rizdek

Numbers 31 provides some interesting perspective on how Moses, the priests and the Bible God viewed treatment of defeated peoples.

The first verse has the Lord instructing Moses to have the Israelites take vengeance on the Midianites. At face value, an odd thing for a good God to do. No mention of negotiation or working to solve international problems peacefully. God would have hated the UN.

Then, they whip the Midianites, and Moses is angry with the soldiers for apparently taking lots of prisoners like children and women. He instructs them to kill all the young boys, and the women who have had sex, but keep the virgins for themselves. Like what, for domestic servants? Or as sex slaves? Who knows, but the implications are clear. If they were to keep women for any other reason than for sex, what difference would it make if they had had previous sex? What difference would it make if they were women or young boys.

But then, the icing on the cake. The lord instructs Moses et al how to divide the spoils. Of all the spoils, 1 out of 500 is required as a tribute to their lord. Now one assumes the livestock that is a tribute to the lord would be sacrificed…unless the lord was going to go into farming. So what was to be the fate of the human tribute to the lord? Human sacrifice?

Joan of Bark

Face it, YHWH / God / Allah is an asshole.

arnoldo

Actually the Midianites were the ones practicing human sacrifice and enticing the Israelietes to follow their pagan gods, note Numbers 25:1-3

So the judgment first and foremost is against the nation of Israel who went after pagan gods and joined themselves to Baalpeor, in which Psalm 106 documents included human sacrifice.

Don't you agree child sacrifice is immoral?

storytime

"What difference would it make if they had had previous sex?" The woman or teenager from another group of non Israelite people may have been pregnant, the child thought to present a threat through disloyalty in later life from someone telling him or her what the Israelites had done to his/her parent. Virgins who were claimed[as wives] by Israelites could bear children to the Israelites and thus be tied to that group via her offspring. Both as slaves without freedom, not equal to their master. The offspring may have been referred to as "bastard" and not "son" of Israel.

Young boys presented a threat in later retaliation against the Israelites and/or producing offspring with an Israelite woman.

Human sacrifice seemed to have been only among the Israelites in their own firstborn being offered to their god. Another offering of mixed sacrifice[blood] would have been considered as of an "unclean" thing, in that others[non Israelites] were uncircumcised in flesh and heart. Also considered as an abomination. For example, it would have been the highest offense to offer a mixed bloodline child as sacrifice to Yahweh. An Israelite man and Moabite woman offering their first born child as sacrifice would not have been an acceptable offering to the god of Israel. All three would probably have been stoned to death. But I'm only speculating from the OT rules and requirements of what and what not was pleasing to that god. :huh:

Thomas II

Damn, when you put it that way...

I have to say "Shit, you're right..." :huh:

Joan of Bark

Don't you agree that slaughtering children in order to prevent the sacrifice of children is illogical and immoral?

Transient

hmm lets see. God is just and moral and perfect. God orders the wholesale genocide of a nation. Wholesale genocide must be moral and upright thing to do.

George Bush harbors terrorists (cuban self-confessed terrorists). George Bush says that anyone who harbors a terrorist is a terrorist. George Bush is a terrorist.

Logic is such wonderful stuff. There should be laws against it. There are.

semiopen

Just a note on the women. The Hebrew in this verse (Numb 31:17) is not completely clear. "...vekhol isha yodaat ish..." (and all women who have known men) yodaat means "who have known (fem)" but this is often considered "fit to know." The implication being that girls who had not yet begun menstruating were spared. Assuming that 32 of these girls were subsequently sacrificed (Numb 31:40), the implication may be that a women subject to menstruation is unclean and therefore not proper to sacrifice.

Arnoldo, thanks for pointing out psalm 106.

Regarding the editorial comments on God; say what you will, but this is vastly cooler than what they teach in Sunday school.

vid

best part in that story is that YHWH himself recieved handful of virgins for himself :constern01: