opportunity would have
come in vain.(P.VI, p. 23)
The Biblical character
of Jacob embodies the personal qualities of virtu. He is a younger brother,
an underdog who insists on getting to the top. After wrestling all night with
an angel, he is renamed Israel, meaning "you have striven with God and Man."
(Gen. 32:28) But fortune does not provide him with the occasion to realize
those qualities fully. Moses, on the other hand, is provided with the occasion
but he alternates between heeding and resisting the call. Temperamentally
a mixture of Jacob and his brother Esau, of the scrapper and the self-abnegating
servant, he resembles Aeneas, the founder of Rome, who reluctantly carries
out the will of the gods, torn between inclination and destiny.
Moses' strengths and weaknesses
in respect to virtu are displayed in his first action, recounted at the beginning
of Exodus:
One day when Moses was
grown up he went out to his own
kinsmen and saw them at
their heavy labour. He saw an
Egyptian strike one of
his fellow Hebrews. He looked this way
and that, and seeing there
was no one about, he struck the
Egyptian down and hid
his body in the sand.
When the occasion arises,
he has the strength, initiative and courage to defeat the enemies of his people.
But when he tries to govern them, they fail to recognize and value his virtue.
When he went out next
day, two Hebrews were fighting together.
He asked the man who was
in the wrong, "Why are you striking
him?" "Who set you up
as an officer and judge over us?" the
man replied. "Do you mean
to murder me as you murdered the
Egyptian?"(Exod. 2:11-14)
Rather than seizing
the opportunity, Moses becomes alarmed and flees to the land of Midian where
he takes up the pastoral vocation of shepherd.
For Machiavelli, a successful
leader must "...contrive that greatness, spiritedness, gravity and strength
are recognized in his actions," whereas it will make him "contemptible...to
be held variable, light, effeminate, pusillanimous, irresolute..."(P. XIX, p.
72) These are the negative qualities that make Moses repeatedly resist the call
to take charge:
"But who am I," Moses
said to God, "that I should go to Pharaoh
and that I should bring
the Israelites out of Egypt?"(Exod. 3:ll-
12)
"But they will never believe
me or listen to me; they will say
'The Lord did not appear
to you.'"(Exod. 4.1)
O Lord I have never been
a man of ready speech, never in my
life, not even now that
thou hast spoken to me.(Exod. 4.10)
The Lord said..:"Go now;
I will help your speech and tell you
what to say." But Moses
still protested, "No Lord send whom thou
wilt."(Exod. 4:13-14)
Like those he is meant
to lead, Moses lacks confidence, faith and persistence: "Why O Lord hast thou
brought misfortune on this people? And why didst thou ever send me? Since
I first went to Pharaoh to speak in thy name he has heaped misfortune on thy
people and thou hast done nothing at all to rescue them." (Exod. 5:22-3) When
they murmur and complain, so does he:
"Why hast thou brought
trouble on thy servant? How have I
displeased the lord that
I am burdened with the care of this
whole poeple? Am I their
mother?...They pester me with their
wailing...This whole people
is a burden too heavy for me; I
cannot carry it alone."(Num.11:10-15)
On these occasions,
he lacks the distinction that qualifies a man of virtu to rise to the top
and be in control.
The narrator of Numbers
admiringly describes Moses as "a man of great humility, the most humble man
on earth..."(12:3) But to Machiavelli, this is further evidence of the weakness
that has been falsely treasured by the Christian religion.
The old religion did not
beatify men unless they were replete
with worldly glory: army
commanders for instance, and rulers of
republics. Our religion
has glorified humble and contemplative
men, rather than men of
action. It has assigned as man's highest
good humility, abnegation
and contempt for mundane things,
whereas the other identifies
it with magnanimity, bodily
strength, and everything
else that tends to make men very
bold.(Dis II.2.6-7, p.
364)
To cultivate virtu and
to eradicate humility and the other traits that "make men contemptible" will
require instruction. This, I think, Machiavelli implies when he mentions that
"Moses...had so great a teacher."(P. VI, p.23)
God is a resourceful pedagogue.
