Deuteronomy 20:10-14


Will someone explain to me how this passage of the bible supports a view of God as a moral being? In what context could these acts of God be viewed as reasonable?


Deuteronomy 20:10-14

As you approach a town to attack it, first offer its people terms for peace. If they accept your terms and open the gates to you, then all the people inside will serve you in forced labor. But if they refuse to make peace and prepare to fight, you must attack the town. When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town. But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you.



[This message has been edited by schizmann (edited 10/17/2006 10:04a).]

I do not know all the answrs. A few things come to mind.

First. the peoples who were to be conquered were barbaric and evil.

Second, it was simply understood in the ancient world that any surviving male would be a perpetual enemy of the people who had conquered his city. Prisoners of war were not taken in ancient warfare; enemies were simply killed.

Accordingly, male survivors would one day return out of a sense of blood honor, and the resulting deaths of those future battles would far exceed the deaths of the immediate battle.

Sounds more like it was written by man than by God.

Those are some of the hardest things to understand from a Christian perspective (please note that they mean nothing in the theism/atheism debate).

Two things:

1) The good of what God was trying to do within Israel was of such profound importance that all steps necessary to create a Jewish state which God could use as a door into our history had to be taken. In other words, it was just that important that a distinct Jewish culture and state be established that it had to be done to ensure such a state. And such a state was just that important for the good that God wanted to work in calling mankind back to Himself.

2) God was working with who he was working with. He hated it, but knew it was necessary within the free will constraints He choose to give us. Isreal could not have accepted a different message at that time in history.


3) This physical life does not mean to God what it does to us. God's aim is to get as many people as possible within the contraints of free will into a voluntary relationship with him as possible. For a Christian, the loss of our physical life is not nearly the worse thing that could happen to us. In fact, if we lost everything we have, including our life, but gain spiritual connection with The Father, then we have lost nothing and gained everything. God, who loves us and wants our good, tearfully destroys when necessary to create the circumstances that would bring as many as possible back to Himself. He is the surgeon of our history, destroying with the aim of saving.


[This message has been edited by letters at random (edited 10/17/2006 11:01a).]

Letters - But how does that justify slavery, child abuse and enjoyment of spoils?

[This message has been edited by schizmann (edited 10/17/2006 10:57a).]

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Letters - But how does that justify slavery, child abuse and enjoyment of spoils?

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slavery - God gave Israel strict standards on how to treat their slaves, and every 7 years they could have all debt forgiven and go free (if they choose to leave there master, which they often did not). It was explicitly stated that they should be treated well. I am reading "Gates of Fire" right now. The worse thing that you could do for someone (especially a woman) was to let them out on their own right after taking over their town.

child abuse - huh? where do you get that? Should they have killed them, too?

enjoyment of spoils - what should they have done with the spoils? Thrown them away? (Although it is interesting that, at another time in history, God ordered all the livestock killed. I think He did this to keep Israel from coming to "enjoy" these things too much. King Saul didn't, and God dumped him for it.)

Letters - Enjoyment of the spoils in this context seems to be a reference to enjoyment sexulally of the women and probably the children too.

This is more explcit in (Zechariah 14:1-2 NAB)

Lo, a day shall come for the Lord when the spoils shall be divided in your midst. And I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem for battle: the city shall be taken, houses plundered, women ravished; half of the city shall go into exile, but the rest of the people shall not be removed from the city.

schizman:

in the second, he is predicting what would happen to Israel, not telling anyone to do it.

In the first, he is no way telling them to "enjoy" the women and children. That's just silly.

Duet 24:14:

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14 Do not take advantage of a hired man who is poor and needy, whether he is a brother Israelite or an alien living in one of your towns.

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In the context of history, God was radical in regards to how he expected Israel to treat people.

[This message has been edited by letters at random (edited 10/17/2006 11:36a).]

It just seems like humans trying to justify their actions (eliminating their enemies) more than an omnipotent all-knowing deity trying to nudge a certain culture ahead of others.

Wouldn't it make more sense for this omnipotent, all-knowing, and benevolent god to find a less violent and sadistic method to eliminate his own creations that just happen to get in the way of "the chosen ones"?


[This message has been edited by muster ag (edited 10/17/2006 12:00p).]

You raise a legitimate question. Prior to my explanation, I feel it important to state that Israel was a political entity with many enemies surrounding it. Being a political entity with your enemies around you, warfare is a reality of life. Since warfare is a reality, there should be a code for such warfare and that is what Deuteronomy 20 provides.

