I recently got into a debate about Numbers 31

[Sirami]

It's very difficult for me to understand the viewpoint of the truly faithful. I recently got into a debate with my aunt, who is a strong fundamentalist. Scripture came into the debate, and I brought up numbers 31.

Here's the New International Version for reference:
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?se ... ersion=NIV

I suggest you read the whole chapter, but here's a paraphrase for those that won't read it:

God told Moses to wipe out Midian as a result of them worshiping other Gods. So Moses people did wipe them out.

After all the fighting men of Midain were killed and the women and children were brought back to camp.

Moses got angry and told his officers that all of the women must be killed, and to kill all of the children as well, except for the children that were female virgins. The female virgins were forced into marriage with the people that destroyed their homes and families.

Now, when reading the bible it's pretty clear that not only did God approve of all of this, God demanded that all of this happen. To me that sounds a lot like the LRA of today.

How could somebody respect God and Moses after reading something like this?

[Hobbes]

I've noticed that God himself in the Bible isn't defensive or apologetic about the barbaric judgements and punishments he inflicts on not only his enemies but also his own people.

Me too.

It's only his followers who try to pussyfoot around the fact that God is barbaric. I used to have to do that myself when I was a follower, but now I see without the blinkers what God is really like.

I don't pussyfoot around.

In the end, God gets all the blame and all the glory for anything and everything that happens in this universe. That's about as direct as one can be.

[Woland]

I've noticed that God himself in the Bible isn't defensive or apologetic about the barbaric judgements and punishments he inflicts on not only his enemies but also his own people. It's only his followers who try to pussyfoot around the fact that God is barbaric. I used to have to do that myself when I was a follower, but now I see without the blinkers what God is really like.

Barbaric people will create a barbaric god. When things are going well for them, they imagine their god is helping them. If things are not going so well they imagine their god is displeased with something they've done and punishing them, with the extreme being the daily sacrifices of the Aztecs to ensure the sun rises each day. So why not blame a natural disaster such as Noah's flood or earthquakes on their god's displeasure.

I tend to agree with wonderer. I don't think Christians do any justice to our faith by sugar-coating what God teaches us. Where I disagree is that I felt that by taking wonderer's position I was assuming I could do better than God.

That's because you already assume that your specific version of "God" exists in reality, and you hope to gain favor from it.

Think about it.

When's the last time you saw a sane person who believed in the existence God of the Bible (any of the countless mutually exclusive flavors of it) and who thought he was NOT "saved"?

It shouldn't be too hard for you to see how similar your attitude is to tyranny-supporters who hope to gain favor from tyrants and are therefore ready to simply define any of their actions as "justified" for any number of inevitably fallacious and irrelevant "reasons".

The only difference is that the brutal dictatorship you support cannot be shown to be anything else than the product of wishful thinking or delusion.

"God owns us, therefore he can do anything to us including genocide and eternal torture without any further hope and we can call it good" is the attitude of someone who has given up on thinking critically about moral issues. Even if your infinitely hateful, genocidal, torturer deity exists (which there's thankfully not a single remotely valid reason to believe is the case), there is no reason to call him good outside of entirely worthless and abject circular reasoning. If "God" exists as you conceive of him, then he is the most malevolent character imaginable. Saying otherwise is like being a Hitler-supporter who wouldn't have any problem with Jewish families being murdered but would be outraged if the same happened to his family because of his twisted definition of "justice" - except that your deity concept is, again, INFINITELY more hateful and cruel than Hitler could ever aspire to be.

Nothing you can ever say will make this fact go away. You can deny this all day and rejoice in the (evidently imaginary) notion that you are "saved" (lucky you), it changes nothing to the horrible reality of your beliefs.

All of the analogies trying to explain this away will and do fail. Humans aren't omniscient or omnipotent, and they're certainly not "omnibenevolent" as your alleged deity is supposed to be. You can bring in WWII all you want, no situation involving humans with limited means, "goodness" and knowledge will ever excuse a deity ordering and committing brutal genocides and watching his creation suffer abjectly.

Please, think about the analogies you're making. They are simply not relevant.

-Woland

[wonderer]

Sure, I undertand that you hold a belief in a god that commanded 'his people' to take vengence in his name. What I don't get is the acceptance of this tribal god as a universal god.

