and he trusts me when I tell him to bring about my suffering. 0 extraneous casualty.
If you were alive and evil in prehistoric times inside a village singing praise to Moloch with the blood of children, don't you think committing suicide becomes the right thing to do instead of planting seeds with no chance of surviving the depravity?
In the Old testament many of the wars fought by the Israelites or Jews are accounted as having the intervention of the Lord to secure victory (or defeat without intervention). Their enemies were made to respect and fear them because they were fighting with influence of the Lord.
Objection: 1. Those primitive tribesmen were simply unenlightened people, 2. the stories are embellished and it never happened like so. Corollary: they took it to head they were being helped by some wind and it was like a placebo that got reinforced, or 3. it never happened at all.
Reply to objection 1, on the contrary while this can be much easier said of those who were being overtaken, it was the Israelites who took claim of a heightened state of moral rectitude. Where the God is pleased solely by man being obedient to his divine will.
The level of trust confided in his members to carry out sacrifices is unparalleled when looking at the history from Issac down to Saul. In the first case man was commanded to offer up his son on the alter, he obeyed and was known for being pious to God. In the latter case by not exterminating the people of Amalek man was disobedient to his God and was thus being impious.
My reply to objection 2 is kinda using a poker strategy of polarized range.
The Lord made a promise to the people of Israel and he kept it. He delivered them from the hands of their enemies, who were made to respect and fear them because the influence of the Lord. There were also neutral clans that attested of such favor upon the Israelites. They had the intervention of the Lord to secure victory, or they were given up to suffer losses for disobeying his commands. The total account is a strong indication for the presence of God. Aha it was just the winds that bloweth at their back!
In conclusion, the evidence is they underwent a supernatural encounter (which happens either from being in a state of weakness and one is tempted to follow less than earthly inclinations, or from being in the opposite spectrum of angelic-order experience)
Fast forward to thinking of 18& 19th century...
United states of American civil war and the battle of Gettysburg and the revolutionary war in America, both are the bloody messes which took place. I will believe the first president at his word as I do with the Hebrew man when he says that divine providence was involved on the battlefield.
"No one can control the wind and stop it from blowing, no one can control the day of death. From war there is no escape, no more can wickedness save the person who commits it." - Ecclesiastes 8:8
