What were the men and women seeing as the practice of their societies in Midianite culture ?
Some indications:
Then Jehovah spoke to Moses, saying,
Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, I am Jehovah your God. You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, in which you dwelt;
and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you, nor shall you walk in their statutes.
You shall observe My ordinances, and you shall keep My statutes to walk in them; I am Jehovah your God. (Lev. 18:1-4)
What were some of things in which they were getting worse and worse?
None of you shall approach to any of his close relatives to uncover their nakedness. I am Jehovah. (v.6)
That includes one's father. No lewdness with one's father (v.7).
It includes no lewdness with one's mother. (v.7).
No lewdness with one's mother-in-law. (v.8)
No lewdness with one's sister. (v.9)
No lewdness with one's grand daughter. (v.9)
No lewdness with one's aunt. (v.11,13)
No lewdness with one's daughter-in-law. (v.15)
Do you get the picture?
Lets not belabor the obvious. The Canaanite societies were going beserk.
How does Duchess64 know that the relative slain was not also the seducer or violator of the women spared, if not yet - as to their likely future?
Adultery was going wild as we see in latter verses.
Children were being offered up to Molech in fire.
And you shall not give any of your offspring to pass through the fire to Molech, and so profane the name of your God; I am Jehovah. (v.21)
How does Duchess64 not know that perhaps the next week that same captive girl was scheduled to be burned to death in the red hot hands of the idol Molech.
Might not Israelite conquest been a relief in some instances?
And then there were the men and women with ANIMALS having beastiality.
And you shall not lie with ANY BEAST to defile yourself with it; neither shall any woman stand before a beast, to lie down with it; it is confusion. (v.23)
Maybe those same spared young girls were being educated against their consciences in the ways of performing beastiality.
Do not defile yourselves in any of these things, for by by all these the nations which I am casting out before you have defiled themselves.
Because the land has become defiled, I visited its iniquity upon it, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. (v.25)
Take some of Duchess64's having the Midianite girls long nostalgically for the good old days in their families and societies with a grain of salt, a big grain.
does Sonship fantasize that one month should be
enough time for the 'spared virgins' to forget and forgive everything about their conquerors having killed their family members?
Maybe that brother was also trying to be lewed with her according to the custom of the land.
Maybe that father was previously practicing pedophilia with that captive Midianite young girl.
Maybe she was terrified that as her older sister had been offered up to Molech in the fire, she was next.
Maybe she did not [edited] want learn human to horse or human to ox intimacy.
Take Duchess64's idealism about the missed "peace" of living in Canaanite society for those girls with some skepticism.
Maybe scores of them came from traumatic dysfunctional "families" of total rampant sexual CONFUSION.
"... for by all these the nations which I am casting out before you have defiled themselves. (Lev. 18:24b)
@sonship saidOnce again. Moses never existed, read current historians assessments. Many of them are Jewish historians. The only people, it seems, who still cling to this fairy tale are Christian fanatics. To them, history and truth do not matter.
What were the men and women seeing as the practice of their societies in Midianite culture ?
Some indications:
[quote] Then Jehovah spoke to Moses, saying,
Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, I am Jehovah your God. You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, in which you dwelt;
and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where ...[text shortened]... algically for the good old days in their families and societies with a grain of salt, a big grain.
Don't let the facts interfere with anything !
@caissad4
I do not consider you an educated person in this realm.
I consider you simply one who has been informed of a particular viewpoint.
I see what your standard response is going to be to all topics related to the Bible -"It never happened, he, she, or they never existed, he never wrote it. "
No need to "Once more" repeat it. I know this denial you will be applying to everything related to the Bible.
@sonship saidDon't you merely have "a particular viewpoint" as well?
@caissad4
I do not consider you an educated person in this realm.
I consider you simply one who has been informed of a particular viewpoint.
One could cite "I do not consider you an educated person in this realm" as a textbook example of several logical fallacies rolled into one.
The Canaanite civilizations had reached a moral rock bottom.
We see a moral low occuring that God may have realized was threatening the whole of human development.
Of course the spared Midianite girls had tragedy of lost loved ones. But we are talking about people enslaved to superstitious devotion to morally corrupt deities. They in fact were trying to destroy humanity with incest, temple sex, beastiality, deviations of all kinds, bloodthirsty child sacrifices, and intense occultic devotion.
We see that it was not just they didn't worship Yahweh that God judged them. It was the immorality involved in "who" they did worship. Their gods and godesses were all about incest. So they too had no sensitivity about its perversion.
We have a peculiar situation here of critics complaining on one hand that God permits too much evil, which they find as proof of atheism. Yet when God left example of His coming in to tolerate no more a society's wickedness, they condemn Him for judging the Canaanites.
It should be noted that an undue favoritism upon Israel was not to be assumed if they fell to the same depths of wickedness. If they fell into those sins the EXACT same punishment of invasion and conquest would be their result also.
Because you did not serve Jehovah your God with rejoicing and gladness of heart on account of the abundance of all things.
You will serve your enemies, whom Jehovah will send out against you, in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, and in lack of all things and He will put an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you.
Jehovah will bring against you a nation from far away, from the end of the earth, like the eagle that swoops down, a nation whose tongue you will not understand. (Deut. 28:47-49)
The captive women were not old enough to leave the land on their own yet. But they knew they had the option latter to leave and not become followers of Israel's ways of their God.
They may have heard Gods command was not to spill innocent blood as the Canaanites practiced in their injustice.
Thus you shall utterly remove the guilt of the innocent blood from your midst, for you do what is right in the sight of Jehovah. (Deut. 21:9)
I believe that the spared women considered these things too. You are a stranger in Israel your conquerors. Yet you hear that their law has God warn of oppression to your kind.
