Numbers (31:17-18)

Neither of which is the equivalent of child sexual slavery or genocide...
Besides, my point is that a "benevolent deity" should not engage in evil that we condemn human beings for engaging in.

 

That would be the goal, yes.

Seeing that you don’t even believe in the God you’re so cross with, the better question would be: Why did the ancient Israelites hate the Edomites, whose ancestor Esau was said to be?

If I remember right, the OT tells us that the Edomites sided with Nebukadnezar II who conquered Judah and Israel and send the Jews into exile. It’s all the more surprising that Esau doesn’t get that bad a press in the OT, quite the contrary: in Genesis 32-33 you’ll find a touching scene of reconciliation between him and Israel’s ancestor Jacob, with Jacob being all conscious-stricken and Esau being the generous noble figure who forgives his brother and is delighted to see him again.

 

Gosh I could name you loads more of contradictions. I like to point them out to my evangelical brethren, who believe in verbal inspiration and biblical inerrancy etc. and like to turn the Bible into a science book or a coherent historical record, when indeed it’s not even a single book, but a library of various books written by various people from various ages. Contradictions are to be expected. That they get all exited about that and think they’re the first to notice is what makes a certain branch of atheists so funny.

 

Actually, had you actually read the conversation rather than leaping to hasty generalization, you would realize I was responding directly to someone who believes there are no contradictions... I provided a short list of examples, nothing more.

 

You were answering tiny little me. Obviously you misunderstood what I meant.

 

Leviticus 19:18: You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.

Proverbs 25:21: If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat;
if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.

Exodus 23:4-5:
If you meet your enemy’s ox or his donkey wandering away, you shall surely return it to him. If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying helpless under its load, you shall refrain from leaving it to him, you shall surely release it with him.

Exodus 23:9:
You shall not oppress a stranger, since you yourselves know the feelings of a stranger, for you also were strangers in the land of Egypt.

In Jesus time the OT was a matter of interpretation (it still is). That's what Jews had/have Rabbis for. Jesus interpretation as shown in the NT was for the most part in the tradition of Hillel the Elder, who famously said "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn." Compare that to Matthew 22:36-40:

36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[a] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

 

The general idea is that God is unchanging but we're not. God progressively reveals Himself within the limits of our horizon. And our horizon changed quite a bit since the times in which the OT was written. Behaviours and thoughts that made sense for people in the bronce ages may not be suitable for us in the 21th century.

 

The way Jacob, Issac, and Rebekah screwed over Esau he should have gutted all of them.

 

'Child sex slavery' are your words.In a wartime situation, they weren't going to kill the people that weren't demoralized yet or leave them out in the middle of nowhere,they were better off becoming a part of another society then being left to die.

Before the law,there were no restrictions so it is pointless to condemn a God that 'spoke to the people'.


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What’s poor old Isaac got to do with it? He wasn’t even in on Jacobs and Rebekahs scheme.

Anyway, first you complain about a lack of “love for the enemy” in the ancient Israelites family-sagas and now you complain that there’s too much of it? What is it?

 

I see. Once you slaughter the families of children, it is best to integrate them into your society than leave them to die... very merciful and benevolent, except for the whole part about having slaughtered their families in the first place...

 

Yes, I suppose it was better to integrate them rather than kill them or leave them for dead.

The Midianites were destroying God's people and had the Israelites never did anything about it,would ultimately result in the destruction of Israel as well as the destruction of the messianic line.

 

I guess this thread brings in the sense of humor of many!

You have to admit that when a reasonable person reads that "message from God," one can only shake his/her head and either laugh or cry hysterically!

 

You can believe that but it is not true.

 

Why not send a flood or plague on the midanites and just wipe em out? Problem solved. It has happened before according to the book. On a much grander scale.

 

When the old creep Isaac realized his mistake he refused to correct it. Esau should have cut his throat.

 

A much grander scale was not necessary, and if you remember the story of the flood,then you remember that God wasn't ever to flood the world again, signifying that promise with the rainbow.


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Where did I say world? Just the territory the midanites lived.
Or he plague?

The grander scale was just saying he handled situations like that before. So that would be peanuts to just wipe out the midanites by himself instead of the other methods of human on human cruelty.

PS - he still sends floods today and wipes out many. See Japan Tsunami. Or sends a hurricane and wipes out many. See Katrina.

 

If you check this verse out with a reference book or even Wiki, you find that the Hebrew patriarchs were living next door to these other people who were sexually promiscuous and irresistibly attractive to the young Jewish male who were bring home STD in such great plagues as to threaten the all the Jewish people.

They were also of course, seducing the next generation of Jews to stop being Jewish, i.e.; sexually super prudent like the Muslims of today.
In essence, this was a full blown Cultural War just as devastating as one with swords.
Jews were dying and so was Judaism.

The answer was War, in kind, one which was intended to fight the "germs" next door until the disease was totally gone.

This is pretty much the same way the Muslim "extremists" are thinking about what the West is doing through TV, Hollywood, Media in general, nakedness in the western woman, and the easy availability of free/cheap wide open sex in non-muslim nations.

If the fanatical deeply religious Muslims will blow themselves up for 72 virgins later, the preponderance of Muslim men will leave Islam very quickly for a quickee.

 

What difference does it make,death is death. The women and Children were spared, at least more than if he had wiped them all out.

Oh, but I DID say "world."


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God couldn't pick who to wipe out?
He can make animals walk or whatever they did across water to the ark and then make it rain for 40days/nites, surely he could just wipe out those he wanted wiped out. It couldn't be that hard.
I did say God could've used a plague and only infected those he wanted. Left the women and children alone. Like when he only chose to kill the 1st born.

 

Obviously he wanted them to be conquered by Israel.

 

Clearly, as I have stated before to both of you here, the OT describes the two kinds of human societies that man can and does form.
Scripture reports that these two different societies battle each other, much the same way that other animals will do, naturally, since that is the reality of how god made them.

Lone Male lions will attempt to kill the cubs of a lioness they have sized up for intercourse in order to get rid of the first lion's pride.
Its just the way things are, for example.

One type of human society is patriarchial, while the others, the Gentile societies are sexually promiscuous matriarchs by comparison.
We can divided the present world into two such camps, with Europe and America with the matriarchies by comparison with Islam, China, N. Korea, Japan, etc.

The history of civilization agrees with you, that apparently, God lets patriarchies to tear down and destroy the soft, weak, rich, feminized matriarchies, because they always have done so.

That Truth is why he sent his son to tell us this Truth, and have matriarchies somehow protect themselves now.

 

This claim illustrates why the God you assume is that one described by the Bible MUST be wrong.

The close comprehensive reading proves this not the God you think.
Apparently, God is just describing the thinking inside the head on the Hebrew patriarchs for us, telling us how these kind of men he made actually think.

They believe that sexual promiscuity threatens them and their families and their society, so they take the same action as would be appropriate to a plague of Ebola.

 

You fail to respond rationally here to the observation that God has a network of Natural Laws by which he accomplishes things like evolution, and the inherent extinctions which also occur.

Once you admit that this makes it necessary for mankind to advance his species by adapting to the ever unfolding Reality it is clear that harming his fellow man for selfish reasons adds to the weight of extinction.

Whether man holds other in sexual bondage or attacks with war, or gathers up all the resources and hoards them, whatever evil he might do, it set us backwards, as a species.