The logical chain is this:
The Old Testament is the Bible Jesus read. I believe Jesus is God. So I accept the OT Bible's version of events because of Jesus's clearly very good behavior and teachings on love. I only started to read the OT because Jesus did.

I don't know how the stories in Numbers can be interpretd as anything else other than murder, kidnap and pillage when looked at from an ethical/moral point of view. It is only justified if looked at from the tribal POV of a bronze age culture.

It isn't even justified from a bronze age culture POV. It can only be justified from the Christian view of a wicked people receiving righteous justice. All this is grounded in the wages of sin being death. At best you can complain that their death came somewhat earlier than they expected. But morally, for anyone to be saved now we needed the Israelites to survive. Much the same is my view of the global flood.

The English word Aryan is derived from the Sanskrit word rya meaning 'noble' - which I take to mean...of an exalted moral or mental character or excellence.

Humankind has and can show its nobility. Moving beyond the divisiveness of the monotheisms will be a movement in the direction of nobility.

I think you missed the point of my last comment. You should have been able to recognize that in the future modern historical events may be viewed how you choose to view the Israelites in numbers. Do you recognize the point being made?

I'm interested in what you say about 'the logical chain', because that is exactly how I reasoned about the Bible when I became a Christian. I started with Jesus, and found that I believed in him, that he was God. He believed in the OT, so therefore I thought the OT had to be true. That's logical. From that came to believe that anything which didn't seem right, had to have reasonable explanation, which I would learn of one day, and that I had to trust God that there was a good reason for it.

However, when I came to pose the question, why did God create us in the first place, knowing that, if hell is real, most people will suffer torment for eternity, and even if hell is not real, many people will suffer excruciatingly in this life, and animals will suffer, I could not reconcile it with the concept of God being loving.
I'm sure I was as sincere and genuine a believer as you are, but I can no longer believe in that God.

[Wootah]

I've noticed that God himself in the Bible isn't defensive or apologetic about the barbaric judgements and punishments he inflicts on not only his enemies but also his own people.

Me too.

It's only his followers who try to pussyfoot around the fact that God is barbaric. I used to have to do that myself when I was a follower, but now I see without the blinkers what God is really like.

I don't pussyfoot around.

In the end, God gets all the blame and all the glory for anything and everything that happens in this universe. That's about as direct as one can be.

No big deal but I didn't write that, wonderer did.

[Wootah]

However, when I came to pose the question, why did God create us in the first place, knowing that, if hell is real, most people will suffer torment for eternity, and even if hell is not real, many people will suffer excruciatingly in this life, and animals will suffer, I could not reconcile it with the concept of God being loving.
I'm sure I was as sincere and genuine a believer as you are, but I can no longer believe in that God.

I would propose to you that what you shirked from is not hate but love. God's grace is shocking. That God would allow one to choose Heaven and another Hell does not negate the value of Heaven for even that one.

Think secularly. The most common of phrases is, 'if I only change one life by my story it will be worth it.' That's all Jesus is saying. God values the existence of even just one free human in loving relationship with Him. That is OK.

Now why can't God view that the same way. He did nothing wrong. He created a good creation and there will be a good result. It may even be grounds for logically asserting that love rules for God.

Think secularly again. Should good men do nothing simply because of what others might think?

I am a big believer in reconciling my faith in the reality of our lives. I feel I can adequately show that doing good doesn't have to be justified by those who are upset because they chose not. Honestly, pick something mundane like playing the guitar. Should I not play the guitar simply because you might be jealous or hurt by my ability to play it?

When you drive at your position and when you face the horror of what the Bible's judgement is on you and I, it really boils down to you, right now, asking a person to not be good at what they do because not everyone is good at it. Frankly I don't do it to people in real life and I don't expect God to respect your wish for everyone to go Heaven or no one either. If you studied and worked harder than I and have a better income/assets then I don't try to force you to share that wealth. Similarly if someone runs the race and keeps the faith why would you even be asking for God to deny them Heaven?

Think secularly. Some kids didn't study for the test and so they failed. Should the teacher fail anyone? Why isn't that sufficient to understand why it is OK for some to go to Heaven and some to go to Hell?

