War Crimes in the Bible

@philokalia said

AND, BECAUSE OF THAT, GHOST OF A DUKE:

Yes, I condemn Sonhouse for saying those things to you and I am sorry that I did not notice this to begin with.

That's why I tried to frame it in this wise man sort of way, implying that you shouldn't pile onto someone who is in a very unpopular position and add insults to the fray, etc.

BEcause, fran ...[text shortened]... e non-Christains to band together and set a higher standard.[/i]

And I believe you can do better.

Thank you, though your condemnation should be directed at Sonship, not Sonhouse.

@sonship said
@Proper-Knob
I am not going to defend words that someone unfairly attempted to put into my mouth.

No one is putting any words in your mouth. You're making it up. This is your verbatim quote.

It is a divine remedy for the misfortune of someone BEING raped.

Page 4 of this thread. Forcing a young girl, a virgin, who has been raped to marry her rapist is a 'divine remedy'. They are your words.

@sonship said

'It is a divine remedy for the misfortune of someone being raped.'

Okay, I read back through and found this comment.

"A remedy" is not meant to mean THE remedy.

I do not mean that there was a remedy which made everything already when a woman was raped.

Reparation of sorts is what I probably should have said.
I think my point was th ...[text shortened]... ery good at doing.) [/quote]

[Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?, Baker Books, pg. 140. ]

You will need to clarify that.

Having a rape victim marry her rapist is 'a' divine remedy, not 'the' remedy? Is that your position? That an all knowing and all powerful deity was only able to provide such an inadequate 'remedy' that would undoubtedly cause further distress to the victim? Your God wasn't able to provide 'the' remedy to prevent such distress? Is that your position?

'Reparation of sorts' is no better than 'divine remedy' and I fully reject your assertion that forcing a rape victim to marry her rapist shows consideration to the violation done to her and that this somehow illuminates God's laws in the Old Testament. It doesn't!!!

@ghost-of-a-duke said
You will need to clarify that.

Having a rape victim marry her rapist is 'a' divine remedy, not 'the' remedy? Is that your position? That an all knowing and all powerful deity was only able to provide such an inadequate 'remedy' that would undoubtedly cause further distress to the victim? Your God wasn't able to provide 'the' remedy to prevent such distress? Is that ...[text shortened]... olation done to her and that this somehow illuminates God's laws in the Old Testament. It doesn't!!!

This is a misunderstanding of the text that involves forcing them to marry.

Men in these days could have multiple wives, but more than anything, there was a duty of a husband to provide for his wife, right...

The father could basically keep his daughter at his home, but have this other husband elsewhere (the former rapist) be forced to support her legally as well as support all of her offspring that she would theoretically conceive with other men. Her sons would also be entitled to his inheritance.

@philokalia said
This is a misunderstanding of the text that involves forcing them to marry.

Men in these days could have multiple wives, but more than anything, there was a duty of a husband to provide for his wife, right...

The father could basically keep his daughter at his home, but have this other husband elsewhere (the former rapist) be forced to support her legally as well as ...[text shortened]... she would theoretically conceive with other men. Her sons would also be entitled to his inheritance.

Is this somehow connected to law as given by the Abrahamic skygod.
I hope not !

Deut. 22:28-29

If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.

A response from me:

This a provision ... SHOULD ... something happen.
This is a proscription for what to do ... PER CHANCE ... something should occur.

It is not a divine command to go RAPE.
It is a divine remedy for the misfortune of someone BEING raped. This is not "GO AND RAPE." Neither is it "Thus says the Lord, I CONDONE rape."

Similarly, are God's instructions IF ... divorce should occur is not God's instruction to "GO AND DIVORCE" (which is something He says He hates (Malachi 2:16) ).

Further objection:

Forcing a young girl to marry her rapist is a 'remedy'? For whom? It's certainly not a remedy for the victim.

Paul Copan's comment on verses 28-29 of Deut. 12:

1. If the father and daughter agree to it, the seducer must marry the woman and provide for her all her life, without the possibility of divorce. The father (in conjunction with the daughter) has the final say-so in the arrangement. The girl isn't required to marry the seducer.

2. The girl's father (the legal point person) has the right to refuse any such permanent arrangement as well as the right to demand the payment that would be given for a bride, even though the seducer doesn't marry his daughter (since she has been sexually compromised, marriage to another man would be difficult if not impossible). The girl has to agree with this arrangement, and she isn't required to marry the seducer. In this arrangement, she is still treated as a virgin.

To this last sentence Copan references a certain book Flame of Yahweh: Sexuality in the Old Testament [Peabody, MA: Henreicksen 2007] - pages 359, 529, by one Richard M. Davidson.

Copan's final comment to the section on Was Rape Allowed? is:

Again, we don't see a lack of concern for the woman. Her well-being is actually the underlying theme of this legislation.

See pages 118,119 - Is God A Moral Monster? Baker Books, Paul Copan.

"A remedy" I wrote, was instituted here.
Is Deut. 22:28-29 not A remedy for the crime of rape?
I didn't and don't mean "the PERFECT solution" but some reparation for the crime.

@Duchess64

So if Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi paid 'financial compensation' to Kayla Mueller's father and pledged never to divorce her, then everything should be fine, right?
Kayla Mueller could settle down into her role as a mother of future recruits for ISIS.

