by Mark Twain
20 And purify all your raiment, and all that is made of skins, and all work of goats' hair, and all things made of wood.
21 And Eleazar the priest said unto the men of war which went to the battle, This is the ordinance of the law which the Lord commanded Moses. . . .
25 And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,
26 Take the sum of the prey that was taken, both of man and of beast, thou, and Eleazar the priest, and the chief fathers of the congregation:
27 And divide the prey into two parts; between them that took the war upon them, who went out to battle, and between all the congregation:
28 And levy a tribute unto the Lord of the men of war which went out to battle. . . .
31 And Moses and Eleazar the priest did as the Lord commanded Moses.
32 And the booty, being the rest of the prey which the men of war had caught, was six hundred thousand, and seventy thousand and five thousand sheep,
33 And threescore and twelve thousand beeves,
34 And threescore and one thousand asses,
35 And thirty and two thousand persons in all, of woman that had not known man by lying with him. . . .
40 And the persons were sixteen thousand; of which the Lord's tribute was thirty and two persons.
41 And Moses gave the tribute, which was the Lord's heave offering, unto Eleazar the priest, as the Lord commanded Moses. . . .
47 Even of the children of Israel's half, Moses took one portion of fifty, both of man and of beast, and gave them unto the Levites, which kept the charge of the tabernacle of the Lord; as the Lord commanded Moses.
10 When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it. . . .
13 And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword:
14 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.
15 Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations.
16 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:
The Biblical law says: "Thou shalt not kill."
The law of God, planted in the heart of man at his birth, says: "Thou shalt kill."
The chapter I have quoted shows you that the book-statute is once more a failure. It cannot set aside the more powerful law of nature.
According to the belief of these people, it was God himself who said: "Thou shalt not kill."
Then it is plain that he cannot keep his own commandments.
He killed all those people -- every male.
They had offended the Deity in some way. We know what the offense was, without looking; that is to say, we know it was a trifle; some small thing that no one but a god would attach any importance to. It is more than likely that a Midianite had been duplicating the conduct of one Onan, who was commanded to "go unto his brother's wife" -- which he did; but instead of finishing, "he spilled it on the ground." The Lord slew Onan for that, for the lord could never abide indelicacy. The Lord slew Onan, and to this day the Christian world cannot understand why he stopped with Onan, instead of slaying all the inhabitants for three hundred miles around -- they being innocent of offense, and therefore the very ones he would usually slay. For that had always been his idea of fair dealing. If he had had a motto, it would have read, "Let no innocent person escape." You remember what he did in the time of the flood. There were multitudes and multitudes of tiny little children, and he knew they had never done him any harm; but their relations had, and that was enough for him: he saw the waters rise toward their screaming lips, he saw the wild terror in their eyes, he saw that agony of appeal in the mothers' faces which would have touched any heart but his, but he was after the guiltless particularly, and he drowned those poor little chaps.
And you will remember that in the case of Adam's posterity all the billions are innocent -- none of them had a share in his offense, but the Deity holds them guilty to this day. None gets off, except by acknowledging that guilt -- no cheaper lie will answer.
Some Midianite must have repeated Onan's act, and brought that dire disaster upon his nation. If that was not the indelicacy that outraged the feelings of the Deity, then I know what it was: some Midianite had been pissing against the wall. I am sure of it, for that was an impropriety which the Source of all Etiquette never could stand. A person could piss against a tree, he could piss on his mother, he could piss on his own breeches, and get off, but he must not piss against the wall -- that would be going quite too far. The origin of the divine prejudice against this humble crime is not stated; but we know that the prejudice was very strong -- so strong that nothing but a wholesale massacre of the people inhabiting the region where the wall was defiled could satisfy the Deity.
Take the case of Jeroboam. "I will cut off from Jeroboam him that pisseth against the wall." It was done. And not only was the man that did it cut off, but everybody else.
The same with the house of Baasha: everybody was exterminated, kinsfolks, friends, and all, leaving "not one that pisseth against a wall."
In the case of Jeroboam you have a striking instance of the Deity's custom of not limiting his punishments to the guilty; the innocent are included. Even the "remnant" of that unhappy house was removed, even "as a man taketh away dung, till it be all gone."
That includes the women, the young maids, and the little girls. All innocent, for they couldn't piss against a wall. Nobody of that sex can. None but members of the other sex can achieve that feat.
A curious prejudice. And it still exists. Protestant parents still keep the Bible handy in the house, so that the children can study it, and one of the first things the little boys and girls learn is to be righteous and holy and not piss against the wall. They study those passages more than they study any others, except those which incite to masturbation. Those they hunt out and study in private. No Protestant child exists who does not masturbate. That art is the earliest accomplishment his religion confers upon him. Also the earliest her religion confers upon her.
