Yea I though it could be legit too, but since it was the only source and very recent (less than a year) I have some suspicions. Made me curious if you saw it thats all. If you happen to find out more, please share. I can do the same.

Thank you for sharing this link. This is the first I've heard of any such thing. I just tossed off the "Liberia" example as a "specific" reference, rather than just staying general and hypothetical like, "Suppose something like this [i]did[/i] happen...". All I knew about Liberian history was the emigration of American slaves there.

I'm not sure about the reliability of the source material, so I'd have to check around more. It seem legit, though.

Thanks for the tip off. I had no clue.

Sorry if this is bringing this thread back from the dead, but I found this interesting.

After reading the example with Liberia I tended to agree with this logic - they wouldn't enslave others after being in that treatment themselves. Yet I found this article suggesting the Liberians went through similar slavery practices after they were freed and moved to liberia to start their own colony:

https://www.brightworkresearch.com/criticalthinking/2019/08/did-african-americans-enslave-liberian-africans/#References

I don't know how good or reputable this is. I do know its independant research, but I also didn't find much else supporting it. Just found it to be curious within the context of what was said.

Thank you for taking the time to reply with such an honest letter. To be honest in return, it was not the letter I was expecting to receive, either in attitude or content. I regret that there cannot be reasoned dialogue between us—something I was looking forward to. It’s obvious that continue to try to discuss these matters would not be a fruitful pursuit.

I do have two short comments, which I assume will be our last exchange unless you want to continue talking.

First of all, the cultural context is far more important than the language used. You can drill forever on the words, "It says, 'KILL ALL THE BOYS’,” but the cultural context rules the rhetoric. Can you imagine 3000 years from now some archaeologist digs up a random 15 documents from our era about the political situation here in the US in 2019, and that’s all they have to go by? We live in such volatile times with inflammatory rhetoric. If they tried to grasp our climate by analyzing words alone, they would be tragically mistaken. Our cultural context is filled with political rhetoric that must be understood to grasp the import of the words.

Secondly, you keep mentioning slavery, so allow me to offer one comment among many that I could make. Imagine that in the U.S., after 350 years of chattel slavery of the blacks, the African-Americans were set free by a U.S. president. Imagine on top of that they were put on boats to start their own country—let’s call it Liberia in Africa. In what universe would they set up society in Liberia with “Let’s own slaves, and it’ll be OK if we beat them and rape them and own them for life”? That would NEVER happen. And yet, after 400 years in Egypt, with a long period of slavery, you are claiming that as soon as they got out of Egypt (Ex. 13), by Exodus 21 they were making it OK to own slaves, beat them, and abuse them at will? And in Leviticus 25 (supposedly describing the era of the Exodus) they were saying, “Yeah, let’s own slaves for life!” It’s not a tenable position. When we understand the cultural context, it warns us to interpret the vernacular very differently than superficial terminology.

I’m sorry that our discussions have so quickly come to an end. There is so much to talk about. It’s easy to see your passionate and afflictive rejection of all things Christian. You undeniably believe very strongly about the conclusion to which you have arrived, and you also feel that anyone who doesn’t not arrive at your same conclusion is closed-minded, sinister, deceitful, beyond depraved, and an embarrassment to rational thought. Through much agony, introspection, study, and thought I have arrived at a diametrically opposite position from yours—a process and conclusion you consider to be poisonous and I have found to be honest and authentic.

Thank you for wishing me the best. I mirror that sentiment to you. May your sincere pursuit of the truth bring you to it.

Jim, thank you for your patience for my response.

I do want to start by saying that I think it’s going to be unsustainable for me to write too much more, not as much because of a busy schedule, but more because of what you are trying to do in your own mind with all the facts. Your email showed very evidently that you are unwilling to be open-minded and skeptical, especially about extremely questionable ideas.

I understand that you think that you are simply looking up historical and linguistic information to try to look up the original meaning of the text. But I can’t emphasize this enough: what you think you are doing is not what you are actually doing. You think you are trying to get to the bottom of the passage meanings, but what you are actually trying to do is to defend something very wicked, very false, and very obviously man-made.

I get it. I’ve been there. I went to Bible college, I took many hermeneutics classes, archaeology classes, Biblical Hebrew … I get where you’re coming from and I understand what you think you’re trying to do, and why you think it’s the right thing to do. I respect your desire to get your interpretations correct.

I wish I could show you and help you see that you are doing something far worse, something far more sinister and awful, than what you have convinced yourself about your efforts.

It is an embarrassment that anyone would pause for more than a second to condemn the Bible—the slavery, the genocide, the endless awful things written in it.

Think about what your religion has done to your mind, Jim … you advocate a book that promotes slavery … and it is making you a slave to an ancient book, to a false religion and to a non-existent god. You no longer have the free will to stand up and read the Bible verses and say, “This is WRONG!”

There is absolutely no way to make what the book says about slavery and genocide even REMOTELY moral.

