Killing in the Old Testament?

[Fuchsia2012]

Hello,

I came across a question on another website (GirlsAskGuys.com):

“Are Christians emotionless…?”

The question is regarding killing in the Old Testament, but I haven’t studied the Bible before, so don’t know how to precisely answer.

Details can be found here:

girlsaskguys.com/Other-Questions/689904-are-christians-emotionless.html.

What is your opinion?

 

[MarcoPolo]

Christians are not emotionless. But it helps to understand many of the Jewish figures in the OT as figures of sin. In other words, when the Jews escaped the clutches of Pharoah and their battalions were swallowed up in the waters of the Red Sea, it is a figure for the elect “escaping” sin and the waters wash the “sin” clean, freeing us from “enslavement” to sin. Think of humanity as a maturing corporate body. In youth, a father may spank the child. But it is unseemly to do so in the child’s adulthood. So too in man’s growth with God the Father, we must understand the human lessons involved in the stories preserved in Scripture.

 

[COPLAND_3]

There’s different reasons for all the violence that happened in the OT. Some were done by man’s free will which lead to results being not God’s decision but the result of the sin committed by man which affected others. Sometimes God punished in order to protect His people. Sometimes He punished because people disobeyed Him. But many times God gave warnings and was merciful. To ignore God’s mercy in the OT is to not be honest. God did often warn strong consequences for sins, but often those strong warning which looks overly harsh were done not so God can punish, but to deter people from sinning. Sin has nasty results in this world, it leads to the fall of kingdoms and governments, homes and families, the innocent suffers because of the sins of the people.

God at times had people destroyed in order to protect His people from idolatry and future threats. God knows the future and knows what will happen before it ever happens. So when God saw the path of the world headed a certain way that would ultimately end up bringing destruction to His people, then He would command or permit things to happen that would not allow that.

 

[MarcoPolo]

There’s different reasons for all the violence that happened in the OT. Some were done by man’s free will which lead to results being not God’s decision but the result of the sin committed by man which affected others. Sometimes God punished in order to protect His people. Sometimes He punished because people disobeyed Him. But many times God gave warnings and was merciful. To ignore God’s mercy in the OT is to not be honest. God did often warn strong consequences for sins, but often those strong warning which looks overly harsh were done not so God can punish, but to deter people from sinning. Sin has nasty results in this world, it leads to the fall of kingdoms and governments, homes and families, the innocent suffers because of the sins of the people.

God at times had people destroyed in order to protect His people from idolatry and future threats. God knows the future and knows what will happen before it ever happens. So when God saw the path of the world headed a certain way that would ultimately end up bringing destruction to His people, then He would command or permit things to happen that would not allow that.

This is a really good post, and I especially like pointing out that God in the OT was merciful quite often.

 

[jcrichton]

Hello,

I came across a question on another website (GirlsAskGuys.com):

“Are Christians emotionless…?”

The question is regarding killing in the Old Testament, but I haven’t studied the Bible before, so don’t know how to precisely answer.

Details can be found here:

girlsaskguys.com/Other-Questions/689904-are-christians-emotionless.html.

What is your opinion?

I think people do have a problem with Christians… well with themselves but they need someone to blame… here’s a little wisdom from Threshold of Hope, a weekly program on EWTN:

Father Mitch Pacua:

“…by the way some people may say that more people died in the name of religion… they’re not telling you the truth. In two thousand years of Christian history the number of people who died in wars of religion is 4.75 to 5 million; that’s little; that’s not good; I’m not commending that; but contrast that with 70 years of communism in which you have as many as 264 million people killed in 70 years vs. 5 million in 2000 years; I mean that’s a big contrast; religion has been an important way of putting the breaks on man’s murderous tendencies while atheism opened the floodgates of murder…”

…that said… who is heartless and emotionless?

Sadly, these are the same types who would embrace everything the world offers while rejecting God for Calling them to a Chaste, Humble, Responsible existence.

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[chosen_people]

Hello,

I came across a question on another website (GirlsAskGuys.com):

“Are Christians emotionless…?”

The question is regarding killing in the Old Testament, but I haven’t studied the Bible before, so don’t know how to precisely answer.

Details can be found here:

girlsaskguys.com/Other-Questions/689904-are-christians-emotionless.html.

What is your opinion?

