Herem, Fully Devoted

The Hebrew language is a rich and ancient language with many words that do not carry over directly into English. These words are often translated with a variety of English words or phrases.  We will look at some of these as we go through the Old Testament.  As we study the book of Joshua, we need to look at the word herem.

חֵרֶם

The New International Version of the Bible, which I have been using for this blog, often translates herem as "totally destroyed." In one version of the NIV, that translation often comes with a footnote acknowledging that the word could also be translated "fully devoted."  Throughout Joshua, the word is used to describe property or people conquered during the battle for a city. The first such city is Jericho, where the term herem is used in Joshua's instructions in Joshua 6: 17. 

There is a strange duality in the word.  Something that was "fully devoted" to YHWH was unavailable to us in the mortal realm.  If it was a sacrificed bull, the bull was burnt and turned over to God.  If precious metals, jewelry, beautiful cloths were "fully devoted" then they were put into the temple treasury.  (See Joshua 6:19 for the instructions on property seized at Jericho.) But if pagan people, during the Joshua campaigns, were to be "fully devoted" to YHWH then, like the sacrificed bull, they were to be killed, destroyed. The strange duality of the word comes in the fact that sometimes herem meant "set aside as sacred" and other times meant "destroyed" -- in either case, the herem objects were separated from normal human environment.

Any modern reader of the Old Testament book of Joshua will react to God's commandments to annihilate the people of Canaan!  These divine commands are explained (in the text) as a reaction by YHWH to the gross immorality of the Canaanites (such as child sacrifice) as first suggested in Genesis 15: 12-21 and as a protection against the rampant idolatry of the people.  This "total destruction" may have allowed a few local inhabitants to convert to worship of YHWH (Rahab in Joshua 2, Ruth much later) or to make treaties (the Gibeonites in Joshua 9.)

The "herem" instructions in Joshua were part of a plan to make the nation of Israel a special devoted theocracy, ruled by YHWH. The nation was then to be a beacon to the rest of the world. Those instructions were unique to the early nation of Israel. After the book of Joshua, the remainder of the Old Testament is a testimony to the failure of that theocracy, first through a set of broken and dysfunctional judges and then through a period of equally dysfunctional kings.  

One should be very careful about reading the book of Joshua into our modern culture.  The only Biblical theocracy was Israel and it was, in many ways, an abject failure.  

Regardless of the country one resides in today, that country 

is not a theocracy and there is no instruction regarding herem! 

For the Christian, this is clearest in passages such as John 8: 1-11 where Jesus confronts men who want to stone an adulteress and in I Corinthians 5: 9-12 where Paul suggests discipline for a persistent sexual practice and then tells the church not to judge those outside the church! In neither case is there a hint of a theocracy.  There is no suggestion that one might apply either herem or the Old Testament Law to the general populace.

Russell Moore has a thoughtful warning about abusing the Joshua text in a recent article, The Joshua Generation and the Paradox of Power, in Christianity Today.  The concept of a ruling religious Taliban is not a Christian concept!

The concept of herem, with Hebrew letters H-R-M, meaning "set aside" or "sacred", evolved into an Arabic word, harim, a sacred sanctuary where women lived. (See here and here.) The modern spelling for that word is harem.  A harem is a safe place "fully devoted" to women.  That word has then lost the connotation "totally destroyed" -- unless, I guess, you are an adult male crashing the harem!