"Rise and Kill Them First": Preemptive Vengeance in Judaism

One of the most fundamental concepts in the religion, morality, and overall way of life, of the J-ws is: vengeance.

The viciousness of this “Old Testament vengeance” (as it was put by a certain German leader in the 1930s), and the dedication to seeing through

But the fact is, they are reading the exact same stories, simply from a different (inverted) moral perspective - and then drawing different conclusions and moral principles out of them.

The most well-known place where this principle is embodied is in the Talmud, an encyclopedic collection of books that are essentially analyses and legal deductions based on the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) and the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible in its entirety.

It is very important to understand that it is the Talmud, NOT the Bible, that forms the core of Judaism as it exists today – and the Talmud is an extraordinarily wicked book.

Yes, it is true that in its over 6,000 pages, it bizarrely finds ways to rationalize having sex with children, the murder of gentiles, blood sacrifice, slavery, and much more that Christians would consider evil or even “demonic.”

When I was researching this topic intensely in 2022, I decided to go to the source itself - not internet posts or memes about the Talmud, but by reading the Talmud itself - and I found all of this in its pages personally. I was so mind-blown by this, and wanted to share it with others so much, that I wrote an entire college-quality course on it called “Talmudic Teachings” which you can order here if you’re interested.

But right now, lets stay focused on this “preemptive vengeance” concept, because being punished or even killed for something you haven’t even done yet can’t be comprehended from either the Christian perspective or the Western philosophical perspective - but it is very well understood by J-ws.

The phrase itself “rise and kill him first” comes from part of the Talmud called Sanhedrin, which essentially is a legal text, explaining extensive Jewish moral law. (Sanhedrin is the name of essentially the Jewish supreme religious court.)

In Sanhedrin 72a-b, we read

The fact that the Midianites haven’t actually done any violence yet is immaterial to their “God.” They plan to do it, so from the Jewish perspective they have already done it - and to get revenge on them for what they have not yet done is therefore proper and just.

But where this principle is most spectacularly illustrated is in the

Esther was a J-wish woman living in Babylon (which had been conquered and then taken over by Persia) when the Persian king, Achachverosh, became fed up with his wife and dismissed her - then went on the hunt for a new one.

His emissaries went around the kingdom recruiting the most beautiful women for essentially “wife auditions,” with the king finally choosing Esther to be his queen.

The king did not know she was a Jewess, as Mordechai (

Later, there was tension between one of the king’s advisors, Haman, and the aforementioned Mordechai, who was actually a high-ranking judge in the Sanhedrin.

The two powerful figures had mounting tension against each other for various reasons - but at some point, Haman decided that it was necessary to purge the empire of all the Jews, which had given the kingdom problems, including his rival Mordechai.

The King gave his permission, and a gallows was prepared for Mordechai’s execution, while an operation was plotted to violently round up and expel the Jews (or kill them.)

But behind the scenes, Mordechai maintained secret communication with Esther, and desperately told her to do something to convince the king to change this edict.

Here’s what Esther did: allegedly, she rose up at a royal party that night, announcing to the king and everyone present that she was Jewish herself, and wanted to be counted among her people - even though they were to be purged the next day.

The king was enraged by the whole spectacle. But he was obsessed with Esther and mesmerized by her beauty, so he sided with his wife, and sent Haman, his own advisor, to the gallows instead (the same one he had prepared for his own enemy!)But there was still the matter of the edict permitting the purging of all Jews. Based on Persian law, the king said he couldn’t change that, since a royal edict supposedly could not be repealed.

So instead, he compromised with Esther.

An estimated 75,000 Persians men, women and children perished. And the Persian king helped them do it.

Now this may not surprise you - but there’s no historical evidence that any of this ever even happened. More than likely, its just Jewish supremacy folklore they’ve been passing down orally to celebrate themselves for so many centuries, they now accept it as “their truth.”

But they believe it happened, so they commemorate it. And in Judaism, this act of “preemptive vengeance” and the slaughter of 75,000 men, women and children is not a somber remembrance in Judaism, but rather, a huge party called

It is a day of feasting, gift-giving, and drinking to celebrate the Jewish concept of “killing your enemies before they kill you.”

There are a couple other interesting things about the Book of Esther – it is the only book in the Hebrew Bible in which

And they use those tools gleefully on Christians, Arabs, and anyone else who stands in the way of their mission to be the supreme race in the world - and they believe it is completely “moral” to do so.

What do you guys think about the concept of “pre-emptive vengeance?” Is this why the IDF is so eager to kill children as part of its war operations?

Do you think this is behind the concept of “pre-crime” (like from the Minority Report) that is now being pursued with AI-powered predictive policing by the Trump administration?