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[Newbie]

Assuming that man has an innate sense that killing infants is "wrong", what would you expect to see as a reaction from a nation who is directed by God to slaughter every living thing in the cities they attack?

Would you expect that any of the soldiers might question this order? Would you expect that any of the soldiers might argue over the morality of this order? Would you expect that any of the soldiers might disobey this order for ethical reasons?

Scripture does indicate that there were instances of disobedience to this order; When some soldiers kidnapped some women to keep for themselves.

Scripture concerning this type of slaughter reads more like permission to do so than an order to do something they were morally against.

[jimwalton]

Thanks for the question. It's a general rule of proper textual interpretation that a text should be read for what its author meant to say and what its first readers or hearers would have heard it say, so let's look into that.

Warfare bravado ("Kill 'em all!") was conventional warfare rhetoric in the ancient near East, and is common in military accounts. What we find out from those accounts is that genocide or total slaughter were not the intent of the language, but victory.

- Egypt's Tuthmoses III (15th c BC) boasted that "the numerous army of Mitanni was overthrown within the hour, annihilated totally, like those (now) not existent." But the fact was that Mitanni's forces were merely conquered, and lived on to fight again and again in the 15th and 14th centuries.
- Hittite king Mursilli II (1322-1295 BC) recorded making "Mt. Asharpaya empty (of humanity)" and the "mountains of Tarikarimu empty (of humanity)." It was rhetoric, not reality.
- 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. All bravado, little fact.
- In the Merneptah Stele (c. 1230 BC), Rameses II's son Merneptah announced, "Israel is wasted, his seed is not." Quite a premature declaration, given what we know of history.
- Moab's king Mesha (840/830 BC) bragged that the northern kingdom of "Israel has utterly perished for always." Well, not in 840 BC they didn't. the Assyrians devastated Israel in 722.
- The Assyrian ruler Sennacherib (701-681 BC) used similar hyperbole and pomposity: "the soldiers of Hirimme, dangerous enemies, I cut down with the sword, and not one escaped." Again, not so.

So you see, it was common warfare grandiloquence to say, "Kill them all!" before a war, and "we killed 'em all" after a war, as a way of saying, "Let's win this," and "we won!" Nobody killed all of anybody. THEY would have understood this stuff. WE don't. We read the text and think, "Bloody jerks!" but it means we don't understand the ancient cultures.

If we go to the biblical accounts, we find out the exact same thing as the surrounding cultures: it wasn't genocide at all, or even the killing of infants. Their battle cry pertained to the armed soldiers, and that's who they killed. They didn't slaughter everyone and everything, and they knew that wasn't the command. It was part of their idiom that we don't understand, being 3000 years removed from it, but these archaeological discoveries help us understand.

- Duet. 7.2 commands the armies to "kill them all," and then in v. 3 warns them not to intermarry with them. Well, they can't intermarry if they're all dead. There was no inference to kill them all, but only to achieve victory.
- Numbers 31: "Kill all the Midianites!" Didn't happen. The Midianites were a large, scattered confederation of Bedouin and nomadic tribes. They hardly had cities, though there were a few. The Israelites are not riding through the entire Middle East slaughtering innocents. Here is it those particular Midianites associated with Moab that are targeted. This particular collection of villages and been hostile to Israel, and they had been a moral detriment to the people. They had instigated hostility against them, and it was time for military action. The Israelites did execute the 5 kings of Midian (Num. 31.8), but this is by no means a genocide. The Midianites show up later in the times of the Judges (Judges 6.1), to confirm for us that the ethnic group was not wiped from the face of the earth. 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.
- Joshua 6: From what we know of Canaanite life in that era, Jericho and Ai were military strongholds with little or no civilian populations. Israel's war was directed towards military personnel and governmental installations, not the women, children, and elderly. The use of women, children, and elderly, in their battle commands and war cries were merely stock cultural language for victory.
- Joshua 10 & 11: The text says all the kings were defeated, all the Canaanites were destroy, and Joshua took the whole land. Josh. 10.40. but Joshua himself acknowledged that wasn't literally so (Josh. 13.1, 13; 15.63; 16.10; 17.12-13, 18. So does the Bible: Judges 1.21, 27-28.
- Joshua 11.22: Joshua says there were no Anakim left in the land. but in Josh. 14.12-15, Caleb asked Joshua for permission to go to war against the Anakim.
- 1 Sam. 15.3. Yeah, not so. "Kill them all" in v. 3, but the Amalekites remain in 1 Sam. 27.8; 30.17-18, and even hundreds of years later (1 Chr. 4.43).

The Bible isn't lying, and Joshua & Moses weren't being deceptive. It's the way they talked.

The point was not to kill the people, but to drive them out (Dt. 7.1).

God was far more concerned about the destruction of the Canaanite religion and idols than Canaanite people. (Josh. 23.7, 12-13; 15.63; 16.17-10; Jer. 18.18; Jonah 4.11 and many more).

Also, God repeatedly expressed his love for the foreign peoples (Gn. 12.3; Lev. 19.34; 24.22; Num. 35.15; Dt. 10.18-19 and many more), if they would just turn to him and worship in truth rather than be misled by lies.

So it wasn't genocide, as it seems to read. We just need to know more of the context, culture, and language.

