The reader with biblical questions continues:
2. What about God giving commands that seem to our post 9/11
consciousness to be more like those given by Osama Bin Laden: i.e., I
think the prophet Samuel tells Sauls to kill all the women and children
of some town that they are fighting.
The
Church has not yet given guidance as explicit on this question as it
has on the previous one, but it has already recognized that there is a
divine pedagogy in which the children of Israel were led over the
course of time into a fuller and fuller understanding of God’s will.
Thus polygamy was tolerated under the Old Law but is not under the New.
Similarly, divorce was regulated at the time of Moses, strongly
discouraged during the time of the Prophets, and remarriage following
divorce was forbidden under the New Covenant.
In dealing with the commands in the Old Testament that seem
particularly barbarous, the logical approach would involve taking
account of this pedagogy and recognizing that God was gradually leading
his people into a fuller understanding of his will. In earlier times
(when these occurred), he was dealing with a people that had not yet
been fully catechized in his will and who were still heavily influenced
by the warfare practices of the cultures around them (which included
genocide). He was thus dealing with a "blunt instrument" in
moral-cultural terms and this may play a role in the bluntness with
which some of these commands are expressed.
This bluntness undoubtedly plays a role in these commands, but one may see the bluntness playing out in different ways:
1) On one interpretation, God himself may have decided that the
people of Israel were not yet at a stage of moral-religious development
in which they could approach the question in the nuanced manner that we
today can (and must!) approach it. Therefore, he gave them blunt
orders, these being the only kind they could effectively implement.
2) On another interpretation, one might say that God himself gave
more nuanced orders but the consciousness of the prophet or the
biblical author was not sufficiently nuanced to be able to articulate
these orders in a nuanced form. Whatever nuanced motions of grace the
prophet or author may have received, they ended up expressing
themselves in a blunt fashion due to the intellectual condition of
their day.
3) On a third interpretation–which grants the most nuance–one
might say that these accounts are written after the fact and the blunt
commands were not given in the original historical circumstances but
instead were written to symbolically express the unconditional break
with paganism that the children of God must make.
Each of these interpretations has challenges to face. The first one
is hard to square with the absolute goodness of God. If he is
absolutely good, why should he give such blunt commands? Against this
it might be argued that God is the author of life and so it is up to
him when and how one dies. All life is a gift, and if God chooses to
give some people less of it than others and to have them die in
particular ways, that is his choice.
The second interpretation is hard to square with God’s absolute
truthfulness. Since very assertion of sacred Scripture is an assertion
of the Holy Spirit, how could God allow such blunt commands to find
their way into the sacred text? In the case of the historical reporting
of what prophets said, this could be explained. If Samuel issued blunt
commands then the sacred author might accurately report this without
endorsing these commands (at least in an unqualified sense). However,
the same kinds of commands appear in non-historical texts, such as the
books of Moses, where this explanation is not as clearly available.
The third interpretation has the challenge that it is not obvious
(to us) that this is what is going on in the sacred text. However,
despite the fact that the ancients were at a lower level of moral
pedagogy than we are, they were at a remarkably high level of literary
development and thus capable of recognizing the non-literal nature of
many texts that we today tend to take literally (e.g., Genesis 1). This
being the case, the ancient audience reading the biblical text might be
much more able to recognize the symbolic nature of these commands and
that they were not necessarily given in the original historical
circumstances.
Not all ancient readers might have recognized this, but God has
shown that he is willing to write in a way that not all people will
understand.
Further, one might point out that few ancient readers at the time
the texts were written would be in a position to commit wholesale
genocide but all were in a position in which they needed to understand
the decisiveness of the break with paganism that God required.
As indicated, each of these views have challenges to face, though I
suspect that the third interpretation would be the preferred one of the
current pope and most current members of the Magisterium.
I once heard that a ban was imposed to keep the Israelites from engaging in their neighbors’ pagan worship.
God’s command, the ban, was never fully implemented; sure enough, the Israelites fell into pagan worship.
I’ve also heard that the Israelites, being former slaves, took agricultural advice from their pagan neighbors, which included pagan worship.
Peace!
Whimsy
I am pretty new to this blog and I am really impressed. How do I keep reading this after I take vows and get rid of my computer?
Whimsy,
The points you raise might go to God’s “motives,” so to speak, in wanting to isolate his chosen people from the Canaanites, but ends and means are two different questions, and the question has to do with the means the text presents God as choosing, i.e., commanding the Israelites to do something that today we understand as immoral. Why God may have wanted the Canaanites removed is one question; the morality of killing women and children is a separate question.
