God commands genocide?

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steffenlaursen

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Hello brothers and sisters,

This problem has been really bugging me for a long time, and I haven’t really heard any good explainations, so I thought “Well, I’d bet the Catholics got an answer!” (I’m nominally a Protestant). This forum has earned a lot of respect in my book after I read some debates on Purgatory and stuff, but enough of that for now, let’s get to the point, shall we?

It appears that in the Old Testament God is commanding great slaughters on men, women and children a number of times. While I can understand the need of killing the men (being potential enemy warriors), or even killing both men and women (being heathens and thus a temptation of idolatry), I can not see why it is neccessary to kill babies.

Even if the genocides are punishment, these babies wouldn’t be more sinful than the israeli babies…

I understand, that Augustine saw these genocides as merely allegorical, but it seems a bit far-fetched to me… any alternative views that doesn’t make God a tyrant and an enemy of humanity?
  • Steffen
 
Steffen,

Hello and welcome to the Catholic Answers Forums. I hope you have a blessed and fruitful time here.

Indeed God commanded great slaughters of men, women, and children in the Old Testament. What was happening there was that there were entire cultures that had gone so far wrong (sacrificing their babies to their heathen gods, for example) that they needed to be destroyed. Had the culture not been destroyed, it would have infected the Israelites (as indeed happened, as you can read in the book of Judges) and led them away from God. The only way the Israelites had to destroy a culture was to kill everybody who was part of that culture. I am not particularly happy about it, but that is how I believe it was.

Had the babies been left alive, there would have been much hardship in taking care of them. Babies need a lot of care and the Israelites probably had their hands full with their own. On top of this, babies do not stay babies; they grow up, and the Canaanite babies when they had grown up would probably have started asking about their roots. And then the culture would have come back to life.
  • Liberian
 
Hi Liberian,

Thanks for your answer.

It just seems so awfully practical… in a bad sense. It is a completely logic, but awfully cruel God who kills babies because it would be to much trouble taking care of them! It is a mindset much like that og pro-abortionists.
  • Steffen
 
steffenlaursen said:
Hello brothers and sisters,
It appears that in the Old Testament God is commanding great slaughters on men, women and children a number of times. - Steffen
Click to expand...
Welcome Steffen

Can you read my comments under the thread
ECF and the early O.T.?

The other "Problem: I see is in God’s respect for
  • the “FREE WILL” given to all his creatures like us; AND
  • the problem of “SIN & EVIL(Satan & its followers)” in the world.
  • The Protection though is “Our Conscience” - BUT this can be darkened by SINS in our lives.
God Blessa
 
Hi Richard,

I read the post you mentioned. Excellent points.

Yet, even Augustine didn’t address the specific point, that it is still a murder of thousands of innocent babies (if the word innocent ever meant anything). How is that fair?

God is the giver of life and he can take life away from someone whenever he wishes to, but isn’t it a terribly cruel way to do it? God didn’t *allow *for the babies to be killed, he ordered it himself… God is in a way more in the right to do it than anyone else, but killing infants is still killing infants.

Then again, the babies were mortals and would have died at some point of time anyway, and according to Augustine, the evil of war is not that the death of some come quicker than it would have, but that men enjoy killing, they hate each other and strive for power and riches. Yet, with this view of death, how is abortion wrong?

I hope you understand what my problem is:)
  • Steffen
 
When God ordered the killing of children and infants, he must have foreseen that each of those individuals would be eternally better off dying early than later, “lest wickedness pervert his mind or deceit beguile his soul.” (Wisdom 4:11) Abortion is wrong because only God knows which individuals will be eternally better off dying early than later.
 
God does have his reasons. The Lord’s Prayer even says, “Thy Will be done.” God wills for the babies to die, and He has his reasons. We are simple folk who try to do things our ways, and hence evil exists because we have sinful natures. God doesn’t have a sinful nature, therefore He does only good. Our reasons for killing babies are mostly for selfish motives. “I don’t want to have to pay for another baby.” “This baby is inconvenient for me at this time.” It’s all about me, me, me. Our logic, our reasoning, though a grace from God, is fallible, broken. God is perfect, His reason is perfect. Just because we can’t see His reasoning doesn’t mean it’s always bad. It’s just that God has a right to give life and to take life. Look at the evil that’s in the world today. Why doesn’t God just get rid of them? Why do bad things happen to good people? It’s because God wills it. No questions asked. God sees far more than what we can see. We must have faith that what He’s doing is for our benefit.
 
