All this must be borne in mind. It has been debated whether the earliest god of Israel was a sun-god or a moon-god, and whether his name was El or Yahve. In point of fact, his name was Starvation, and the Jewish Taboo a great food-making apparatus. This accounts for the extreme ferocity with which the struggle for the land flowing with milk and honey was carried on by the rival tribes.
"When thou comest nigh to a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace to it.
"And it shall be, if it make thee an answer of peace and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee.
"And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it:
"And when the LORD thy God hath delivered it into thy hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword;
"But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself: and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the LORD thy God hath given thee.
"Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations."
The "cities that are very far off" mean, in reality, those that are nearer to Moses in the desert than the cities of the promised land, but the writer, composing imaginary laws for Moses in Jerusalem, some hundred years after his death, overlooked this. These are not pretty ones. These cities have to choose at once between slavery or extinction.
"But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth.
"But thou shalt utterly destroy them, namely the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee." (Deut. xx. 10-17.)
It accounts, too, for the ferocity of the punishments for the infringement of the Taboo. Death was the penalty. The man who fails to pour dust on the blood of a pigeon that he has knocked down with an arrow, the man who picks up sticks upon the Sabbath, the perfumer who imitates a temple smell, the man who roasts the smallest particle of fat or blood, the labourer who has an abscess and fails to take two turtle doves as a "sin offering" to the priest at "the door of the tabernacle of the congregation" (Levit. xv. 15), may all be cut off. Every one may be stoned for infringing the Taboo.