Had God destroyed the Canaanites directly (Like Sodom & Gomorrah) the question of the morality of the act would probably not have come up. Most people understand that, as a people, the Sodomites had totally polluted themselves and incurred God’s wrath. I have never heard anyone ask, “Who does God think he is, destroying all these people?”.
We also see God using foreign peoples to punish Israel’s disobedience at different times, using their armies as the instrument of his will. Women, children and other innocents died at these times as well.
If God used Isreal as his instrument to destroy a nation that had become irredeemably depraved it would not be out of line with the previous two principles.
Jimmy said. “God was gradually leading his people into a fuller understanding of his will.”
I think this is correct. God treated us differently because we really were different. It is the same way with children; if you use a spanking to discipline a four-year-old you are just doing what parents do. Spanking a 16-year-old would be totally inappropriate, however. It is not the morality of spanking that has changed, it is the child.
Doesn’t one of God’s creation, the Angel of Death, take the lives of every single human being under God’s direct orders, at the appointed time and place?
What then is so outrageous about God ordering the Israelites to participate in the Angel’s work?
Um, that it seems somewhat hard to reconcile with the general notion that we human beings aren’t supposed to kill one another, and that even in war you don’t target non-combatants like women and children?
“Um, that it seems somewhat hard to reconcile with the general notion that we human beings aren’t supposed to kill one another, and that even in war you don’t target non-combatants like women and children?”
Not when it’s understood *why* such killing is wrong under normal circumstances. It’s not because killing is itself never justified, but because we, as men, do not have the right to take the life of any man.
This principle does not apply to God, Who can give and take life as he chooses.
Darin said:
“I am pretty new to this blog and I am really impressed. How do I keep reading this after I take vows and get rid of my computer?”
If you’re serious… I suggest the old solution called “sneakernet” or “snailnet”. In other words, get a friend to print out the blog, and then walk it over or mail it to you.
These choices are too limiting. There is a forth, as is alluded to here in the comments, that God intended the women and children to die. This really isn’t as harsh as it sounds to our modern ears. They could have been culpable. Or, alternatively, they’re parents by not submitting to the Israelites could have been judged as the true instruments of their death.
I also can’t remember what the word for children used in that account was, but it could be a word that includes teenagers and (possibly) older children. This is made especially difficult by not citing a chapter and verse for reference.
Given the size of many of these settlements and the brutality of being born into a less than medically advanced environment, there could have been very few “children” around.
Jimmy, here’s a harder question:
In Numbers 31:18, after God has commanded the complete slaughter of the Midianites… “but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.”
God commands rape? It was the custom of the day to use female slaves for sex.
This is what the Sudanese Muslims have done to the Christians lately. It’s what Mohammed did to his enemies. I can’t see how this falls into category 1, 2 or 3. It’s hard to see how any good moral lesson can be drawn from such a command.
The above case is routinely brought up by athiests when trying to discredit the Bible.
David C.-
It is very possible that these virgins were meant to be taken in marriage, and not raped. I’m no Bible scholar though.
We should probably start that account in Chapter 30. These women, evidently all or most of them, had been involved in a system of ritualized prostitution in order to convert the Israelites. From the NIV translation (apologies if this offends I *love* biblegateway):
Numbers 30:14-16
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers%2031;&version=31;
Therefore, likely, those that were killed were earlier participating in the destruction of Israel. You also have to separate our fairly modern notions of romantic love from marriage. It was expected that married individuals would come to love one another. That doesn’t mean that romantic love wasn’t recognized, it has been for centuries, but that it wasn’t considered the only method of falling in love. Young captive women (and given marriage ages that were popular at the time these indeed would be young women) were expected to adapt to the new situation. We know from other accounts that these women were usually allowed a mourning period were intercourse was not allowed.
This treatment was many steps above how they would have expected to be treated if captured by their own people. Then they would have likely been raped and left for dead, not protected by a family arrangement. Torture would also have been possible. Since Israelite soldiers were forbidden the use of torture this would have also been a relief.
All of this could have been avoided of course if they hadn’t tried to seduce Isreal in the first place…
Wow. That one has some huge mistakes in it. I found this article while searching around:
http://www.rationalchristianity.net/genocide.html
It actually represents my position pretty well. Can’t comment on any other articles that may appear there.