The simplistic answer is that it was G-d’s will (and who are we to understand or to question). The immorality would have been in not carrying out G-d’s commandments. Had the Jews disobeyed G-d they would have been punished by
G-d as a people.

We have G-d’s destruction of the world by flood or His destruction of Sodom and Gemorrah (Abraham’s debate with G-d to spare the cities if ten righteous men could be found).An example you missed is the destruction of Pharoh’s army by drowning in the Red (Reed) Sea. Pharoh chases after Moses and the Jews with his army after G-d has hardened his heart.

The talmud debates these moral issues. It is propositioned that G-d demanded the total destruction of the Cananites because had the Jews not done so and tried to form an alliance, the Cannanites would have later turned against the Jews and destroyed them.
 
Hi chosen people,

I still don’t see how Caananite infants could pose a threat to the Jews… as far as I know, conversion is possible in Judaism.

“Who are we to question?” - is that not the Moslem train of thought? Or that of Eli, who was the high priest when Samuel became a prophet.

In case there is a God, we may come to him with all we find unfair as the holy Job did.

Yet if the God of whom the Bible speaks is not just, that is a good argument against his existence, which is what bothered me.

I know that God would not be evil or cruel. He could at most be angry an just, all else is contrary to his very essense.
  • Steffen
 
steffenlaursen said:
It just seems so awfully practical… in a bad sense. It is a completely logic, but awfully cruel God who kills babies because it would be to much trouble taking care of them! It is a mindset much like that og pro-abortionists.
Click to expand...
Steffen,

You are right, it does sound awfully practical. Let me emphasize that it is my own answer; I do not presume to speak for the Church here. I think I also mentioned that I don’t particularly like the answer, but I do not have a better one.

Your statement about the mindset of pro-abortionists also hits a mark. I would like to think that people–particularly those with a Christian tradition–have learned a few things about ethics in the last two or three thousand years. But obviously I don’t have the final answer on this subject.
  • Liberian
 
Although it sounds cruel and/or evil, it won’t be wrong to say that God commanded genocide.

The prevalent and explicit commandment given by God to exterminate a whole nation targeted the Amalekites:

1 Samuel 15:3. Now therefore go, and smite Amalec, and utterly destroy all that he hath: spare him not, nor covet anything that is his: but slay both man and woman, child and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ***.

Interestingly, God gives the reason for sending Saul & his army to the ethnic cleansing of the Amalekites in the same chapter:

15:2. Thus saith the Lord of hosts: I have reckoned up all that Amalec hath done to Israel: how he opposed them in the way when they came up out of Egypt.

Thus, such a commandment is vindictive in essence. God delivers the same commandment through Moses:

Deuteronomy 25: 17 Remember what the Amalekites did to you on your way from Egypt

Deuteromomy 25: 19 So when the Lord your God gives you relief from all the enemies who surround you in the land he is giving you as an inheritance, **you must wipe out the memory of the Amalekites from under heaven **– do not forget!

If I take into consideration how God destroyed the whole mankind through the flood in Noah’s time (such a disaster that only eight people were saved!), it will not be difficult for me to ascribe the plan of such an utter destruction to God. Remember, God also killed the firstborn of all Egyptians and some of them were newborn babies at that time! Therefore, when I read these narratives in the Old Testament, I keep my mind fixed on God’s love for His chosen ones rather than His hatred for wicked and sinful nations. Most of the judges, kings, and prophets in Israel hated the Gentiles and murdered them out of their love for God! Nevertheless, Jesus came the first time to save the lost! The second time He will come again in His heavenly glory to punish the evildoers. I am almost sure that the Messiah will return at the end of times to take revenge from the ones oppressing His chosen ones. Glory be to Him for all ages.

Peace to all,
Angelos N.
 
**God didn’t [allow for the babies to be killed, he ordered it himself… - **

Hi Steffen

Here is exactly why we need to understand how the Bible was formed.
Unlike the Qu’ran, where Muslims believe the Angel Gabriel whispered to Muhammadf what to write…God inspired religious men in their culture & time to reflect on His salvific works and …the formation of the Bible over time…

Angain If the understanding of God at that point in time is that God loves only Isral… of course they will record that “God ordered the killing…”. .

