Give Me Children or I Shall Die: Children and Communal Survival in Biblical Literature

The Child and the Community at Risk

4 The Child and the Community at Risk The history of childhood is a nightmare from which we have only begun to Awaken. –—Lloyd DeMause Introduction In previous chapters, we have seen how offspring were essential for the survival of both the mišpaha (“family”) and the broader community of Israel in a very practical sense. The effect of the ancient association of children with livelihood that I have noted in texts regarding (in)fertility and education/enculturation is also evident in images of the loss of a child throughout biblical texts. The rhetoric of child loss would have frightened an ancient intended audience in ways that reflect ancient, rather than modern, constructions of childhood. The loss of a child aptly expresses the threat of extinction in biblical prophecy and poetry because of the dependence on offspring that led ancient Israelites to associate children with the biological and cultural reproduction necessary for familial and communal survival. As a result, biblical imagery depicting the loss of a child through rejection and premature death posed a threat to ancient audiences that they and their culture would not survive. Each birth carried the communal hope of a family and a people’s survival, and each premature death the threat that biological and cultural reproduction might cease with this generation. Without offspring, there would be no future for the children of Israel. 93 The Rhetoric of Childhood Anneke Meyer has argued that for contemporary English-speakers, childhood has become a kind of moral shorthand.1 She sees this as directly resulting from the sacralization of childhood, leading to public indignation at actions that challenge the solely emotional value of children, for which Viviana Zelizer has argued.2 In a series of focus-group interviews with British adults affiliated with Manchester University,3 Meyer points to her subjects’ rhetorical use of children and childhood so as to make assumedly indisputable arguments without the necessity of support. Meyer’s empirical research documents a trend in moralistic speech. Phrases such as “because they’re kids” have come to stand on their own as explanations for moral judgments, most particularly regarding the qualitative difference between crimes committed against adults and those perpetrated against children. One of Meyer’s research subjects explained the difference in this way: “that’s like people don’t like seeing murders and stuff on TV, we do, but obviously . . . when seeing kids go missing, obviously they think it’s worse.”4 The speaker does not see the need to describe any particular differences between the crimes or the victims other than to state that it is somehow worse when the victims are “kids” and that this distinction is (in his evaluation) “obvious.” Those adults in the focus group who did articulate differences used phrases such as “that’s wrong because their . . . their childhood innocence will be lost”;5 “Yeah, cause kids are innocent”; and the explanation that as a result of such a crime the victims are “not children anymore.” As a result of this evidence, as well as documentary and discourse analysis of legal documents and print media respectively, Meyer concludes, Several factors indicate that the perception of the special and moral status of the child is deeply entrenched, widespread and powerful: (1) children are used as a shorthand explanation; (2) such explanations are understood and not disputed by those listening; and (3) words such as obviously can be used. These aspects combined suggest that the perception has become so powerful and accepted as to seem natural. When a discourse becomes “natural” it becomes powerful: it 1. Anneke Meyer, “The Moral Rhetoric of Childhood,” Childhood 14,no. 85 (2007): 86–104. 2. Ibid., 96. 3. These adults included a preexisting parents’ group, several parents recruited from the college nursery and academic departments for the purpose of the study, and a class of college students. 4. Ibid., 99. 5. Ibid., 94. 94 | Give Me Children or I Shall Die gains the status of an irreversible, natural fact and obliterates its origin as a social idea. Children can become an explanation because of this natural fact status, and the concept of sacralization can be developed into the concept of childhood as a moral rhetoric.6 Meyer’s research highlights the influence that the cultural construction of childhood innocence has as a social idea, one evolving out of the sacralization of childhood at the turn of the century, as documented by Zelizer. The rhetorical...