Strategy from Scripture

THE BIBLE

As they demonstrated again in last year's Six-Day War, the Israelis are tough, wily soldiers. Their ancestors weren't bad either. In a new book called Great Battles of Biblical History (published in England by Hutchinson & Co. Ltd.), retired British General Sir Richard Gale analyzes scriptural warfare from Abraham to the Maccabees. Gale suggests that, more often than not, the Hebrew military commanders anticipated many of the tactics employed by later and more celebrated generals.

Gale is a former chief of British troops in Palestine after World War II, and later served as a Deputy Supreme Commander of NATO. He contends that the major biblical battles were not haphazard confrontations of wandering primitives but meticulously planned affairs. Abraham's victory over the Elamites--achieved by a surprise attack at night from two directions--"showed an appreciation of military tactics as applicable today as it was 4,000 years ago."

Crumbling Will. In capturing Jericho, Joshua employed some still valid techniques of intelligence gathering and psychological warfare. He first sent into the city two spies who learned from a harlot named Rahab (Joshua 2:1) that the inhabitants were demoralized. His army marched around the city for six days to advertise its strength before Joshua called for the trumpets to be blown. "My interpretation of the falling of the walls of Jericho," writes Gale, "was that it was in fact the crumbling of the will of the inhabitants to fight."

A classic example of tactical guile was offered by the Prophetess Deborah in her battle with the Canaanite general, Sisera. Pursued by better-armed forces, Deborah, according to the Book of Judges, refused to close with them headon. Instead, she took up a defensive position on the slopes of Mount Tabor. When Sisera ventured into the open to attack--and a providential rainfall bogged down his chariots--Deborah's troops charged down the mountainside to annihilate the Canaanite army. The tactic of luring an enemy into a trap that favors the defense, Gale says, is fundamentally the same maneuver employed by Wellington at Waterloo and by Viscount Montgomery in his victory over Rommel at Alam Haifa.

The Early Guerrilla. David defeated Goliath, Gale adds, because he possessed fire power--meaning a primitive but effective missile--plus "the courage, the skill and the brains to use it." David might be considered an early prototype of the socially conscious guerrilla fighter, "cultivating friendship with the local people, who were happy to have a protector against the marauding Philistine tribesmen, even if for this he demanded tribute. He foraged far and wide, bringing retribution where it was due and giving succour where it was needed." Even in one of the most tragic defeats of Hebrew history--the futile defense of Jerusalem against the Roman general Titus in A.D. 70--Jews displayed a fanatic resourcefulness. Making early use of the fifth column, they sent into the Roman ranks supposedly disaffected citizens who offered to lead the besieging troops through Jerusalem's gates. When the Romans approached, the fifth columnists turned on them, while the city's defenders decimated the enemy soldiers with arrows.

Concludes Gale: "The more one studies the battles of biblical history the more convinced one becomes that the elements that make for military success or failure remain constant." The early Jews, of course, had unswerving faith in their destiny as God's chosen people--but it helped no little bit that they also had leaders who knew their way around a battlefield.

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