Alledged absudities of Samson

Originally posted by sonship

no i am not saying they should have acted like the nations that lived there. they could have allowed them to live there, and forbid some practices. not kill all people of different religion or drive them out. we today allow for freedom of religion but we don't allow satanists to sacrifice humans, or whatever.

Do you remember why God to ...[text shortened]... erate and goal oriented as it is related to the whole earth and its peoples.

so to save the earth and the humans from an abstract evil, some people have to die so god's experiment would begin in canaan? kind of like milking a cow by cutting open her udders.

Originally posted by Zahlanzi
"Do you remember why God told Abraham in Genesis 15 that He would not bring the Hebrews into Canaan for another 400 years? He said that the people there had not gotten bad enough yet to warrant such a takeover"

yes, i remember that. it wasn't the biggest lie ever told in the bible. it was a big lie nonetheless. the god that would later send his only s ebelion, they murdered the crap out of them. and justified it as "god made me do it"

yes, i remember that. it wasn't the biggest lie ever told in the bible. it was a big lie nonetheless.

Here is the promise:
"And He said to Abram, Know assuredly that your seed will be sojournors in a land that is not theirs, and they will serve them: and they will afflict them four hundred years.

But I will also judge that nation, whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with great possessions.

But as for you, you will go to your fathers in peace; you will be buried in a good old age. And in the fourth generation they will come here again, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. " (Genesis 14:13-16)

Now when you say God lied, I don't know if you mean God really said it but none of it happened or what. But this is the promise and given another 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, this is what I believe happened.

Where's the lie in any of these details? Perhaps you mean you just don't believe any of this really occured.

the god that would later send his only son to die on the cross, the son that preached in his name of love and salvation,

And He was the God of love then as also now. This God of love ALSO had to demonstrate His hatred for sin. What sense would it make for the Gospel of Luke to follow immediately after Genesis?

That God loved and Christ came to bear under the divine judgment for the sins of the world, is impressive to us precisely because His hatred for man's sinning was demonstrated.

So coming in Christ for redemption was NOT another God. Nor was it a God who decided to love us, though previously did not.

not for a chosen people, but for everyone.

The Old Testament furnishes the backround for this plan for redemption. What He spoke in the Old Testament concerning all the ends of the earth and all the families of the earth, He eventually worked out in Christ's redemption.

"Turn to Me and be saved, All the ends of the earth, For I am God and there is no one else." (Isaiah 45:22)

Progressively, God unveils His nature and reveals His plan of salvation.
The demonstration of His righteous judgement upon the sinful Canaanites has its place in unfolding revelation.

Mind you, so does the discipline He sorely applied to His own chosen nation Israel.

this god would condemn an entire civilization to slaughter, because he couldn't be bothered to save them. furthermore, he knew exactly when they would be ripe for the slaughter.

I think that the slaughter was in regards to certain cases. I think the harshest slaughter involved the hardest of the hard who were the mostly the combatants who resisted the strongest to being dispersed.

The Amalekites were harshly judged because they came from behind and slaughtered the Hebrews in the rears where the most tired and stragglers were. This was heartless.

The Midianites were harsly judged because they concocted a scheme of mass fornication to seduce the Israelite men. These nastiest of schemes won for them the harshest retributions from God.

Another fact should be considered. The language of Joshua's writing some scholars say was in the typical military hyperbolic rhetoric of the age.

Ie. "We wiped out everything that breaths, etc." was the typical kind of exaggerated bragging that military leaders often did. I can provide examples.

In the case of the Amalekites it is clear that they kept turning up in the other chapters. So having been eradicated literally cannot be taken be true. The speech employed in the book of Joshua actually argues that a military man of the ANE really was doing the writing.

For example - Egypts Tuthmosis III (later fifteenth century) boasted that "the numerous army of Mitanni was overthrown within the hour, annhilated totally, like those (now) not existent." In fact though, Mitanni's forces lived to fight on in the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries BC.

For example - In the Merneptath Stele (ca. 1230 BC), Ramses II's son Merneptah announced - "Israel is wasted, his seed is not." But it was a premature declaration.

For example - the Assyrian ruler Sennacherib (701-681 BC) used similar hyperbole saying "The soldiers of Hirimme, dangerous enemies, I cut down wth the sword; and not one escaped."

Now compare Joshua 10:40 - "Thus Joshua struck all the land, the hill country and the Negev and the lowland and the slopes and all their kings. He left no survivor, but he utterly destroyed all who breathed, just as the Lord, the God of Israel, had commanded."

The writer of Joshua used the rhetorical bravado typical his day.
Joshua asserts that ALL the land was captured, ALL the kings were defeated,
ALL the Canaanites destroyed (comp. Joshua 10:40-42; 11:16-23 ):

"Joshua took the whole land ... and gave ... it for an inheritance to Israel". This has to be taken as some hyperbolic bravado speak of the age. Joshua himself acknowledges that this wasn't literally so.