What would it take for you to condemn that awful book? For the Bible to say

[list][*] It’s ok to cut off your daughter’s fingers and toes if she disobeys you?
[*] It’s ok to cut out your kids eyes if they disobey you?
[*] It’s ok to disembowel your neighbors if they have sex with someone or for reasons you don’t approve of?
[*] It’s ok to burn people alive on poles or bake them in giant toasters?
[*] It’s ok to slice people slowly with little cuts of tiny razors until they bleed to death or die from shock?
[*] It’s ok to throw people off tall buildings to kill them, right in front of their kids?[/list]

When does it get absurd enough for you, Jim? At what point is the absurdity so big enough of a splinter in your mind that you will think twice about it all with a truly skeptical perspective?

I’d have a modest amount of respect left for your position if you said something like, “This is WRONG, and we’re going to ignore the following passages in the Old Testament.” I’d question why you are still believing at that point, but I would at least respect you for rejecting the awful passages. But you don’t even go anywhere near that. You just defend it all.

Your Bible says that the human heart is exceedingly deceitful, but it is, in fact, your Bible that is exceedingly deceitful. It’s a very elaborate trick, and you fell for it. Terribly. I am so very sad for you. You are so very closed-minded. I don’t think there’s much I can say after this email. I will give you a few thoughts, but I understand from your email that you’re not ready yet to take the blindfold off. I understand how appealing the darkness is; I was there for 43 years.

I can see right through your arguments. I know that many simple-minded people would give you at least some level of credence; I used to be one of them, for reasons I can no longer fathom or stomach. I was so foolish to believe arguments like the ones you shared. They’re barely deserving to be called arguments. I see a lot of :”tap dancing for the Lord” going on, but zero substance.

Those arguments sound like Smeagol, “Come on, precious, don’t be so upset at these passages, let me wow you with my Hebrew skills, or some historical facts that will help you not be so concerned about these extremely horrible passages.”

People who fall for that look really gullible, and I guess gullibility loves company. I know I did. I won’t be among that company any longer--now or ever.

You sound like you could argue for the goodness of the North Korean government or the friendliness and love of freedom of Communist China, or like a Trump spokesman.

What you wrote adds up to a stretch. A very far-fetched stretch.

“KILL … ALL ... the BOYS.” Oh, it doesn’t mean that.
“KILL … ALL … the ADULTS.” Oh, it doesn’t mean that.
“KILL … ALL ... the GIRLS WHO’VE HAD SEX.” Oh, it doesn’t mean that.
“TAKE AWAY … ALL ... the YOUNG GIRLS WHO ARE STILL VIRGINS.” Oh, it doesn’t mean that.
“ENSLAVE THEM FOR LIFE.” Oh, it doesn’t mean that.

Listen to yourself, Jim. Listen to what your desperate clinging to a pretend god has done to your mind. You would probably attribute Bible passages which talk about a depraved mind to ME, no doubt. Listen to yourself, Jim. The kind of arguments you gave, and the very fact that you even seriously consider them, is BEYOND DEPRAVED.

Look at what you’re trying to defend. Look at the monsters that the Bible makes of us. I am so sick to think that I was about to live the rest of my life that way.

You keep trying to get away with the message of “It doesn’t mean that.” Your god and his book can’t be crystal clear, for all people of all ages? In is supposedly perfect and timeless book? Your timeless god who never changes, who is CRYSTAL CLEAR about not eating shellfish or mixing two different kinds of cloth can’t be clear about not killing kids or adults or stealing girls???

Your all-powerful god can’t lead his people to a promised land that is uninhabited, where no ethnic cleansing is required? Where they won’t have to murder anyone? Where they won’t steal other people’s land? Your all-powerful god, whose word never returns void, and who has the power to change hearts, can’t protect his people from a sex cult by just leading them far away from them? And giving them hearts to obey him?

Your amazing god’s only options are 100% identical to the options of every other pagan false god?

Honestly, how stupid have we all been to believe this garbage? These explanations try to make idiots of intelligent people, and to make people say really stupid things.

What else would we like to add in Hebrew or historical references that excuses genocide, stoning our own children, slavery, rape, mistreating women, etc.?

You think so lowly of your god that he is apparently powerless to be Timeless, Clear, Consistent, and Easily Distinguishable from the ruthless brutality of the pagan kings and gods of Biblical times?

The benchmark is pagan tribal warfare, genocide, and slavery. And your amazing god perfectly meets that definition, but does not exceed it by one inch? And you’re actually ok with that? I know you are. So was I.

It’s like we all have or had a vested interest in making ourselves believe this, no matter how unreasonable we had to become to do it, or how much we had to ignore or pretend isn’t there.

We ignored the extremely obvious: the god of the Bible sounds like a barbaric, bloodthirsty jerk. Was it 60 million babies murdered by Israel by God’s command? Or was it 60K? 600? 60? How few murdered parents, babies, and stolen virgins, and stolen land, and permanent slaves, and stonings, would we need to get it down to, by studying Hebrew and ancient history, for it to be ok?

