I saw this somewhere and it set me thinking because it is quite true. So my dear people, what do y'all think?
Background: In Exodus Chapter 2, Moses flees Egypt because he has killed an Egyptian. He passes through the land of the Midianites, who befriend him. Moses lived among them for a while and “took to wife” a Midianite woman, Zipporah. Moses and Zipporah have a son, Gershom.
Sometime later, about the same time Moses develops in-law problems, a significant number of Israelites start cohabiting with Midianite girls and worshipping Midianite gods.
Moses orders the beheading of the Israelites who are encouraging the mix. For good measure, a plague — presumably sent by God — kills 24,000 of the offending Israelites. Chapter 25 ends with God urging his people to “vex” and “smite” or “harass” the Midianites. Why? What wrong did the Midianites do? No one forced the God’s Chosen People to party with the Midianite girls and worship their gods. Whatever . . .
Time passes. God and Moses spend Chapter 26 of Numbers organizing a huge census and Chapters 27, 28, 29 and 30 laying down various laws for the Israelites.
But by Numbers Chapter 31 — for reasons not explained — God’s attention becomes fastened once more on the Midianites. He orders Moses to kill them. Why? For what happened in Chapter 25.
Thus God orders an unprovoked attack on Moses’ in-laws. Not a problem. Moses sends off thousands of his troops to slay them.
The Israelites kill the five Midianite kings and all the other Midianite adult males. They loot the cities and burn them, and take the women and children in captivity.
But when they return, Moses is furious. “Have you kept all the women alive? These women caused the children of Israel to trespass against the Lord . . .” (New King James translation, Verses 15, 16).
Moses then orders:
1) all the non-virgin women captives to be killed
2) all the boy children captives to be killed
3) all the virgin girl captives to be saved for the use of the Israelite men.
Check out Numbers, Chapter 31, King James Version
(13) And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp.
(14) And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle.
(15) And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive?
(16) Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD.
(17) Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.
( 18 ) But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.
Numbers Chapter 31, New Living Translation
(13) Moses, Eleazar the priest, and all the leaders of the community went to meet them outside the camp. (14) But Moses was furious with all the generals and captains [a] who had returned from the battle.
(15) “Why have you let all the women live?” he demanded.
(16) “These are the very ones who followed Balaam’s advice and caused the people of Israel to rebel against the Lord at Mount Peor. They are the ones who caused the plague to strike the Lord’s people.
(17) So kill all the boys and all the women who have had intercourse with a man.
( 18 ) Only the young girls who are virgins may live; you may keep them for yourselves.
So, shall we talk? Or is this kind of topic out of bounds?
14 comments:
peace be with you
Mr. peacebewithyou!!! all that the writer is asking of you is some reasonable brainstorming and not your "peace be with you".
Yes! Chxta's, thanks for sharing - food 4 thaught, info. I myself wonder about many if not all of the stories in the so called Holy book ...questionable when one imagine what happend then in the DARK AGE with what is happening in the present day. It's all twisted, stolen and patched works - plagiarized???
Hello Chxta,
This looks like a topic to excite Bible scholars.
Since, I am no Bible scholar, I would wait to learn from the Gamaliels and be ready to excoriate the Sons of Sceva.
I hope the intellectual content of what should be a useful discourse is upheld and enhanced in the comments.
Sons of Sceva religiously has become my term for the masses who take no time to understand any concept before they profess fundamental belief and in the process express blinding ignorance.
Regards,
Akin
you have to learn to take religion with a "pinch of salt" (Uwa)
I think there are some incidents that should be looked at as 'history' written from the view of the of the writer. God told Moses to Kill all those people, the same way he told George Bush to invade Iraq.
The thing about claiming 'God told me' is that other people not only have to take your word for it, you assume that you are right and your (soon to be) adversary or victim deserves what is coming.
I find a lot of the things contained in the holy book, Bible and Koran (these are the only two I am familiar with) objectionable because of the ease with which human life was taken.
Anyway, this is my two pence.
On an absolutely unrelated note,
wtf is up with Juve?
Good one. now do the Koran!
While reading the article, A cold chill ran over my body. I could not believe that "God" will do such a thing.What crime did the midinite commit? What kind of "God" will order people to be killed without any reason? It doesn't just add up man. But again, with religion, there is no such thing as common sense and people will believe anything as far as it is from "God".
I simply don't believe that "God" ordered Moses to kill anybody if at all what was written is at all true.
What is the difference between that and some Nigerian traditional religion where the "gods" ask people to be killed for peace and prosperity?
it is now becoming increasingly apparent that people will use the name of God to carry out treacherous acts, and perpetuate ignorance and evil. Religion is regressive. I have always asked why a foreign religion is what we accept as true. I take it that should the yoruba's have been the ones to spread their beliefs and dominate nations, then we will believe that Ile Ife is the Garden of eden and Oduduwa, Adam.
It tires me, the whole thing. I believe Jesus Christ was the 'liberal' in their days,whilst our todays 'christians' are the modern day Pharisees aka Hypocrites. Majority of the 'new' liberals believe in nothing. I am a modern day liberal who believes in the teaching of Christ, where we should all live purely by Grace. I believe that Christ subtly renounced the old ways without outrightly condeming it as plain wicked. Acts like that are analogous to the child witches story in Akwa Ibom - 'suffer not the witch to live', they quote, yet the only witches they discover are one of the most vulnerable and defenceless individuals in society - it is all debauchery.
Just one of the many unfair events in the bible. I remember been preached to in Sunday school, in the way those preachers sanctified bible stories in a very unquestioning way, about God killing the first borns of Egyptians, who wouldn't set this same Moses and his people free.
I just felt it was so unfair and mean, to take someone else's life, especially a young man's, cos of one's grievances with their father.
God's portrayal in the bible, isn't very nice, or accomodating. Even the whole eternal hell damnation thing is just intense, aha, Hitler was even kind enough with gas chambers.
LOL. Religion is always out of bounds with the typical Nigerian. Meanwhile all religions have this kind odd anomalies that get u thinking.
We get plenty for Islam too. I don’t talk about them cos Naija people are too passionate (and unreasonable I dare say). When Karl Marx said religion was the opium of the
masses, he didn’t have Nigerians in mind, else he would have added heroin to the mix…
As a rule, i stay away from religious discussion because i do not want to offend God by thinking too much and question some things. Another reason is that i find that people are usually not very rational when discussing religion and faith.
@ Pocus- i think God is bigger than that; to be offended just because ur creation think and question suggests an insecurity that would be incongruous with the set view of omnipotence omniscience etc etc u get the drift...
The verse in Numbers 31 says:
1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
2 Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites: afterward shalt thou be gathered unto thy people.
That doesn't necessarily mean killing all the men, women and children and saying the virgins for the monotheist Israelites, does it?
I am not sure that the Bible says God told him to commit all the war crimes, or just to battle the heretics. Moses' war orders were just to battle, Moses didn't say to kill all the poor kids, until after they won.
I guess the conclusion is that Moses was making some things up as he liked, beyond the vague order by God to do Old-Testament style-revenge.
So, Moses=War Criminal whose war crimes are not necessarily the OT God's orders.
It's kind of like how the State of Israel decides that God promised them all of Israel so that means they can commit war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza, bombing 400+ children for the deaths of 24 Israelis by rockets from Muslim extremists.
I am in discussions now with a Zionist convert to Christianity from Judaism, who insists that Palestinian Christian villages should be "treated harshly" and "suffer" because of some Muslims' terrorist attacks.
Their idea is that God promised the land to them, so they can kill all the people and do all the war crimes they want.
Military Zionism's f*cked.
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