He begins with confidence-building devices to counter Moses' diffidence. First
he provides the spectacle of a burning bush that is not consumed, then the promises
of liberation from bondage, the grant of a new homeland, the luxury of plundered
Egyptian jewelry and clothing. When Moses still resists, God shows him how to
make his rod into a snake and his hand into something leprous. Instead of being
impressed with the magic, Moses ignores God's directions for turning the Nile
to blood and tries to weasel out altogether with the excuse that he's a poor
speaker. Exasperated but still persistent, God reassures Moses that his brother
Aaron will do the talking for him and that he will never be left at a loss:
"I will help both of you to speak and tell you both what to do."(Exod. 4.15)
This guarantee elicits Moses' reluctant assent to take on the duties of leadership,
after which God strengthens his commitment with a bout of serious hazing. While
Moses is camped in the wilderness on his way back to Egypt, he is subject to
a sudden murderous attack which is only averted in the last minute by his wife's
quick thinking.(Exod. 4.24-26)
These lessons begin the
process of transforming Moses into a great leader, but he still requires renewals
and reminders from his teacher throughout the wilderness journey. By its end,
he has become the mighty and eloquent hero of Deuteronomy, but in God's eyes
he never lives down his earlier failures and is therefore not allowed to enter
the promised land himself.
If the concept of virtu
can help make sense of Moses' character development, Machiavelli's analysis
of the difficulties and methods of establishing political power illuminates
one of the Pentateuch's general themes, its "teachings." At the same time that
they instruct Moses, God's lessons are amplified and transmitted to several
other audiences, including Pharaoh, the Egyptians, and the Israelite populace
in 1250 B.C.E. They also are directed to later generations of friendly and hostile
nations and to the descendants of his chosen people, the Israelites, down to
the present-day reader. These distinct audiences of learners are specified in
the text through a mirrored hierarchy of speakers and listeners:
"I have made you like
a god for pharaoh, with your brother
Aaron as your spokesman.
You must tell your brother Aaron all
I bid you say and he will
tell Pharaoh..."(Exod. 7:1-2)
"I have made Pharaoh and
his courtiers obdurate so that I may
show these my signs among
them, and so that you can tell your
children and grandchildren
the story: how I made sport of the
Egyptians and what signs
I showed among them."(Exod.1 0:1-2)
The story thus broadcast
by the voice of the Torah is one of exemplary achievement in the face of almost
insurmountable odds, the triumph of virtu over adversity.
The obstacles are carefully
mapped in a dense passage by Machiavelli:
nothing is more difficult
to handle, more doubtful of success, nor
more dangerous to manage
than to put oneself at the head of
introducing new orders.
For as the introducer has all those who
benefit from the old orders
as enemies, and he has lukewarm
defenders in all those
who might benefit from the new
orders. This lukewarmness
arises partly from fear of
adversaries who have the
laws on their side and partly from the
incredulity of
men, who do not truly believe in new
things unless they come
to have a firm experience of them. (P.
VI, p. 23-4, italics mine)
The difficulties in
founding a new state fall into two categories: defeating one's enemies and
maintaining the support of one's adherents. But there is one solution that
applies to both, that is, producing belief. In enemies, such belief
is credibility, in followers it is faith.
The first method for production
of belief is intimidation. In dealing with enemies, one must make credible threats
to weaken their morale so they and future enemies will be discouraged from putting
up a fight. After each of the ten plagues that God sends, Pharaoh relents. As
soon as it is lifted, the credibility of the threat wanes and Pharaoh returns
to obduracy. On one hand this justifies the use of increasingly harsh measures
against him. On the other, the narrative emphasizes that Pharaoh reneges only
because God hardens his heart. The lesson is that to enhance one's credibility
by piling on punishments is more important than to be fair to one's enemies.
The same principle of
producing belief applies to the Amorites in the war of conquest:
"I have put Sihn the
Amorite, King of Heshbon, and his territory
into your hands. Begin
to occupy it and provoke him to battle.
