John Milton on the Jews

John Milton - the seventeenth century blind English poet - is best known for his majestic poetic works such as 'Paradise Lost' and 'Paradise Found'. Much praise is heaped upon Milton and his works, but yet few when reading them notice that there is an anti-jewish strain in them that is easily detected when one knows what one is looking for.

This anti-jewish strain is in spite of the pious Christian ideas that underlie much of what he says and his use of jewish quasi-historical figures such as Samson.

We can see this exemplified in Milton's poetic renderings on the Psalms when he states:

'And Israel who I loved so dear,

Misliked me for his choice.

Then did I leave them to their will,

And to their wandering mind;

Their own conceits they followed still,

Their own devices blind.

O that my people would be wise to serve me all their days,

And O that Israel would advise,

To walk in my righteous ways.

Then would I soon bring down their foes,

That now so proudly rise,

And turn my hand against all those,

That are their enemies.

Who hate the Lord should then be fain,

To bow to him and bend,

But they, His people, should remain,

Their time should have no end.' (1)

Here Milton is using the history of the chequered relationship between Yahweh and the Israelites to enlarge upon the distance that separates the latter from their God. In other words Yahweh has chosen the Israelites - in addition to being merciful and forgiving when he didn't have to be - and they have been continually unfaithful to him.

This - as Milton tells us - is in spite of the fact that Yahweh would - if Israel could just obey some simple rules - bring the whole world under their dominion.

Despite this promise to them by their (supposedly) omnipresent and omnipotent god: the Israelites are simply incapable of keeping to his few dictates since they spend most of their time acting like prostitutes (which the Tanakh frequently uses as an allegory).

Expanding on this theme in 'Paradise Lost' Milton suggests that Israelites engaged in murderous rites (which probably involved human sacrifice) (2) as well as cultic orgies (3) and in so doing grew to hate that which was good in eyes of Yahweh:

'Peor his other Name, when he enticed,

Israel in Sittim on their march from Nile,

To do him wanton rites, which cost them woe,

Yet thence his lustful Orgies he enlarged,

Even to that Hill of scandal, by the Grove,

Of Moloch homicide, lust hard by hate' (4)

In addition to jewesses acting like proverbial bitches in heat when given a new cult to follow that meant they could engage in rampant sexual intercourse under the guise of religious ardour:

'Of Thammuz yearly wounded: the Love-tale

Infected Sions daughters with like heat,

Whose wanton passions in the sacred Porch,

Ezekiel saw, when by the Vision led,

His eye surveyed the dark Idolatries,

Of alienated Judah.' (5)

While the Israelites get horribly drunk and then insult anyone nearby as well as becoming rampant homosexuals (which is how the sin of Sodom was understood in Milton's day):

'Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine,

Witness the Streets of Sodom' (6)

This is then reinforced and directly linked with the Israelite worship of dark gods in Milton's 'Samson's Agonistes' when we are told:

'While their hearts were jocund and sublime,

Drunk with Idolatry, drunk with Wine,

And gorged of the fat of Bulls and Goats,

Chanting to their Idols' (7)

Related to this in Milton's view is the growing obsession with gold and material goods that is infecting the Israelites and causing them to worship wealth rather than wisdom so-to-speak:

'Mammon led them on,

Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell,

From heaven, for even in heaven his looks and thoughts,

Were always downward bent, admiring more,

The riches of Heaven's pavement, trodden in Gold,

Then aught divine or holy else enjoyed,

In vision beatific: by him first,

Men also, and by his also his suggestion taught,

Ransacked the Centre, and with impious hands,

Riffled the bowels of their mother Earth,

For Treasures better hid. Soon had his crew,

Opened into the Hill a spacious wound,

And dug out the ribs of Gold. Let none admire,

That riches grow in Hell.' (8)

This - in Milton's view - then leads on to Yahweh punishing the Israelites, because - as he states 0 they have forsaken him and he returns the favour:

'And works of love or enmity fulfil,

For those the Race of Israel oft forsook' (10)

Causing them to conquered and enslaved by the Babylonians:

'The clouded Ark of God till then in Tents,

Wandering shall in a glorious Temple enshrine.

Such follow him, as shall be registered,

Part good, part bad, of bad the number grows,

Whose foul Idolatries, and other faults,

Heapt to the popular sum, will so incense God,

As to leave them, and expose their Land,

Their City, his Temple, and his holy Ark

With all his sacred things, a scorn and prey

To that proud City, whose high Wall thou saw,

Left in confusion, Babylon thence called.' (11)

As well the conquest and slavery famously inflicted upon the Israelites by the Philistines:

'The Philistine, thy Countries Enemy,

Thou never wast remiss, I bear thee witness:

Yet Israel still serves with all his Sons.

That fault I take not on me, but transfer

On Israel's Governors, and Heads of Tribes,

Who seeing those great acts which God had done,

Singly by me against their Conquerors,

Acknowledged not, or not all considered,

Deliverance offered: I am on the other side,

Used no ambition to commend my deeds,

The deeds themselves, though mute, spoke loud of the doer;

But they persisted deaf, and would not seem,

To count them things worth notice' (12)

This forsaking of the Israelites by their god Yahweh leads Milton to assert by proxy that it was this jewish intransigence that lead to their crucifying Jesus and thus lead to the jews being forever a people devoid of Yahweh's love. Since they time and time ago betrayed Yahweh's trust and therefore are to be cursed forever by never having their old lands back, but rather are to stay scattered throughout the world as a Diaspora.

This then leads Milton to style the jews as being a shattered remnant of Israel whom are now merely obsessed with legalistic minutiae in relation to Yahweh (13) rather than what Milton might call the 'living religion' that was to him embodied in Christian religious and intellectual life.

Thus we can see that Milton - as well-known a poet as he might be - propounds the idea (much as Arnold Toynbee was to do three centuries later) that the jews are a failed people obsessed with nothing but legalistic navel-gazing after having been every opportunity by Yahweh to rule the world in his name.

References

(1) Milton, Ps. 81:11-15

(2) For more information see the following article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/reconstructing-the-first-jewish-ritual

(3) For more information see the following article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jews-and-sacred-prostitution-in-ancient

(4) Milton, Paradise Lost, 1:412-417

(5) Ibid., 452-456

(6) Ibid., 1:502-503

(7) Milton, Samson Agonistes, 1669-1672

(8) Milton, Paradise Lost, 1:679-691

(9) Ibid., 1:431-432

(10) Ibid., 12:333-343

(11) Milton, Samson Agonistes, 238-250

(12) To quote Milton in his 'Areopagitica': 'And ask a Talmudist what ails the modesty of his marginal Keri, that Moses and althe prophets cannot persuade him to pronounce the textual Chetiv.'