Numbers 31 is a troubling Scripture from the standpoint of modern westerners. It is not just the fact that God orders a war but genocide.
The chapter is basically about Israel's war with the Midianites in which God orders that Israel to utterly destroy the Midianites. To leave no male alive and to only spare women that were virgins so that they could become wives to the Israelites. For all practical purposes this would mean the end of the Midianites forever as the virgin girls would be suddenly Israelite the moment they had sex with and Israelite male.
I really have no problem with God going to war. In the Law there are laws about murder, but there are also laws about how to divide the spoil after a battle. The context for killing, and the Hebrew word for 'to kill' are different. One is premeditated crime of an individual; the other the act of the state in its own interests. If God therefore wants to act as king of His country (A state of affairs that would last until the monarchy of Saul) and wage war on his enemies, He has just as much right to do so as any other king.
Genocide is a different story. To wipe out an entire people group is a harsh action. The question is it justified? One could argue that God is in a better position to judge these things or has a different standard for himself involving justice. Perhaps the first is true about God being in a better position to judge these things, but God is said to be just and the definitions of justice simply don't change just because one entity has more power that others. Justice is justice.
No the real question is genocide sometimes justified? What we are asking here is can a group of people get so corrupt and so vile that they whole lot of them deserve death. Looking at this time period for not just the Midianites but all of Canaan the answer might be 'yes'. Worship of the gods of the time period involved some pretty disgusting rites:
1. Ritual drunken orgies are the norm with temple prostitution as the chief means of support for the temples. Incest was a common accepted practice in religious rites. That's dads with daughters; sons with mothers; brothers with sisters, etc.
2. Human sacrifice in particular the burning to death of a man's firstborn son. Not a quick burning either, but the child was basically placed in a hole in a bronze idol that was then heated from the inside slowly cooking the child to death while drums beat so the child's cries could not be heard.
The whole area is wracked with wars and disputes which were filled with brutality and rape. Slavery was common and while the Law of Moses allows for a kind of indentured servitude, it was not the brutal, for life, under the lash that the people of this time in Canaan practiced.
It wouldn't have been so bad but the local politics, culture and religion supported these activities and promoted them.
There is also the practical advantages of genocide to consider in this case:
1. The fact that Canaanite worship survived became an absolute plague to the Israelites that got them into trouble with God on a regular basis.
2. The fact is the surviving Canaanites and the the Israelites would battle for centuries in which more people would die, more women would be raped and more misery and suffering would be dealt out over the long term than if the Canaanites had simply been destroyed. In short, kill a few now over a short time inflicting short term misery or kill a a whole bunch more over a longer period of time causing continued, long term misery.
3. Had all of Israel's enemies been destroyed, the odds for a lasting peace in the region would have been far higher.
God would be in a better more knowledgeable position to judge these things and see the bigger picture and the lasting impact. Even so, this is troubling to my humanity because to fulfill this you would see soldiers breaking into homes and they find a woman nursing her baby boy, then by the order of God, they would have to spear them both. But in truth as a king going to war in this region, He would have been no different than many others, only in this case the objective is to ultimately crush evil in an area of the world.
Perhaps we should consider that, we may not like the means but had the full will of God been carried out, evil in Canaan would have been destroyed. It is just perhaps we simply do not like the means with which God had chosen to do this act. But then again He is God, it seems in the authority structure that he would have the right to choose any means He wants.
I will be honest, this one still keeps me up at times because God here seems unfair. Why give the Israelites the power and the right to wipe out a sinful race when they at times were just as vile. In truth, there are a lot of races could be condemned to death but are not. So why at this time and in this way? In this case, we may simply have to exercise faith in the justice and goodness of God.
No comments:
Post a Comment