I want to acknowledge that I do recoil from the horror of what I perceive the reality of Hell to be but for me to abandon my faith you would have to show me 'why criminals shouldn't go to prison' or 'that good can exist without justice'. And honestly just show me that there is any common sense in a practical application here on Earth for what you would desire for Heaven. ie: Show me where rewarding the bad, wicked, naughty, actually ends up being a net good on Earth. Show me where denying the good because there are some bad makes sense. etc.

[Jrosemary]

Again: The women were directly and personally involved in the sabotage upon the Israelites through sexual temptation. God's vengeance for that act fell upon the Midianite women and all the Israelite men that had sexual relations with them. As an aside, we should take note that God didn't withhold judgment from the guilty Israelites; He dispensed His judgment among both nations.

I'm going to elbow my way in here and point out that this doesn't seem to be about sexual temptation--it's not even clear there was a sexual sin. The Torah is overall accepting of prostitution; you don't violate any rules by indulging. And as long as the Moabite (and one Midianite) women spoken of in Numbers 25 were un-married, there was no adultery.

(Even if the guys were married. It's only technically adultery to sleep with a married woman. That's how it was back then, even if we modern Jews argue that double-standard now. Today, however, it would take a very brave--and probably very stupid--husband to fall back on this technicality as an excuse.)

And the guys probably could have married outside the tribe, as Moshe (Moses) did. As someone pointed out, his wife Zepporah and his father-in-law Jethro were both Midianites. (Although there's a question of whether they were still outsiders or whether they sort of became Israelites. There was probably no formal way of converting at that time, but some later rabbis like to regard them as the equivalent of Jews-by-choice.)

However, the problem the Torah sees with "whoring" outside the tribe is that it leads to idolatry. And that's the real sin here.

The women in question (mostly Moabites, but they were connected with the Midianites) "invited the people to the sacrifices for their god. The people partook of them and worshipped that god. Thus Israel attached itself to Baal-peor, and HaShem [the LORD] was inscensed with Israel." (Numbers 25: 1-4)

You know how in professional American baseball the cardinal sin is gambling? You can do just about anything and be forgiven--except betting on the game. In this narrative, I think G-d has the same gut reaction to idolatry. He'll get over just about anything else. But idolatry will not only keep us out of the Hall of Fame; it will incite His wrath to the point of our utter destruction. It's a good thing we had Moshe to talk G-d down from destroying all of us because of it! (Exodus 32:7-15)

Now, back to the slaying-of-every-male of the Midianites. As the Jewish Study Bible points out, this is a case of us trash-talking. It says of Numbers 31: "Total annihilations is an expression of victory not to be taken literally. It is a common propagandistic statement in ancient Near Eastern battle accounts."

Accepting this as trash talk and propaganda may be a problem for biblical literalists--but I think it makes good sense. The same thing happens in Joshua. From the archeological studies I've seen, we never actually had the astonishing victories that narrative describes! It seems we greatly exaggerated our warrior prowess in our stories.

(I've talked about this with my rabbi and he agrees: this is all about gameday face and trash talk. It's sort of like we were saying, "Oh, yeah, man, we were awesome! We annihilated them! You should have been there! Our G-d was totally more powerful than theirs." Gotta love that Bronze Age trash-talk. )

But even if you take this narrative literally, let me put it in a Jewish context. If G-d is about to do something or command something that is morally repugnant, you can argue with Him about it. Avraham argues with G-d. Moshe argues with G-d. This is not a bad thing.

In my synagogue last week, when we were reading the Torah portion that contains Moshe arguing with G-d, talking him down from destroying the Israelite people, Dr. Michael S. Kogan (author of Opening the Covenant by Oxford Press and the speaker in place of our rabbi, who was leading another service) talked about how a Jew has two responsibilities. The first is to help bring about a morally righteous world. But the second is to remind G-d to live up to that moral righteousness!

In my opinion, we should never be passive readers with this text. The text contains the mythic-historic memories of the people Israel--and the very name Israel means "G-d-wrestler." And that's what the powerful stories of this text should cause us to do: wrestle with our understanding of G-d, morality, peoplehood, human relationships and law. And we should never just accept something morally repugnant or make excuses for it--our duty, I think, is to wrestle with G-d and argue with Him instead.

[Woland]

And here we go with the irrelevant analogies which Christian Hell-believers have to resort to in apparently successful attempts to convince themselves that eternal torture can ever be made compatible with love.

