Well that explains a lot… your false assumptions distorting what I write. 
Thanks, I began all this by arguing that Jesus’ attitude toward wicked enemies condemns your insistence that God actually has a “positive attitude” toward genocide, and arguing that it was necessary to prevent Israel’s internal corruption.
If you didn’t realize I was offering an exclusively moral critique, you misunderstood everything I was presenting. But I’m glad we agree that while writers portray God as ordering genocide, there is no way to defend it as a “moral” notion.
Bob, your constant attributing this mistruth to me or my words is so tiresome… YOU alone invented and inserted this repetitious perversion of my position. I’ve made NO insistence at all, that… “God actually has a “positive attitude” toward genocide” — I have pointed this out numerous times but still you persist in this deliberate perversion. I’m not sure what else I can say to this but to keep calling you on it.
Again, my contention is… I believe the text, period — not because of inerrancy but simply because I believe the text. Thus, said commands are correctly attributed, BUT, were understood as per hyperbolic genre which was common; of which the internal evidence also suggests the hearers likewise understood and so acted, i.e., to my knowledge there is NO recorded genocide having occurred at the hands of Israel anywhere in Scripture.
Example: in no uncertain terms the sports coach instructs his team midway through the game to… “get back out there and kill these guys, wipe the floor with them, take them to the cleaners…!!” Now of course there are always the exceptions, but only the foolish actually thinks the coach’s commands are literal — what the coach MEANS in his hyperbole, i.e., a figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect, is… do what is needed for victory.
This post was flagged by someone reading along. Brothers, please try to be more gentle in your disagreements. Kind regards, Alex
3 Likes
Genocide: “the policy of deliberately killing a nationality or ethnic group”
-
Numbers 21:3 The LORD listened to Israel’s plea and gave the Canaanites over to them. They completely destroyed them and their towns; so the place was named Hormah [English: destruction].
-
Numbers 31:7 They fought against Midian, as the LORD commanded Moses, and killed every man.
-
Deuteronomy 2:33-34 The LORD our God delivered him [Sihon king of Heshbon ] over to us and we struck him down, together with his sons and his whole army. At that time we took all his towns and completely destroyed them—men, women and children. We left no survivors.
-
Joshua 6:21 They devoted the city [Jericho] to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.
-
Joshua 8:24-25 When Israel had finished killing all the men of Ai in the fields and in the wilderness where they had chased them, and when every one of them had been put to the sword, all the Israelites returned to Ai and killed those who were in it. Twelve thousand men and women fell that day—all the people of Ai.
-
1 Samuel 15:8 He took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his people he totally destroyed with the sword.
-
1 Samuel 27:8-9 Now David and his men went up and raided the Geshurites, the Girzites and the Amalekites. (From ancient times these peoples had lived in the land extending to Shur and Egypt.) Whenever David attacked an area, he did not leave a man or woman alive, but took sheep and cattle, donkeys and camels, and clothes. Then he returned to Achish.
1 Like
Davo,
Thanks, I’m sorry I fostered confusion. On your view that hyperbolic commands to deal with Canaan’s sinners by killing all, were necessary to prevent Israel’s “internal” corruption, I clarified mine by citing
texts I see portray God with a “positive attitude toward commands to slaughter” opponents (even by exterminating whole peoples, including infants: Dt 7:1f,6,16; 20:14-19; 2:34f; 3:6; 1Sam 15:3; 27:9; Jos 6:21; 8:24f; 10:28-40; 11:11-20; Num 31:17f,27), and so punishing Israel when it fell short of doing this.
(E.g as positive: "GOD trains hands for battle… to beat them as fine as dust.” (2Sam 7:9-23).
“I trampled the nations in my anger; their blood spattered my garments” (Isa 63:3).
“Through God we trample…and destroy them… May a double-edged sword be in Israel’s hands
to inflict Vengeance… This is the GLORY of God’s faithful people!”
Blessed is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks!”
(Psalms 44:5; 18:39f; 2:9; 149:6-9; 137:8f; 139: 21f; 55:15; 109:9-12; 60:12))
You agree said commands say such, but imply that God is not portrayed with a ’positive’ disposition toward such commanded violence. Do such texts imply a “negative” attitude toward such commands?? They seem to me to be largely supportive and positive toward this means of dealing with sinners.
Why do you reject my use of this adjective, positive, about God’s Biblically portrayed attitude?
Hermano, such accounts makes me ask if we’d reason that there’s ‘no record genocide occurred
at the hands of’ Germany, since there were some survivors of Nazi efforts.