Today I will begin to
put the fear and dread of you upon all the
peoples under heaven;
if they so much as hear a rumour of you,
they will quake and tremble
before you."(Deut. 2:24-26)
Such brutalizing of
one's opponents also overcomes the difficulty of "lukewarmness" in one's followers.
It tends to neutralize their fear of the enemy and heighten their confidence
in their own cause. This method is applied by allowing the Israelites to closely
observe the sufferings of the Egyptians while feeling protected themselves:
"All Egypt will send up
a great cry of anguish, a cry the like of
which has never been heard
before, nor ever will be again. But
among all Israel not a
dog's tongue shall be so much as scratched,
no man or beast be hurt.
Thus you shall know that the Lord
does make a distinction
between Egypt and Israel."(Exod. 11: 6-8)
The result is that a
population of former slaves "marched out defiantly in full view of all the
Egyptians, while the Egyptians were burying all the first-born struck down
by the Lord as a judgement on their gods."(Num. 33:3-4)
But followers tend to
lose faith and return to fear. Even after the ten plagues, Pharoah's chasing
chariots erode belief: "In their terror...they said to Moses, '...We would rather
be slaves to the Egyptians than die here in the wilderness.'"(Exod. 14:10- 13)
Fear distorts their perception of Canaanite enemies. The spies sent by Moses
on their first approach to the promised land lose heart and provide discouraging
false reports: "The country we explored...will swallow up any who go to live
in it. All the people we saw are men of gigantic size...we felt no bigger than
grasshoppers." (Num. 13:32-33) Thus, Machiavelli observes, in addition to neutralizing
fear of enemies, the leader of a new state must overcome old habits of belief
which persist because of mental inertia--the natural tendency to backslide.
"Lukewarmness arises ...partly from the incredulity of men, who do not truly
believe in new things unless they come to have a firm experience of them."
One form of backsliding
caused by lack of belief is complaint or "murmuring":
"If only we had died at
the Lord's hand in Egypt, where we sat
round the fleshpots and
had plenty of bread to eat. But you
have brought us out to
this wilderness to let this whole assembly
starve to death."(Exod.
16:2-4)
"Will no one give us meat?
Think of it! In Egypt we had fish for
the asking, cucumbers
and water-melons, leeks and onions and
garlic."(Num. 11: 5)
Lack of belief also
issues in the backslide of counterrevolution. Because they have no firm experience
of the new order, the Israelites revert to Egyptian idol worship of a golden
calf while Moses is absent on Sinai for forty days writing down their new
laws. Not long afterwards, Miriam and Aaron question Moses' authority to lead:
"Is Moses the only one with whom the Lord has spoken? Has he not spoken with
us as well?" Then Korah, Dathan, Abiram along with with 250 men of rank directly
challenge him:
They confronted Moses
and Aaron and said to them, "You take
too much upon yourselves.
Every member of the community is
holy and the Lord is among
them all. Why do you set yourselves
up above the assembly
of the Lord?"(Num. 16:3)
To counteract these failures
of faith under new circumstances, says Machiavelli, intimidation also must be
used to make followers "believe by force":
The nature of peoples
is variable; and it is easy to persuade them
of something, but difficult
to keep them in that persuasion. And
thus things must be ordered
in such a mode that when they no
longer believe, one can
make them believe by force. Moses,
Cyrus, Theseus and Romulus
would not have been able to make
their peoples observe
their constitutions for long if they had
been unarmed...(P.VI,
p.24)
Machiavelli here alludes
to the punishments attendant upon the lapses into unbelief reported in the
Bible. In response to their complaints about the food, God sends so many quail
that people are buried in them and as soon as they start eating they're struck
with a deadly plague.(Num. 11:34) The rebels fare even worse. Following God's
command, Moses deputizes the Levites and says "'Arm yourselves each of you,
with his sword. Go through the camp from gate to gate and back again. Each
of you kill his brother, his friend, his neighbour.' The Levites obeyed and
about three thousand of the people died that day."(Exod. 32: 27-28) Miriam
is afflicted with leprosy, and Korah, Dathan and Abithan are swallowed by
a gulf in the earth while a fire burns up the remaining 250. People are upset
by their deaths so God starts another plague which kills 14,700 of them before
Aaron makes expiation and it stops.(Num. 16) Such incidents tend to force
belief not only in the Israelites but also in the reader.