The first problem is that many of the things that are thought to be “harsh” are merely misunderstandings of the Jewish scriptures

some examples:

A Christian reads Judges and believes that a man turned his daughter into a human sacrifice

Of course, she could not be sacrificed, but she also could not work in any capacity, or marry, or be “used for breeding”, for the rest of her life. She lived the rest of her life in seclusion, devoted herself to prayer, never married or had children and never knew a man.

Similarly, an “eye for an eye” in Judaism is not mutilation of a person who has blinded another (nor impunity to the offender if he happens to be blind) but monetary compensation

The Christian reads of a “death penalty” for a particular sin, but has no knowledge of the almost impossible conditions (committing the act in front of at least two witnesses, being warned and continuing to commit the act despite the warning) which made a conviction in a Jewish court virtually impossible. Nor do they have knowledge of the Jewish Sages attitudes against the death penalty (quite rightly you have never heard of a convicted terrorist, no matter how many people he killed, ever being sentenced to death and executed by the Jewish State of Israel). Often they do not differentiate between a “Divine punishment” from God and one to be carried out here on earth.

However the main problem,the basis for these and similar threads concerning God in the Jewish scriptures as opposed to the god of the Christian scriptures, has to do both with the different concept of God in the two religions as well as the differences in the perceived relationship between God and man.

God in Judaism has no limitations. The same God who has absolute powers of forgiveness, mercy and justice, also has the absolute power to decide not to forgive, that justice and the benefit of mankind and creation, demand that there will be no forgiveness. This is something that is very difficult, if not impossible for the Christian to accept.

Judaism is an intellectual religion for adults. It demands the conscience choice of obligations and responsibilities, it demands the understanding of consequences.

Christianity is a dogmatic religion The relationship of the Christian to his god is similar to that of a small child to a loving father No matter what the child does, he/she knows that if they are truly sorry, the father will always forgive them, will always love them. (Hitler can murder six million Jews, but in the moment before his death if he was truly repentant, if he accepted the Christian god into his heart, then he can go to Christian heaven.).

 

[Crescentinus]

There’s different reasons for all the violence that happened in the OT. Some were done by man’s free will which lead to results being not God’s decision but the result of the sin committed by man which affected others. Sometimes God punished in order to protect His people. Sometimes He punished because people disobeyed Him. But many times God gave warnings and was merciful. To ignore God’s mercy in the OT is to not be honest. God did often warn strong consequences for sins, but often those strong warning which looks overly harsh were done not so God can punish, but to deter people from sinning. Sin has nasty results in this world, it leads to the fall of kingdoms and governments, homes and families, the innocent suffers because of the sins of the people.

God at times had people destroyed in order to protect His people from idolatry and future threats. God knows the future and knows what will happen before it ever happens. So when God saw the path of the world headed a certain way that would ultimately end up bringing destruction to His people, then He would command or permit things to happen that would not allow that.

 

[Trebor135]

Father Mitch Pacua:

That data is intriguing and could come in quite handy.

I’d like to find out what his sources were–do you know?

 

[nordskoven]

Jews would put a piece of honeycomb into a child’s mouth and say, “Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.” Catholics do the same things with sweets at Easter and feasts. It’s all good, if not “adult.”

What if…? What if state-sponsored atheism that slaughtered untold millions in the twentieth century wrote a saga as telling, real, and painfully honest as the Old Testament? Not gonna happen from the “Father of Lies and Murder.” Russia got great press/propaganda starting with Reed. Hasn’t been openly revealed since, although the VENONA transcripts from the KGB after Gorbachev flew the coop are wonderful insights into Communist infiltration into American media and culture. Should be on the net somewhere. These guys invented the sound bite, with the belief that the masses needed some plausible–not true–but plausible storyline.

Too bad we don’t know history. Otherwise, we would know the parallel of Stalin’s control of the banking system in 1929 as the start of the slaughter by starvation of the Ukranian middle-class farmers/kulaks. This parallels new bank regulations forcing insanely tightened credit to eradicate capital for anybody but Friends of Barak/FOB’s. The middle class is THE buffer against socialist dictators. Now, in the USA, the middle class is teetering on the brink, 401(k) retirements are drained. The last shove is the The Famous Barak’s health care dictate ready to collapse the insurance industry, the last bastion of non-governmental assets having some degree of insulation from government meddling/looting as the pension funds were looted.

The Old Testament has many lessons for us. If God says do it, do it. If He says don’t do it, don’t do it. One OT guy looted the enemy against divine orders and disaster struck until he was executed for his crime. One tribe of people God commanded be killed to the last man was spared; and one of their later descendants, Haman, contrived to have all the Jews slaughtered as seen in the Book of Esther. Prayer and fasting turned the tables on Haman, and he and all his people were executed in their stead. God knows. We don’t.

