The Heritage of Violence

Violence is a beast of the human soul that has been around from the earliest of times. If we look back into the Torah we not only read of fighting between the Israelites and many other peoples, but we see the earliest violence between brothers, in Genesis 4.8, where Cain killed Abel. As time moved forward the violence and evil continued so badly that G-d had decided to flood the earth to blot out the wickedness that had become. Even after the water had settled evil and violence was not totally abolished.

The Israelites had seen hatred from the Egyptians, which made them slaves to the Pharaohs. The Amelakite’s started their torment on the Israelites as early as mid-thirteenth century BCE. They tried to prevent the tribe’s entrance into the region. They also grouped with Moabites and Midianites in raiding Israel. The Amelakite’s evil ways of violence towards the Israelite people and their continued attempts to try to destroy the Israelites that G-d commands us to “blot out ...