Both the content and the
lurid style of these reports suggest that forcing belief ultimately requires
not only strength but cruelty. Machiavelli declares:
A prince...so as to keep
his subjects united and faithful, should
not care about the infamy
of cruelty, because with very few
examples he will be more
merciful than those who for the sake
of too much mercy allow
disorders to continue...And of all
princes, it is impossible
for the new prince to escape a name for
cruelty because new states
are full of dangers...(P. XVII, p. 65-66)
In addition to the rationale
that cruelty is ultimately merciful to the people, Machiavelli volunteers
the judgement that the populace is essentially degenerate, both requiring
and meriting rough treatment by their leaders:
It is much safer to be
feared than loved...For one can say this
generally of men: that
they are ungrateful, fickle, pretenders and
dissemblers, evaders of
danger, eager for gain... (P. XVII, p.66)
Such an assessment accords
with the characterization of the Israelites in Numbers 11:4 as "rabble."10
By this point it should
come as no surprise that Machiavelli substantiates his least palatable moral
claims with the sanctified example of Moses. It is his actions that validate
the maxim that the end justifies the means.
He who reads the Bible
with discernment will see that, before
Moses set about making
laws and institutions, he had to kill a
very great number of men
who...were opposed to his plans.(D.
III.30.4, p. 547)
Reprehensible actions
may be justified by their effects...when the
effect is good, ...it
always justifies the action...I might adduce in
support of what I have
just said numberless examples, e.g.
Moses, Lycurgus, Solon,
and other founders of kingdoms and
republics... (D. I.9.2-5,
p.235)
Though Machiavelli must
have taken some iconoclastic satisfaction in using a traditional paragon of
virtue as his own paragon of virtu, any disinterested reader of the Bible
could hardly find this displacement to be a distortion of the original text.
Thus far, I have outlined
what I see as Machiavelli's submerged reading of plot, characterization and
theme in the Pentateuch. Insofar as he regards human political power rather
than divine power as its animating force, Machiavelli disregards the Bible's
manifest theological content. This is not to say, however, that he discounts
the significance of religion. In fact, he insists it is essential in the governance
of the state: "The rulers of a republic or a kingdom...should uphold the basic
principles of the religion which sustains them in being, and, if this is done,
it will be easy for them to keep their commonwealth religious, and, in consequence,
good and united."(D. I.12.3, p. 244) Though out of prudence, he never applies
this analysis directly to the Scriptures, it can be easily inferred.
Machiavelli observes that
"There is nothing more necessary to a community, whether it be a religious establishment
a kingdom or a republic than to restore to it the prestige it had at the outset."(D.III.1.10,
p. 463) A state religion furnishes citizens with an enhanced sense of identity
derived from the Deity at its divinely assisted foundation. God's selection
of Israel as recipient of his blessing is a tenet that Moses continually reemphasizes
as a source of national distinction and pride:
I have taught you statutes
and laws, as the Lord my God
commanded me; these you
must duly keep when you enter the
land and occupy it. You
must observe them carefully, and
thereby you will display
your wisdom and understanding to
other peoples. When they
hear about these statutes, they will
say, "What a wise and
understanding people this great nation
is!"(Deut. 4:5-8)
The association of prestige
with a restoration of origins here is crucial. Moses' last book, Deuteronomy,
may itself be an artifact of such restoration. According to the Book of Kings,
it was unearthed during a renovation of the Temple at the time of the reformation
instituted by King Josiah in the seventh century B.C.E. after having been
lost for hundreds of years.
