Old testament question regarding the israelites conquests

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James1990

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Hi guys. I would like to know why God asked the israelites to conquer and kill their enemies to take the promised land? Or is that the case?

Also… Did the israelites kill the children and men of their enemies but keep the women for themselves?
 
James1990 said:
Hi guys. I would like to know why God asked the israelites to conquer and kill their enemies to take the promised land? Or is that the case?

Also… Did the israelites kill the children and men of their enemies but keep the women for themselves?
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Hello guy.

Have bible will travel much farther than you are going to here.

I have this little problem with asking people that make positive claims to actually back them up. Now, in this case I know there is plenty of back up for this, yet you seem to want everyone here to do the homework for you.

Also, here is a hint. Remember there are many ways of knowing (metaphor, literal…)

In closing I would ask that you dare to be more than very vauge in your questions. Specific questions after research could be more helpful to you.
 
You might be more specific as mentioned above, but let’s consider a bit: Yes, many people in the OT were killed. In fact, it can be correctly said that God provided the means that led to many deaths (think of the great flood for example). Does this make God a murderer, or a bad God?

No. What are the wages of sin? They are “death”. Who has sinned against God? Everyone. So who has earned death? Everyone. (Do you see where I am going with this?)

The fact is that the entire human race has done nothing but earn death for itself…and for a great many of them, God has simply let them reap their wages. The REAL question, then, is…"why did God have mercy on the Isrealites…and why now is He extending this mercy to all the world, even though we’ve done nothing other than to earn death?
 
Another good question you might consider: “What belongs to God?” And to go along with it, “Does God have a right to do as He pleases with what belongs to Him?”
 
Well, in the case of the Promised Land, if you read closely you’ll see that they only attacked military and governmental cities. The civilians started fleeing long before they got there. So as a “people” they were annihilated by having their government and military forces overthrown and the rest run out.

I think Dave Armstrong wrote something about this. I think it was him at least…
 
James1990 said:
Hi guys. I would like to know why God asked the israelites to conquer and kill their enemies to take the promised land? Or is that the case?

Also… Did the israelites kill the children and men of their enemies but keep the women for themselves?
Click to expand...
I may be wrong but I don’t think the Israelites kept the women and killed the children and men, I believe they usually killed all of them - men, women, children.

But I don’t believe for one moment that God asked them to commit these atrocities. The God as described by Jesus is merciful, loving and kind. He could never have ordered such terrible actions. Committing a crime and claiming it was sanctioned or requested by God, is something people do even today - there is no reason to believe it.

For those who believe that everything in the OT is true - do you really believe that Jacob wrestled with God (or maybe an angel) and defeated him? Do you really believe Lot’s wife turned into salt because she turned back? There is lots of other weird stuff in the OT.

God never ordered any massacres. This is just a story told by humans to justify their atrocities.
 
openmind77 said:
…But I don’t believe for one moment that God asked them to commit these atrocities. The God as described by Jesus is merciful, loving and kind. He could never have ordered such terrible actions.
Click to expand...
You should read the OT…it will give you a much better glimpse than what you have been told. One thing we need to NOT exclude about God, which Jesus also taught, is that God is JUST.
 
From the perspective of the Israelites, they were purging the Promised Land of people who had committed a variety of sins. The Old Covenant emphasized the “separation” of the Chosen People, distinctive by the mark of circumcision, the restricted diet, the Sabbath observance, etc - all designed to remind them of their exclusive relationship with the One God. They were NOT supposed to “keep” the women (or even the cattle) because they were supposed to remain unmixed with those who were unclean. Other parts of the OT describe the kinds of misfortune that befall them when they give in to the temptation to keep the women and livestock . . .

Against this background the radical nature of the “mystery” that Paul wrote had been revealed in Jesus, that the Gentiles were to be co-heirs with the Jews in the Messianic Covenant, was extreme and shocking.

I think it is impossible for us to accurately tease out from the OT what is the dictated will of God and what is the interpretation of His will by the Israelites of the time and what is the redaction by those in the Exile who wrote down the accounts that had been passed down for centuries, especially as we are reading through the filter of our own time, which has been molded by 2000 years of the revelation of God in Jesus; the God who is both just and merciful, the God who has extended the opportunity for reconciliation to all. The Israelites who wrote the OT did not have this part of revelation. It would not have occurred to them or been credible to them that God their Father was also the Father of their enemies, or that He would have cared about all those Ishmaelite, Edomite, Amelekite babies . . . That is what GRACE is about.

Sally
 
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