God commands genocide?

[chosen_people]

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). *

Thanks for replying

Everything became clear when I saw the New Testament reference. This is one of the huge differences between Christianity and Judaism. From a Jewish point of view were talking “G-d’s holy law”.

This is the Jewish point of view:

G-d revealed the entire Torah to Moses. The entire Torah includes the first five books of the Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) that Moses himself wrote as G-d instructed him. It also includes all of the remaining prophecies and history that would later be written down in the remaining books of scripture, and the entire Oral Torah, the oral tradition for interpreting the Torah, that would later be written down in the Talmud. Moses spent the rest of his life writing the first five books, essentially taking dictation from G-d.

After Moses received instruction from G-d about the Law and how to interpret it, he came back down to the people and started hearing cases and judging them for the people, but this quickly became too much for one man. Upon the advice of his father-in-law, Yitro, Moses instituted a judicial system (Ex. 18:13-26).

Moses died in the year 2488, just before the people crossed over into the Promised Land (Deut. 32:51). He completed writing the first five books of the Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) before he died. There is some dispute as to who physically wrote the last few verses of Deuteronomy: according to some, Moses wrote these last few verses from a vision of the future, but according to others, the last few verses were added by Joshua after Moses’s death. In any case, these verses, like everything else in the Torah, were written by G-d, and the actual identity of the transcriber is not important.

As important as Moses was to the Children of Israel, it is always important to remember that Moses himself was not the deliverer or redeemer of Israel. It was G-d who redeemed Israel, not Moses. Moses was merely G-d’s prophet, His spokesman. The traditional text of the Pesach haggadah does not even mention Moses’s name. In order to prevent people from idolatrously worshipping Moses, his grave was left unmarked (Deut. 34:6).

source:jewfaq.org/moshe.htm

 

[richardeekw]

Now we all know that if Moses wrote Deuteronomy by himself .

Do read this interesting research website before we make conclusive statements on the human authors of the inspired texts… To me it doesn;t really matter who wrote; so long as we have the Church to guide us in our understanding the MESSAGE of the Scriptures

thehttp://www.religioustolerance.org/jepd_gen.htm

 

[chosen_people]

Do read this interesting research website before we make conclusive statements on the human authors of the inspired texts… To me it doesn;t really matter who wrote; so long as we have the Church to guide us in our understanding the MESSAGE of the Scriptures

thehttp://www.religioustolerance.org/jepd_gen.htm

I was responding to another post. For the Jewish concept of the Torah being the devine word of G-d as dictated to Moses see my additional post which appears one before yours. If I understood the post to which I was responding, it was indicated that Moses changed the law or made new rules because of our being a “stiffnecked” people. I had never heard of that claim and given the devine source of the Torah in Judaism I knew it could not come from a Jewish source. It was subsequently brought to my attention that the source was in the Christian bible.

 

[richardeekw]

I was responding to another post. .

Thanks for the message. Nevertheless, it is an interesting website regarding the human authorship of the first 5 Books of the Bible for anyone interest to read.

 

[Asbestos_Mango]

If my understanding of history is correct, the peoples of the ancient Near East had a strong sense of communal responsibility. Thus, if the army of one people, say, the Amelekites, did something truly execrable to another people, say the Isrealites, like attacking them as they were passing through town and ripping the unborn babies out of their pregnant mothers’ wombs, they were presumed to be acting on behalf of their entire community, so the community as a whole, including non-combatants and women, children, and even the infants, would have been considered responsible, and therefore liable to whatever punishment, or vengeance, that the offended community cared, or was ordered by their god, to inflict upon them.

Also, genocide was actually a pretty common feature of warfare back then. If one group of people wanted a chunk of real estate that another group of people was already living on, and the circumstances made it impractical to capture the non-warriors and enslave them, they would simply wipe them out.

Of course, then there’s Shepherd’s Chapel pastor Arnold Murray’s theory that the peoples God ordered exterminated down to the infants were biologically descended from the Nephalim (apparently there was a second influx after the Flood- I think it’s Deuteronomy that makes reference to “giants in the land”). But I’m not going to go there.

Oops, too late, I already did.

 

[Mirdath]

Of course, then there’s Shepherd’s Chapel pastor Arnold Murray’s theory that the peoples God ordered exterminated down to the infants were biologically descended from the Nephalim (apparently there was a second influx after the Flood- I think it’s Deuteronomy that makes reference to “giants in the land”). But I’m not going to go there.

Oops, too late, I already did.

The Nephilim supposedly came around before the flood, actually (I have no idea how they’re supposed to have survived – maybe, being giants, they were tall enough to just stand up and their heads would be above water?). They weren’t a second human creation, but the offspring of angels and mortal women.