The high priest Hilkiah
told Shaphan the adjutant-general that
he had found the book
of the law in the house of the Lord...When
the king heard what was
in the book of the law..."Great is the
wrath of the Lord," he
said "that has been kindl ed against us,
because our forefathers
did not obey the commands in this book
and do all that is laid
upon us."(2 Kings 22:8-13)
Machiavelli says that
restorations like this are the only way that established institutions can
gain the vigor of newly founded states. Without that vigor, they tend naturally
to decay:
The life of all mundane
things is of finite duration...Without
renovation...composite
bodies such as states and religious
institutions...do not
last. ...at the start religious institutions,
republics and kingdoms
have in all cases some good in them, to
which their early reputation
and progress is due. But since in
the process of time this
goodness is corrupted, such a body must
of necessity die unless
something happens which brings it up to
the mark....men who live
together under any constitution should
frequently have their
attention called to it ..." (D.III.1.1-2, p.459-
61)
Moses also warns against
the dangers of such entropic tendencies:
"When you have plenty
to eat and live in a fine house of your
own building, when your
herds and flocks increase and your
silver and gold and all
your possessions increase too, do not
become proud and forget
the Lord your god who brought yo u out
of Egypt, out of the land
of slavery"(Deut 8:11-17)
He therefore institutes
a permanent and continuous rehearsal of the Pentateuch story for future generations:
"But take good care: be
on the watch not to forget the things that
you have seen with your
own eyes, and do not let them pass
from your minds as long
as you live, but teach them to your sons
and to your sons' sons.
You must never forget that day."(Deut.
4:9)
The originating event
is to be relived not only once a year in the Passover Seder, but is to be
recalled by hourly reminders.
"These commandments which
I give you this day are to be kept
in your heart; you shall
repeat them to your sons, and speak of
them indoors and out of
doors, when you lie down and when you
rise. Bind them as a sign
on the hand and wear them as a
phylactery on the forehead;
write them up on the door-posts of
your houses and on your
gates."(Deut 6:4-9)
Although it is likely
that many passages like this stipulating future memorial practise were postdated
into the earlier texts, their provisions have nevertheless fulfilled Moses'
purpose. In Jewish liturgy this instruction to repeat is itself still repeated
several times a day.
In addition to buttressing
and reviving community identity through its historical narratives, religion
is an essential instrument for producing the belief that sustains identification
and loyalty. At one, (though only one) of several strata of meaning, every word
in both Hebrew and Christian Bibles is there to generate faith. Parables, poems,
prayers, preachings, prophecies and prohibitions all provide teaching tools
to strengthen the reader's allegiance to the authority of God. Insofar as political
leaders succeed in aligning themselves with that authority, they attain immense
power over their own subjects.
Religion is effective
in generating belief because it can intimidate the populace with words rather
than requiring physical force.
It was religion that facilitated
whatever enterprise the senate
and the great men of Rome
designed to undertake...its citizens
were more afraid of breaking
an oath than of breaking the law,
since they held in higher
esteem the power of God than the
power of man.(D.I.11.2-5,
p.240-242)
Thus Moses warns the
children of Israel that if they do not fulfill their oaths and "'obey the
Lord your God by keeping the commandments and statutes which he gave...'"
"Then you will eat your
own children, the flesh of your sons and
daughters...because of
the dire straights to which you have been
reduced...The pampered,
delicate man will not share with his
brother, or the wife of
his bosom, or his own remaining children
any of the meat which
he is eating, the flesh of his own
children....The pampered
delicate woman...will not
share with her own husband
or her son or her daughter the
afterbirth which she expels,
or any boy or girl that she may
bear."(Deut 28: 52-57)
Since threats made in
God's voice are uttered by an invisible presence, they require no enforcement
mechanism to retain their credibility. And since they can be ritually repeated,
they are magnified by tradition and internalized by the listener.
