just an isolated example of heathen resilience in biblical times. When Joshua's army defeated king Jabin and captured the city of Hazor that Jabin reigned over, "all the souls that were therein" were struck by the sword and "utterly destroyed."  The city was burned, and "there was none left that breathed" (Josh. 11:10-11), yet somehow Hazor recovered under (will wonders never cease?) king Jabin, whose mighty army of nine hundred chariots, oppressed Israel for twenty years (Judges 4:1-3), until it was completely destroyed again under the leadership of Deborah and Barak. The second destruction was as thorough as the first. All "fell by the edge of the sword; there was not a man left" (4:16).

The miraculous regeneration of exterminated heathen nations continued throughout Israelite history.  Serving as Yahweh's spokesman, Samuel the prophet commanded Saul, the first Israelite king, to "smite Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not" (1 Sam. 15:3). The destruction was to include even "infant and suckling." Saul carried out the instructions almost to the letter, but did keep Agag, the Amalekite king, alive, a gesture that so enraged Yahweh that he sent Samuel to reprimand Saul and to hack Agag to pieces with a sword (vs:10-33). One would think that after the hacking was over, the Amalekite nation would have been completely extinct, but apparently it wasn't. In the Twilight Zone of biblical history, the "utterly destroyed" Amalekite nation somehow managed to regenerate itself, because just a few chapters later, David (Saul's successor) raided the Amalekites, "smote the land, and saved neither man nor woman alive" (27:8-9). Well, surely the Amalekite nation was now completely exterminated, but amazingly it wasn't. (We must remember that in the Twilight Zone anything can happen.) Three chapters later, these incredibly resilient Amalekites had managed to recover sufficiently to raid Ziklag (the Philistine city from which David operated in his days as a guerrilla marauder) and capture David's wives. (Yes, this man after Yahweh's own heart [1 Sam. 30:14] was a polygamist.) David pursued the Amalekites, overtook them, and "smote them from the twilight even unto the evening of the next day" (30:17). Did David "utterly" destroy them again? Well, yes and no: "There escaped not a man of them, save four hundred young men who rode upon camels and fled" (v:17). 

Apparently, biblical historians had learned by now to temper their penchant for superlatives with at least a smidgen of reality. If, however, 400 young men did indeed escape David's assault on this occasion,  we have a pretty good indication of how inaccurate the inspired historian was just chapters earlier when he said that Saul had "utterly destroyed" the Amalekites and that David had saved "neither man nor woman alive" on his foray into Amalekite territory.

Such absurdities as these tales of nations and tribes that were utterly destroyed only to return just chapters later armed and ready for action could happen only in the Twilight Zone of biblical history.