We are Pharaoh
Leviticus 25:46 You may keep them [non-Israelite slaves] as an inheritance for your children after you, for them to possess as holdings; for the ages you may make them serve you. But as for your brothers, the children of Israel, each man toward his brother, you are not to have dominion over him with crushing labor.
Dominion
The expulsion from the garden is intimately related to men taking the boundary that divides humanity from the living things over which humans have dominion and distorting the boundary so that women are placed with the dominated, to be possessed by men. Leviticus 25:46 distorts the boundary even further by putting words into God's mouth so that some men, the “non-Israelites” may also be dominated and possessed by Israelite men. This is the sin of Sodom, the sin that divides the world into native and foreigner and assigns human worth unequally across this boundary.
We are Pharaoh.
In the Torah, the term "crushing labor" occurs only in Leviticus 25 and in Exodus where it refers to the crushing labor that Pharaoh imposed on the Israelites. The word choice implies that Israelites may act like Pharaoh towards non-Israelites. The message of this verse is that we are Egypt. We are Sodom. We are Canaan. We construct boundaries that divide people into “us” and “them.” We call the people on our side of the boundary good and worthy and peaceful. We call the people on the other side of the boundary evil and unworthy and violent. . It is only by creating this boundary that one can justify using means on one side that we deplore when used by the other side. By focusing only on differences we may be able to convince ourselves that there is no moral equivalence between us and our opponents and thereby embolden ourselves to commit new levels of atrocities against our fellow human beings.
Boundary-Crossing Historical Analogies
When Amnesty International compared Guantanamo Bay to the Gulag and when President Carter compared the occupied territories to Apartheid, they exposed the man-made boundary as a lie. It is inevitable that there will be aspects of Gulag and Apartheid in any institution in which one group of people dominate another group. By comparing our situation today to those in the past on the other side of the boundary, Amnesty International and President Carter remind us that we are all capable of great evil and that if things continue on the present course we should expect the similarities with Gulag and Apartheid to grow.
Leviticus 25:46 You may keep them [non-Israelite slaves] as an inheritance for your children after you, for them to possess as holdings; for the ages you may make them serve you. But as for your brothers, the children of Israel, each man toward his brother, you are not to have dominion over him with crushing labor.
Dominion
The expulsion from the garden is intimately related to men taking the boundary that divides humanity from the living things over which humans have dominion and distorting the boundary so that women are placed with the dominated, to be possessed by men. Leviticus 25:46 distorts the boundary even further by putting words into God's mouth so that some men, the “non-Israelites” may also be dominated and possessed by Israelite men. This is the sin of Sodom, the sin that divides the world into native and foreigner and assigns human worth unequally across this boundary.
We are Pharaoh.
In the Torah, the term "crushing labor" occurs only in Leviticus 25 and in Exodus where it refers to the crushing labor that Pharaoh imposed on the Israelites. The word choice implies that Israelites may act like Pharaoh towards non-Israelites. The message of this verse is that we are Egypt. We are Sodom. We are Canaan. We construct boundaries that divide people into “us” and “them.” We call the people on our side of the boundary good and worthy and peaceful. We call the people on the other side of the boundary evil and unworthy and violent. . It is only by creating this boundary that one can justify using means on one side that we deplore when used by the other side. By focusing only on differences we may be able to convince ourselves that there is no moral equivalence between us and our opponents and thereby embolden ourselves to commit new levels of atrocities against our fellow human beings.
Boundary-Crossing Historical Analogies
When Amnesty International compared Guantanamo Bay to the Gulag and when President Carter compared the occupied territories to Apartheid, they exposed the man-made boundary as a lie. It is inevitable that there will be aspects of Gulag and Apartheid in any institution in which one group of people dominate another group. By comparing our situation today to those in the past on the other side of the boundary, Amnesty International and President Carter remind us that we are all capable of great evil and that if things continue on the present course we should expect the similarities with Gulag and Apartheid to grow.
posted by ross at 12:17 AM
0 comments