The Bible has this advantage over all other books that teach refinement and good manners: that it goes to the child. It goes to the mind at its most impressible and receptive age -- the others have to wait.
Thou shalt have a paddle upon thy weapon; and it shall be, when thou wilt ease thyself abroad, thou shalt dig therewith, and shalt turn back and cover that which cometh from thee.
That rule was made in the old days because "The Lord thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp."
It is probably not worthwhile to try to find out, for certain, why the Midianites were exterminated. We can only be sure that it was for no large offense; for the cases of Adam, and the Flood, and the defilers of the wall teach us that much. A Midianite may have left his paddle at home and thus brought on the trouble. However, it is no matter.
The main thing is the trouble itself, and the morals of one kind and another that it offers for the instruction and elevation of the Christian of today.
God wrote upon the tables of stone: "Thou shalt not kill," Also: "Thou shalt not commit adultery."
Paul, speaking by the divine voice, advised against sexual intercourse altogether.
A great change from the divine view as it existed at the time of the Midianite incident.
Letter XI
Human history in all ages is red with blood, and bitter with hate, and stained with cruelties; but not since Biblical times have these features been without a limit of some kind. Even the Church, which is credited with having spilt more innocent blood, since the beginning of its supremacy, than all the political wars put together have spilt, has observed a limit. A sort of limit. But you notice that when the Lord God of Heaven and Earth, adored Father of Man, goes to war, the
re is no limit. He is totally without mercy --
he, who is called the Fountain of Mercy. He slays, slays, slays! All the men, all the beasts, all the boys, all the babies; also all the women and all the girls, except those that have not been deflowered.
He makes no distinction between innocent and guilty. The babies were innocent, the beasts were innocent, many of the men, many of the women, many of the boys, many of the girls were innocent, yet they had to suffer with the guilty. What the insane Father required was blood and misery; he was indifferent as to who furnished it.
The heaviest punishment of all was meted out to persons who could not by any possibility have deserved so horrible a fate -- the 32,000 virgins. Their naked privacies were probed, to make sure that they still possessed the hymen unruptured; after this humiliation they were sent away from the land that had been their home, to be sold into slavery; the worst of slaveries and the shamefulest, the slavery of prostitution; bed-slavery, to excite lust, and satisfy it with their bodies; slavery to any buyer, be he gentleman or be he a coarse and filthy ruffian.
It was the Father that inflicted this ferocious and undeserved punishment upon those bereaved and friendless virgins, whose parents and kindred he had slaughtered before their eyes. And were they praying to him for pity and rescue, meantime? Without a doubt of it.
These virgins were "spoil", plunder, booty. He claimed his share and got it. What use had he for virgins? Examine his later history and you will know.
His priests got a share of the virgins, too. What use could priests make of virgins? The private history of the Roman Catholic confessional can answer that question for you. The confessional's chief amusement has been seduction -- in all the ages of the Church. Père Hyacinth testifies that of a hundred priests confessed by him, ninety-nine had used the confessional effectively for the seduction of married women and young girls. One priest confessed that of nine hundred girls and women whom he had served as father and confessor in his time, none had escaped his lecherous embrace but the elderly and the homely. The official list of questions which the priest is required to ask will overmasteringly excite any woman who is not a paralytic.
There is nothing in either savage or civilized history that is more utterly complete, more remorselessly sweeping than the Father of Mercy's campaign among the Midianites. The official report does not furnish the incidents, episodes, and minor details, it deals only in information in masses: all the virgins, all the men, all the babies, all "creatures that breathe," all houses, all cities; it gives you just one vast picture, spread abroad here and there and yonder, as far as eye can reach, of charred ruin and storm-swept desolation; your imagination adds a brooding stillness, an awful hush -- the hush of death. But of course there were incidents. Where shall we get them?
Out of history of yesterday's date. Out of history made by the red Indian of America. He has duplicated God's work, and done it in the very spirit of God. In 1862
the Indians in Minnesota, having been deeply wronged and treacherously treated by the government of the United States, rose against the white settlers and massacred them; massacred all they could lay their hands upon, sparing neither age nor sex. Consider this incident:
Twelve Indians broke into a farmhouse at daybreak and captured the family. It consisted of the farmer and his wife and four daughters, the youngest aged fourteen and the eldest eighteen. They crucified the parents; that is to say, they stood them stark naked against the wall of the living room and nailed their hands to the wall. Then they stripped the daughters bare, stretched them upon the floor in front of their parents, and repeatedly ravished them. Finally they crucified the girls against the wall opposite this parents, and cut off their noses and their breasts. They also -- but I will not go into that.
There is a limit. There are indignities so atrocious that the pen cannot write them. One member of that poor crucified family -- the father -- was still alive when help came two days later.
Now you have one incident of the Minnesota massacre. I could give you fifty.