If you look at the verses that you have cited, you can see that peace is the first option. If they were willing to accept a peaceful solution, they were not to be oppressed and given their full rights while living under the rule of Israel (keep in mind that this is a political entity here). If they refused, then Israel would fight. Even in fighting, certain rules were imposed on the Israelites and these rules can be found if you read further in Deuteronomy. For example, Deuteronomy 21 mentions the regulations dealing with captive women and what was permitted and what not.

It's important to take these verses in context. If you do not understand the context in which the verses originate, you really can't judge how good/evil the verses are.

There are many examples in addition to Deuternomy 20:10-14 which can be misconstrued to show intolerance and evil. However, the key is to understand the history behind them.

Christians are guilty of the very same thing in dealing with verses from the Quran. Many times people throw our Quranic verses and use the verses to say how Islam is evil and Muslims are evil. It's exactly the same thing.

My $0.02

In order for the state of Israel to thrive purely, they had to eliminate every one of their enemies. Thre preservation of the seed is one of the most important aspects of the old covenant.

This is actually nothing compared to the conquest in Joshua, where they killed the women and children.

eus6267: The big difference is that the founder of Island himself was a murderer, slave trader and pedophile. Since then, there has been no Islamic "New Testament" or reform movement. Everywhere in the world today, Muslims are murdering others in the name of their religion. No other religion is waging war on the entire world simultaneously. Ergo, Islam is still a fundamentally evil belief system at the root of most of the evil in the world today. Nice try at the mindless attempt to equate the two religions, though.

Buck- No one here is equating anything. What I said is that you can take verses out of context in both the Bible and the Quran. Can you refute that? The mention of the Quran was intended to show that it can be done anywhere and that one should not judge based on selective interpretation. I didn't get into Islam as a religion because it has nothing to do with Deuteronomy 20. I don't know why you brought Muhammad, terrorism, pedophilia, etc. into this discussion. Nice try at getting your personal talking points into the discussion.

Sid -maybe this was the basis behind the actions of the Knights in the war against the infidels during the Crusades. Women in England and Europe were to be treated with respect but the muslim women and children could be murdered and raped with impunity because they were not Christian. Same mind set the "Christians" had in their dealings with the Mormons. Go figure.

I will give you all the answer later to the original question.

We must also recognize that the Bible was written over a 1500 year period of God's interaction with his people. God meets the Israelites where they are, but He leads them forward.

For example, in the OT polygamy was allowed though God clearly look upon it with disfavor, but in NT it is no longer allowed. They progressed. Similarly, He allowed the Israelites to have a king even though He knew it was a bad idea.

Here is a detailed answer to your question:

http://www.christian-thinktank.com/qamorite.html

Although I do not agree with all of it, it may give you some ideas. Much has been written on this topic.

Sid -God would not have allowed polygamy if he looked on it with disfavor.

He allowed Israel a king even though he looked on kings with disfavor.

Wasn't that more a case of them asking for it and God wanting to teach them a lesson? I don't recall many prophets asking for polygamy....but perhaps I'm wrong.

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Will someone explain to me how this passage of the bible supports a view of God as a moral being? In what context could these acts of God be viewed as reasonable?

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...oh I don't know...Perhaps if they flew three airplanes into your buildings and killed thousands of innocent civilians? I think that context would make the above passage reasonable.



Stand to Reason
Knowledge.Wisdom.Character
www.str.org

Since all of those guys are dead, we should go and rape their women and this would make your god happy?

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Since all of those guys are dead, we should go and rape their women and this would make your god happy?

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Who said anything about rape?



Stand to Reason
Knowledge.Wisdom.Character
www.str.org

"But you may keep for yourselves all the women..."

"You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you."

I doubt that they planned to have tea with them.

Have you ever heard of maidservants? The fact that you read rape into that passage shows your bias.



Stand to Reason
Knowledge.Wisdom.Character
www.str.org

Probably, but I like to be realistic and plausible.

muster,

Then you are being intellectually dishonest.

Then so are you if you assume that they were willing maid servants after your god killed all of their husbands and sons regardless of the quality of the character of the men they killed.

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Then so are you if you assume that they were willing maid servants

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I never said they were willing maid servants. They were female slaves. Slavery does not equal rape.



Stand to Reason
Knowledge.Wisdom.Character
www.str.org

Who do you think these women had sex with?

I think the Christians got let off the hook on this thread. I honestly don't know how someone can defend a God who would command attrocities.

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I think the Christians got let off the hook on this thread. I honestly don't know how someone can defend a God who would command attrocities.

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Could you please list the attrocities that you are referring to?



Stand to Reason
Knowledge.Wisdom.Character
www.str.org

A4Life,
see the first post of this thread.