God is Spirit. In the Bible we read God walking with Adam… Such is called writing in "Mythical Form i.e. "Man’s attempt to comprehend and to explain the Incomprehensible})…

Remember God Wills for all mankind to be saved… that is the firs Principle.

rgds**
 
There is nothing wrong with God ordering the killing of the wicked.
 
ricmat said:
Perhaps I’m mistaken, but I thought I read on a different thread that God didn’t command the massacre of these peoples, Moses did.

Moses changed a few of God’s laws (e.g. divorce) to be more acceptable to his stiff-necked people.

Late edit:
Read it here, scroll down about half way:

salvationhistory.com/online/intermediate/class1_lesson4_3.cfm
Click to expand...
Moses didn’t enter into the Promised Land.

Jewish law views marriage as a contract and therefore allows divorce.

Due to dietary restrictions Jews may be called “stiff-necked” but not “pigheaded”
 
steffenlaursen said:
Hi chosen people,

I still don’t see how Caananite infants could pose a threat to the Jews… as far as I know, conversion is possible in Judaism.

“Who are we to question?” - is that not the Moslem train of thought? Or that of Eli, who was the high priest when Samuel became a prophet.

In case there is a God, we may come to him with all we find unfair as the holy Job did.

Yet if the God of whom the Bible speaks is not just, that is a good argument against his existence, which is what bothered me.

I know that God would not be evil or cruel. He could at most be angry an just, all else is contrary to his very essense.
  • Steffen
Click to expand...
Small Canaanite babies become grown men. A good example is Moses, although he grew up as an Egyptian prince as a grown man he lead his people out of Egypt acting against the Egyptians.
 
chosen_people said:
Moses didn’t enter into the Promised Land.

Jewish law views marriage as a contract and therefore allows divorce.

Due to dietary restrictions Jews may be called “stiff-necked” but not “pigheaded”
Click to expand...
Deuteronomy was written by Moses, before he entered the promised land.

Marriage was actually the covenant sign with Adam and Eve, and covenants are unlike contracts in that they include God, and last forever. Divorce was first allowed in Deuteronomy, by Moses, who changed marriage from a covenant to a contract.

Wasn’t genocide first allowed in Deuteronomy - again by Moses?

I’m not bashing Moses here, but it seems to be clear that he made temporary concessions from God’s law to satisfy his stiff-necked (but definitely not pigheaded) people 🙂
 
ricmat said:
Deuteronomy was written by Moses, before he entered the promised land.

Marriage was actually the covenant sign with Adam and Eve, and covenants are unlike contracts in that they include God, and last forever. Divorce was first allowed in Deuteronomy, by Moses, who changed marriage from a covenant to a contract.

Wasn’t genocide first allowed in Deuteronomy - again by Moses?

I’m not bashing Moses here, but it seems to be clear that he made temporary concessions from God’s law to satisfy his stiff-necked (but definitely not pigheaded) people 🙂
Click to expand...
Thank you for your reply

Now we all know that if Moses wrote Deuteronomy by himself He must have been real put off about writing about his death and about not having a known place of burial. We can go either “the Torah was written by G-d route” or the “let’s examine the different sources and compare styles” route as done by biblical scholars.

I’m not sure which temporary concessions your talking about and why you feel they were made in contravention of G-d’s law. Please give me the sources you are refering to.

I know enough about Catholicism’s view on divorce to not go down that road.

Actually the first mass killings (I’m a little sensitive about using the word genocide) occurs in the flood, Sodom and Gemorrah, the killing of all first born Egyptians and then the drowning of the Egyptian army in the Red (Reed) sea. Of course I expect your reply would be that those actions were done directly by G-d though all these actions raise the moral conundrum pondered in this thread.

You don’t have to worry about Moses bashing. We’re only related through a distant cousin.
 
chosen_people said:
I’m not sure which temporary concessions your talking about and why you feel they were made in contravention of G-d’s law. Please give me the sources you are refering to.
Click to expand...
The link I posted earlier has a good explanation (at least it makes sense to me). This course focuses on God’s covenants with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and finally the new covenant which Jesus implemented. I realize that the Jewish perspective on this is probably different (even leaving Jesus out of it). But I find the idea of focusing on the covenants as milestones in history to be fascinating.