[William Hendershot]

If only soldiers were killed in battle, what do you make of the following scripture?

Judges 20:48 And the men of Israel turned back against the people of Benjamin and struck them with the edge of the sword, the city, men and beasts and all that they found. And all the towns that they found they set on fire.

Judges 21:7 What shall we do for wives for those who are left, since we have sworn by the Lord that we will not give them any of our daughters for wives?

This is what Israel did to one of its own cities. I doubt they were more compassionate to their true enemies.

[jimwalton]

In this particular case, all of the citizens were involved in the crime. The text takes pains to let us know that negotiators were sent to the city of Gibeah, asking that the perpetrators be surrendered for punishment so that the city and its population might be spared (Judg. 20.12-13). A refusal to do so would make the general population complicit in the crime, guilty by refusal, and therefore accomplices to the immorality. Verse 13 explicitly tells us that the people of the city refused. Their refusal means they were defending the sin, implicitly condoning it, and willing to fight against justice. This action on their part was a sin of far-reaching consequences all by itself. It is clear that this is not just a decision of a few, but of the population, and so the population as a whole is executed for this capital crime. In this sense the scenario is different from the conquest, because the people as a whole explicitly joined in the guilt and sin. Besides, as I said, the people as a whole had a choice to turn over only the guilty ones and refused. They made their choice, just as during the conquest when the Israelites gave each city an opportunity to surrender, in which case the city would be spared. It's interesting to note that Israel didn't get a pass just because they were the people of God. If they did wrong, they were punished just the same as "the pagans". When they sinned, they were dispossessed from their land, just as the Canaanites had been. Justice is justice, and those who were guilty, whoever they were, were the ones who were punished. In this case, tragically, it was the population.

[William Hendershot]

In what fantasy scenerio does every member of society get a vote on whether or not certain criminals will be turned over to another authority for punishment? Do you believe that young girls in the city were given a vote, and that every single young girl in that city decided that they wanted to protect rapists?

[jimwalton]

> In what fantasy scenerio does every member of society get a vote on whether or not certain criminals will be turned over to another authority for punishment?

I think you're reading literally instead of, may I say it, reasonably. If I were to address a crowd, asking, "Do you want liberty?", I might easily say, "They all screamed 'YES!' "

Matt. 27.20-23: "They all answered... But they all shouted all the louder."
Gen. 19.4: "All the men from every part of the city..." (If there were even 5 righteous, God would have spared the city.)

But it's a figure of speech, not a technical observation of everyone's mouth. We all talk this way. But what about the city of Gibeah? Did they ALL get to vote? Of course not, but that doesn't mean the city isn't both corrupt and complicit, as a whole.

The point is not necessarily that EVERY individual in the city was complicit, but that the city was so systemically and endemically corrupt that it was beyond hope and beyond help. The inference of the passages is that while the leaders made the decision, the people sanctioned it also.

But as I've said all along, there is no particular reason to believe that the young girls in the city were killed. This was not the way of ancient Israelite warfare, as I have shown. In Josh. 20.37, they didn't kill everyone. It was warfare rhetoric. Even though they all talked this way, as I have shown, they didn't act this way, as I have shown.

[William Hendershot]

> But as I've said all along, there is no particular reason to believe that the young girls in the city were killed.

The reason to believe that the young girls were killed is because of the lengths they had to go to afterward in order to replace enough young women so that the tribe of Benjamin would not become extinct.

[jimwalton]

You'll notice that during and after the battle at Gibeah (Judg. 20), the Benjamites are scattered to the winds. They are fleeing in every direction in the face of defeat. People managed to escape, even some of the soldiers (Judges 20.47). You've seen this scene in many movies: the townsfolk know the armies are coming, and they gather their stuff and make for the hills. They were not pursued for extinction. The armies roll through and burn their homes and barns (Judg. 20.48). The population of Benjamin "is no more" because they've all fled the area. It's interesting that the Israelites know there are Benjamite survivors and yet have no desire to extinguish them. That's never the objective.

[William Hendershot]

You can try to twist it into something less brutal, but thats not what scripture says. The Benjamites needed women to avoid becoming extinct. Instead of telling the Benjamites to go and fetch their women from the woods, they slaughtered another Israelite city and kidnapped their women.

[jimwalton]

Please don't misunderstand me. The book of Judges is a dreadful tale, one story after another, of disobedience, stupidity, and failure. It's a testimony to the tragedy of unfaithfulness and the consequences of sin. You'll notice that there is no word from the Lord in chapter 21. We have another unwise oath (Judg. 20.2), just as misguided, stupid, and ungodly as Jephthah's (Jud. 11.30-31). The people cry out to God in Jud. 21.3, but you'll notice that there is no oracular response. Then they built an altar (at least they were sincere), but they had placed themselves in a difficult situation after making an unwise vow, and now they want God to endorse their mistake. He doesn't. So they make their own moronic and sinful plan, and execute it to the full. It was certainly brutal.

There is no sense in the Scripture that God endorses anything they have done. My only point is that they didn't kill everybody as it sounds. But they did attack the city, kill people, and kidnap women. Idiots, one and all. Just because a story is in the Bible doesn't mean it's an example for us to follow. The Bible has plenty of negative examples.