CRUEL JUSTICE, RESPONSIBILITY, AND FORGIVENESS: ON LEVINAS'S READING OF THE

GIBEONITES
Author(s): Gary D. Mole
Source: Modern Judaism , October 2011, Vol. 31, No. 3 (October 2011), pp. 253-271
Published by: Oxford University Press

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 Gary D. Mole

CRUEL JUSTICE, RESPONSIBILITY, AND

FORGIVENESS: ON LEVINAS'S READING
OF THE GIBEONITES

Levinas often insisted in his Talmudic readings that he w

Talmudist. On other occasions he would emphasize that he
a biblical scholar either and that he never used biblical passag
deed Talmudic apologues) as "proof texts" for his philosophica
"The verses of the Bible," he writes in his 1970 essay "No I
do not, in his work, "have as their function to serve as proofs;
do bear witness to a tradition and an experience."1 Notwith
such claims, experienced Levinasian commentators such as
Chalier have consistently argued that "both the Bible and the
commentaries [. . .] are essential in order to understand Levin
losophy."2 Indeed, there is now almost as much secondary
on Levinas and Jewish thought, Levinas and the Talmud, Levi
ligion, and ethics, as there is on his strictly philosophical writ
course the word "strictly" may be meaningless in light of the
most of these studies have eloquently demonstrated that
constant interferences between Levinas's philosophical and con
al texts. As Jean-François Rey has written: "Levinas's work
whole: in particular, the collections of Talmudic readings
much philosophical texts as those which borrow the lexi
field of phenomenology or the most classical philosophy."4 M
tion in the present study is not to rehearse familiar argumen
cerning Levinas's views on the Bible and Talmud, but rat
provide a particularly striking example of the concrete lin
creates between the Jewish experience and his philosophical t
and thus to contribute to determining whether biblical fig
stories in Levinas's thought are merely a rhetorical device- illu
of his ideas- or whether they have a deeper function in his p
ical project in a way that other literary figures and stories do n
Shakespeare, Hugo, Dostoyevsky, and Rimbaud to the clu
twentieth-century writers on whom Levinas explicitly wrote
Leiris, Blanchot, Laporte, Celan, Agnon, to name but
Putting aside the issue of Levinas's renowned mistrust of l

doi:10.109Vmj/kjr018 Advance Access publication October 27, 2011

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 254 Gary D. Mole

and the aesthetic,6

Levinas's use of bibl
powers of analysis
// Samuel 21 conc
justice for the per
Saul.

I shall begin by recalling the biblical details relevant to my expo-

sition. I do so because Levinas himself appeals directly to certain
events that need to be made explicit and because the Talmudic pas-
sages he cites in relation to those events take such knowledge for
granted. I shall then read and comment on Levinas's commentary
within the parameters of the questions raised above concerning
Levinas's use of biblical figures, and finally open up a few horizons
intended to indicate the need to go beyond the immediate concerns
of Levinas's reading.
The Gibeonites first appear in holy history in the book of Joshua
9:3-27. They were part of the Hiwite people, one of the original in-
habitants of the Land of Canaan before the conquest by Joshua. Like
the people of Jericho and Ai before them, the Gibeonites chose to
resist the Israelite conquest, but they did so somewhat differently.
Jericho chose defense; Ai chose offense; the Gibeonites choose decep-
tion and guile. They disguise themselves as exhausted travellers from a
far-off non-Canaanite land, go to Joshua's camp at Gilgal and ask for a
covenant of peace. The Israelites are suspicious, however, so the
Gibeonites appeal directly to Joshua, displaying their dry bread,
cracked wineskins and well-worn clothes and sandals as proof of
their long journey. Failing to "ask for the word of HaShem" (Joshua
9:14),7 Joshua seals the alliance. When the deception is uncovered
three days later, the Israelites travel to the Gibeonite cities with the
intention of destroying them, claiming that since the peace treaty was
obtained through deception, it was not valid. Joshua and the elders,
however, maintain it would be a desecration of God's Name for Jews
to nullify an oath made to non-Jews. As we shall see, this desecration
of the divine Name- particularly in relation to strangers- is something
David too will have to take into account in ceding to the Gibeonites's
request. The Gibeonites in any case explain in their defense how they
feared being exterminated, so the leaders of the fledgling Jewish
nation make them servants (woodchoppers and water drawers) to
the entire assembly, but Joshua modifies the decree. As Radak8 ex-
plains, as long as all the people lived together, the Gibeonites were
to be general servants; but after the land was divided among the tribes,
the servitude would be limited to serving the Kohanim, the priests, in
the Temple.

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Cruel Justice and Forgiveness in Levinas 255

