Did God tell the Jews to commit genocide?

[MNathaniel]

Praise God, sister! (or brother?)

Yes, I think it’s one of those things that we can all be grateful to have handy, when someone comes knocking with a question we need a quick resource for. I’m thankful to Trent for cooperating with God in writing it!

Enjoy the read! and may God bless you and your friend through your earnest efforts.

 

[goout]

But for God to be immoral would be for God to deny Himself.

Correct. And this informs biblical exegesis and interpretation. If a passage is out of step with God’s revealed nature (and Christ is the very fullness of revelation) then you must look for interpretations that do not violate his person.

And “God commands genocide” is in violation of that.

 

[MiserereMeiDei]

Is it? God killed everyone in the world except for 8 people. He killed everyone in Sodom and Gemmorah except for four. Jerusalem 70 A.D. was a bloodbath. He commanded Amalek to be made cherem. There’s an eternal hell and people will be there. The Church has not declared a literal interpretation invalid. I believe Him. I take Him at His word.

If I don’t understand why is moral it’s because I don’t have all the facts.

 

[goout]

Is it? God killed everyone in the world except for 8 people. He killed everyone in Sodom and Gemmorah except for four. Jerusalem 70 A.D. was a bloodbath. He commanded Amalek to be made cherem. There’s an eternal hell and people will be there. I believe Him. The Church has not declared a literal interpretation invalid. I believe Him. I take Him at His word.

Christ is the Word.
If you are not starting there you are doing biblical fundamentalism.
http://www.vatican.va/content/bened...ts/hf_ben-xvi_exh_20100930_verbum-domini.html
sec’s 42 and 44

Have you ever read this?
This document has been well referenced by many scholars and apologists.
What do you think about it?

 

[Inquiry]

Well partly it violates it because it is impossible for God to command murder or its ilk. Part of the reason murder, mutilation, and the like are sins is because they are explicitly not our domain. We do not have the viewpoint to know who should live and die, nor the power to grant salvation and eternal life, but we usurp the authority of the one who does. We act as pretenders to his judgement and authority.

When God commands death or dismemberment He is not usurping His own authority nor acting without true knowledge of the morality of the act. Fundamentally, when he kills or orders a death it cannot be murder.

 

[goout]

The Church has not declared a literal interpretation invalid.

The Church has also not declared a literalist interpretation of Genesis 1:6 to be invalid. Right?
Why not? And many many other passages that clearly cannot be taken in literalist fashion.

That fact that the Church does not declare negatives does not give us a license to ignorance.
The bible doesn’t specifically condemn abortion either, in clear terms that address our modern situation. Does that give you a license to ignorance on the right to life? Because there are many bible-only progressive Christians who use the “dashing heads” excuse. How are you going to help them if you give their fundamentalist viewpoint full credence? If we promote an absolute license to ignorance because the Church has not definitively spoken on every passage, most anything is justifiable using the bible.

 

[TK421]

I have always thought that the Jewish people just thought they were being told to kill the various groups they did in the Old Testament and not that God actually told them too. I really can’t accept a perspective that God really did tell them to kill entre groups of people. Can anyone shed light on this topic from a Catholic perspective?

I have also heard that the numbers of people the Jewish peoples killed were greatly exaggerated in some cases. Any light on that subject?

God didn’t command the Jews to commit genocide:

There might be some details in the OT where immoral things were committed, but a record of it happening isn’t in itself an endorsement. Polygamy is objectively against the ideal of marriage but polygamy was common for very wealthy men, along with tribal warfare, divorce, slavery, etc. All of these things are immoral.

 

[MiserereMeiDei]

What do you think about it?

I think they don’t address the issue in that they make no case. I’ve read section 42 multiple times, though I’m always happy to read it again. Do you also think that God did not flood the world or that Sodom and Gemmorah were spared?

Excerpted from: Reading Herem Texts as Christian Scripture, Christian Hofreiter (2013)
John Chrysostom comments on texts involving herem in ways that do not directly respond to moral criticism. However, the lessons he draws from Ahab’s failure to kill the king of Aram are very similar to the observations made by Augustine concerning the failure of the Israelites to fully carry out the herem command, and about Saul’s “misericorida mala” towards king Agag. In a sermon “against the Jews,” Chrysostom sums up the basic premise of divine-command-theory:

“it is God’s will and not the nature of things that makes the same actions good or bad.” For him, the moral drawn from 1 Kgs 20 is “[t]hat you may learn that, when God commands, you must not question too much the nature of the action; you have only to obey.” In fact, [w]hat is done in accordance with God’s will is the best of all things even if it seems to be bad. What is done contrary to God’s will and decree is the worst and most unlawful of all things—even if humans judge that it is very good. Suppose someone slays another in accordance with God’s will. This slaying is better than any lovingkindness. Let someone spare another and show him great love and kindness against God’s decree. To spare the other’s life would be more unholy than any slaying.

And from St. Thomas Aquinas:

A distinction was observed with regard to hostile cities. For some of them were far distant, and were not among those which had been promised to them. When they had taken these cities, they killed all the men who had fought against God’s people; whereas the women and children were spared. But in the neighboring cities which had been promised to them, all were ordered to be slain, on account of their former crimes, to punish which God sent the Israelites as executor of Divine justice: for it is written “because they have done wickedly, they are destroyed at thy coming in.” The fruit-trees were commanded to be left untouched, for the use of the people themselves, to whom the city with its territory was destined to be subjected

 

[goout]

goout:

What do you think about it?