1 Like
So Bob this is becoming fruitlessly circular. You moved away from your initial charge that… “God celebrated genocide” finally admitting your assertion wasn’t actually anywhere in the bible, so then modified that to God having a… “positive disposition” towards genocide. Generally this has been referenced to the Amalekites of which you have stated in discussions elsewhere. You then moved the goal posts yet again out further in terms of divine violence to justify your original point.
My focus however has simply been the charge of genocide you originally brought to the table — not something most of your references above specifically deal with. But like I said this is just getting circular so there’s not much more for me to add.
Again Hermano, hyperbole — as is evidenced by these quotes above… the first one of which speaks to Saul’s exploits and the second speaks to David’s exploits. A strict wooden literalism cannot see the logical contradiction… not in the text, but in the assumptive position brought to the text, i.e., IF Saul indeed did as he claimed (1Sam 15:20) THEN from whence came the Amalekites who later David was said to have exterminated? And yet did that really happen? well no, not according to the text as per 1Sam 30:1, 17. And as someone has noted on Saul’s campaign…
“Perhaps, the statement where Saul struck the Amalekites from Havilah to Shur is hyperbolical. Shur is on the edge of Egypt; Havilah is in Saudi Arabia. That is pretty large distance of battle between Arabia and Egypt.”
And again we know the Amalekites had NOT suffer genocide because beyond Saul and David we again find remnants of the escapees pursued and defeated by Simeon’s sons in the reign of Hezekiah, as per 1Chron 4:43. The witness of the text suggests such events can be explained and understood within the hyperbolic genre — again a common literary device relative to ANE conflict.
And to top all that off… long after the time of Nebuchadnezzar in the reign Ahasuerus aka Xerxes I, the Amalekites were still alive and kicking, still threatening God’s people in the person of Haman the Agagite in the Book of Esther, as per Est 3:1.
Now I know you won’t accept what I’ve just laid out, which is fine, it’s all information and grist for the mill, but you may find this following article of interest which far better makes some of the points I’ve raised in earlier posts — it is worth the read even if you don’t agree.
Davo, I must be missing something.
All I keep asking is why you deny that God is portrayed as having a “positive attitude”
toward commands to slaughter and even to specifically kill every person, as well as toward
Israel’s efforts related to those commands.
You didn’t engage texts I offered that celebrate such an approach to dealing with enemies, and I’m baffled as to why you think exaggeration in accounts of such efforts, or the reality that some survived such invasions (with Israel punished for falling short of such commands!) at all refutes that God is portrayed with a positive attitude toward such commands & efforts. I see this portrayal as consistent.
What you’re missing I answered way back at the link below (and a few others), so I can’t add much more to said genocide relative to the Amalekites than I’ve been stating.
No, no!! The term “celebrate” is admittedly mine. But when I explain that seeing God as “celebrating” such efforts is based on seeing his “positive” attitude toward such efforts, you keep saying I switched claims and have admitted that this is not in the Bible. No, I don’t see a distinction, and this is precisely what I see as plainly portrayed in the texts I presented! Indeed, I find this portrayal as quite consistent.
But you can call my word, celebrate, Bible-like hyperbole, if you like 
Do yourself a favour Bob and read that article I posted a link to in my last post to Hermano… it is a sensible read.
“Do yourself a favour Bob and read that article I posted a link to.”
Davo, thanks for your efforts to clarify you view!
This article is old stuff to those who read the many current books that also argue that we should not “use some OT war passages to argue that God is violent.” I find theses that commands with genocidal language are not morally problematic because Israel never effectively accomplished total extermination irrelevant to evaluating whether the morality of such commands & efforts conflicts with Jesus’ message.
Of the many present books on this, I’d commend the summaries and debate in “Show Them No Mercy: 4 Evangelical Views on God and Canaanite Genocide.” I like Pt. Loma Nazarene’s OT prof, C.S. Cowles view, who alone concedes the tension with Jesus’ ethics. (Also Gregory Boyd’s two volume study: “The Crucifixion of the Warrior God” exhaustively addresses such articles’ contentions)
You’d argued preventing Israel’s “internal” (or moral) corruption “justified” such commands. My rejoinder all along has been that the OT reflects a more “positive” view of commands to exterminate problem people and such efforts, than does Jesus whose teaching contrasts with that. Your insistence that
no “positive” attitude is portrayed toward such commands and efforts is what made me curious.
But I’m not seeing any reason not to acknowledge that that positive OT theme exists.
I’ve read this book twice, Bob. Cowles’ argument is excellent! It’s exactly my position. I opine that the arguments of the other 3 are weak, and not much different from one another.