"There shall be one standard for you; it shall be for the stranger as well as the native, for I am the Lord your God." (Lev, 24:22, comp Num. 35:15)
They learned of financial justice also God commanded for the stranger in Israel. Yet the laws were set so that the possession of the land remained with the theocratic nation.
In the matter of charging interest, God considered the foreigner in their midst with fairness.
This regulation had a built-in incentive: the outsider (who didn't have to live in Israel) could choose to become a part of Israel and embrace the one true God; if so, he could benefit from divinely commanded economic perks and displays of Israelite concern. Instead of hostility, God commanded the Israelites to love and show concern for the resident aliens in their midst. The command to love the resident alien and to treat her the same way as a citizen (Lev. 19:33-34) is remarkable and unique in ancient Near Easts religious thoughts and practices.
- Paul Copan
Does anyone read the book of Exodus and see that the father-in-law of Moses was a priest to God among the Midianites?
Does anyone read the book of Numbers and notice that Balaam was a prophet not from Israel but from the Gentile nations?
Does anyone notice that when Abraham lived the people still had some awareness of God? And they had some conscience. They, as it says, had not gotten wicked enough YET for God to bring in a judgment.
Reading the story of Abraham and Isaac you notice that the people of Canaan at that time had some conscience to convict them of wrong doing.
Judgment is related to what one KNOWS OUGHT to be and what OUGHT NOT to be. All the facts taken in show they declined, degraded, departed from better knowledge until they hit rock bottom in morality and idolatry.
Once one realizes that there is nothing in the Bible by accident she can began to notice things.
Genesis notes that the people among whom Abraham dwelt in his sojournings still had some sense of conscience.
God told Abraham that the land would be turned over to his descendents. But not just yet because the people were not so bad yet to be under the judgment that was coming.
God knew it was coming.
You and I suspect things may continue as business as usual.
But God knows what path we are on and where it is likely to end up.
At any rate I read Genesis and am struck with the occasional God fearing-ness of the people of the land at that time.
They must have been informed by God outside of the Hebrews faith. Jethro was a priest of Midian. Melchizedek was a non-Israelite priest also. Balaam was a Gentile prophet of God.
Abraham had RESCUED the people of Sodom from conquest. They knew at that time he was sent by his God to assist them. (Gen. 14).
This is before Sodom hit rock bottom in morality, which thing we see in chapters 18,19.
God came to Abimelech in a dream warning the Gentile king not to mistakenly steal Abrahams wife for his own. (Genesis 20)
But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him, You are now about to die because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is a man's wife.
But Abimelech had not come near her, so he said, Lord, will You slay even a righteous nation? Did he himself not say to me, She is my sister? And even herself said, He is my brother. In the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands I have done this.
And God said to him in the dream, Yes, I know that in the integrity of your heart you have done this, and I also prevented you from sinning against Me; therefore I did not let you touch her.
Now therefore return the man's wife, for he is a prophet; and he will pray for you, and you will live. But if you do not return her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours. (Genesis 20:3-7)
The people including the king still had some sense of conscience. God could still get through to speak to them. The iniquity of the Amorites had not reached the climax of utter degradation yet.
@sonship saidYes yes, a month to get over such trauma is quite sufficient.
@Duchess64Sonship has apparently implied that a young 'spared virgin' who was traumatized
by the recent murders of her loved ones would have welcomed the men ...
I assume the law for captive females gave weeping and traumatized survivors a month to be left alone to mourn.
[quote] When you go out to fight against your enemies and Jehovah your God ...[text shortened]...
Of age girls I would expect to have been shown this custom of the people according to their law.
That insight changes everything.
😵
Yes yes, a month to get over such trauma is quite sufficient.
That insight changes everything.
Is there need to be overly idealistic in sarcasm?
They were sorrowful. They were also removed from a very degraded society and possibly dysfunctional family life.
They were now with people who recently knew the power of God. They had the words of God. There was reason for hope.
I did not say girls with slain relatives lived happily ever after. But let's be realistic.
Fathers don't sleep with their daughters.
God forbade it.
Brothers don't lust after their sisters.
God forbade it.
Humans don't marry animals.
God forbade it.
Children are not assigned to burn to death in the red hot hands of an idol Molech so that crops would be good that year.
All I ask for is a little realism. The Canaanite culture was no peaceful paradise. I think something in them said "Good Riddance. "
But I don't say they bore no scares of their past lives at all.
You reason without accounting for God being there.
You have no thought of God's help for her. NONE-WHAT-SO-EVER. Cause you're an ATHEIST who begins WITHOUT GOD, proceeds WITHOUT GOD, and concludes WITHOUT GOD in any of your reasoning.
One whole book, the book of RUTH the Moabitess, is dedicated to the subject of an enemy nation's young woman becoming a part of Israelite society.
The Moabites, forbidden to enter into the congregation of the Lord up to the tenth generation (Duet. 23:3) .
Yet the young woman Ruth sought God and God's people. An entire inspired book dedicated to the story of the Moabitess Ruth and the overruling grace of God to bring her in and bless her because her heart was right.
@sonship saidThanks to your valuable insight we now know Jesus has made suicide obsolete. Has He also done the same for PTSD? (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).
@Ghost-of-a-DukeYes yes, a month to get over such trauma is quite sufficient.
That insight changes everything.
Is there need to be overly idealistic in sarcasm?
They were sorrowful. They were also removed from a very degraded society and possibly dysfunctional family life.
They were now with people who recently knew the power of God. They ...[text shortened]... ]Ruth[/b] and the overruling grace of God to bring her in and bless her because her heart was right.