What age of boys would be ok with you for murdering, since they apparently posed a threat to Israel as Israel STOLE THEIR LAND? Would it be ok to murder 17 year old boys? 14 year olds? 12 year olds?

Maybe Elisha cursing those 42 children and them getting eaten by the bears wasn’t 42 children. Maybe in Hebrew it’s only 14. That makes it so much better! Your god suddenly looks only mildly bloodthirsty now.

How many men who got stoned for picking up STICKS on a Sabbath Day would it be ok to stone? 100? 10? Or does it feel more comfortable for you that it’s just 1 man that they recorded stoning, over picking up sticks? Or maybe they didn’t mean stoning! Maybe in Hebrew it says that they just threw water balloons at him? Pardon my sarcasm but the Bible deserves far more sarcasm than I could ever throw at it.

By the way, the “infallible” Bible doesn’t say what you wrote. It says over many clear passages: KILL THEM ALL, including babies. It either means “ALL” … or it’s unreliable. It’s either a bloodthirsty, savage god who looks IDENTICAL to the pagan gods of the region … or it’s an unreliable man-made book.

What kind of weak god do you believe in who can’t be clear??? This passage isn’t a passage of hyperbole or even metaphors; it’s historical. So your god can’t be accurate, for the record, and for all times?

Jim, how about a NEW and IMPROVED 10 Commandments:

[list][*] DON’T MURDER KIDS, NEITHER YOUR OWN BY STONING OR THE FOREIGNERS BY GENOCIDE.
[*] ETHNIC CLEANSING IS WRONG, WHETHER YOU LEFT 5% OR 75% ALIVE WHEN IT’S OVER.
[*] DON’T ABUSE KIDS, AND ESPECIALLY DON’T RAPE THEM.
[*] WOMEN ARE JUST AS IMPORTANT AS MEN, IN EVERY WAY. THEY ARE NOT PROPERTY. CORROLARY: STOP VALUING WOMEN BY THEIR VIRGINITY.
[*] DON’T RAPE WOMEN. VIRGIN OR OTHERWISE.
[*] DON’T DEMEAN WOMEN BY MAKING FUN OF OR DEMEANING THEIR MENSTRUAL CYCLE. HONOR YOUR WOMEN, DON’T PUT THEM DOWN.
[*] IF A MAN RAPES A WOMAN, WHETHER SHE CRIES OUT OR NOT, HE GOES TO PRISON, AND SHE IS NEVER REQUIRED OR EVEN ASKED TO BECOME HIS WIFE. HE GOES TO PRISON.
[*] DON’T OWN PEOPLE. NO ONE. EVER. NO SLAVES. I REPEAT, NO SLAVES. CAN YOU BEAT YOUR SLAVES? NO, BECAUSE YOU CAN’T EVEN OWN THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE. CAN YOU BEAT YOUR SLAVES AND ITS OK IF THEY GET BACK UP WITHIN 2 DAYS? NO, BECAUSE YOU CAN’T OWN SLAVES IN THE FIRST PLACE. CAN YOU HAVE SEX WITH YOUR FEMALE SLAVE? NO, BECAUSE YOU CAN’T OWN SLAVES IN THE FIRST PLACE.
[*] DON’T STEAL LAND.
[*] NO RACISM. YOU’RE NOT THE CHOSEN PEOPLE. YOU’RE NO BETTER OR WORSE THAN ANYONE ELSE. PERIOD.
[*] SATURDAY/SUNDAY ARE NOT SPECIAL. BUT EVEN IF YOU THINK THEY ARE, NEVER KILL ANYONE OVER IT. ESPECIALLY OVER PICKING UP STICKS.
[*] DON’T EVER … EVER … EVER.. EVER ... PICK UP A STONE AND THROW IT AT SOMEONE. UNLESS ITS NERF. I REPEAT: NEVER THROW A STONE AT SOMEONE. ESPECIALLY NOT YOUR OWN CHILD, BUT I PROBABLY DON’T HAVE TO SAY THAT, BECAUSE SURELY NONE OF YOU WOULD EVER THROW STONES AT YOUR OWN CHILDREN THAT YOU LOVE SO MUCH. BUT JUST IN CASE: DON’T DO IT.[/list]

And how about some minor commandments, like the verses after the 10 Commandments?