Joshua 10 goes on to recount how an alliance is

Amorite kings to smite the Gibeonites for makin
The Gibeonites call on Joshua for help, and, respe
the Israelites descend from Gilgal and deliver a m
them. Hailstones pummel what remains of the
battle, and Joshua follows this with the extraord
the sun at Gibeon and the moon at the Valley of
"There was no day like that before it or after it,
the voice of a man, for HaShem did battle for Isr
Clearly, the Gibeonites are not a people simply de
and the covenant binding them to Israel cannot
punity. As for the five kings, they are captured
hanged on the gallows until sunset- the Torah in
prohibits the corpses of the executed from remai
night-and their bodies immured in the cave in w
refuge.
The next major event in which the Gibeonites are involved be-
comes apparent only in retrospect and constitutes a crucial part of
the biblical narrative that will draw Levinas's attention. / Samuel 22
recounts how Saul, in his war against David, accuses Ahimelech son of
Ahitub the Kohen of aiding and abetting David against him. In retri-
bution, Saul orders his general, Doeg the Edomite, to slay the entire
city of Kohanim at Nob: men, women, children, ox, donkey, and
sheep. One son of Ahimelech escapes and flees to David to recount
the massacre, whereupon David, admitting he knew of Doeg the
Edomite's presence among Saul's men, claims responsibility for the
brutal murders: "I am responsible for every life of your father's
house" (/ Samuel 22:22).
While there is no mention of the Gibeonites here, // Samuel 21
clarifies matters. David has become king. A three-year famine descends
on the land and David inquires of God who replies: "It is for Saul and
the House of Blood, for his having killed the Gibeonites" (// Samuel
21:1). Saul's family is described here as the "House of Blood," explains
Rashi,9 because they took part in his campaign against the Gibeonites.
Seeking an explanation, David summons the Gibeonites, and Scripture
adds that "the Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel, but from
the remnant of the Amorite; the children of Israel had sworn not to
harm them, but Saul had tried to strike them down in his zeal for the
children of Israel and Judah" (// Samuel 21:2). Taking this parenthet-
ical remark as their cue, the Sages recall that the Gibeonites were
woodchoppers and water drawers, according to Joshua's decree, and
that after the conquest of the land, they had settled in the priestly city
of Nob. When Saul ordered the massacre of the city in / Samuel 22,
seven Gibeonites were among the murdered while the rest, as servants

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 256 Gary D. Mole

of the Kohanim, w
egetes Kara10 and R
country, killing m
members of the H
were not entitled
held that Joshua's c
against Joshua's pro
the sun and the m
Name and incurred
So David, I recall, summons the Gibeonites and asks them how he
can atone for Saul's apparent sin, so that they will bless God's heri-
tage. This attempt at appeasement only leads the Gibeonites to stress
that they are not seeking any financial reparations for the sin commit-
ted against them, nor are they seeking to punish the innocent. And in
a classic biblical case of a promise made soon to be bitterly regretted,
David tells them he will do whatever they ask for. Whereupon the
Gibeonites invoke the talion law, "an eye for an eye": they ask that
seven sons of Saul be brought and hanged (or nailed to a rock, de-
pending on the translation of the verb le'hokia), "for the sake of
HaShem in the Gibeah of Saul" (// Samuel 21:6). David has no
choice but to acquiesce: "I will give them to you." As Radak adds,
the hanging would show God's justice, for He had punished the entire
land for three years because of the injustice committed against the
Gibeonites. So seven sons of Saul are brought by David's orders and
delivered into the hands of the Gibeonites who promptly hang them
or impale them on the mountain before God. The time, Scripture
points out, is the beginning of the barley harvest.
Needless to say, the Sages- and Levinas in his turn- are inquisitive
as to how seven sons of Saul could be executed for their father's sins.
Is there not, they point out, a direct contradiction here with an ex-
plicit ruling in Deuteronomy 24:16 that "sons shall not be put to death
because of fathers?" And who exactly, we might add, is responsible for
the massacre in which the seven Gibeonites were killed and the others

left destitute? Saul certainly ordered the massacre of the city of Nob
and is therefore legally responsible11; Doeg the Edomite is equally
responsible, as the officer in command; and as we saw David assumes
moral responsibility because he knew what would happen if he sought
refuge in the city and then fled. But it is Saul who is held responsible
by the Gibeonites and before God. David's moral guilt is not account-
able, at least not in the way he is later made accountable for a crime
he does commit such as when he gets rid of Uriah, Bathsheba's hus-
band, by sending him off to do battle in the front line (in // Samuel
11). Even if Saul's responsibility is beyond question, however, no court
would have the right to impose the death penalty on seven innocent

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Cruel Justice and Forgiveness in Levinas 257

men as an expiation for the sins of their father. W

Saadia Gaon, for instance, uncomfortable at the idea of the innocent
being punished for the guilty, comments that they participated in
Saul's deed. The general consensus among the Sages, however, is
that this was a heavenly imposed penalty and that the seven were
chosen by the Urim ve Tumimx?t- hence David's prayer and relief that
Mephibosheth son of Jonathan is not among the sons chosen to be
handed over to the Gibeonites, though, again, the Rav Saadia Gaon
maintains that this was because Mephibosheth was not involved in the
massacre. The Talmudic tractate Yebamoth 79a- to which Levinas will
refer- quotes Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba who says, in the name of Rabbi
Yochanan, that in order to end a desecration of the Name- caused
here by Saul's mistreatment of the Gibeonites- "it is better that a
letter be rooted out of the Torah,"14 in other words the command-
ment that sons not be put to death because of the crimes of their
fathers is set aside, so that the seven men chosen atone for Saul's sin.
But the narrative does not end there. The last half of the chapter
recounts that Rizpah daughter of Aiah and mother of two of the men
hanged, took a "sackcloth and spread it for herself over a rock, from
the beginning of the harvest until water fell down on the corpses from
heaven. She did not allow the birds of the heaven to descend upon
them during the day, nor the beasts of the field during the night"
(/ Samuel 21:10). In other words, the corpses are protected from
carion from Pessach (Passover) to Sukkot (the Festival of
Tabernacles). Normally, the Torah does not permit a hanged person
to remain exposed on the gallows even for one night, as we saw with
the five Amorite kings executed by Joshua- but again a Torah ruling is
overturned. Radak, quoting the Talmud, comments that God decreed
that the bodies should be left hanging for what amounts to six months
so that all would see that God condemns those who take advantage of
the poor and powerless. Such a powerful impression did this sanctifi-
cation of the divine Name make that 150,000 people converted to
Judaism. Scripture itself ends the narrative by relating that David
upon hearing what Rizpah has done, gathers the bones of Saul and
his son Jonathan from the inhabitants of Jabeth-Gilead, and together
with the bones of the seven executed sons, has them buried in the
land of Benjamin, in Zela, in the grave of Saul's father, Kish. And God
answered the prayers of the land, and the famine was over.
As passing references here to the Talmud, Rashi, Radak, Kara, and
the Rav Saadia Gaon demonstrate, classical Jewish exegesis never
evaded the harsh reality of the biblical narrative concerning the
Gibeonites even as it explicated and expounded on levels of meaning
other than the literal. No commentator steeped in Jewish exegetical
tradition could see the narrative simply as one of culpability