This information comes to me from Paul Copan's book - "Is God a Moral Monster ? Making Sense of the Old Testament God" in a chapter section called "Ancient Near Eastern Exaggeration Rhetoric".

I consider these matters as I study the Old Testament.

bear in mind that Nazi Germany killed millions, the soviets millions, the khmer rouges also. they weren't wiped off the face of the world as nations. you could argue that they went extinct but god didn't speak to a chosen prophet to go gather the armies of the world and conquer hitler. we kinda did that on our own. and we didn't obliterate every german we could find, and turn Germany into france territory. we eliminated a dangerous and evil threat and we let the civilians be. they were given their country back.

It is clear that the people of Canaan were not totally eradicated. That is what Joshua tells us.

Now the boast "we kind of did that on our own" should take into account that Judea / Christian sentiments surely played a part in Nazi resistance. So a voice from heaven was not involved. But men like Detritch Bonhoeffer the Christian theologian, felt an ethical obligation to plot Hitler's assasination. I think he paid with his life.

My only point in saying this is - don't brag that "we" resisted Nazi aggression with absolutely no enfluence from concepts fueling Allied resistance from Judea / Christian ethical considerations.

how much more evil were the canaanites that they deserved to be slaughtered? every man, woman, child.

On a case by case bases I contemplate these things.
The Hebrew kings ALSO had a reputation latter of being merciful too.

"And his [Ben-hadad the Syrian] servants said to him, Look now, we have heard that the kings of the house of Israel are merciful kings. We beg you, let us put sackcloth on our loins and ropes upon our heads, and go out to the king of Israel. Perhaps he will preserve your life." (1 Kings 20:31)

I have to read the OT with a eye for a case by case consideration.
Granted, in some instances, God did say something like "Your eye shall not pity ...". I do not deny those cases are there. All cases are not like this.

And the instructions of God to Moses concerning Canaan seem first to put more emphasis on breaking down religious relics, idols, and driving OUT the people. God wanted the centers to be dispersed.

You know that in Jericho Rahab and her family were spared. But the ban and devotion to destruction was upon the whole city. I have to consider these exceptions and not be overly general in either direction.

For length's sake, I may comment on your other paragraph latter.

a god who was omnipotent couldn't persuade the canaanites to reform. a god that was benevolent and kind, wouldn't lift a finger to save them. he lit a bush on fire for moses and spoke to him. don't you think he could have lit something on fire for the canaanites?

Go read about the Canaanites that were assimilated into Hebrew society.

I think a lot of people expect God to act like Barney the Dinosaur.

Why do you think God told the Israelites to circle Jericho for a day, then another day, then another day ... once a day for seven days ? Then on the seventh day they were to circle the walled city seven times.

I think that this was to give the repentant ones time to get out and avoid being killed along with the hardest of the hard.

A army surrounds your city walls and then withdraws. They do it seven times. I think this was God allowing some to evacuate and avoid judgment.

I also think that God does not judge without having given prophetic warning. We know that the Gentile nations had prophets from God. Balaam, though not a very good one, was a Gentile prophet. Jethro as a priest of Midian.

Though much is not said, I think they Canaanites may have had some prophetic warning from God. Now they knew about this miraculous nation crossing the Red Sea by an act of thier God. And they had an ADDITIONAL 40 years after that to stop their crimes.

There are a lot of things in the Bible. One of the things is a testimony of some societies reaching rock bottom in morality. I accept this. This too has to be communicated in God's book. People can actuaully get to a rock bottom degradation.

It may be that the continued Canaanite practices were a threat to civilization as a whole. I envision them dedicating animals and children to demonic pacts, oaths. I envision the darkest occultic practices.

I do not like the fact that in some cases it appears children were killed. But it is also a fact man must learn that children WILL suffer sometimes because of our sins. Your rebellion against God can negatively effect your kids.

I don't like it. But I can see God making a point of it.
So when we do long to throw ourselves headlong into sin, we do need to consider what effect it may have on our children.

I expect that judged children of the OT will be eternally saved. But I'll have to wait to find out. I do not know this. I know that the Judge of all the earth will do justly -

"Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justly ?" Abraham to God (Gen. 18:25)

so no, the god of the new testament did not do this. simply some nomad barbarians conquered a nation and rather than assimilate the population and risk rebelion, they murdered the crap out of them. and justified it as "god made me do it"

There were some non-repeatable commands of God to Israel. Non-repeatable in that they had also instructions for warfare which did not include these methods. I take the Canaanite conquest as a once in history specific case.

I consider with this harshest cases the more general rules for warfare which God through Moses commanded them. And included in those instructions was to seek peace with an enemy first if possible.

How do you feel about some 54 million killed unborn babies in America since the mid 60s?

How do you feel about the Eugenics practiced by the Social Darwinists of among Hitler's scientists ? How do you feel about the murder of mentally retarded individuals by German scientists to help evolve a master race?

These were the fruits of scientific theories. Do you have a similar revulsion to such events?