Jack the Bodiless

The first of those references refers to the importance of celibacy in the ritual of "holy bread", the second is merely Uriah wishing to show solidarity with the soldiers in the encamped army:
It's quite obvious that the context here is that the commanders don't want the soldiers to break camp and go home. Not a deliberate attempt to enforce celibacy for religious reasons.

Numbers 31:17-18 more specifically addresses the attitude of Israelite armies towards captured women:

DrJim

YHWHTruth says:
But certainly not all!

Surely casting the city as a 'daughter' implies youth. then speaking of her own children as victims implies another "childlike" image. From context, it seems as if the text is emphasizing that vengeance will be extended to citizens of a young age.

The word "BT" (your "bath") is actually a root BNT (note the plural BNWT), whose regular meaning is "daughter". It is only used of "towns" etc. in the sense of the outlying villages of a named city, and such like. It is quite rare. It is pretty forced, in my opinion, to use it as an escape clause from the full impact of the Psalmists (et. al.) craving for vengeance.

There is another word, BYT, which means "house" or "town", e.g., Bethlehem (house of bread). Most likely the similarity betweent the two words help develop the image of a town as a young woman. Clearly, the personification of a town as a woman and violence done to the children of the woman is speaking of violence done to all the inhabitants.
It is (metaphorically speaking) doing violence to the text to sanitize the imagery, and rule out allowing the images their full effect. Contextually it is unjustified, and in view of the extreme liklihood that innocent children would be raped and slaughtered in a real war (still happens...) then the full effect of the gruesome metaphor in the Psalms and elsewhere should be felt.
If the writers of these biblical texts was concerned to show that God was not intending harm to children, then they made some pretty stupid decisions as to the chosen wording.

If they didn't mean it to be read that way, why write it? To let them off on a such a rationalized "technicality" is not so much interpreting the text as it is rewriting it.


JRL.

{fix quote tag - Toto}

Doctor X

Hmmmm. . .

yet. . . .

and that whole thing with wholesale slaughter of women, children, and infants.

Methinks perhaps he should love them less?

--J.D.

YHWHtruth

Dr Jim,

I'm not trying to be obtuse or give you a hard time, but I still don't understand your point? So daughter implies "youth?"

DrJim

I don't mean dauther = "youth" as in another term for a teenager, or is synonymous with "young age". Rather, in poetic metaphors it evokes images of young age: for 'daughter' to make sense, there is the image of a 'parent'...
That the offspring of a 'daughter' will be destroyed reinforces the sense that violence will extend to the young, and that is the heart of my disagreement with your point. As I understood it, you meant to construe the verse as saying that mostly adults would be killed.


I think in context the image that the children of the daughter of a place suffering a gruesome fate on the one hand does exactly what you say it does, speaks about violence to the city as a whole. ON the other hand, the use of 2 words that evoke images of "young9er) age", "daughter" and 'child' should be read as implying the violence done to the inhabitants will extend to the very young, that is all.

In poetry, I think details like this is very important to context.

JRL

YHWHtruth

Dr. Jim,

Do you have any examples in the OT, where this idiom of expression in verse 8 denotes a literal daughter evoking an image of young age? I say this because, if I cannot show examples supporting my suggestion, it is tantamount to special pleading.

DrJim

YHWHTruth:
You first.

The construction in Psa 137:8-9 contains at least one metaphor.
In fact, you are finding TWO metaphors, and this may not be fully justified, but I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt. You say,

So, BOTH "daughter" and "Children" in these verses are symbols of something else: the dauther is the whole city and the "children" are the people as a whole.

Now, since children are included in the population, if only as a minority group, why do you try to minimize the psalmist's desired violence against them?

My point is that if there is this double metaphorization, the Psalmist wants the reader to know he is craving violence so bad, he personifies the whole city as a "daughter" and wishes murder the population construed as her "children". If he wanted to protect himself against accusations of blood-lust agianst real kids, why use such terms? Why not "Daughter of Babylon" + "Your Inhabitants/ Your elders / Your priests and soldiers"? But no. He has "Daughter" + "children"! The primary motif govenerning the expression of slaughter is that of "offspring". Among the "daughter's children" (i.e., city's population) would be REAL children. Why should we conclude the writer did NOT wish violence on real kids! Was he too stupid to realize what people would think!

You seem to want us NOT to think of children as deliberate targets of aggression when we read this Psalm.

You are special pleading.

I fail to see how the rest of your discussion helps your case at all. All it does is establish the original metaphor, daugher = city. It does not establish in anyway that the Psalmist did not indend harm to little kids.