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 258 Gary D. Mole

(Saul's sin), retribu

(the rainfall bring
nonjewish readings
example, is an excel
of the role of Riz
// Samuel 21 has
rarely preached a
story." This story,
David and of God, r
stances beyond hi
force" and "villains
of Israel's god [sic]"
burial." and, finally
in the narrative as
eventually brings a
David symbolized b
While Exum is righ
reconciliation of t
the whole episode t
ial loyalty (materna
While Levinas, as w
has to play, empha
surprisingly far rem
ings such as Exum's
ical tradition. Levinas's commentary, then, is both brief and
characteristically charged with a surplus of signification. It comes at
the end of one of his early Talmudic readings, "Toward the Other,"
delivered at the Annual Colloquium of French-speaking Jewish
Intellectuals hosted in October 1963 by the École Normale Israélite
Orientale under Levinas's direction, and whose theme that year was
"Forgiveness."18 Levinas's Talmudic reading turns around an extract
of the Mishnah and Gemara in tractate Yorna 85a-85b which deals with

the transgressions against one's fellow, transgressions against God,

tchouvah or repentance, and forgiveness. Unsettled by Rav Hanina's
refusal in the Gemara to forgive the great Rav for what seems like a
minor personal offence, Levinas ends his reading with an almost in-
eluctable reference to his philosophical arch-enemy, Heidegger: "One
can forgive many Germans, but there are some Germans it is difficult
to forgive. It is difficult to forgive Heidegger."19 But Levinas then goes
on to beg the public's indulgence and noting the absence that year of
André Neher's habitual biblical commentary, adds a biblical coda in-
tended to create a link between his Talmudic commentary and the
main theme of the conference, namely, behind the question of for-
giveness, the problems confronting Jews by their "relations with the

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Cruel Justice and Forgiveness in Levinas 259

Germans and Germany" (p. 25). 20 The link of cou

Levinas offers a succinct summary of the episode
to admire the "savage greatness" and "extreme
text whose principal theme is the lex talionis, t
greatness of what is called the Old Testament, Le
in being sensitive to bloodshed, to being unab
crying out for vengeance, to feeling the horror b
granted by proxy when the victim alone has t
Levinas's preliminary observations already raise im
how are sensitivity to murder, and in particula
justice to be reconciled if another injustice- th
innocent- is committed in the process (as we
get round this by having Saul's sons take part
Nob)? How do we distinguish the need for justi
desire for vengeance?22 How is forgiveness possibl
and the perpetrators are dead, if forgiveness c
proxy? David cannot ask for forgiveness on Sa
versely, the surviving Gibeonites cannot grant
name of the Gibeonites who were murdered, even if it were asked
for. So if there is no forgiveness from beyond the grave, must talion
hold sway?
Let me add before proceeding further with my extrapolation of
Levinas's reading of the episode of the Gibeonites- blowing on the
embers of a commentary of a commentary- that Levinas's three-page
reading goes to the heart of a number of his major ethical concerns:
the other or the stranger, vulnerability, responsibility, and justice.
While no doubt self-evident to seasoned Levinas readers, these con-
cerns should be borne in mind in what follows since they represent
precisely the concrete link between this particular Jewish (biblical) ex-
perience and Levinas's more overt philosophical writings.
Having invoked, then, the apparent savagery of the biblical narra-
tive in the demand for justice by the talion law, Levinas opens up what
constitutes in fact his second Talmudic reading of the day, the Gemara
commentary in tractate Yebamoth 78b-79a, to which I have already
referred.23 For Levinas, any biblical commentary necessarily remains
incomplete if not accompanied by Midrash, Mishnah, Gemara or sub-
sequent Jewish exegesis. While I follow the general linear direction of
Levinas's text, I shall break his remarks down into essentially seven
points.
First, Levinas raises a question implicitly posed by the plain, literal
meaning of the initial verse of Chapter 21: "In the days of David there
was once a famine for three years, year after year. David inquired of
Hashem ..." (// Samuel 21:1). Why would David wait three years before
inquiring of God as to the reason or reasons for the famine?

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 260 Gary D. Mole

The answer, provid

year, David suspect
But no foreign cult
David thought to b
in Israel. Finally, D
risy, charitable wo
idolatry and sexual
In paraphrasing the
to the biblical assum
divine punishment
false suspicions in
need to be addressed.