If I thought that "everything is fine" in the case of Deuteronomy 12:28,29 I would not have written -

"A remedy" I wrote, was instituted here.
Is Deut. 22:28-29 not A remedy for the crime of rape?
I didn't and don't mean "the PERFECT solution" but some reparation for the crime.

I would add that the Israelites knew that HARD cases which were difficult to handle would occur. This is why Moses appointed many minor judges and told them that cases that they could not discern they should bring to him.

I do not count this to mean that he knew he could be infallible. But it was a way to deal with the intricacies of human sins and sinning when it is hard to know what justice should be applied.

See Exodus 18:13-27.

Common sense should also inform us that the father of a loved daughter would consider her feelings in the matter. People of ancient times had normal family sentiments as people of today.

I am not claiming to be an expert on world history.
The Bible shows that the theocratic nation (the one and only ever genuine nation with a covenant relationship with God) had laws considering the vulnerability of women.

Perfect laws I do not claim they were.

Now as a New Testament Christian I am not living under the law of Moses. But some people did.

Duchess is painting a case against God which I think doesn't hold.

Now if I point out that men do SEEM to get away with crimes on this earth and that there is a last infallible judgment conducted by God, they don't like that either. Yet in spite of all their complaints about injustice, the atheist viewpoint is lenient. Don't worry. There is no final accounting.

If the laws of humans didn't catch you, don't worry.
If the law in Israel didn't do justly 100%, neither be concerned.

Now the case of the hatred for sin by God is built up throughout the Old Testament. And we are taught that ALL ... ALL have sinned and come short of the glory of God. All are guilty before God.

We all need a Savior.
And if we know enough to condemn others we especially have made ourselves all the more culpable before the ultimate judgement.

In Duchess64 world regardless of how loud she protests of injustice, we all will dissolve peacefully into the dust of the earth. Some things were caught. Many things we simply think we just lucked out to get away with. - Men, Women, Boys, Girls, ALL.

In reality not the rapist, not the lustful man, not the irresponsible father, no one will be without an infallible record of their deeds to answer for, unless we are saved.

Notice the loudest protestations are often the loudest to argue with this:

And I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose face earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them.

And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and scrolls were opened; and another scroll was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by the things which were written in the scrolls, according to their works.

And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, each of them. according to their works.

And death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone was not found written in the book of life, he was cast into the lake of fire." (Rev. 20: 12-25)

For the rapist and every other one of us, in the Bible, there is:
1.) The guilt of an infallible record before God which will have no mistakes or omissions.

2.) The offer of eternal redemption and forgiveness to everyone from the first day of human existence on the earth to the end of time.

3.) A salvation to become transformed into Christ likeness - the ONLY perfect Person who ever walked the earth. ( God has all the time He needs to accomplish this ).

Concerning every living person's ancient or modern or future (from any and ALL cultures) rendezvous before a perfect Moral Final Judgment -

Do you think your post doctrinal knowledge of world history is going to mean anything on that day?

Man's laws certainly err.
Even the laws given by God to Moses as applied by fallible people may not meet out a perfect justice.

As a Christian man (with a less then extensive knowledge of world history and cultures) I know that I will get away with nothing.

Either I will be judged on Christ's cross at Calvary in His saving death for me, Or I will be judged at the end of time when the graves and tombs and earth and sea yield up before God all who have ever lived.

Given the whole revelation of the Bible, it makes more sense to me then the loud protestations of atheism / agnosticism drawing from the record of the crimes of any cultures.

I am not running away from fair exegesis of the Old Testament. But I have to take a moment for the big picture.
Your godless universe leaves an absurd vacuum concerning final justice.

The whole history of God's involvement with humankind has the absolute justice that you fail to provide for with your anti-God social analysis of the world cultures.

Not only so. But you have to steal from my worldview of absolute moral perfection as an attribute of God in order to judge the very One whom you deny exists.

Congratulations to anyone patient enough to read carefully to the end of this post.

Sonship shows his abysmal ignorance of history.

"Common sense should also inform us that the father of a loved daughter would
consider her feelings in the matter."
--Sonship

That fathers have not always done right by their children, is also common sense.

You don't need to imagine the worst for ancient Israel. You may surmise that not always were all parties dealt with adaquately. The is also common sense.

And a message of the Bible is that ALL have sinned and come short of the glory of God. All are in need of forgiveness.

Laws considering the vulnerability women were enacted from Mt. Sinai.

Now, David's daughter Tamar (sister of Absalom) was rapped. She was not forced to marry her attacker. According to your view she should have been forced.

It didn't happen.
Vigilante like Absalom took matters into his own hands and killed the man - lustful Amnon.

Wiki

Murder of Amnon

Leaf from the Morgan Picture Bible, Scenes from the Life of Absalom, c. 1250
Absalom's sister, who was also called Tamar, was raped by Amnon, who was their half-brother. Amnon was also David's eldest son. After the rape, Absalom waited two years, and then avenged Tamar by sending his servants to murder a drunken Amnon at a feast, to which Absalom had invited all the king's sons (2 Samuel 13).

Remember that these were real people with real feelings.