[list][*] IF THE NATIONS AROUND YOU ARE COMMITTING RITUAL PAGAN SEX, LEAVE THEM ALONE. LET THEM HAVE SEX … AND DON’T THINK FOR ONE SECOND THAT THEIR SEX IS WORSE THEN YOUR MURDERING THEM.
[*] IF THE NATIONS AROUND YOU ARE KILLING THEIR CHILDREN IN THEIR RITUALS, IT’S NOT OK TO KILL ALL THEIR CHILDREN, IN ORDER TO KEEP THEM FROM KILLING SOME OF THEIR OWN CHILDREN. DO WHAT YOU CAN TO RESCUE THOSE BEING SLAUGHTERED, BUT DON’T DO ANY SLAUGHTERING OF KIDS YOURSELF.
[*] AS GOD, I DON’T GIVE A RAT’S ASS ABOUT YOUR HAIRCUT, WHETHER YOU EAT SHELLFISH, AND WHAT KIND OF THREADS YOU WEAVE TOGETHER. DON’T EVEN ASK, I DON’T CARE.[/list]


The Biblical position is entirely indefensible and absurd.

You wrote:

[quote]Num. 31.17: “And kill every woman who has slept with a man.” So we have already more than adequately established that they’re not killing every non-virgin woman. Instead, it means to kill the perpetrators of the crime.[/quote]

It says nothing of the sort about a crime. It says they had sex. It says nothing about ritual pagan sex. And even if they had ritual pagan sex, LEAVE THEM ALONE.

You wrote:

[quote]“These women were disbursed among the nation’s households (Num. 31.27). These girls were not the “possessions” of the soldiers to do with as they saw fit: rape, sexual abuse, and whatever else people illegitimately read into this text. No, these girls were taken in by families across the nation to be incorporated into those families.”[/quote]

Jim, if the Israelites weren’t killing all the people, as you suggested, but just the military men who were a threat, then that means a TON of people were left alive and well in those towns. Why would they take all the young virgins if the young virgins have parents and grandparents and cousins and younger siblings left for them? Why would your god tell them to take all the young virgins away from their loved ones and their homes? Why would your god put those young girls through institutionalized kidnapping and emotional and sexual torture for the rest of their lives, knowing they had family waiting for them and hoping for their safe return?

You are trying to defend genocide. You are trying to defend murdering women having sex. You are trying to defend kidnapping and slavery. It does not matter whether they were prostitutes or not. It does not matter whether they agreed with Israel’s sexual rules. These are wicked pronouncements. And you are actively defending them.

On top of all the obvious, first-level reason to call these awful verses, I find it ironic that the Bible that condemns these women to death calls Lot, who offered his daughters to a bad crowd instead of the angels, and who slept with both his daughters, a “just man.” It calls David, an adulterer and murderer, a man after God’s own heart. Why weren’t those men put to death by God or His people? The hypocrisy is endless.

Moses, the man who, according to you, told the people of Israel to slaughter all the pagan prostitutes, was the same man who wrote,

[quote]“Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.” --Ex. 21:20-21.[/quote]

Moses, the man who wrote these same things, instructed Jews how to trick slaves into being their slaves forever:

[quote]“If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free. But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,’ then his master must take him before the judges. He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life.”
--Ex. 21:2-5[/quote]

Tricking a slave into being your slave for life, because you “gave him” a wife, but the wife has to stay with the master, not the slave once the slave is freed?

If you honestly look at these man-made books, dominated by toxic male dominance and violence, and can’t see right through them, you are soooooo far gone off the deep end, it’s beyond absurd. I wish you could hear yourself. You sound super desperate to try to make these issues sound acceptable, or to just diminish a straightforward reading.

This breaks my heart so much, to watch the poison that religion has embued people with, to the point that they will bend over backwards to try to defend having slaves, and beating them, and all the other atrocities of the Bible.

Honestly, you need a decent dose of skepticism. Not for your debating with others, but with just for your own mind and for the Bible, and especially for the Bible teachers you’re apparently reading.

I am not surprised in one sense at your email, and yet there will always be a sense of shock when I hear someone even try to defend these things.

You betray an extremely false sense of erudition as you twist a straightforward reading of the text. I heard similar explanations in Bible college, when subjects like inspiration, canonicity, inerrancy, and preservation came up. Trying to throw quotes and possible historical interpretations and possible translation variations doesn’t help the case one bit.

You are ignoring one of the central Christian hermeneutic rules: interpret Scripture with Scripture. Other Bible passages make the slaughter clear and the bloodthirstiness all too evident.

Your own words undermine the authority of Scripture. You rip apart its trustworthiness … and then ask people to trust it.

[quote]“This was the way they talked, but it often was not the literal or historical truth.”[/quote]

If any of this were to happen today, it would incur worldwide condemnation from Christians, non-Christians, Atheists, etc. They were like modern-day ISIS.

Your kind of email is exactly where I was for years … and thankfully it’s exactly what led me to see the Bible as the further thing possible from divine. You appear to have written with the intention of giving a defense, or reasons to consider the passage, and thus the Bible, credible. You instead further undermined it, exponentially.

You set it up that the person who goes to seminary or reads 10 advanced books, or has some super study Bible with lots of notes, that such a person might have a slight change at excusing or explaining away this behavior. You apparently think that if you add enough other historical references it will sound less horrible. Wrong. It doesn’t. And all you keep doing is undermining Scripture and defending horrors.