Hence, and this is my second point, while the Gemara seeks

explicate the meaning of "David inquired of Hashem"- which Re
Lakish and Rav Eliezer interpret as David consulting the Urirn
Tumim- Levinas identifies the disaster as the result of a "politi
wrong," an injustice "not caused by private individuals" (p. 27). T
Gemara indicates that David receives two replies to his inquiry ("It
for Saul"- first reply, "and the House of Blood"- second reply):
first injustice is that Saul has not been buried according to the roy
prerogatives stipulated in the Halachah, in other words as befitting
anointed king chosen by God; the second injustice we have alrea
seen, it concerns Saul's mistreatment of the Gibeonites. In deprivin
the surviving Gibeonites of their subsistence, "Scripture," notes th
Gemara, "regards it as if Saul himself had killed them." Levinas ma
ginalizes the first injustice- redressed by the biblical narrative whe
David has Saul's remains properly buried in Zela- but concurs w
the Gemara in his twofold remarks concerning the second: firs
Saul's sin, in taking away the Gibeonites's livelihood, was indire
but no less culpable: "The Midrash," Levinas writes, "affirms th
the crime of extermination begins before murders take place, t
oppression and economic uprooting already indicate its beginnin
that the laws of Nuremberg already contain the seeds of the horrors
the extermination camps and the 'final solution' " (p. 27). This i
perfect example of how Levinas, throughout his Talmudic readin
and in the spirit of traditional Midrashic exegesis, actualize
Judaism's ancient texts. Here, and with his previous remark o
Heidegger, and again on two more occasions before concluding
the actualization of // Samuel 21 concerns Nazi persecution, th
Occupation of France, the Shoah in general, and by extension, t
relations between Jews, Germans, and Germany. Levinas's seco
remark is that Saul's sin in his mistreatment of the Gibeonites- not
to mention his ordering of the murder of the priests and their families
at Nob- does not cancel out the merit of his royal position. Merit and

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Cruel Justice and Forgiveness in Levinas 261

transgression, Levinas adds, are incommensurab

be settled on its own account. In other words,
does not set up a tally for good actions agains
accumulate a plenitude of merit but this cann
action which requires specific atonement. In Levin
also where Saul is the most culpable, for Saul is th
khar), and election, like Israel's over the nations,
superiority, but a responsibility, as Levinas frequen
Freedom and elsewhere.24 Amongst other shortcom
to measure up to the responsibility of his election
out in Beyond the Verse in relation to Joseph in Eg
sibility of the sovereign- in other words, the firs
is feeding the people, not slaughtering them.25
The third point of Levinas's joint biblical an
logue is a question arising from verse 7: "The
Mephiboshet." How was David able to save Mep
son? Does mercy not lead to exceptions, to arbi
tice? Did the king not display flagrant favoritism?
the passage in the Gemara which states that it wa
who chose which sons to deliver to the Gibeonites
in other words God separated the innocent from
as we have seen, Mephiboshet was spared beca
involved in the killings. David's pity, Levinas a
formed into a prayer which God heard: "there
reason and no reason without a heart," concludes Levinas. In other
words, as we shall see, for Levinas the rational order of strict justice
does not, indeed should not exclude the affective order of compassion.
My fourth point, Levinas's second question, concerns an issue I
have already raised and answered, namely does one have the right to
punish children for the sins of their fathers? The Torah here, as we
saw, is not upheld. Quoting Rabbi Yochanan's opinion, as cited by
Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba, that it is "better that a letter be rooted out
of the Torah than that the Divine name shall be publicly profaned,"
Levinas adds that "to punish children for the faults of their parents is
less dreadful than to tolerate impunity when the stranger is injured"
(p. 27). To fully appreciate Levinas's comment here, we need to recall
that the Gibeonites, as the biblical narrative highlights, were not of the
children of Israel. They were strangers, foreigners, above and beyond
their status as water bearers and hewers of wood. In fact this is the
actual context of the Mishnah and Gemara in Yebamoth 78b-79a,
namely the ineligibility of mamzerim (illegitimate children) and nethi-
nirn (the name given to the Temple assistants) to marry Israelites, a
prohibition which, according to the Mishnah, is "for all time" and
applies "both to males and females." The nethinim is precisely the

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262 Gary D. Mole

term originally app

in his decree (Josh
tween three decree
the entire Israelite
all the men, wome
wood" to the "draw
were singled out, th
congregation of Isr
were peculiar to th
It was Moses, then,
intermarriage with
eration; Joshua ad
Temple would be
made the decree ex
not be in existence,
authority should al
reference to these
der of his reading.
separate occasions
and the orphan, a
indeed divine righ
that right, and Da
the price demande
writes Levinas, "in
ers were injured by
sanctification of th
all the rest is a dea
in an explicit reject
and the Christian s
Difficult Freedom-
letter, that is Judai
that" (p. 28). This e
tween the spirit an
on both the Bible a
the law would be it
represent thematic
theme or "said" of
reduced to the them
"eye for an eye." T
the expressive "sa
justice, and not, as
ical grasping of mo
here concerns the
on the talion in Dif

