Comments on Otagosh: Rocks in the Chebar

Hi Charlie. Numbers 31:1-18 is one of the those pa...

2008-03-27T16:49:00.000+13:00

Hi Charlie. Numbers 31:1-18 is one of the those passages difficult to explain. For a Bible believer, the difficulty is not that the Midianites were regarded as implacable foes, nor that God asserted the right to take vengeance (verses 1,2). The difficulty lies in the manner of the retribution - the hand-to-hand slaying of the individual Midianties, including women and male babies. All it raises is a litany of questions:

Do we think of the Israelites as heartless? Yet is that likely? - they were husbands, fathers, brothers themselves. Would they have suffered post-traumatic stress at having to do such terrible slaughter? There is no indication of that, yet we understand today that normal human empathy would result in a measure of it, at least for some of them. But were they sustained instead by a national pride that cancelled out such niceties? Did God require them to finish something they had themselves started by allowing themselves to be morally and spiritually corrupted by the Midianites in the first place??? If so, is this a lesson of consequences of actions, with knobs on? Finally, do we find it easier to explain and justify to our children the bombing of, say, Dresden in WWII, than the Midianite slaughter and if so, why? Is it part of western rationalisation that bombing from a distance and not witnessing the deaths personally is "better"? Is there a point at which knowing you are in the right (often a subjective view, of course) cancels out all other considerations? Whatever the answers, the Bible believer must conclude that, in the end, God gave them no other choice.

I understand the Midianites were descended from Abraham, too, through Keturah. Sheesh, families!;-)

A slightly cynical, quizzical raised eyebrow here regarding the "rape law" - wouldn't such a law in fact be a deterrent? We recoil at the prospect of a rapist having to support his victim for the rest of her natural life - but then we have vast reservoirs of public money to spend on locking them up, don't we? before releasing them to reoffend.

Just another vexed thought to throw at the vastly different culture we are considering here.

Kiwi; as Dennis pointed out a little while ago:Num...

2008-03-27T02:32:00.000+13:00

Kiwi; as Dennis pointed out a little while ago:

Numbers 31:1-18

Perhaps you have a point about western thinking, however, modern thinking aside I can't imagine that women or young girls in ancient times, would be all that thrilled about being taken by an Israelite soldier after having her father, mother, and brothers all slaughtered...But I could be wrong.

&

Deuteronomy 22:28-29

Rape was apparently enough of a problem that Moses enacted laws that forced a woman to be permanantly married to the cretin who raped her. Nothing like a lifetime of perpetuated violence...I find it difficult to believe that either of the above were sanctioned by God and were more likely the pronouncements of a man regarding the spoils of war and the response to the complaints of the fathers of raped virgins who saw them as damaged goods and would be tough to marry off.

Just an opinion.

--> Charlie Kieran

Statements such as “dashing infants against rocks”...

2008-03-26T09:51:00.000+13:00

Statements such as “dashing infants against rocks” can be understood in the light of Hebraisms and poetic hyperbole. However, apart from that, the Bible is replete with straightforward historical narratives of executions, etc, sanctioned as part of God’s judgement against sin and sinners. The criterion was always whether an action was sanctioned by God or not; those not sanctioned by God resulted in punishments on the Israelites instead. To that end, because the Gibeonites were cunning enough to deceitfully arrange a binding covenant that protected them, it became an offense to kill them, whereas without the covenant their execution would have been acceptable.

There’s no doubt the God of the Bible does not share our modern perceptions of “human rights”. If the assumption is made that our modern perceptions are automatically the correct ones, people will no doubt attempt to reinvent these historical narratives through symbolic lenses and thus present them as being more palatable. An acceptance of God as supreme Judge, and as the Creator who has a supreme right to reign over His creation, does not sit easily with modern western thinking. As in many other respects, western thinking regarding these matters is at odds with the thinking of the Bible. Trying to marry the two is tantamount to bashing a square peg into a round hole.

The comment was made regarding rape: no, rape was never sanctioned by God for the Israelite troops going into battle. In fact, even an “emission” during the night made a soldier “unclean” until the following evening (Deut 23:9-11). Setting a captured woman apart for future marriage was acceptable, though, as was, in certain instances, the keeping of women and children for servitude.

We never found the key to explaining any of these things to our children as they were growing up in a way which did not upset them greatly (such was the focus on O.T. by the former WCG). Examining these things through the lenses of Jewish history can on occasion be helpful, but I agree, it is not an easy subject for a modern westerner.

One thing that has troubled me a great deal even a...

2008-03-26T05:35:00.000+13:00

One thing that has troubled me a great deal even as a child growing up in the WCG was not only the amount of violence in the Old Testament but who it was inflicted on.

It seemed no one enjoyed genocide, rape, pillage, and forced marriage more than Samuel although Joshua seemed to get in on the act quite a bit. Fast forward through the next few thousand years and it looks like most major religions had a go at it as well. It should hardly stand to wonder that reasonable people call the doctrines and stories of the bible into doubt.