A normal public reading of the texts is, in your view, a dangerous and misleading thing. God is thus purposely hidden, and a confusing God. Which undermines your case across the board.

If all people in all times and all cultures in all languages could not understand God’s clear, timeless message to them in a straightforward way, what does that say about the intelligence and wisdom and forethought of your god?

You asked if this is fun. This isn’t fun, it’s just sad. I feel sad for you. Profoundly sad. You’re brainwashed, and apparently you have a ministry to try to brainwash others.

This discussion can’t go very far. I’m ok if it’s dead after this email. I’m not proud or happy about that, because I’d rather be available to rescue you, but I am glad that it can’t go very far at the moment, as I doubt you would be open to rescue. Such a waste. You seem like a really nice guy; I hate to see you waste your life.

I wouldn’t feel comfortable if the discussion could keep going round and round, same as I wouldn’t be happy with myself if I somehow found myself in long-term discussion with a white supremacist or a Neo Nazi. I would know I was doing something wrong if people in those camps somehow felt unattacked and comfortable, or if I felt comfortable with their arguments enough to give them some kind of credit for making some good points or grace to just agree to disagree. I’ll never agree with white supremacy, neo Nazism, or the Bible. And yes, those 3 items do belong in the same sentence. I’d be very happy to walk out on Donald Trump or have him walk out on me; I’d be ashamed of myself if it were otherwise.

At some point people who are where you are need to step back and do a little introspection. Hear yourself. Listen to how you sound. You sound like you’re trying extremely hard to make things fit that don’t fit. To make things sound reasonable that are beyond ridiculous. Honestly, you sound like you’re trying so hard, grasping at straws, and it doesn’t work at all, but you just won’t give in, because it’s too hard to admit the truth and its implications. I get it. But it’s time to stop.

You end up sounding like a charlatan from the first few sentences. You sound like a slick used car salesman. I get it, that there there’s a hint of a slightly shiny gloss from certain angles, but when you look close, and put it all in the bright light of the sunshine, the arguments fall apart immediately, and the car is revealed to be a total lemon. I say “you” are doing that, but I put myself in that camp for 43 years; I hang my head in shame to have been on the side of the Bible. I understand the prison you are in, and the clarity and peace and truth that you think you have.

At some point I sincerely hope you will step back and look at the way you are butchering both the text, and rational thought, and how you are trying to dumb down the people you claim to be helping. If this is what you do, it’s not a ministry, it’s a brainwashing service. Sorry to be so blunt, but that’s the truth. You’re hurting people. Lots of them.

If I can sense something’s super shady before I even dig in, the case is lost right out of the gate. That’s what I see in almost every Christian in their debates versus atheists. They look and sound extremely irrational and yet proud of it. They are like the Emperor in his new Clothes, parading gladly when they look more foolish with every step.

The problem is that this isn’t just a debate over semantics or Hebrew words or historical exaggerations. The problem is the insanity of the entire proposition. You’re trying to nitpick on whether adding a dash more salt to the soup will make it taste better, when the whole pot is full of rotten garbage. In a very real sense, I hate to sound harsh, but I’ll take that any day over sleazing people back into superstition and a fake god.

I hope you join the right fight soon. I’d love to pick up this discussion when you are willing to stop hurting people. But if your soul and the devil were real, I’d tell you that you’ve sold your soul to the devil, and it’s time to come into the light.

The reality is that you, and I until recently, sold our mental capacities to a Bronze Age religion written really poorly by bad, angry, savage, misogynistic, power hungry rapists, murderers, thieves, and war criminals. And that book was our “Good Book.” It’s where we went to get your morality. Look at the monsters we have become. We were completely removed from reality. Jim, please step back from this whole thing and look at what your attachment to the Bible has done to you.

If I sound a little perturbed, it’s probably because I am, at least in some ways. It’s people like you that keep people who are on the fence, on the fence. And you pull people back from rationality. I am not truly angry at you, but angry at what you are doing and at the fact that these deceptions just keep going on, generation after generation.

Jim, there is a sense that when you bring things into the light, they lose their power. Step into the light. I understand it’s hard to lose heaven and the afterlife. I understand that it’s hard to realize you’ll never see loved ones again that have passed. I get it. I get the loneliness. But superstition, bloodthirsty pretend gods, and a really bad book won’t cut it. Not even close.

Are you willing to analyze alternatives? Are you willing to pursue the TRUTH above all else? Are you willing to search for the truth no matter what the implications for your belief system?

What you are willing to consider as acceptable has crept into the absurd and horrific, but because you do it so slow to your own mind, you see it as natural somehow. I have no such openness to these things anymore. It is 100% clear that the Bible is not divine, and is a man-made book, and a poorly made book at that. The reasons to disbelieve drip off every page.

This Jefferson quote sums it up fairly well:

[quote]"I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence: and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being."[/quote]
— Thomas Jefferson

I wish you well, Jim. I truly do.