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Cruel Justice and Forgiveness in Levinas 263

the Talmud never understood the talion law in its literal sense but

interpreted it in the light of the spirit running throughout the Bib

"The drama of justice," writes Levinas, has to be "humanized," which
means the application of justice "without an executioner."27 As
Levinas goes on to show with the Gibeonites, then, the spirit behind
the letter of the law relates not just to the rights of the strange
capable of trumping divine decrees- but to the basic human feelin
of compassion.
Levinas's third question, my fifth point, concerns the exposure o
the corpses for six months, contrary to the formal prohibition in th
Torah of leaving a body hanging overnight. Again Levinas quot
the Talmud's identical reply to the question of the sons punishe
for the crimes of their fathers, namely that nothing, not even t
Torah, can override the desecration of the divine Name. "The
image of God," Levinas writes, "is better honored in the right given
to the stranger than in symbols" (p. 28). But he adds too:
"Universalism has a greater weight than the particularist letter of the
text; or, to be more precise, it bursts the letter apart, for it lay, like an
explosive, within the letter" (p. 28). Judaism as a universalism; Jewish
law protecting non-Jews from injustice, or not recoiling from redress-
ing injustices committed toward them. The universal right of the
stranger supersedes the particularist letter of the law. Levinas can
thus conclude that the Midrash of the Talmudic text "spiritualizes"
and "interiorizes" the biblical text but "preserves its unusual power
and harsh truth" (p. 28). Justice has to be served, no matter how cruel.
A "life for a life" has to be respected if requested on behalf of the
victim. In fact, as we saw, 150,000 passersby were so impressed by the
punishment meted out to the sons of Saul, that they converted to
Judaism. The Gemara suggests that the converts were Gibeonites
themselves- clearly struck with wonderment and fear at Israel's readi-
ness to punish even royal princes for a crime against strangers- and
that they would become the avdei Shlomo, the "servants of Solomon,"
bearing burdens and hewing in the mountains, as mentioned in /
Kings 5:29. As with other parts of the Gemara, however, Levinas
chooses to ignore this particular detail because he is more interested
in what keeps the Gibeonites not strangers in Israel but strangers to
Israel. The Gemara text, Levinas writes, must surely be teaching far
more than a dramatic case of the talion in action. He is quite right,
but what he says tempers what he previously stated about universalism
bursting apart the particularist letter. For now, the particular explodes
the universal, an idea Levinas develops at length in a much later
Talmudic reading, "The Pact," in Beyond the Verse: the particular
should be seen in the Law "as an independent principle in relation
to the universality reflected by all particular laws. It is precisely the

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 264 Gary D. Mole

concrete and partic

application which c
istic. [. . .] The grea
special discipline w
which the general
trary, and watches
Now, it stands to r
under which a par
Critique of Judgme
ular laws and cases
a question of the ap
the universality of
the specificity of
Drawing on Talmu
that inverts the pr
particular case and
a measure of freedo
in the demand for
With this in mind
point.
Levinas recalls the verse I have already cited in // Samuel 21:2
which adds, as if it were supplementary information necessary to nar-
rative coherence, that the Gibeonites were "not of the children of
Israel, but from the remnant of the Amorite." For Levinas, the
Gemara turns this parenthetical remark into a verdict pronounced
by David, his decree that the Gibeonites be excluded "for all time"
from the community of Israel because they excluded themselves from
Israel by displaying an utter lack of the three characteristics that the
Gemara identifies as prerequisites for belonging to Israel: rahamim-
mercy, compassion, or pity; bayashanout- bashfulness or humility; and
gomlei 'hasidim- benevolence, generosity, or disinterested acts. The
Gemara stresses that "only he who cultivates these three characteristics
is fit to join this nation," and Levinas indeed is anxious to note that
the presence of one characteristic is no guarantee of the presence of
another: one can show pity without offering a helping hand, and one
can be generous but not to the persecuted. Whereupon Levinas makes
his third reference that actualizes his whole commentary: "Under the
Occupation we learned these distinctions, just as we also knew souls
full of humility, pity, and generosity- souls of Israel beyond Israel. The
Gibeonites who lacked pity put themselves outside Israel" (p. 28). For
to belong to Israel, in Levinas's reading of the Talmudic text, is not
just to possess humility, a sense of justice, and a penchant for good
deeds. "Strict justice, even if flanked by disinterested goodness and
humility, is not sufficient to make a Jew" (p. 28). Justice itself has to be

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Cruel Justice and Forgiveness in Levinas 265

intimately mixed with goodness, and it is this mix

designates as rahamim, the "specific form of pity
tended to whoever undergoes the rigors of the
clearly lacked this pity. "The Talmud teaches u
conclusion, "that one cannot force men who dema
tice to grant forgiveness. It teaches us that Israel
imprescriptible right to others. But it teaches us a
recognizes this right, it does not ask it for itself a
to not claim it" (pp. 28-29). In the light of this, t
ture is evidently more like an act of vengeanc
justice, giving them the role of the villains, as J.
It is important to recall briefly here the two dist
gives to justice, roughly corresponding to his two
texts. In Totality and Infinity, Levinas sees justic
ethical relation with the other in the face-to-face
the modalities of Levinas's phenomenology of t
other is exposure and vulnerability revealed i
destitution of the widow, the orphan, and the str
comes face-to-face with the suffering Gibeonites
the legitimate demand for justice according to th
the biblical narrative and the Gemara overlook Da
sibility in the whole affair and David himself is n
he was just after the massacre in accepting his gu
for a crime he did not commit. The situation with the Gibeonites in
any case would hint at the limitations of justice as defined in Totality
and Infinity. In Otherwise than Being, on the other hand, Levinas sees
justice as necessarily taking into account the third party: "The rela-
tionship with the third party is an incessant correction of the assyme-
try of proximity in which the face is looked at."32 This accounting for
the third party would be the foundation of sociality or community.
Justice and law are thus crucial in determining Levinas's pluralistic
vision of society. Justice may amount to an examination of the condi-
tion of interpretation and application of laws to particular cases, but
the law is embedded not just in the face-to-face relationship between
self and other, but in all the social arrangements of the anonymous
other persons who constitute Levinas's third party. Needs that arise in
the social situations must be satisfied by the law, especially the other
person's demand for justice and responsibility. In the present instance,
David has satisfied the law since, as we saw, he could not ask for Saul
to be forgiven and the Gibeonites could not grant forgiveness in the
name of the dead. But they could have manifested generosity, pity,
compassion. They fail to do so, and this is what Levinas emphasizes:
the Gibeonites want justice for themselves, which is why their justice-
the demands of talion, the rational order- is inherently cruel.

