Originally posted by Zahlanzi
what is wrong with you?
I have looked at your passage -
Deuteronomy 22:113-30 approximately. I have considered the particulars, the context, and other factors and given you my brief immediate feeling to your comment.
The jest of which is something like this "At least I am not so bad as God. I mean to have little girls stoned. At least I am better than that."
I am not sorry the passage is in my Bible. I would not change it. I would not argue that it doesn't say what it says. I give you my balanced feeling how I take this passage.
you have someone stoning a teenager for being a stupid hormonal teenager and you try to find excuses?
I think it is easy to read our present day modernity into the matter.
This was a nation privy to witness the greatest display of God's direct interaction in history. They, parents and children, had witnessed the reality of God Almighty in a uniquely overwhelming manifestation of His supernatural deliverance.
They had not just come from watching Sesame Street on TV.
God expressed to them His righteousness and His laws and their unique mission as a genuinely theocratic nation.
I take these things into account and am careful about seeing
Deuteronomy through the eyes of the modern culture of the American pop scene.
I think instead of pulling passages out, Internet Infidel style for ridicule, it would be helpful to read
Exodus and
Deuteronomy entirely to get the bigger picture. These people had freshly been eyewitnesses or the immediate descendents of eyewitnesses to divine deliverance of God from the top kingdom on earth - Egypt.
Hormones in all, they knew that they were special and had a unique national relationship with God.
you have someone accusing someone else of a crime ( and a stupid crime at that) and it is up to the accused, NOT the accuser to provide proof and you still try to find excuses?
There is nothing in the account which gives me the feeling it was easy to condemn someone. I already showed you the passage about hard cases with difficult controversial disputes.
I think if you compare Deuteronomy to the code of Hammurabi I wager you would have preferred to live in Israelite society on a number of aspects. With some more time I may get a chance to study some comparisons.
For one, having the parents so involved in maintaining the girl's and the family's integrity put a serious sense of responsibility on the family. With out extremely permissive modern culture and rebelliousness of youth culture fed and nourished by multi-billion dollar entertainment industry protected by laws of freedom of speech, it may be hard for us to take this sense of family rearing of young women.
This was not a utopian society. It was a society paving the way for the world wide realization that we all have sinned and are in need of the Savior the Son of God.
While stoning death is unquestionably harsh, i told you that all things considered it doesn't look to me as if God was not smart enough provide other outcomes beside the most serious capital punishment.
God created youth, hormones, puberty, adolescents, sexual attraction, and even the institution of marriage. The idea that God needs to come and sit at your feet to learn a thing or two about this, seems unrealistic to me.
Of course by yanking passages out in isolation you can appear to think you're better qualified to school the Almighty, and bring God up to speed on 21rst century youth culture.
"Joseph did not have her stoned in front of her farther's house but thought to put her away privately."
that proves my point. the law was so horrible that even righteous men ignored it.
You're not being sober minded. I can't trust your kind of wild opportunistic complaining.
Verse 13 says
" If a man takes a wife and goes in unto her ..."
You do not have a issue here until a man takes the woman as a WIFE.
It is not bringing any accusation against any young girl.
"And charges her with shameful deeds and spreads an evil report about her ..."
There is no command to despise her.
There is no "Thou Shalt Raise a Stink" as a mandatory reaction.
There is no command that if there be a problem between the man and his wife that he HAS to make it public.
None of the things leading to this ugly affair are COMMANDED as a mandatory reaction.
IF ... a man claims loudly to have this complaint ... THIS is what should be done in this situation.
It is YOU who wants to read into the passage that OF COURSE every man would ONLY
"spread an evil report about her, [saying] I took this woman, and when I drew near to her, I did not find her a virgin."
YOU assume no love, no sympathy, no forgiveness, no even mistakenness, no prior consultation, no admition, no confession, no negotiation, no clarification of an unfortunate incident could ever take place.
I think the law is somewhat similar to what I have heard soldiers in the US Army tell me. That on the books some offenses are like letting a bolder roll down off of the top of a hill until you are crushed by it at the bottom. But built into the system are stops along the way as the rock falls that can halt its decline.
They told me that if NO stops are activated the ultimate penalty is really bad. But it is possible for the ultimate penalty to be circumvented along several stations down the system.
You also have verse 20
"But if the claim be true ...".
It is not necessary that the claim HAS to be raised depending on what kind of person the husband is or what kind of relationship the couple has.
It is also not easy for the claim to be proved true.
The protection of the woman is an integral part of the passage.
The death penalty is here like the stone at the top of the hill. But along the way I see various provisions to stop its total fall.
why can't you just say "the law was horrible, there is no excuse for it, it was right to be abolished" ?
You mean like the Apostle Paul saying that Christ has abolished on the cross the law of commandments and ordinances?
"Abolishing in His flesh the law of the commandments in ordinances, ..." (Eph, 2:15)
Or
"Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to everyone who believes." (Romans 10:4)
Or do you mean -
"Christ has redeemed us out of the curse of the law, having become a curse on our behalf ..." (Galatians 3:13) ?
Or do you mean like
"For the law was given through Moses; grace and reality came through Jesus Christ." (John 1:17) ?
As a new testament believer in Christ, I can see that God had to lay a foundation in the OT for the revelation of His hatred for sins. To appreciate that Christ has carried up our sins in Himself to His cross to be a curse that we may be redeemed from the law of God, it is meaningful that we realize how dreadful is the holy God's hatred for the sins. That is the sins for which the Son of God paid our dept with His blood.
I don't stop my reading of the Bible with Deuteronomy 22. I go on all the way into the New Testament.
21 Feb '15 04:35
RedLetter Bible Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21
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