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[Dominator]

Human beings can make inferences. The least plausible thing of these texts is that these "marriages" were somehow ethical.

You're engaging in something I call cross texting. It's what fundamentalists, who need the Bible to be inerrant, have to do when a text breaks doctrine.

So you see these passages where - in any other context - you would say that the male behavior towards females constitutes rape. But this one is in the Bible, so here's the process as I see it:

1. The Bible is inerrant.
2. God is love and does not condone rape.

You see a text of questionable behavior and must now preserve it, so you reach for other texts like Deuteronomy 21:10-14 (the cross texting) to bolster your claim. The problem with that this only works for you and other people who accept an inerrant reading of scripture. Maybe God exists, and maybe God revealed himself through the person of Christ, but why on earth would anyone be required to force this book to say things it clearly does not?

[jimwalton]

I'm not guilty of your accusations. Cross-texting is a legitimate practice, because no text says everything there is to say about a subject. In the same way we let law interpret law and certain facts of science contribute to other facts of science, Biblical studies is a cumulative effort. We can best understand Scripture if we examine everything Scripture says about something. It's legitimate interpretive discipline. Cross-texting is essential to good Bible study. If we were to look at a text about money ("give everything you own away"), we can't just say that's the Bible's teaching about money. We have to look at everything the Bible has to say about money to properly grasp its economic theology.

You treat me as if I'm just contriving things to preserve some notion of inerrancy, but that's not an accurate accusation. This text says nothing about rape, nor does it imply rape. None of the texts do. Any interpolation of rape is an interpretive insertion into the text of a teaching that is not present.

[Dominator]

By forcing Israelites to marry their virgin female captives, YHWH institutionalized rape.

[jimwalton]

Again you are reading into the text something that isn't there. God didn't force Israelites to marry their virgin female captives. That was something they were permitted to do, assuming they followed a strict protocol of introducing those women into the covenant community. But God never said, "You have to do this. You have to bring these women home for sex!"

Deut. 21.11: you *may* take are as your wife
Deut. 20.14: you *may* take these as plunder

The "save for yourselves" of Numbers 31.18 is what they're talking about when he's telling them not to kill them. They are to be spared." It means "do not kill them, but let them live."

God never institutionalized rape, nor is he OK with it. He never commanded it or endorsed it.

[J Lord]

But doesn't God command his followers to kill innocent people? Like women who do not bleed after having sex on their wedding night for example. Surely you don't think a women deserves to be killed for something like this. Maybe you don't consider stoning to be torture, but it is certainly commanding the death of people when we know for a fact that many of them will be innocent of any wrongdoing.

[jimwalton]

Oh, see, I thought you were talking about people who were innocent, not people who were guilty of disobeying the laws of the covenant and betraying the God they claimed to follow. So it turns out you're not talking about innocent people at all, but people who you think, in your modern value system, weren't so bad as Another thought they were. That's a different matter.

But then, intriguingly, you say, "when we know for a fact that many of them will be innocent of any wrongdoing." Interesting. To what such facts do you have access?

[Mark Evens]

These virgin girls were the only survivors of the genocide if their people, saved so that the Israelite men could have sex with them. I really don't get how you think these girls being forced to marry men who slaughtered the girl's family and friends somehow makes it okay or not rape.

[jimwalton]

Because the text isn't about rape. The text is not advocating rape. God is not commanding rape. God is not endorsing rape. Rape isn't in the picture, it's not in the concept, it's not allowed, it's not taught, and it's certainly not commanded.

You may think ancient warfare was barbaric. Join the club. We all think war is barbaric. Modern warfare is too. It has terrible casualties. But rape of captive women in ancient Israel was not allowed.

[Yo Rick]

Ok, but in Judges 21:10-24 NLT "This is what you are to do,” they said. “Completely destroy all the males and every woman who is not a virgin.” Among the residents of Jabesh-gilead they found four hundred young virgins who had never slept with a man..."
These women are then "given to them as wives."

It's essentialy the same situations with different nations and cities in Deuteronomy 20:10-14, Numbers 31:7-18, Deuteronomy 21:10-14 and honestly there's enough of a patern here that I shouldn't have to go on.

All of these situations describe the taking of young virgins as wives. Not as laborers, not to spin cloth. As wives.

No are you genuinely implying that these women went home with the men who had killed their fathers, slaughterd their baby brothers, and burnt their villiages to the ground willingly?

Can you imagine your sister or mother doing that? Yes, societal norms have changed, and morality along with it (if we'd been born maybe 150 years earlier you and I would both have thought cat burnings were wondedful family fun, for instance). But not that much. Not that humans 3000, or even 70000 years ago would not have grieved for murdered family members and hated the ones who killed them

And in other situations where it's not explicitly stated thaylt they were being taken as 'wives', If they weren't taking them for sexual purposes, why only take the virgins? Surely a woman of 50 would have better skills and experience then a youn 14 or 12 year old?

Also there is, throughout these texts the use of the word in many of these

[jimwalton]

> Ok, but in Judges 21:10-24 NLT "This is what you are to do,” they said.

Right, but God is not giving that command. Nor are godly people giving that command. Judges 21 is a dreadful and dark picture of sin and disobedience. It's a travesty. Just because you read it there doesn't mean God commanded it or endorsed it. People made bad mistakes in that chapter. They did evil.

> It's essentialy the same situations with different nations and cities in Deuteronomy 20:10-14, Numbers 31:7-18, Deuteronomy 21:10-14 and honestly there's enough of a patern here that I shouldn't have to go on.

But that's the point: it isn't the same situation at all. In Deuteronomy and Numbers we have God's commands. In Judges we have a bunch of scoundrels.

> No are you genuinely implying that these women went home with the men who had killed their fathers, slaughterd their baby brothers, and burnt their villiages to the ground willingly?

Do you have any evidence they didn't? The fact is, neither of us know. The text doesn't say. But the text most assuredly does not endorse or command rape.

> If they weren't taking them for sexual purposes, why only take the virgins?

As Keil & Delitzsch say, "Women who had had sex might possibly have been engaged in the licentious worship of Peor (Num. 25.2), and they were to be killed to preserve the congregation from all contamination from that abominable idolatry." Any female who was still virginal could be spared because they could not have possibly been guilty of cultic fornication. Jensen adds, "This was to protect the Israelites from any further defilement and to prevent a future propagation of the Midianite people." Maybe one of those non-virgin women was pregnant, and she would give birth to a Midianite. Moses makes it impossible for Midian to continue as a people group, as the virgins who become wives of the Israelites will bear children for the conquerors.