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 266 Gary D. Mole

It is also why, for

with the Gibeonites
image of Rizpah dau
corpses of the seve
from wild beasts and birds. For Levinas, after the blood and the tears
demanded by strict justice, comes individual self-abnegation, the sac-
rifice which, Levinas concludes, "amidst the dialectical rebounds of
justice and all its contradictory about-faces, without any hesitation,
finds a straight and sure way" (p. 29). The sure way, indeed, which
Martin Buber interpreted in his 1929 essay on the text, as leading to
the reconciliation between the Davidic and Saulide royal houses.
While Levinas's early Talmudic readings have not failed to attract
critical attention, readers who have noted in particular the biblical
coda at the end of "Toward the Other" have tended to focus on
Levinas's actualization of the biblical situation in the light of
Shoah. As we have seen, the general context of the 1963 confer
on forgiveness and the relations between Jews and Germans,
justifies this, and Levinas himself clearly encourages such an appr
in his remarks concerning Heidegger being unforgivable, the
Nuremberg laws, the Occupation of France and the hunting down
of Jews, and the fact that no-one during the conference was asking
that "the descendants of our torturers be nailed to the rocks" (p. 28).
Michael de Saint Cheron, for instance, evokes what he calls the "prob-
lematic passage" in // Samuel 21 when the Gibeonites's "act of ven-
geance" takes precedence over the profanation of the divine Name.34
Noting the "exceptional arrangement" which allowed the State of
Israel to execute Adolf Eichmann, Saint Cheron goes on to place
Levinas's thoughts on the impossibility of forgiveness by proxy in
the context of Simon Wiesenthal's The Sunflower in which the future
seeker of justice relates his own refusal to grant absolution in the
name of the dead to the dying SS officer for the atrocities he had
committed. 5 In an essay on Levinas and the claims of incommensu-
rable values, Alan Montefiore also juxtaposes Levinas's reading of the
Gibeonite episode with Wiesenthal's text in his discussion of the per-
sistent tension he sees in Levinas's philosophy as a whole between the
claims of a universal principle and those of particular, individual hu-
manity.36 For Montefiore, the "somewhat uncomfortable coda" on the
Gibeonites merely confirms his point that the universal claims of strict
justice can sit uneasily on the particular virtue of personal compassion,
and reinforces the link between Levinas's Talmudic commentary on
Yorna 85b and the problems confronting Jews in their relations with
Germans and Germany.37 In his review essay of Josh Cohen's theory of
interruption and his reading of Levinas's Jewish thought as a sustained
philosophical reflection on the moral and ethical implications of

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Cruel Justice and Forgiveness in Levinas 267

Auschwitz, C. Oscar Jacob also references Levinas's co

Gibeonites but uses them as evidence that not only d
self not experience any crisis of faith or theology wh
the absolute evil of the Auschwitz experience but also
certain wounds- Heidegger, the Shoah- that can be
nor healed.38
Rare, however, are the readings that use Levinas
the Gibeonites as a springboard for an extended an
flection on the themes his reading clearly evokes:
stranger, vulnerability, election, responsibility, justi
ness. Articles by Laurence Edwards and Marty Slaugh
exceptions, but although both cite at some length Lev
addendum to his Talmudic reading, Edwards stops sho
gation of "justice, reconciliation, and the impossi
finding neat endings" in order to analyze Levinas
and his recourse to biblical citation as "shorthand, a code, for an
ever-expanding range of possible meanings,"39 while Slaughter is
more interested in using Levinas to explore medieval concepts of jus-
tice and mercy than in exploring justice and mercy in Levinas's work
through the prism of the biblical coda.40 Of course the present study
too has only hinted at such a reading; I have been more concerned
with showing that Levinas does indeed use biblical figures and situa-
tions-here, Saul, David, the Gibeonites- to illustrate philosophical
issues that go to the core of his ethics, and in doing so also extends
the tradition of Midrashic exegesis by inviting reconsideration and
reappraisal of an ancient situation as difficult and painful to compre-
hend for modern sensibilities as, say, the two hundred virgins of
Shiloh kidnapped and forced into marriage to prevent the tribe of
Benjamin from disappearing (Judges 21:19-23) or Samuel's execution
of Agag (/ Samuel 15:33) which so disturbed Martin Buber.41
In the same Midrashic spirit and in keeping with Levinas's fre-
quent habit of adding one final remark in his Talmudic readings, I
would like to conclude with three brief questions that extend Levinas's
commentary on the Gibeonite episode beyond the relations between
the Jews and Germans and Germany, whether back in 1963 or in 2011,
to other contemporary contexts. How, first, can Levinas's reflections
on justice, responsibility, and forgiveness help us to, negotiate the
seemingly intractable conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, or
indeed between Israel and its surrounding neighbor Arab states?
Second, how would Levinas help us to think through the relations
between victims- and the family of victims- of terrorism and the per-
petrators-and the family of perpetrators- of terrorist acts, from the
World Trade Center in New York to the Chabad Center in Mumbai?
And third, can Levinas be mobilized in the contexts, for example,