YHWHtruth

Me first what?

I said:

Do you have any examples in the OT, where this idiom of expression in verse 8 denotes a literal daughter evoking an image of young age? I say this because, if I cannot show examples supporting my suggestion, it is tantamount to special pleading.

I was sure you had something in mind when you responded:

Surely casting the city as a 'daughter' implies youth. then speaking of her own children as victims implies another "childlike" image. From context, it seems as if the text is emphasizing that vengeance will be extended to citizens of a young age.

And

It is only used of "towns" etc. in the sense of the outlying villages of a named city, and such like. It is quite rare.

What OT examples did you have to buttress your position?

MrDarwin

Not only that, but whoever wrote Exodus had trouble remembering the commandments from one chapter to the next. Compare the version that Christians usually cite, taken from Exodus 20 (repeated in Deuteronomy 5) with the version in Exodus 34! Seems like there's a wee bit of a discrepancy there. I asked Magus about this in a discussion over in evo/cre but the discussion was ignominiously locked before he could get back to me on it. Maybe he's thought about it some more??

Lux Interior

Not sure how "good" these two are, but both have always struck me as a bit "off" and have not been mentioned in the thread to this point....

www.usccb.org/nab/bible/joshua/joshua11.htm

15 As the LORD had commanded his servant Moses, so Moses commanded Joshua, and Joshua acted accordingly. He left nothing undone that the LORD had commanded Moses should be done. 16 So Joshua captured all this land: the mountain regions, the entire Negeb, all the land of Goshen, the foothills, the Arabah, as well as the mountain regions and foothills of Israel, 17 from Mount Halak that rises toward Seir as far as Baal-gad in the Lebanon valley at the foot of Mount Hermon. All their kings he captured and put to death. 18 Joshua waged war against all these kings for a long time. 19 With the exception of the Hivites who lived in Gibeon, no city made peace with the Israelites; all were taken in battle. 20 For it was the design of the LORD to encourage them to wage war against Israel, that they might be doomed to destruction and thus receive no mercy, but be exterminated, as the LORD had commanded Moses. 21 3 At that time Joshua penetrated the mountain regions and exterminated the Anakim in Hebron, Debir, Anab, the entire mountain region of Judah, and the entire mountain region of Israel. Joshua fulfilled the doom on them and on their cities, 22 so that no Anakim were left in the land of the Israelites. However, some survived in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod. 23 4 Thus Joshua captured the whole country, just as the LORD had foretold to Moses. Joshua gave it to Israel as their heritage, apportioning it among the tribes. And the land enjoyed peace.

Hope this isn't too much of a C&P. Anyway, in Js 11 we've got mass murder of Canaanites "encouraged" by God, or perhaps "ordered" by him, performed on Canaanites apparently stripped of their free will. So, Joshua was a man of God? "Exterminating" those Canaanites with his personal Einsatzgruppen for a little bit of lebensraum. Pity there was no Nuremburg for ol' Joshua. I guess crimes against humanity are okay when you're doing God's work?

Well, the land enjoyed peace after it was done, after the Untermenschen had all been "exterminated."

www.usccb.org/nab/bible/genesis/genesis38.htm

Since Js 11 is a bit on the "heavy" side, I figured I'd thrown in ol' Onan, and his seed spilling, (Gn 38:9) since no one had mentioned him 'til now. I'll just post a link, since the whole chapter should be read to be believed. Very odd that a little self-pleasure when you're forced to marry your brother's wife gets God so P.O'd. Even odder that God doesn't get P.O.'d when Tamar sets herself up as a temple harlot, (Gn 38:15) does the horizontal bop with her father-in-law (Gn 38:16) and then conceives twins by him.

Did Onan really deserve to die? Why couldn't God have merely hit him with hairy palms or something? Where did Jesus say that younger brothers don't need to marry their brother's widows? That certainly seems to upset God at that time. After all, it was failure to fulfill his marital duty that got Onan in the soup. Or, should we think that certain bits of the Bible are now irrelevant?

Was it okay for Judah to do what he did? After all, God got angry only with Onan, not Judah. Sure, Judah felt a bit guilty about the whole thing, but after he got over the whole let's-burn-Tamar-to-death-bit (Gn 38:24) he welcomed his grandsons, err, sons.

Anyone else humming I'm My Own Grandpa ? Or, thinking that Gn 38 would've set Jerry Springer drooling? Quite a family dynamic they had going on.