Lord, grant us all hearty appetites for truth; even the Way, Truth and Life. Let us taste and see Thy goodness, dearest, most wondrous Creator. Thanks.

 

[jcrichton]

The first problem is that many of the things that are thought to be “harsh” are merely misunderstandings of the Jewish scriptures

some examples:

A Christian reads Judges and believes that a man turned his daughter into a human sacrifice

Of course, she could not be sacrificed, but she also could not work in any capacity, or marry, or be “used for breeding”, for the rest of her life. She lived the rest of her life in seclusion, devoted herself to prayer, never married or had children and never knew a man.

Similarly, an “eye for an eye” in Judaism is not mutilation of a person who has blinded another (nor impunity to the offender if he happens to be blind) but monetary compensation

The Christian reads of a “death penalty” for a particular sin, but has no knowledge of the almost impossible conditions (committing the act in front of at least two witnesses, being warned and continuing to commit the act despite the warning) which made a conviction in a Jewish court virtually impossible. Nor do they have knowledge of the Jewish Sages attitudes against the death penalty (quite rightly you have never heard of a convicted terrorist, no matter how many people he killed, ever being sentenced to death and executed by the Jewish State of Israel). Often they do not differentiate between a “Divine punishment” from God and one to be carried out here on earth.

However the main problem,the basis for these and similar threads concerning God in the Jewish scriptures as opposed to the god of the Christian scriptures, has to do both with the different concept of God in the two religions as well as the differences in the perceived relationship between God and man.

God in Judaism has no limitations. The same God who has absolute powers of forgiveness, mercy and justice, also has the absolute power to decide not to forgive, that justice and the benefit of mankind and creation, demand that there will be no forgiveness. This is something that is very difficult, if not impossible for the Christian to accept.

Judaism is an intellectual religion for adults. It demands the conscience choice of obligations and responsibilities, it demands the understanding of consequences.

Christianity is a dogmatic religion The relationship of the Christian to his god is similar to that of a small child to a loving father No matter what the child does, he/she knows that if they are truly sorry, the father will always forgive them, will always love them. (Hitler can murder six million Jews, but in the moment before his death if he was truly repentant, if he accepted the Christian god into his heart, then he can go to Christian heaven.).

Intestesting… how you reduced Christianity to a human credo with a straw god while you elevate Judaism to the outmost level of potency… your error is that Jesus, Emmanuel, is that same God which you seem to Love; Yahweh, the One that was to Come to His Temple… He Came, He Saw, He Established His Church, and He Returned to His Place… from where He Is to Return: the Alpha and Omega, the First, the Last, the Eternal, the One True God!

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[jcrichton]

That data is intriguing and could come in quite handy.

I’d like to find out what his sources were–do you know?

I truly cannot tell you; I’ve watched him for quite a while… even during his Homilies he manages to introduce pertinent data, including the Jewish roots of Catholicism…

I suggest that you visit the EWTN site and search for it; if you are short on time let me know and I’ll drop by the site and post or pm the findings.

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[Abba]

(quite rightly you have never heard of a convicted terrorist, no matter how many people he killed, ever being sentenced to death and executed by the Jewish State of Israel).

Objection. No propaganda please. Please stay on topic.

You are quite right that the state of Israel has not given a fair trial to many so-called ‘convicted terrorists.’ Many are judged without a trial and either imprisoned, mulilated or exploded by a missile that usually kills and wounds plently of civilians and children.

Israel sentences to death and executes people without a trial.

usatoday.com/news/world/story/2012-06-20/Israel-retaliatory-air-strike/55709504/1
nytimes.com/2010/06/01/world/middleeast/01flotilla.html
mondoweiss.net/2012/03/israel-has-killed-23-in-gaza-most-of-them-civilians-pchr.html
ifamericansknew.org/stats/deaths.html
electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/mowing-lawn-israels-latest-massacre-gaza-and-lies-behind-it
answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100531080125AAvgwD9
rt.com/news/israeli-strike-kills-boy-gaza-563/

I can just go one with the links for pages.

 

[jcrichton]

Jews would put a piece of honeycomb into a child’s mouth and say, “Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.” Catholics do the same things with sweets at Easter and feasts. It’s all good, if not “adult.”