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 268 Gary D. Mole

of the Truth and R

Africa or the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda or the

former Yugoslavia? No doubt carefully weighed answers to these q

tions would constitute a study apart, but if Levinas's philosophy i
continue to resonate in an increasingly complex world of violence
terrorism it needs to find ways to think through such questions an
help to provide some of the necessary ethical tools for confron
them.42

BAR-ILAN UNIVERSITY

NOTES

1. Emmanuel Levinas, "No Identity," in Collected Philosophical Papers,

trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh, 2006), p. 148.
2. Catherine Chalier, "The Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas and th
Hebraic Tradition," in Ethics as First Philosophy edited by Adriaan T
Peperzak (New York, 1995), p. 3.
3. The literature is extensive indeed, but see in particular: Catherin
Chalier, Judaïsme et altérité (Lagrasse, 1982); chapters by Catherine Chalie
Robert Gibbs, Merold Westphal, Theo de Boer, Jill Robbins, Adriaan T
Peperzak, David Tracy, John Llewelyn, and Hent de Vries in Ethics as First
Philosophy edited by Peperzak; Ira F. Stone, Reading Levinas/ Readin
Talmud (Philadelphia, 1998); chapters by Hilary Putnam and Catherin
Chalier in The Cambridge Companion to Levinas, ed. Simon Critchley a
Robert Bernasconi (Cambridge, 2002); Emmanuel Levinas: Philosophie e
judaïsme, ed. Danielle Cohen-Levinas and Shmuel Trigano (Paris, 2002
Samuel Moyn, "The Ethical Turn: Philosophy and Judaism in the Col
War," in Origins of the Other: Emmanuel Levinas Between Revelation a
Ethics (Ithaca, 2005), pp. 195-237; and chapters by Benjamin Gro
Paul Elbhar, Salomon Malka, Michael B. Smith, and Shmuel Wygoda,
Levinas à Jérusalem edited by Joëlle Hansel (Paris, 2007).
4. Jean-François Rey, Lévinas: Le Passeur de Justice (Paris, 1997), p. 17,
my translation.
5. For an excellent study of Levinas and literature, see Jill Robbin
Altered Reading: Levinas and Literature (Chicago, 1999).
6. Besides Jill Robbins's study, see for instance: Françoise
Armengaud, "Éthique et esthétique. De l'ombre à l'oblitération," in
Cahiers de ГНегпе. Emmanuel Levinas edited by Catherine Chalier and
Michel Abensour (Paris, 1991, Coll. Le Livre de Poche), pp. 605-19;
Sean Hand, "Shadowing Ethics. Levinas's View of Art and Aesthetics,"
in Facing the Other: The Ethics of Emmanuel Levinas edited by Sean Hand
(Richmond, 1996), pp. 63-89; Gerald L. Bruns, "The Concepts of Art and
Poetry in Emmanuel Levinas's Writings," in The Cambridge Companion to
Levinas, ed. Critchley and Bernasconi, pp. 206-33; David Gritz, Levinas
face au beau (Paris, 2004); Colin Davis "Levinas and the Phenomenology of

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Cruel Justice and Forgiveness in Levinas 269

Reading," Studia Phaenomenologica, No. 6 (2006)

Mole, "Misreading or Missed Reading? Levinas o
Recherches Lévinassiennes edited by Roger Burgg
Marie-Anne Lescourret, Jean-François Rey, and J
(Leuven, 2011).
7. Biblical quotations throughout this study are t
Edition of the Tanach (Torah, Prophets, Writings) e
Scherman (New York, 2000). "HaShem," literally m
the Hebrew term used to avoid pronouncing the s
outside strictly liturgical contexts.
8. Acronym of Rabbi David Kamchi, biblical com
pher, and grammarian, active in thirteenth-century F
9. Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki, French rabbi active in the eleventh cen-
tury, famous for his comprehensive commentaries of the Hebrew Bible
and the Talmud.
10. Joseph ben Shimon Kara, twelfth-century French biblical exegete.
11. King's law would have given him the right to supersede the judi-
cial process to put down a rebellion if he was convinced or had proof tha
it sought to depose or kill him, but in Saul's case there was no such
justification against the priests and certainly none whatsoever against
the Gibeonites.
12. Prominent rabbi, philosopher, and exegete, born in Egypt, active
in the land of Israel and Baghdad in the first half of the tenth century.
13. Objects placed inside the sacred breastplate worn by the High
Priest via which God's judgment on the guilty and the innocent was trans-
mitted to those allowed to consult them.
14. Although all Talmudic references have been verified in a standard
Hebrew/ Aramaic edition of the Talmud, I have given all English quota-
tions as in The Babylonian Talmud edited by Isidore Epstein, 34 volumes
(London, 1935-52).
15. J. Cheryl Exum, "Rizpah," Word and World: Theology for Christian
Ministry, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Summer 1997), p. 260.
16. See Ibid., pp. 262, 266, 267, 261, 267.
17. See Ibid., p. 264.
18. The reading was published in the proceedings La Conscience
juive face à Vhistoire: Le pardon (Paris, 1965), pp. 289-304, and again
as the first of Levinas's Quatre Lectures Talmudiques (Paris, 1968), pp. 29-
64; and see also Emmanuel Levinas, "Toward the Other," in Nine
Talmudic Readings, trans. Annette Aronowicz (Bloomington, 1990),
pp. 12-29.
19. Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings, p. 25; all subsequent page refer-
ences appear in parentheses in the body of my text. Levinas is referring of
course to Heidegger's involvement with the Nazi party from 1933 on-
wards, but also to Heidegger's post-war evasion of the subject of the
Shoah and the missed opportunities to ask for forgiveness for having
placed his philosophical discourse in the service of a racist, antisemitic
ideology.