They would cover all the different kinds of cruelty the brutal human talent has ever invented.
And now you know, by these sure indications, what happened under the personal direction of the Father of Mercies in his Midianite campaign. The Minnesota campaign was merely a duplicate of the Midianite raid. Nothing happened in the one that didn't happen in the other.
No, that is not strictly true. The Indian was more merciful than was the Father of Mercies. He sold no virgins into slavery to minister to the lusts of the murderers of their kindred while their sad lives might last; he raped them, then charitably made their subsequent sufferings brief, ending them with the precious gift of death. He burned some of the houses, but not all of them. He carried out innocent dumb brutes, but he took the lives of none.
Would you expect this same conscienceless God, this moral bankrupt, to become a teacher of morals; of gentleness; of meekness; of righteousness; of purity? It looks impossible, extravagant; but listen to him. These are his own words: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
The mouth that uttered these immense sarcasms, these giant hypocrisies, is the very same that ordered the wholesale massacre of the Midianitish men and babies and cattle; the wholesale destruction of house and city; the wholesale banishment of the virgins into a filthy and unspeakable slavery. This is the same person who brought upon the Midianites the fiendish cruelties which were repeated by the red Indians, detail by detail, in Minnesota eighteen centuries later. The Midianite episode filled him with joy.
So did the Minnesota one, or he would have prevented it.
The Beatitudes and the quoted chapters from Numbers and Deuteronomy ought always to be read from the pulpit together; then the congregation would get an all-round view of Our Father in Heaven. Yet not in a single instance have I ever known a clergyman to do this.
Papers of the Adam Family
I EXTRACT FROM METHUSELAH'S DIARY
The items here brought together were translated from the Adamic at different times but approximately in the sequence I have given them. In an unpublished philosophical work dated a thousand years after his death Mark Twain refers to himself under two titles, Bishop of New Jersey and Father of History. Both as a theologian and as a historian he had a lifelong interest in the private archives of the oldest human family. He nowhere tells us how or when the Adam family papers came into his possession, but his first translation from them appears to have been the two extracts from Methuselah's diary. I cannot date it exactly but it apparently belongs to the 1870's; that is, it precedes the translation and publication of Adam's Diary by at least fifteen years. A note of Albert B. Paine's says that he began with Shem's diary even earlier, in 1870, but if he did, the translation has been lost.
The translation from Methuselah belongs to a period when Mark was reading history systematically. He was preparing to write The Prince and the Pauper , and a sketch that was a by-product of his research has obviously influenced the style of this translation, which frequently reproduces the idiom of 1601. But, what is more important, he found in Tudor England and in the world before the Flood the recurrences and correspondences that he was later to generalize into a law of history. At the end of the first extract we encounter such a correspondence, one that probably stimulated
him to translate this particular passage, the peace treaty with the Jabalites. He intended to pursue further the analogy with recent events in America. One of the summaries of passages in the archives which he read but did not translate (there are many such notes in the manuscripts) reads: "Take this up again under brief republican form of govt., when Methuselah is about 300 or 400 years old, and put in Custer and Howard and the Peace Commissioners and the Modoc Lava Beds and so forth and satirize freely." He had recognized a continuity from Adam's time, through the Tudors', to his own.
But a stronger reason for his choosing Methuselah's journals appears in an unobtrusive allusion in the second extract. Methuselah refers to "that silly deluge whereof overpious fools do prate and prophesy from time to time." The reader will find him still skeptical about it hundreds of years later, when Shem quotes his derision of the Ark. It was Methuselah's skepticism that attracted Mark -- and his rebelliousness. Not altogether emancipated, he nevertheless perceived much stupidity, hypocrisy, and cruelty in the society to which he was born. His first diary shows his uneasiness about the institution of slavery, and notes on untranslated parts reveal that the uneasiness widened till he was ready to reject the entire religio-legal system of his people.
Methuselah had been influenced by the rising scientific spirit of his age, and a note shows that he became a freethinker. That phase belongs to the wild youth of his first century, to a period shortly after that of the two extracts, and it had an astonishing ending. When Shem's diary alludes to his having been disappointed in love at an early age, we are reminded of Zillah, the great-great-granddaughter of Methuselah's tutor Uz, who is tenderly mentioned in the translated passages. Further notes show that through love of Zillah he became an idolater, embracing her ancestral religion, the worship of Baal.
The notes show, moreover, that Methuselah could not quite dismiss as nonsense those "foolish prophecies about a flood." He recognized much true teaching in Judaism, inextricably mingled with superstition though it was, and he pondered it, pondering also the signs of the times. It seemed to him that the world was growing decadent and corrupt, as the prophets had foretold. If they had been right atout the corruption of society, might they not also be right about its destruction? Methuselah wondered if his world might not be rushing toward disaster.