Wootah, I will once again present you with the same challenge I've given to every Hell-believer I've come across, and which none has been able to take up.

I challenge you, in your analogies, to take into account the relevant parameters of torture for beliefs or lack thereof.

I absolutely, 100% guarantee that you will not be able to do so, because it would undeniably expose to you the horrible reality of the deity you worship.

Observe.

I would propose to you that what you shirked from is not hate but love. God's grace is shocking. That God would allow one to choose Heaven and another Hell does not negate the value of Heaven for even that one.

Once again, it's meaningless to say that those who don't even believe in the existence of YOUR specific deity have "chosen" Hell, but let's set that aside for a moment.

I am a big believer in reconciling my faith in the reality of our lives. I feel I can adequately show that doing good doesn't have to be justified by those who are upset because they chose not. Honestly, pick something mundane like playing the guitar. Should I not play the guitar simply because you might be jealous or hurt by my ability to play it?

If someone told you, a guitar player, that they would torture those who didn't play the guitar, would you think that the person telling you this is good?

THAT is the issue at hand, not distractions about leaving people behind because they "choose to be tortured eternally" - an absurd notion if I've ever seen one.

When you drive at your position and when you face the horror of what the Bible's judgement is on you and I, it really boils down to you, right now, asking a person to not be good at what they do because not everyone is good at it.

Has nothing to do with anything. Enjoy being "saved" all you want, your deity concept remains the essence of pettiness and infinite cruelty, and you remain a supporter of these.

Think secularly. Some kids didn't study for the test and so they failed. Should the teacher fail anyone? Why isn't that sufficient to understand why it is OK for some to go to Heaven and some to go to Hell?

Why? Because it's a MASSIVELY irrelevant analogy which unsurprisingly doesn't take into account torture for beliefs or lack thereof.

I want to acknowledge that I do recoil from the horror of what I perceive the reality of Hell to be but for me to abandon my faith you would have to show me 'why criminals shouldn't go to prison' or 'that good can exist without justice'.

More irrelevance.

Would you imprison someone eternally if you could?
Can we torture people in prisons and call this good?

Tell me, how does ANY decent concept of justice entail extended (nevermind ETERNAL) torture except in the minds of people who already believe in an invisible torturing tyrant and hope to gain favor from "him"?

And honestly just show me that there is any common sense in a practical application here on Earth for what you would desire for Heaven. ie: Show me where rewarding the bad, wicked, naughty, actually ends up being a net good on Earth. Show me where denying the good because there are some bad makes sense. etc.

Yes, because only those who believe in JESUS are "good", and all the rest deserve eternal torture.

There is no justice or love in your God concept, only cruelty and vanity.

-Woland

[EasternSP]

Evidently the Midianites et al were a cancer to humanity and a threat. They had to be eliminated. At least that's God's story and so there is your explanation. I know you don't appreciate it or like it; in fact you probably hate it. But that's what God has revealed in Scripture and it was recorded to be passed down through the generations.

Any moral person would would detest this story. Any moral person would have issues with this God who commanded these acts of genocide. Justify it all you want it is simply immoral.

I have been reading through the chapters in Numbers regarding this event. I don't see it as genocide because later in the bible there is reference to the Midianites (Judges 6 through 8) and besides that, the Midianites covered a large area of the Middle East. Wikipedia describes the Midianites as many tribes who lived or traveled around in a large area from the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aqabah and beyond. The commandment to Moses was to wipe out this local group that caused this problem. He did not go on a rampage across the Sinai Peninsula seeking every Midianite which kinda confirms the order as directed at the local Midianites. Moses himself had married a Midianite woman and new her father, Jethro was a Midianite priest. Im sure you all know of this information already.
In Numbers 31: 16 Moses refers to a plague among the congregation as a result of the trespass with the Midianites. The resulting action to kill every male and to kill every female who was not a virgin seems to point to possibly a venereal disease of some sort that was known to be deadly. I don't think Moses' concern was so much about the seriousness of the disease as he was about the sexual sin brought onto them by the Mideanites. Numbers 25:1-5 illustrates the trouble that the men of Israel got into with the daughters of Moab and the consequences. The Midianite women were the front line troops in this action as Balak had obviously heard of the military might of the sons of Israel and probably decided to try another approach to undermine the Jews. Just my speculation on the issue.