I’m glad to talk. This is as good a place as any to begin. But I will preface my comments with “I don’t defend texts.” The text speaks for itself. My job is to understand it properly, no matter where that takes me. It’s the only way to approach the text without bias and the only path to an accurate interpretation.

I’ll assume you don’t really want to start with vv. 13-14. I’ll presume you started there to give some context. I’m-a guessin’ you want to talk about Moses’s anger that he let the women live, commanded to kill the boys and save the virgins. If I’m wrong, let me know and we can go back and talk about vv. 13-14.

Sooooo, the prologue to the discussion is to understand ancient Near Eastern (ANE) warfare rhetoric, because it affects all of these verses you’ve brought up.

ANE warfare rhetoric often included the idea of “kill them all” or “we killed them all.” This kind of massacre and slaughter was rarely actually done (by all available records). Instead, the rhetoric of “kill ‘em all” was their way of saying “Win a decisive victory.” Here’s my evidence.

[list][*] Egypt’s Tuthmosis III (later 15th c.) boasted that “the numerous army of Mitanni was overthrown within the hour, annihilated totally, like those (now) not existent.” In fact, Mitanni’s forces lived on to fight in the 15th and 14th centuries BC. There was no annihilation. No “totally."
[*] Hittite king Mursilli II (who ruled from 1322-1295 BC) recorded making “Mt. Asharpaya empty (of humanity)” and the “mountains of Tarikarimu empty (of humanity).” It just wasn’t true. It’s warfare rhetoric.
[*] The “Bulletin” of Ramses II tells of Egypt’s less-than-spectacular victories in Syria (1274 BC). Nevertheless, he announces that he slew “the entire force” of the Hittites, indeed “all the chiefs of all the countries,” disregarding the “millions of foreigners,” which he considered “chaff.” Not true.
[*] In the Merneptah Stele (c. 1230-1208 BC), Rameses II’s son Merneptah announced, “Israel is wasted, his seed is not,” another premature declaration. This sounds like he was killing all the children. It just wasn’t so. Israel was around for six more centuries—but this is the way they talked.
[*] Moab’s king Mesha (840/830 BC) bragged that the Northern Kingdom of “Israel has utterly perished for always,” which was over a century premature. The Israelites were still around for the Assyrians to devastate in a century later, in 722 BC.
[*] The Assyrian ruler Sennacherib (701-681 BC) used similar hyperbole: “The soldiers of Hirimme, dangerous enemies, I cut down with the sword; and not one escaped.” Yeah, I don’t believe a word of it. What they’re saying is that they won decisively.[/list]

This was the way they talked, but it often was not the literal or historical truth. What it means is they whipped the pants off the enemy (um, they didn’t whip off their pants, either. That’s just one of OUR expressions about total victory).

Here's another evidence that the "kill 'em all" is just rhetoric, and this one is from the Bible. When you read Exodus 9 (part of the 10 plagues in Egypt), in v. 6 we learn that the Lord brings a plague to the livestock, and "all the livestock of the Egyptians die." ALL of them. Drop down to verse 9, where there is a plague of boils. Notice it affects the livestock. It turns out "all of them were killed" was rhetoric, not literal. It turns out all of them were NOT killed, because now we find these same animals are affected by boils. Then in verse 19 we find that the livestock have to be brought inside so they survive the hailstorm. The "I killed them all" of v. 6 is rhetoric to describe a severe devastation, not a wipeout of all those that were living. This is very important in this Midianite story where it says they "killed all the boys" and "killed all the women who were not virgins." It's rhetoric of devastation, not a literal genocidal slaughter.

Now, piece #2 of the prologue. When God wanted something particularly special in warfare, the text uses the Hebrew term [i]cherem[/i]. Sometimes this involves “utterly annihilate," but most often not. The term is often used in these kinds of contexts (like Jericho, and the Amalekites in 1 Sam. 15), and often translators translate it as “kill ‘em all,” but the word actually refers to the removal of something from human use: “No one shall make use of this.” When (if) [i]cherem[/i] objects are destroyed, the purpose of the destruction is to make sure nobody can use it (but not all cherem objects are destroyed. Most notably, Josh. 11.12-13 reports that all of the northern cities were [i]cherem[/i], yet Joshua destroyed only one of them [Hazor]. Likewise, a field that is cherem is not destroyed but becomes the property of the priests [Lev. 27.21] Destruction, when it happens, is only a means to an end). [i]Cherem[/i] may involve destruction, but destruction is not the essential meaning. If destruction is involved it is because that is the way to remove that particular entity from human use.

In the OT, [i]cherem[/i] is not limited to cities. There are 4 distinct categories of things that can be [i]cherem[/i]:

1. Inanimate objects (including plots of land): plunder (Josh. 6.17), metal objects (Josh. 6.19, 24), a field (Lev. 27.21). These things are assigned to the divine realm.

