Chapter 9 begins Part IV of the book, which analyses violence as a problem of impurity. This chapter focuses on what the grammar of impurity enabled biblical writers to say about the affront of violence. It draws on the ritual insights of Catherine Bell (via William Gilders), the metaphor theory insights of Joseph Lam, and the cognitive research of Thomas Kazen and Richard Beck. Psalm 106 describes the impure consequences of ‘mixing’ with the nations that Israel failed to expel from the land. Practices like child sacrifice polluted the land and people, and led to exile. Bloodshed, in this poetic retelling, disintegrated the sacred order that bound together Yhwh, the people, and the land. Isaiah 1 insists that entrance into Yhwh’s presence demanded social as well as ritual purity, and even suggests social means of ‘purifying’ from bloodshed. Lamentations 4 attributes exile to the bloodshed in the ‘midst’ of Jerusalem, and describes the people as those defiled among the nations. For Ezekiel, bloodshed was an affront to Yhwh’s name and sanctity in the land. Finally, according to Numbers 35, blood from homicides polluted the land. As such, it was a threat to the ongoing presence of Yhwh in the land.

Chapter 6 examines the outcry of the victim of violence. Understanding the formal or informal legal framework and ancient legal discourse around violence also helps us grasp with greater specificity the preoccupation among biblical writers with the ‘outcry’ of violence, the ‘violent witness’, and the receptivity of the responsible party (often Yhwh). These concerns each operate differently, but together highlight a central and driving concern with voicing – or revoicing – the otherwise unnoticed evil of violence, and setting it within a framework of appeal (usually prayer) to one with the capacity or responsibility to intervene and restore order. The preoccupation with verbal appeal via distress signals like the outcry highlight the fact that ancient Israel was not a legislative society. In other words, individuals did not, in the first place, appeal to laws for justice. While the Hebrew Bible does preserve legal codes, they were hardly ever the basis for judicial rulings. Instead, individuals had recourse to individuals who embody legal custom, and who, by community standards, act justly insofar as they fulfil their expected roles. This relational nature of justice meant that cries for justice to a judge or avenger were both morally driven and, to be effective, needed to be rhetorically persuasive.

Chapter 1 examines the drama of Abel’s blood returning to the ground and crying out on behalf of the slain victim ‘from the ground’. Genesis 4 indicates that bloodshed harms the relationship between Cain and the ground, such that the ground refused to yield its produce. Cain then had to leave the land and God’s presence. I examine the portrayal of shed blood ‘crying out’ from the land, a phrase that suggests an appeal for judicial vengeance. That vengeance is never meted out, leaving the cry of the land in an unaddressed state. The image of blood on the ground may suggest blood pollution, which likely remained unresolved in Genesis 4. The pattern of injustice > outcry > the land’s refusal to yield produce finds striking resemblance to several other texts in the Hebrew Bible.

Chapter 7 analyses legal portrayals of the problem of violence, using the Deuteronomic Code as a case study. Deuteronomy focuses on ‘bloodshed’ (using דם) and its legal and communal consequences. Violence threatens relationships between households in Israel, hence its emphasis on males. But it also creates a problem for the community and its relationship to the land. Deuteronomy communicates that the problem of blood ‘in your midst’ (בקרבך) needs to be ‘expelled’ through judicial processes. The land is always a third party to violent crimes in Deuteronomy. Laws pertaining to refuge cities (Deut 19:1-13), the ‘violent witness’ (19:15-21), unknown perpetrators (Deut 21:1-9), the hanging corpse (21:22-23), and sexual violence (Deut 22:25-27) each reflect a concern to expel violence from the whole community of Israel, and in so doing, from the land. Violence, and the outcry it elicited, signalled the breakdown in the relationships constitutive of a just society, and demanded legal resolution. This is why, at times, the term חמס stands in for a range of potential judicial infractions.