9 - Violence and the Problem of Impurity

Summary

Chapter 9 begins Part IV of the book, which analyses violence as a problem of impurity. This chapter focuses on what the grammar of impurity enabled biblical writers to say about the affront of violence. It draws on the ritual insights of Catherine Bell (via William Gilders), the metaphor theory insights of Joseph Lam, and the cognitive research of Thomas Kazen and Richard Beck. Psalm 106 describes the impure consequences of ‘mixing’ with the nations that Israel failed to expel from the land. Practices like child sacrifice polluted the land and people, and led to exile. Bloodshed, in this poetic retelling, disintegrated the sacred order that bound together Yhwh, the people, and the land. Isaiah 1 insists that entrance into Yhwh’s presence demanded social as well as ritual purity, and even suggests social means of ‘purifying’ from bloodshed. Lamentations 4 attributes exile to the bloodshed in the ‘midst’ of Jerusalem, and describes the people as those defiled among the nations. For Ezekiel, bloodshed was an affront to Yhwh’s name and sanctity in the land. Finally, according to Numbers 35, blood from homicides polluted the land. As such, it was a threat to the ongoing presence of Yhwh in the land.