2. Living Individuals (people or animals). It is implied in Josh 6.17 & 8.2; Lev. 27.28.

3. Abstractions representing communities of people. The nation of Israel refers to the abstract identity of the community, not to each and every individual Israelite. The same is true of nations who inhabit the land. If cherem means “remove from use,” then removing an identity from use depends on what identity is used for. Essentially it is the equivalent of disbanding an organization. It is not disposing of the members, but disposing of enough of the organization so that there is no longer any identity as members.

4. Cities. They prohibited all human activity at the site. Cherem cannot and does not mean “destroy” because apart from Jericho, Ai, and Hazor, no cherem city was destroyed. The city was removed from use. They drove them out. After that, YHWH leased the land and the cities back to Israel. Because the land is cherem, Israel cannot make use of it for herself, but it belongs to YHWH, and so YHWH can do whatever he wants with it. What He chooses to do with His land is to allow Israel to use it, provisionally on Israel’s fidelity to the covenant.

Now, why THIS is important is because [i]cherem[/i] is not the term used in this text. It really nails it down for us that this text is NOT talking about killing all the boys or killing all the women who were not virgins.

Let’s keep going. I hope you’re having as much fun as I am.

Piece #3 of the prologue. Who are these Midianites, anyway? They were a large confederation of tribes with a wide ranging region, mostly in the eastern part of the Sinai Peninsula and east of the Gulf of Aqaba, but they ranged as far north as the Moab region east of the Jordan River. They were neither semi-nomadic or Bedouin during this period, but had villages and even walled cities. Why this matters is that Moses was not targeting all the Midianites (therefore no genocide here of “all the boys” and “all the non-virgin women”), but specifically the ones who were the perpetrators of the dirty deed done dirt cheap in the Peor incident: the Moabite contingent (Num. 25.1). We are not to picture the Israelites as riding through a region of thousands of square miles slaughtering innocents. This particular collection of villages had been hostile to Israel. The record says it was basically a war against five cities (Num. 31.8). We know this wasn’t genocide, because the Midianites show up later in the time of the Judges (Judges 6.1), to confirm for us that they weren’t all killed, as the warfare rhetoric might lead us to believe. Gideon defeated them in Judges 7, but they’re still around as a people group. The prophet Habakkuk (Hab. 3.7) mentions them in about 600 BC, so they’re still around then.

Piece #4 of the prologue. What did these Midianites do to Israel? The text is not clear, but the impression we are given is the it was the worst of all possible offenses. Apparently their women seduced the men into sexual trysts (Num. 25.1), but then corrupted their religious morals by leading them into idolatry (25.2). It’s possible that they were able to corrupt even the priesthood (an incident involving Phones and a Midianite woman). Perhaps Balaam has learned what Israelite behaviors will invoke the wrath of YHWH, and he advised the Midianites to encourage these behaviors among the Israelites. In other words, they are attempting to manipulate YHWH Himself. What exactly the Midianite scheme was, or what it was supposed to achieve, is lost to us, but the upshot is a crossroads for the Israelite nation. Apparently they are in danger of losing everything: their national identity, their distinctiveness as people of God, the integrity of the family units, the chain of inheritance, their priesthood, their access to God’s presence, and their future as a nation. Everything hangs in the balance. This is the biggest deal they have EVER faced, and God says it must be both contained and dealt with, or they are DONE as a nation. Done.

Now onto the text itself.

Numbers 31.15. Moses asks what sounds like a brutally cruel question: “Have you allowed all the women to live?” We know from all the background that he’s talking about the Moabite Midianite women who had been involved in the travesty, and no others. He must be able to see in the crowd some of the shrine prostitutes (religious hookers), and he confronts his leaders about it. Moses is not talking about women in general, and certainly not “all” the women, but specifically about the women who had perpetrated the greatest evil on Israel to that point.

Num. 31.16. This shows that I’m telling it correctly: He talking about the specific ones who were the perpetrators of the problem.

Num. 31.17: “Now kill all the boys.” Again, we have learned he is not talking about all of they boys, but those who present a military threat to Israel. An enemy people will rise again unless they are sufficiently vanquished. Napoleon Bonaparte, after crowning himself as emperor, was banished and exiled. But three years later he rose up again to challenge the government and won. It was only Waterloo that brought him down. In 1953, Fidel Castro launched a revolution in Cuba. He was captured and imprisoned, and many of his men were killed. But he was released in 1955 as part of a general amnesty. He moved to Mexico, gathered supporters around him, and returned to Cuba and took over the country. His family is still in power.

Moses is not saying to kill all the boys. What are being killed here those boys who pose some kind of military or subversive threat to the State. It is a targeted elimination of combatants. (Keep in mind that the Israelite males who participated in the seduction were also put to death (Num. 25.5). If Israel didn’t deal with this whole mess, they would never succeed as a nation.

Num. 31.17: “And kill every woman who has slept with a man.” So we have already more than adequately established that they’re not killing every non-virgin woman. Instead, it means to kill the perpetrators of the crime. How would they know? Duh—they know which women seduced them. They know which women trained them in idolatry and got them to betray YHWH. This was not hard to separate the sheep from the goats.