1 Like
Regarding Saul’s mandate to kill all the Amalekites, supposedly at “God’s” command, the prophet Samuel confronts Saul later in the same passage:
1 Sam. 15:18-19a
“And he [GOD] sent you on a mission, saying, ‘Go and completely destroy those wicked people, the Amalekites; wage war against them until you have wiped them out.’ Why did you not obey the LORD?"
Samuel himself then goes on to put to death the king of the Amalakites: “And Samuel hewed Agag to pieces before the LORD at Gilgal.”
Thank you for the linking to the thoughtful discussion on the “The Amalekite Genocide.” In one place, it says,
People argue, with a fair bit of justification, that this looks like God is commanding genocide, and therefore that this creates some problems for our understanding of God’s goodness.
But it doesn’t just look like “God” is commanding genocide: according to the text, He indeed commanded complete genocide, which Saul failed to carry out—and for which he was subsequently confronted by Samuel. So, speaking of “wooden literalism,” that is what the text literally says that “the LORD” said to do. (And you affirm your belief that, as the text literally states, God indeed commanded people groups be slaughtered—if not in whole, then at least in part. Whereas I, the wooden literalist, do not believe that–in the face of the text literally saying that. 
)
But my primary issue here is not so much whether it was one person who was literally put to death at God’s supposed command, or, as in the case of the Noahic Flood, possibly millions. My issue is that in light of NT revelation 1) of God being agape love (1 John 4:8, 16), and 2) of the existence of, and clarification about, the devil actually being the one with the power of death (John 10:10, Hebrews 2:14)—when people go back and read these murderous stories, how can they not see that the unchanging God of love was never the one who commanded any such killing to begin with?
The Israelites should have been evangelizing (Gen. 18:17-18, John 4:22), not killing (Ex. 20:13, Deut. 5:17)! But kill they did, and yet the Lord continued to be gracious to them.
The following, I suggest, is an example of the Lord’s way for Israel to have been dealing with its enemies (versus Moses’ or Joshua’s or Samuel’s or David’s way):
2 Kings 6:15-23 (NIV)
15 When the servant [Gehazi] of the man of God got up and went out early the next morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. “Oh no, my lord! What shall we do?” the servant asked.
16 “Don’t be afraid,” the prophet answered. “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”
17 And Elisha prayed, “Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.” Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.
18 As the enemy came down toward him, Elisha prayed to the Lord, “Strike this army with blindness.” So he struck them with blindness, as Elisha had asked.
19 Elisha told them, “This is not the road and this is not the city. Follow me, and I will lead you to the man you are looking for.” And he led them to Samaria.
20 After they entered the city, Elisha said, “Lord, open the eyes of these men so they can see.” Then the Lord opened their eyes and they looked, and there they were, inside Samaria.
21 When the king of Israel saw them, he asked Elisha, “Shall I kill them, my father? Shall I kill them?”
22 “Do not kill them,” he answered." Would you kill those you have captured with your own sword or bow? Set food and water before them so that they may eat and drink and then go back to their master.” 23 So he prepared a great feast for them, and after they had finished eating and drinking, he sent them away, and they returned to their master. So the bands from Aram stopped raiding Israel’s territory.
After all, through the indwelling Holy Spirit, we Christians now recognize more clearly than the Israelites did, that it is actually God’s kindness that leads people to repentance (Rom. 2:4), and that God has always wanted all men to be saved (Is. 45:22, Ezek. 18:23, 1 Tim. 2:3-4, 2 Pet. 3:9).
Me too. Cowles’ is bold, but seemed most honest with the texts. The other 3’s Bibliology felt bound to defend genocidal commands as right, and then struggled with avoiding concluding that its’ principles can apply again for us, with only slight variants amid our still evil unbelieving world about how to dodge the implications that seemed obvious to many generations of violent churchmen.
Hermano… although you quoted me you haven’t appreciated the actual point of the quote, i.e., that the evidence points to their understanding of said commands in terms of hyperbole. Jesus literally said and literally meant… “you must be born again” as in, this must happen, BUT Nicodemus in his religiosity couldn’t get past his wooden literalism — big difference.
With this constant hit-and-miss bowdlerising so many Universalists seem to employ it is little wonder the position itself struggles for credibility in evangelical circles.
Your assertion appears to just ignore engaging the textual counter evidence Hermano presented, especially that when Israel acted as if God did not mean what he actually said, or as if it’s only hyperbolic exaggeration, they are rebuked for disobedience and punished.
I see the narrative actually seeks to justify these commands and their use of genocidal language.
As I did, Hermano also presented other texts that offer a contrary approach to overcoming evil.
1 Like
Just had this thought the other day. If one of Jesus’ functions was to properly interpret the scriptures (Torah), then that means everything we need to know can be found in the Torah. Right?