[jatkins]

Again: The women were directly and personally involved in the sabotage upon the Israelites through sexual temptation. God's vengeance for that act fell upon the Midianite women and all the Israelite men that had sexual relations with them.

1) So, all of them tried to seduce the Israelite men?
2) So, because Israelite men lacked self-control, the Midianites had to die?
3) Seducing someone to have sex with you is worthy of not just death, but the extinction of your family?

There are so many problems with this.

As an aside, we should take note that God didn't withhold judgment from the guilty Israelites; He dispensed His judgment among both nations.

But he didn't destroy all the men of Israel, their children and their wives. So it's cool for just the specific Israelite men to bear their sin alone, but the entire Midianite civilization has to be annihilated. This is not a just god.

As far as the male children go, once again: the idea is that if the males were allowed to live (in obvious captivity) among the Israelites, they would eventually grow up, become strong, and they would have plotted revenge against Israel.

1) Where does the Bible say that would happen, and that this was the justification for their murder.
2) You still have not addressed the question of adopting those small enough not to remember their previous civilization. Even newborns, babies, and toddlers were slaughtered. Were they genetically evil? Did they lack free will? And if either of these things is your contention, what is your Biblical support for it?

God, having infinite foreknowledge, knew this would happen; it wasn't just a guess or a decision based on probability.

So there is no free will. If God knows what they will do before they do it with absolute certainty, then they cannot change their path. They therefore lack free will. I thought free will was a central tenet of the Christian faith, and the only way to justify any of the punishments that God inflicts. And if, indeed, the Midianites had no free will, then it would not be damaging at all for God to just intervene and change their minds and make them nice, respectful Israelites. But if they do have free will, then you have to face the fact that many of those male children would not ever have rebelled, and were brutally killed in cold blood.

It should be recognized that the people captured by the Israelites (the women and children) were given a chance to flee. Jewish Torah scholar Maimonides notes in his book Hilchot Melachim that the siege upon the Midianites was carried out as the Lord commanded Moses, which was the traditional way; by surrounding the city by 3 corners and leaving the 4th corner open to give those who did not want to fight, a path to flee.

1) There is no Biblical source for this.
2) Maimonides was writing about two millenia after this was supposed to have happened, and was himself an apologist. His testimony alone is not evidence of any such ancient tradition or policy.
3) Even if true, it doesn't justify the murder of defenseless children.

Not all the Midianites were killed in the battle which is obvious since the Midianites appear again later in the bible.

Yet another inconsistency in the Bible. And if some survived, it was not for lack of trying on the part of the Israelites.

Meanwhile, again, the reason for those who were put to death is clear and justified. It was done for the protection of Israel.

It isn't justified by a longshot, even within the narrow confines of your scripture.

The women had already demonstrated the damage they could inflict;

Yes, their horrific ability to force men to have sex with them and sacrifice in front of pagan idols...or, no, the Israelite men still had their free will. And making those choices doesn't seem worthy of death for either party. And it certainly doesn't justify the attempted annihilation of an entire culture.

and the male children"as God foreknew"would have eventually risen up and exacted revenge against Israel.

Men who lack free will seems to be a running theme here.

If you want to argue that killing someone to protect others is immoral, then I'll say again you are arguing moral absolutism and I need not continue if so, because that position is hardly defensible.

To protect others from the nefarious wiles of women who don't share your religion, you would destroy a civilization. God doesn't change, so is this just to this day? If I become a Christian, and a son of mine goes off to marry a Hindu and converts, can I kill him and her entire family? Is that just? Am I, thereby, "protecting people?"

[mitty]

The Old Testament is the Bible Jesus read. I believe Jesus is God. So I accept the OT Bible's version of events because of Jesus's clearly very good behavior and teachings on love. I only started to read the OT because Jesus did.

Hmm!! That's new, I don't recall that Jesus ever claimed that he was a god. Certainly, his own family including his own mother didn't recognise or acknowledge anything extraordinary about their brother and son. Nor did the people of Nazareth who he grew up with. Don't you think that they (including Jesus himself) would've been in better position to judge if this man was divine instead of someone living two millenia later. Other eye-witnesses described him as a drunkard and he was probably also a homosexual (John 13:23-5, 19:26 21:20).