Num. 31.18: “But save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.” Any girl was was still virginal was spared because they could not possible have been guilty of cultic sex. Have you watched "Zero Dark Thirty"? The American military invaded the compound, and shot most of those they came across. But when they came across an obvious innocent, that life was spared. That's what Numbers 31 is about. Kill the guilty, spare the innocent.

The phrase “save for yourselves” has nothing to do with rape, as people accuse who haven’t studied the text. The Hebrew word is chayah, which means “You shall keep alive.” There is nothing in this term implying sexual pleasure. it simply means “Do not kill them, but let them live.” In Deut. 21.10-14, it was against the Law for a Gentile female POW to be used as a sex object. An Israelite male had to carefully follow proper procedures before she could be taken as a wife. In light of the highly sensitive nature of sexual purity in Israel and for Israel’s soldiers, specific protocols had to be followed. Rape was most certainly excluded as an extracurricular activity in warfare. We also know that the Hebrews in particular had stringent sexual propriety laws.

What the command is about is that anyone who was not guilty or who didn’t pose a future threat to Israel was to be spared. This was no mass slaughter, genocide, or brutal mayhem on innocents. God is saying these Midianites, these girls, were presumed to be innocent of the crimes of the others, and they could be brought into Israelite tribes to become part of the chosen people. (The same kind of thing happened in Judges 21.1-12—same warfare rhetoric, same sparing of the innocents, same effort to incorporate those innocents into the population of Israel. Naomi did the same with Ruth.)

The history of the culture bears out this interpretation as well. Unlike the future Greeks and Romans, the cultures of the ANE were not into using captured females for sexual purposes. Instead, the households used them as part of a much-needed labor force, in this case spinning and weaving. The ancient world, with very little technology, was necessarily labor-intensive.

These women were disbursed among the nation’s households (Num. 31.27). These girls were not the “possessions” of the soldiers to do with as they saw fit: rape, sexual abuse, and whatever else people illegitimately read into this text. No, these girls were taken in by families across the nation to be incorporated into those families.

Even v. 19ff. shows us how dedicated they were to purity. To think that what is really going on here is a rape-fest is just way off the mark of everything we know about the situation and about Israelite ethics in specific.

The numbers recorded in the plunder (Num. 31.32ff.) are WAY off. Even when Thutmose III of Egypt campaigned against Megiddo and other northern Canaanite cities, his recorded plunder (which is probably also exaggerated) was not this high. Again, this is a demonstration of warfare rhetoric. It’s all “fishing stories.”

But there’s another factor about the numbers. In Moses, the word for “thousand” was vocalized “[i]elep[/i]” but was written “[i]lp[/i]” (Gn. 20.16). But a similar word vocalized “[i]alup[/i]” (meaning clan, grouping, troop) was also written “[i]lp[/i]” (Gn. 36.15; Judges 6.15). If the numbers shown in throughout this passage were intended to use “[i]alup[/i]” instead of “[i]elep[/i]”, our resulting accounting of spoils is far smaller. So in v. 32 when we hear that “32,000 women were captured,” it probably means 32 groups of women, not 32 thousand women. Notice in v. 4 that only “12,000” soldiers went into battle. It’s probably 12 military cohorts (groupings), not 12,000 anyway. So these 12 military units conquer the 5 cities, which were also probably not that large, and they brought back 675,000 sheep? 72,000 cattle? 32,000 women? No, no, no they didn’t. They brought back 675 flocks of sheep, 72 groups of cattle, and 32 groups of women.

So, a summary of what’s happening here. Let’s look at the total picture. The Midianites, particularly a group of women (probably temple prostitutes), had foisted on Israel a nation-wrecking travesty of some sort. It was severe and extreme, and unless it was dealt with, there would be no Israel in the future. In a military action, Moses attacked the Moabite region of Midianites, 5 cities in particular, to put a stop to it. Five kings were killed (Num. 31.8). They also killed the false prophet, Balaam, who was leading this travesty (31.8). No doubt many soldiers were killed—that’s what war is. They were also instructed to kill the women who had perpetrated the travesty along with any young men who were entering the military. Everyone else was to be spared and incorporated into Israelite society (instead of slaughtered or driven out). The animals were brought into Israelite homes as plunder, and many were donated to the tabernacle for Levite and priestly use (31.29-30). That’s what’s going on here.

If you think you can honestly defend this, I'd love to hear it.

Numbers 31:13-18, 32

[quote]13 Moses, Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the community went to meet them outside the camp. 14 Moses was angry with the officers of the army—the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds—who returned from the battle.

15 “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. 16 “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the Lord in the Peor incident, so that a plague struck the Lord’s people. 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.

32 The plunder remaining from the spoils that the soldiers took was ... 32,000 women who had never slept with a man.[/quote]