Biblical Moses as Thief and Mass Killer: A Non-Western Abrahamic Reinterpretation and Its Colonial Afterlives

 

Abstract (conceptual)

This work advances a non-Western Abrahamic re-reading of the Mosaic narrative, foregrounding ethical evaluations that have been systematically suppressed in Western theological, legal, and colonial traditions. Through the lens of those historically subjected to displacement, genocide, and civilizational betrayal, Moses emerges not primarily as a liberator or lawgiver, but as a figure associated with asylum betrayal, divinely sanctioned plunder, and the orchestration of mass killing—including women and children. This reinterpretation is not anachronistic polemic, but a historically grounded moral critique that exposes how Mosaic logic reappears—mutatis mutandis—in Western colonial expansion, colonial jurisprudence, Zionist settlement narratives, and contemporary military ethics.

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1. Moses and the Midianites: asylum, kinship, and extermination

From a non-Western Abrahamic perspective, the Midianite episode is not a footnote—it is foundational.

The biblical text itself establishes the following sequence:

1. Flight and asylum
   Moses flees Egypt as a homicide fugitive and is received by the Midianites (Exodus 2). He is granted shelter, livelihood, and familial integration through marriage into the household of Jethro, a Midianite priest.

2. Kinship and protection
   Moses lives among the Midianites for years. This is not mere hospitality but political and social incorporation—a covenantal act by any Near Eastern standard.

3. Return as exterminator
   In Numbers 31, Moses leads or commands a campaign against the Midianites that culminates in:

   • the killing of all men,

   • the execution of male children,

   • the killing of non-virgin women,

   • and the sexual enslavement of virgin girls.

This sequence—asylum → integration → return with overwhelming force → extermination—is not incidental. It is structurally identical to patterns later repeated by Western colonial powers.

From the standpoint of the Midianites, Moses is not a prophet betrayed by foreigners; he is a beneficiary of refuge who returns as an agent of annihilation.

2. Moses as “thief”: plunder, dispossession, and divine laundering

The accusation of theft, when articulated carefully, is analytically robust.

The biblical narrative explicitly describes:

• seizure of land,

• confiscation of livestock,

• appropriation of material wealth,

• and redistribution of spoils under priestly authority.

This is not private criminal theft; it is institutionalized plunder sanctified by divine command.

From a non-Western legal-ethical frame, this constitutes:

• theft through sacralized violence, and

• moral laundering of dispossession.

The critical point is not whether Moses personally pocketed goods, but that he presided over and legitimized a system where killing authorized taking.

This logic becomes decisive in later Western history.

3. Moses as serial killer? Precision matters

Western defenders often object to the phrase “serial killer” on technical grounds. That objection misses the ethical core.

If “serial killer” is narrowly defined as a lone individual committing repeated personal murders, the term is imprecise.
If, however, it is understood as:

a figure who repeatedly authorizes, commands, or legitimizes lethal campaigns against civilian populations across time,

then Moses fits the category of a recurring orchestrator of mass killing.

A more exact formulation is:

religious-military commander overseeing repeated exterminatory campaigns against designated out-groups

The refusal to apply moral language to such figures—while eagerly applying it to modern enemies—reveals a civilizational double standard rather than analytical rigor.

4. The colonial afterlife of Mosaic logic

a) Western colonial mentality

European colonial expansion repeatedly followed the Mosaic template:

1. Arrival as guests, traders, or refugees

2. Dependence on indigenous hospitality

3. Moral reclassification of hosts as “heathens,” “savages,” or “obstacles”

4. Violent dispossession framed as civilizational or divine necessity

The Native American parallel is not metaphorical; it is structural. Indigenous hospitality was routinely answered with extermination, justified retroactively through religious and legal narratives strikingly similar to those found in Numbers and Deuteronomy.

b) Colonial law: theft legalized, violence normalized

Colonial legal doctrines—terra nullius, Doctrine of Discovery, emergency powers—functioned exactly as Mosaic law does in the biblical narrative:

• prior inhabitants are rendered morally or legally void,

• violence becomes lawful by definition,

• and plunder is transformed into “administration” or “settlement.”

The Mosaic precedent provided a script: law does not restrain conquest; it ratifies it after the fact.

c) Zionist narratives and sacred entitlement

This work does not conflate Judaism with Zionism. It examines how Mosaic conquest narratives are selectively mobilized.

In Zionist political theology, the same triad appears:

• divine promise,

• historical grievance,

• moral exemption for violence.

The ethical problem is not self-determination per se, but the appeal to ancient exterminatory precedent to justify modern displacement, while denying the humanity or historical legitimacy of those displaced.

The Midianite problem returns—unresolved.

d) Modern military ethics: rules for us, exceptions for “targets”

Contemporary Western military doctrine often claims adherence to universal ethics, yet repeatedly introduces exceptions:

• collateral damage,

• lawful targets,

• enemy human shields,

• necessity overrides.

This mirrors Mosaic reasoning:

• the enemy is defined as inherently corrupt,

• civilian categories collapse,

• and killing becomes regrettable but righteous.

The logic is ancient; the technology is new.

5. The core ethical rupture

At the heart of this analysis lies a single unresolved contradiction:

If genocide, plunder, and sexual enslavement are moral when divinely authorized, then morality is not universal—it is tribal and conditional.

Western civilization inherits this contradiction but refuses to name it. Instead, it:

• sanitizes Moses,

• mythologizes conquest,

• and criminalizes resistance when it appears elsewhere.

From the perspective of non-Western Abrahamic peoples—those more often cast as Midianites than Israelites—this is not theology. It is lived history.

6. Why this reading is resisted

This interpretation provokes hostility because it:

• destabilizes Western moral exceptionalism,

• collapses the distance between sacred past and colonial present,

• and re-centers the voices of those historically erased.

It insists on a simple but dangerous question:

What if the problem is not that Western civilization betrayed its values—but that it has been faithful to them all along?