How can we explain violence in the OT?

[clem456]

Clem, you say it wouldnt be a valid command today, although I wouldnt think it to ever be a valid command, especially in the midst of “love your enemies”, but as another poster stated, killing people doesnt necessarily mean we dont love them. Its still confusing.

It wouldn’t be valid for us to look at an OT scripture passage and use it for justification, or a command to, kill the infidels in our midst today.
It’s very hard to connect the dots between killing someone and loving them. If I will the good of someone, I am hopeful they will come to know Jesus before they depart this earth, I faithfully attempt to bring them to Christ. I’m not sure exactly how killing them fits into this schema.
If someone is threatening to harm another, and I am required to kill to stop them from committing that evil, you could say that I love them, for the sake of not letting them commit an evil. But you could also say that disabling was a better option, and that killing was simply necessary. Is something being necessary the same as willing their good?
Society has the legitimate authority to pass laws and protect people, including the death penalty. The Catholic Church recognizes legitimate authority.
BTW, the Catholic guidance on use of the death penalty has become such that it seems pretty difficult to justify the use of it. It seems the Church finds it difficult to see the love there.

We are bound to do what the Church instructs us to do. If the Church should command, speaking on behalf of God, which He gave them all authority to do, that believers go out and slay all non believers to keep them from further sinning and that this is ok and moral because it is done out of love, is this not a dangerous belief?

I dont see how killing someone would benefit them, even in the old testament. I wouldve thought Jesus to instruct us to not live by the sword and to instead pray for our enemies to be saved, not kill them in the midst of their sins and have them die in that state.

All sorts of evil is justified by “it’s for your own good”. I think your God-given instincts are right on.

Jesus changes everything in this discussion. The God-man who, rather than force himself on us, accepted an ugly death at the hands of infidels. Could he have killed his enemies and prevented them from committing the ultimate evil, deicide, out of love for them?
His example sets a very high standard for when looking at the justification of killing.

 

[fred_conty]

Deuteronomy 20:10-17 When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. . . . This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby. However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you.

Joshua 6:21
Then they devoted to destruction by the edge of the sword all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys.

Numbers 31:17-18
17 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, 18 but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.

And also the eye for an eye principle.

And i believe there are more verses like these. How can we explain them?

One viewpoint and explaination of these violent actions are explained on this site.
christianthinktank.com/qamorite.html

 

[TheHolyGhost]

Edit: Oops, deleted.

 

[odhiambo]

“How can we explain violence in the OT?”
No one can because The Lord’s ways are not our ways:

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts: nor your ways my ways, saith the Lord.”
Isaiah 55:8