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 270 Gary D. Mole

20. André Neher himself was not absent from the conference.
His paper in fact immediately followed Levinas's Talmudic reading, but
instead of a biblical commentary Neher offered a highly idiosyncratic
commentary on condemnation, reconciliation, forgiveness, the German
reparations launched in 1948, and the notion of the irreparable.
Interestingly, in the lengthy animated debate that followed the papers
by Levinas and Neher, not one word was mentioned of Levinas's recours
to the Gibeonite episode; see La Conscience juive face à l'histoire: Le pardon,
pp. 305-35.
21. The law is based on several passages from the To rah: Exodus 21:
22-25, Leviticus 24: 19-21, and Deuteronomy 19: 16-21.
22. The Torah is well aware of this natural desire and designates
"cities of refuge" to which the involuntary murderer (guilty of manslaugh-
ter) can flee to avoid the possibility of revenge by family members of the
victim; the issue is not raised here because the biblical narrative specifie
Saul's intention (and by exegetical inference, that of his sons) to have Nob
destroyed. For Levinas's reading of the cities of refuge, see Emmanue
Levinas, Beyond the Verse. Talmudic Readings and Lectures, trans. Gary D.
Mole. (New York, 2007), pp. 34-52.
23. Levinas mistakenly references 58b-59a, unfortunately reproduced
in Annette Aronowicz's English translation, p. 26.
24. See, for example, as one remark among many, "election is made
up not of privileges but of responsibilities," in Emmanuel Levinas, Difficult
Freedom. Essays on Judaism, trans. Sean Hand (Baltimore, 1990), p. 21.
25. See Levinas, Beyond the Verse, p. 18.
26. See В. С Hutchens, Levinas: A Guide for the Perplexed (New York,
2004), p. 107. 1 am indebted to Hutchens for a number of formulations here
27. See Levinas, Difficult Freedom, p. 147 which renders the original
French slightly differently: "For there is a drama which involves the hu
manizing of justice. [. . .] [Man] must also have justice without killing."
28. Levinas, Beyond the Verse, pp. 78-79.
29. See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. J. C. Meredith
(Oxford, 1964), p. 18.
30. See Hutchens, Levinas: A Guide for the Perplexed, p. 108.
31. See Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on
Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh, 2007), p. 78.
32. Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, trans.
Alphonso Lineds (Pittsburgh, 2006), p. 158.
33. See Martin Buber, Kampf um Israel: Reden und Schriften (1921-
1932) (Berlin, 1933), pp. 113-14, cited by Exum, "Rizpah," p. 267.
34. Michael de Saint Cheron, Conversations with Emmanuel Levinas,
1983-1994, trans. Gary D. Mole (Pittsburgh, 2010), p. 137.
35. See Saint Cheron, Conversations with Emmanuel Levinas, pp. 150-
61, and Simon Wiesenthal, The Sunflower, trans. H. A. Piehler (New York,
1976).
36. See Alan Montefìore, "Levinas and the Claims of Incommensurable
Values," Parallax, Vol. 8, No. 3 (2002), pp. 90-102.

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Cruel Justice and Forgiveness in Levinas 271

37. Montefiore, "Levinas and the Claims of Incommensurable

Values," p. 98.
38. See C. Oscar Jacob, "Interrupting Auschwitz, Josh Cohen,"
Janus Head: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Summer 2004),
pp. 226-29.
39. Laurence L. Edwards, " 'Extreme Attention to the Real': Levinas
and Religious Hermeneutics," Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish
Studies, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Summer 2008), pp. 47, 50.
40. See Marty Slaughter, "Levinas, Mercy and the Middle Ages," in
Levinas, Law, Politics, ed. Marinos Diamantides (London, 2007), pp. 49-70;
in keeping with the themes of the present study, see also in the same
volume Julia Ponzio's useful essay on forgiveness, "Politics not Left
to Itself: Recognition and Forgiveness in Levinas's Philosophy," and
Desmond Manderson's illuminating essay on responsibility, "Here I am:
Illuminating and Delimiting Responsibility."
41. Saint Cheron mentions Buber's unease in Conversations with
Emmanuel Levinas, p. 15. Levinas merely replies: "I think one need
read the text differently from how Buber reads it. Buber wants to be m
charitable than Samuel."
42. Joshua James Shaw gestures precisely in this direction in his
recent study Emmanuel Levinas on the Priority of Ethics: Putting Ethics First
(Amherst, 2008). Rebutting the idea that Levinas championed an imprac
tical expectation of human compassion, Shaw defends Levinas's sensitivit
to the vulnerable as an understandable consequence of his experience of
the Shoah and argues that Levinas is best read as a pragmatic thinker wh
carefully considered the practical expression of his ethics.

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