I remember seeing somewhere that Goliath is considered by some to be a descendant of the Nephilim…

 

[Zooey]

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

I think there is a lot to this…We have to look back at the mindset of Moses & his contemporaries, too, & realize that we no longer have the same way of looking at world events.
When a tragedy occurs, though, there are still people who will say, “Why didn’t God stop that?” And the answer is something like, well, God doesn’t work that way. We cause a lot of the troubles in the world…
Example: the dreadful weather changes over the last few years are at least partially caused by humans chopping down the rain forests. Yet, there is always someone who sees this as a “judgmnet from God”.
But in Moses’ day, that was how it was actually believed to be. People thought that everything that happened was “ordered by God”, & they wrote that, when they wrote down the stories of these battles & so many being killed.
I think it would be more accurate to say, that God loved the Israelites in spite of them committing genocide; not that He ordered it. He permitted it–because, as others have said, there were seemingly good reasones to remain separated from the other nations.But God didn’t always order what He is said to have ordered. That was done by Moses (or whomever).
HTH

 

[Zooey]

I was responding to another post. For the Jewish concept of the Torah being the devine word of G-d as dictated to Moses see my additional post which appears one before yours. If I understood the post to which I was responding, it was indicated that Moses changed the law or made new rules because of our being a “stiffnecked” people. I had never heard of that claim and given the devine source of the Torah in Judaism I knew it could not come from a Jewish source. It was subsequently brought to my attention that the source was in the Christian bible.

May I just say that, saying that the Jewish people are/were “stiff necked” is not necessarily to be taken as an insult…I remember reading somewhere that the amazing Golda Meir once said, " Of course we have stiff necks! We’ve needed them, in order to last this long as a people!"
I have remembered that every since, as a totally different way to read that phrase. Every other of the ancient peoples, as far as I know, have been assimilated. Not the Jews. A stiff neck, you see, may be a sign of great strength & courage.
God bless.

 

[mercygate]

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

There is a school of thought that the Canaanites are the descendents of Cain. Therefore, in order to cleanse the land, every opportunity for repopulating the place with Cain’s offspring had to be eliminated.

OK: I don’t like it either, but when you look at it in the context of the rest of the story, it makes a kind of grisly sense. Idolatry and adultery are always linked in the O.T. because Israel is to be to God as a spouse. I relate it to Jesus’ saying, “If your right hand offends you, cut it off.”

 

[mercygate]

I was responding to another post. For the Jewish concept of the Torah being the devine word of G-d as dictated to Moses see my additional post which appears one before yours. If I understood the post to which I was responding, it was indicated that Moses changed the law or made new rules because of our being a “stiffnecked” people. I had never heard of that claim and given the devine source of the Torah in Judaism I knew it could not come from a Jewish source. It was subsequently brought to my attention that the source was in the Christian bible.

The Christian Bible? OK: Jesus forbids divorce and says “For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you todivorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.” He uses the name “Moses” – an equivalent for “the law of Moses” – but I NEVER heard anyone claim that Moses CHANGED the law. :bigyikes:

The understanding would be that God gave the permission for divorce via the law, although Adam and Eve – “in the beginning” – were intended to be in a perfect covenanted relationship forever.

 

[PauloFreire2]

you must be prepared to do some evil. Old Testament violence, supposedly inspired by God, could be viewed that way.

 

[mercygate]

you must be prepared to do some evil. Old Testament violence, supposedly inspired by God, could be viewed that way.

Huh? Could you clarify this?

 

[Asbestos_Mango]

The Nephilim supposedly came around before the flood, actually (I have no idea how they’re supposed to have survived – maybe, being giants, they were tall enough to just stand up and their heads would be above water?). They weren’t a second human creation, but the offspring of angels and mortal women.

I didn’t say they were a second human creation. What I said was (according to Pastor Murray) that there was a second influx of Nephalim - in other words, a second influx of the Sons of God parallel parking with the daughters of men. Hence, among other people, the Anakim and other giants. Basically what Murray is saying is that the people, including the infants, were part demon and therefore needed to be wiped out.

I remember seeing somewhere that Goliath is considered by some to be a descendant of the Nephilim…

Yeah, I’ve heard that, too.

 

[MBS1]

Mercygate noted:

There is a school of thought that the Canaanites are the descendents of Cain. Therefore, in order to cleanse the land, every opportunity for repopulating the place with Cain’s offspring had to be eliminated

I don’t know. Scripture is quite clear that the Canaanites are descended from Ham, son of Noah. It was Canaan who was acutally cursed by Noah for Ham’s sin.