I think they don’t address the issue in that they make no case. I’ve read section 42 multiple times, though I’m always happy to read it again.

The “dark” passages of the Bible

1. In discussing the relationship between the Old and the New Testaments, the Synod also considered those passages in the Bible which, due to the violence and immorality they occasionally contain, prove obscure and difficult. Here it must be remembered first and foremost that biblical revelation is deeply rooted in history . God’s plan is manifested progressively and it is accomplished slowly, in successive stages and despite human resistance. God chose a people and patiently worked to guide and educate them. Revelation is suited to the cultural and moral level of distant times and thus describes facts and customs, such as cheating and trickery, and acts of violence and massacre, without explicitly denouncing the immorality of such things. This can be explained by the historical context, yet it can cause the modern reader to be taken aback, especially if he or she fails to take account of the many “dark” deeds carried out down the centuries, and also in our own day. In the Old Testament, the preaching of the prophets vigorously challenged every kind of injustice and violence, whether collective or individual, and thus became God’s way of training his people in preparation for the Gospel. So it would be a mistake to neglect those passages of Scripture that strike us as problematic. Rather, we should be aware that the correct interpretation of these passages requires a degree of expertise, acquired through a training that interprets the texts in their historical-literary context and within the Christian perspective which has as its ultimate hermeneutical key “the Gospel and the new commandment of Jesus Christ brought about in the paschal mystery”.[140] I encourage scholars and pastors to help all the faithful to approach these passages through an interpretation which enables their meaning to emerge in the light of the mystery of Christ.

 

[MiserereMeiDei]

And?
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Rather, we should be aware that the correct interpretation of these passages requires a degree of expertise, acquired through a training that interprets the texts in their historical-literary context and within the Christian perspective which has as its ultimate hermeneutical key “the Gospel and the new commandment of Jesus Christ brought about in the paschal mystery”.

Which I certainly do when I read the Church fathers.

 

[goout]

And?
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I thought maybe you could specifically have a conversation with Pope Benedict.

 

[MiserereMeiDei]

If you can get me an audience that would be terrific. Though I’m partial to St. John Chrysostom and just about as likely to be received by him.

 

[goout]

Right. All we have is their words, and the living Magisterium.
Which parts of Benedict’s thinking don’t apply here, or which parts do you think are out of step?
How about Bp Barron’s reference a few posts ago? Those are good click-ables.

 

[MiserereMeiDei]

Are those who live now better than those who came before merely because they align more favorably with modern sensibilities? Nothing said in 42 prevents one from accepting the interpretations of the Church fathers who took it at face value. They merely open a door to another interpretation. Feel free to take that interpretation. I do not.

And in fact, as I stated before, nothing in 42 makes any interpretation whatsoever.

 

[goout]

Are those who live now better than those who came before merely because they align more favorably with modern sensibilities? Nothing said in 42 prevents one from accepting the interpretations of the Church fathers who took it at face value. They merely open a door to another interpretation. Feel free to take that interpretation. I do not.

So to go full circle, you believe that it is literally in God’s nature to command one human being to kill other innocent human beings, cause it says so in the bible.
Is that correct?

 

[Inquiry]

We have at least one example where that happened and it is very important that it did: The Binding of Isaac.

Set aside people being brutal in war, God commanded someone to kill his own beloved Son. He stopped Abraham before he could go through with it, but He ordered it.

 

[MiserereMeiDei]

I believe God took people’s lives directly and through intermediaries and still does. I believe that in the days when Israel was governed by prophets, those prophets were told to do the things that we read they were told. Those days are over.

 

[Sociallycal]

The key message we should try to stick to, GOD is serious about creating a Holy nation of priests out of the Hebrews.

As followers of GOD, we ought to be concern not with humanism or morality, but with the Will of GOD. As the OT is assumed to be inspired by the Holy Spirit, especially the first five books are even precious, it is directly imparted by GOD to Moses.

As for why GOD does it, the book did mentioned that they were pagan worshipers and that’s why He took back the protections and ask Israelis to claim the land. As for why it must be genocide - “a rather 19th century term”, it is up to GOD decision making, and thus a mystery.

God is always Love and Just.

 

[goout]

The key message we should try to stick to, GOD is serious about creating a Holy nation of priests out of the Hebrews.

Yes God is so serious that he reveals the fullness of that holy priesthood in and through Christ, who is The High Priest. As The One and Only High Priest, Christ demonstrates God’s disposition to all people.
If you believe that Christ is the eternal Son of God, then you must believe that Christ always was and is and will be. And that includes the times of OT writings. It’s easy to stray into Marcionism if you lose sight of Christ as the fulfillment of all revelation.

This makes a literalist interpretation of these passages utterly incoherent with the creation of a holy nation of priests in the form of Christ.

As followers of GOD, we ought to be concern not with humanism or morality, but with the Will of GOD.

This statement is very troubling. Morality IS the orienting of human freedom to God’s will. It is not optional in any time or place. This is a false dichotomy concerning morality and God’s will.

 

[MiserereMeiDei]

The problem I see with your understanding is that you don’t seem to take God at his word, whereas when Abraham was told Sodom and Gemmorah were to be destroyed, he didn’t say, “nah, you wouldn’t do that, you’re all merciful.” He pleaded with God to spare the city because He believed God would do exactly what He said He’d do. And then…God did it.