What if…? What if state-sponsored atheism that slaughtered untold millions in the twentieth century wrote a saga as telling, real, and painfully honest as the Old Testament? Not gonna happen from the “Father of Lies and Murder.” Russia got great press/propaganda starting with Reed. Hasn’t been openly revealed since, although the VENONA transcripts from the KGB after Gorbachev flew the coop are wonderful insights into Communist infiltration into American media and culture. Should be on the net somewhere. These guys invented the sound bite, with the belief that the masses needed some plausible–not true–but plausible storyline.

Too bad we don’t know history. Otherwise, we would know the parallel of Stalin’s control of the banking system in 1929 as the start of the slaughter by starvation of the Ukranian middle-class farmers/kulaks. This parallels new bank regulations forcing insanely tightened credit to eradicate capital for anybody but Friends of Barak/FOB’s. The middle class is THE buffer against socialist dictators. Now, in the USA, the middle class is teetering on the brink, 401(k) retirements are drained. The last shove is the The Famous Barak’s health care dictate ready to collapse the insurance industry, the last bastion of non-governmental assets having some degree of insulation from government meddling/looting as the pension funds were looted.

The Old Testament has many lessons for us. If God says do it, do it. If He says don’t do it, don’t do it. One OT guy looted the enemy against divine orders and disaster struck until he was executed for his crime. One tribe of people God commanded be killed to the last man was spared; and one of their later descendants, Haman, contrived to have all the Jews slaughtered as seen in the Book of Esther. Prayer and fasting turned the tables on Haman, and he and all his people were executed in their stead. God knows. We don’t.

Lord, grant us all hearty appetites for truth; even the Way, Truth and Life. Let us taste and see Thy goodness, dearest, most wondrous Creator. Thanks.

I concur. Rulers and conquerors have always known the truth about cows, er, people: lead them by the nose and they will do as you command; man’s propensity to loath, even himself, outweighs even reason and his appetite for truth ends at gossip and finger-pointing–two elements quite susceptible to manipulation and alteration (check out the US justices deeming an outrageous anticonstitutional exploit as “tax!”)truth suppression and manipulation is a practice which power mongers have early on perfected!

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[jcrichton]

Objection. No propaganda please. Please stay on topic.

You are quite right that the state of Israel has not given a fair trial to many so-called ‘convicted terrorists.’ Many are judged without a trial and either imprisoned, mulilated or exploded by a missile that usually kills and wounds plently of civilians and children.

Israel sentences to death and executes people without a trial.

usatoday.com/news/world/story/2012-06-20/Israel-retaliatory-air-strike/55709504/1
nytimes.com/2010/06/01/world/middleeast/01flotilla.html
mondoweiss.net/2012/03/israel-has-killed-23-in-gaza-most-of-them-civilians-pchr.html
ifamericansknew.org/stats/deaths.html
electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/mowing-lawn-israels-latest-massacre-gaza-and-lies-behind-it
answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100531080125AAvgwD9
rt.com/news/israeli-strike-kills-boy-gaza-563/

I can just go one with the links for pages.

…well… that person has… “we good, and mature,” “Christians bad and infantile.” oh, wait, that wasn’t the topic… sorry! :juggle:

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[Trebor135]

I truly cannot tell you; I’ve watched him for quite a while… even during his Homilies he manages to introduce pertinent data, including the Jewish roots of Catholicism…

I suggest that you visit the EWTN site and search for it; if you are short on time let me know and I’ll drop by the site and post or pm the findings.

Some quick Google searching didn’t turn up the homily or lecture where Fr. Pacwa mentioned those statistics.

Where did you get the quote from?

 

[jcrichton]

Some quick Google searching didn’t turn up the homily or lecture where Fr. Pacwa mentioned those statistics.

Where did you get the quote from?

…yeah… google and the other engines have sold out… many times you get everything and anyone selling you the moon and stars… but not the info you’re requesting… here’s a direct link:

ewtn.com/tv/live/thresholdofhope.asp

The program was aired last Tuesday, June 26… the particular information is found about 15 to 16 minutes into the program–you can watch it right on your computer!

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[Trebor135]

…yeah… google and the other engines have sold out… many times you get everything and anyone selling you the moon and stars… but not the info you’re requesting…

Haha.

here’s a direct link:

ewtn.com/tv/live/thresholdofhope.asp

The program was aired last Tuesday, June 26… the particular information is found about 15 to 16 minutes into the program–you can watch it right on your computer!

Thanks for the link. I downloaded the program from June 26th and will give it a listen.

God bless,
T.