Genesis 9:18-2518 The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan…24 When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, 25 he said, "Cursed be Canaan; a slave of slaves shall he be to his brothers.""******
Interestingly, Ham was also the father of Egypt:

"Genesis 10:6
6 The sons of Ham: Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan. "
How often do we consider that the Arabs and Israelites both come from the same lineage - and not just from Abraham, but going all the way back to Noah? I wonder if the Koran indicates this.

MBS1

 

[mercygate]

Mercygate noted:

I don’t know. Scripture is quite clear that the Canaanites are descended from Ham, son of Noah. It was Canaan who was acutally cursed by Noah for Ham’s sin.

Genesis 9:18-2518 The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan…24 When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, 25 he said, "Cursed be Canaan; a slave of slaves shall he be to his brothers.""
Interestingly, Ham was also the father of Egypt:

"Genesis 10:6
6 The sons of Ham: Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan. "
How often do we consider that the Arabs and Israelites both come from the same lineage - and not just from Abraham, but going all the way back to Noah? I wonder if the Koran indicates this.

MBS1

Good grief! What was I thinking? Of course: you are absolutely correct. Thank you for noting that!

Still, the point would hold that permanently wiping out the “bad” lineage would be the point of all that slaughter.

 

[chosen_people]

May I just say that, saying that the Jewish people are/were “stiff necked” is not necessarily to be taken as an insult…I remember reading somewhere that the amazing Golda Meir once said, " Of course we have stiff necks! We’ve needed them, in order to last this long as a people!"
I have remembered that every since, as a totally different way to read that phrase. Every other of the ancient peoples, as far as I know, have been assimilated. Not the Jews. A stiff neck, you see, may be a sign of great strength & courage.
God bless.

I absolutely agree.

However as I pointed out above (post #15) Due to dietary restrictions Jews may be called “stiff-necked” but not “pigheaded”

 

[chosen_people]

I didn’t say they were a second human creation. What I said was (according to Pastor Murray) that there was a second influx of Nephalim - in other words, a second influx of the Sons of God parallel parking with the daughters of men. Hence, among other people, the Anakim and other giants. Basically what Murray is saying is that the people, including the infants, were part demon and therefore needed to be wiped out.

Yeah, I’ve heard that, too.

Concerning Nephilim: The Ramban explains, that they were the other children of Adam. Because Adam, the First Man, was the handiwork of God, his children were of greater physical stature than their descendants. Because these people were so close to the Creator, they knew that they had no grandfather, they should have been spiritually elevated. Because they didn’t live up to their potential they were considered “fallen ones.”

 

[buffalo]

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

We see things in a very human and limited way. The ways of God are divine. Try focusing on the soul and where it will spend eternity. We do not know the state of those OT souls, we only know they undewent a bodily death.

 

[bfermanich]

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.”

This sounds suspiciously of “ends justifying means”. From what I know about Catholic teaching, this is seriously wrong. I thought that the means always justify the ends.

 

[FCEGM]

This sounds suspiciously of “ends justifying means”. From what I know about Catholic teaching, this is seriously wrong. I thought that the means always justify the ends.

One can’t forget that death is not a moral evil – it’s the consequence of Original Sin. God, being the Author of Life, has the right to bestow it and take it away in any manner He chooses since all that occurs is wise and just in light of the Salvation in Christ, THE End.

The End is placed by the wisdom of God and the means are suitable to that end. This is, of course, especially seen in the “end” of Christ (His Resurrection and Glorification) Who by the means of the Cross came to that End for us, and into which End He invites us by His Grace.

Further, “means not justifying end”, is meant for us, not for God since He is Wisdom and sees all that has and will occur and providentially arranges all that is suitable to the end so that His Divine Will will be done. We, otoh, aren’t able to see the future and what consequences – either good or bad – will arise out of the means we have chosen.

After the Original Sin which affects all of humanity, God in His wisdom decides not to save the whole human race in a global manner, but to save a remnant which is a small, obscure and unimportant people in the eyes of the world in order to bring forth the Christ Who will be the Savior of the whole. Thus He has the right to command the leaders of His People to wipe out, e.g., the Canaanites, first to teach obedience to His will, and second to protect them from being attracted to the prosperous culture and religious which is involved with the sacrifice of children to Moloch and with ritual prostitution. God sees His providential arrangement all in one eternal seeing and in Salvation History uses such incidents as questioned by the OP as pedagogy for the particular People He chose. Through them the entire world will eventually be taught in the Self-Revelation of the Incarnate Son Who is born to and in the midst of that People.