Moses has received the Ten Commandments from God, one of which was
"Thou shalt not kill".
He came down from Mount Sinai to find the Israelites worshiping the golden
calf.
And he said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Put every man
his sward by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout
the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion,
and every man his neighbour.
And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there
fell of the people that day about three thousand men.
For Moses had said, Consecrate yourselves to day to the Lord, even every
man upon his son, and upon his brother; that he may bestow upon you a
blessing this day.
Moses received a commandment from God stating that killing was against God's
law; Moses immediately set the Israelites to killing each other
indiscriminantly!
Are we to take it from this that it's OK to ignore God's commandments, and
to kill and to order other
people to kill, so long as you believe that is what God really wants?
Try to imagine what a group of people would do if they were told to "go out
and kill your brother, companion, and neighbour".
Many would think, "if I have to kill people then I will kill people I don't
like"; so there would be a purge of the more unpopular people.
One would hope that in any real-life situation where the leader of a group
gave such an order the reaction would be an immeadiate rebelian against
the leader, but one can imagine if there was a Jonestown-like blind
following of what was perceived as a semi-divine leader people might
obay the order.
Were the followers of Moses similar to the Jonestown group?
|
There are three versions of the Ten Commandments in the Bible, two of them
are very similar, Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21,
the third version, in Exodus 34:12-26, is radically different.
(See rational
Wiki.)
It seems odd that God couldn't pass on a consistent set of rules, don't
you think?
It is telling that there is nothing in any sets of the ten commandments
against the rape of a woman.
In fact, from Genesis 19 (the story of the two angels who Lot protected
from the Sodomites) one could get the impression that women have no rights
at all, and can be raped at any time that it may suit whichever male
rules their lives.
In Genesis 19, Lot pleads with the Sodomites to not molest his
guests (male angels), and offers his virgin daughters to be raped in the
place of Lot's guests.
Genesis 19:8:
"Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me,
I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your
eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the
shadow of my roof."
How could this be justified under any set of rational and consistent ethics?
Can it be that those who believe that the Bible sets out the rules under
which we should live also believe that women should be treated as the
property of men and may be handed over to other men to be raped at will?
Rape of virgin girls seems to be justified in the story of
Moses and the Midianites too.
|
Moses is talking to the captains of Israel after the army had destroyed
Midian.
"Have you allowed all the women to live?" he asked them.
"They were the ones who followed Balaam's advice and were the means of
turning the Israelites away from the Lord in what happened at Peor, so that
a plague struck the Lord's people.
Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man,
but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man."
This is genocide of the most bloodthirsty kind.
If it happened today Moses would be tried in an international court
and would, correctly, be jailed for years.
Are we supposed to believe that it was acceptable because Moses thought he
was doing God's work?
(How many war crimes have been committed by people who claimed to be doing
God's work?)
|
Joshua and the army of Israel are outside the walls of Jericho.
And it came to pass on the seventh day, that they rose early about the
dawning of the day, and compassed the city after the same manner seven times.
And it came to pass at the seventh time, when the priests blew with
the trumpets, Joshua said unto the people, Shout; for the Lord hath given
you the city.
And the city shall be accursed, even it, and all that are there-in, to
the Lord: only Rahab the harlot shall live, she and all that are
with her in the house, because she hid the messengers that were sent.
And ye, in any wise keep yourselves from the accursed thing, lest ye
make yourselves accursed, when ye take of the accursed thing, and make
the camp of Israel a curse, and trouble it.
But all the silver, and gold, and vessels of brass and iron, are
consecrated unto the Lord: they shall come into the treasury of the Lord.
So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets: and it
came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and
the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat,
so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before
him, and they took the city.
And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman,
young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.
So, what was the crime of the people of Jericho that justified the
destruction of their city and the slaughter of every man, woman and
child?
They were in the way.
The people of Israel wanted their land, they had been promised it by
'the Lord'.
Three of the ten commandments were, "Thou shalt not steal", "Thou shalt
not kill" and "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house ... nor any
thing that is thy neighbour's".
But here are the 'people of the Lord' stealing the land of the people
of Jericho and killing the people of Jericho, because they wanted their
land, they coveted their land.
We are to believe that they had some God-given right to break the
commandments (and to commit these crimes against any reasonable
system of ethics), and that this God-given right somehow justified
ignoring the commandments.
Whether the wall miraculously fell down flat, or indeed, whether the
army of Israel ever laid siege to Jericho, is not the point here.
The point is that whoever wrote the Book of Joshua believed that genocide,
mass murder, was quite acceptable, so long as it was thought to be
sanctioned by God.
|
|