Another method for producing
belief is deception. In regard to this technique Machiavelli says
The princes who have done
great things are those who have
taken little account of
faith and have known how to get around
men's brains with their
astuteness...it is necessary to know well
how to...be a great pretender
and dissembler (P. XVI II, p.69-70)
There is no more fertile
ground for sowing such deception than religion. The wiser leaders are, the
more sceptical they will be about religion, and also the more likely to promote
it among their subjects:
They should foster and
encourage [religion] even though they be
convinced that it is quite
fallacious. And the more should they
do this the greater their
prudence and the more they know of
natural laws.(D. I.12.3,
p. 244)
Numa, the founder of
Rome's religion and its lawgiver, invented the divine source.
...Numa ...pretended to
have private conferences with a nymph
who advised him about
the advice he should give to the people.
This was because he wanted
to introduce new institutions to
which the city was unaccustomed,
and doubted whether his own
authority would suffice.(D.
I.11.3, p.241)
Other successful founders
have devised miracles and then lent them the credence of their own authority.
Such miracles are confirmed by later leaders whose wisdom resides both in
the knowledge that the miracles are false and in their pretense of accepting
them as true:
It was owing to wise men
having taken note of this that belief in
miracles arose and that
miracles are held in high esteem even by
religions that are false;
for to whatever they owed their origin,
sensible men made much
of them and their authority caused
everybody to believe in
them. (D.I.12.3, p. 244)
Prophecies and auguries
are particularly valuable religious activities because they lend themselves
so easily to manipulation by the agents of the state:
When reason told [the
priests] that a thing had to be done, they
did it anyhow, even should
the auspices be adverse. But so
adroit were they in words
and actions at giving things a twist
that they did not appear
to have done anything disparaging to
religion.(D. I.14.2, p.249)
The very idea of God
may be the founder's necessary political fiction:
Hence wise men, in order
to escape this difficulty [of resistance
to new laws], have recourse
to God. So Lycurgus did; so did
Solon, and so have many
others done who have had the same
end in view. Marvelling,
therefore, at Numa's goodness and
prudence, the Roman people
accepted all his decisions. (D. I.11.4,
p.241-2)
Moses is not named here
in the company of founders with whom he often appears in Machiavelli's discussions.
But he may be present in disguise as one of the "many others."
Ironically, for Machiavelli,
religious deceptions are required because most people are not rational enough
to accept the real truths which such deceptions support:
Nor in fact was there
ever a legislator, who in introducing
extraordinary laws to
a people, did not have recourse to God, for
otherwise they would not
have been accepted, since many
benefits of which a prudent
man is aware, are not so evident to
reason that he can convince
others of them.
Machiavelli's point
about truth hidden in the lies of state religion hints at the difficulty of
determining where he stands on theological questions.11
He clearly rejects the Christianity of his own day as a false "interpretation,"
one that promotes the negative values of "l'ozio" [better translated as leisure,
inactivity and laziness than "laissez faire"]:
But, though it looks as
if the world were to become effeminate
and as if heaven were
powerless, this undoubtedly is due rather
to the pusillanimity of
those who have interpreted our religion in
terms of laissez faire,
not in terms of valour.
If such human interpreters
had a more activist and political concept of religion, then Christianity could
have more positive effects and hence be more worthy of belief:
For, had they borne in
mind that religion permits us to exalt and
defend the father land,
they would have seen that it also wishes
us to love and honour
it, and to train ourselves to be such that
we may defend it. (Dis.
II.2.6-7, p.364)
Machiavelli's own occasional
"God-Talk" thus can be read either as deliberate rhetorical pretense or as
reference to what he actually intuits as the ultimate driving energy of the
universe. In The Prince, he speculates about the goddess Fortuna, who
represents the outcome of random and predictable conditions within which people
exert their freedom. This goddess, though finally uncanny and uncontrollable,
nevertheless acts as if she can be anticipated, contained, satisfied and even
seduced by human beings with virtu.
...fortune...shows her
power where virtue has not been put in
order to resist her...
fortune is a woman; and it is necessary if
one wants to hold her
down, to beat her and strike her
down...and one sees that
she lets herself be won more by the
impetuous than by those
who proceed coldly.(P. XXV, pp. 98-101)