Here’s the link to the start of the course:

salvationhistory.com/Online/intermediate/covlove.cfm

and a link to the specific page which talks about Deutoronomy as a concessionary law:

salvationhistory.com/online/intermediate/class1_lesson4_3.cfm

Excerpt:
*Among other things, Moses permits divorce and remarriage (see Deuteronomy 24:1-4); the taking of foreign slave wives (see Deuteronomy 21:10-14), and genocidal warfare against the Canaanites (see Deuteronomy 20:16-17). In every case, these concessions are “lesser evils.” For instance, the people are instructed to slay the Canaanites because if don’t they will likely fall into worshipping their gods.

This isn’t God’s holy law, this is Moses’ concessionary legislation, his compromises with a stiff-necked people. As God will later explain through the prophet Ezekiel, “I gave them statutes that were not good, and ordinances through which they could not live” (see Ezekiel 20:25). *
 
steffenlaursen said:
Hi Richard,

I read the post you mentioned. Excellent points.

Yet, even Augustine didn’t address the specific point, that it is still a murder of thousands of innocent babies (if the word innocent ever meant anything). How is that fair?

God is the giver of life and he can take life away from someone whenever he wishes to, but isn’t it a terribly cruel way to do it? God didn’t *allow *for the babies to be killed, he ordered it himself… God is in a way more in the right to do it than anyone else, but killing infants is still killing infants.

Then again, the babies were mortals and would have died at some point of time anyway, and according to Augustine, the evil of war is not that the death of some come quicker than it would have, but that men enjoy killing, they hate each other and strive for power and riches. Yet, with this view of death, how is abortion wrong?

I hope you understand what my problem is:)
  • Steffen
Click to expand...
Steffen, such incidents concern the economy of Salvation. By that is meant that God reveals Himself gradually to His people according to what they can handle at the time, until the Fullness of Time when He reveals Himself in His Son Incarnate.

After the sin of our First Parents, the human race was left with natural law and Angels to guide it. God’s solution was not to deal with the whole human race personally, but to choose an obscure and unimportant and motley race of Semites and reveals Himself to them first, bringing about the Incarnation of His Son from them, and then through His Church to reach the whole human race.

God’s main point of instructing the Israelites first was to impress upon them that He alone was God and was to be loved and obeyed first and above all. But there were a very earthy and stubborn race and learned this lesson with difficulty (in fact, did not really get the point until the destruction of Jerusalem and the Exile).

By obedience to His will they would learn that God personally chose them from among the nations (the rest had only guardian angels over them, but the Hebrews had Yahweh Himself) and that He would bless them if they followed His will. Their entrance into and possession of the Land of Promise and victory over the inhabitants already there would therefore be understood to have been the result of God’s initiative and gift to them and not the result of their own doing or cleverness in politics and war. All other understandings of the value of life would have to be put on hold until they “got” the primary message. The Prophets would serve in doing that later until Our Lord reveals the full understanding.

Some other points:
  1. God is the Lord of Life and History and has the right to take life since He gave it; others don’t have that right, but He does, always has.
  2. Although He did not intend death (it comes as a result of Original Sin, which He permits), He inflicts it or permits it to further His Plan of Salvation for all and each.
  3. This reveals that death is not the greatest evil, but sin is.
  4. It also reveals that God inflicts or permits it, for a higher purpose or greater good - which comes out later, and is supernatural.
  5. When He orders the “herem”, or ban, e.g., to be put into effect, God, of course, eternally knows His Plan of Redemption in His Son. It is in view of that that He orders the “herem”; and it is view of that that the innocent who are killed by the Israelites will be saved.
  6. The enemies of God’s people who are destroyed are also real symbols of evil and sin which Christ destroys at His Sacrifice (applied at Baptism) and of the vices of concupiscence to be overcome by active cooperation with the grace of God in the spiritual life, and the final defeat of all the powers of evil and sin at the end of the world. All those things are known by God when He commands the “herem” and are spiritual meanings not known by the human writer, who, btw, is usually writing many years after the described event.
Yes, from the human perspective at first glance it looks like God is the bad guy in these instances; a deeper consideration of theology reveals that God’s Mercy and Justice together are infinitely higher Love than man’s reason can guess, and that we cannot water down its fierceness into a bourgeois sense of being nice. “Love is stronger than death.”
 
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