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@Ghost-of-a-Duke
Left handed compliment. Damning with faint praise.
I'm guilty of it too sometimes.
Let me put it this way. Jesus Christ, because of His death and resurrection and ability to be available to us has made the entire old man of the fall obsolete.
If anyone is in Christ there is a new creation.
Instead of poohooing this you might just say "I have never experienced what you talk about."
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The reputation of Israel if they would keep God's commandments:
See, I have taught you statutes and ordinances, as Jehovah my God commanded me, so that you would do them within the land which you are going in to possess.
Keep and do them therefore; for this will be your wisdom and prudence in the sight of the peoples who hear all these statues and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and prudent people. (Deut. 4:4,5)
How many of you thought the poor young women spared from the Midianites had these thoughts once they got to know the peoples of Israel and their God ?
For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as Jehovah our God is whenever we call upon Him?
And what great nation is there that has statutes and ordinances so RIGHTEOUS as all this law which I am setting before you today? (v.8)
I think the poor spared Midianite virgins realized the righteousness of Israel's God and Israel's laws as compared to the nightmare of their Canaanite idolatrous societies.
But be careful and guard your soul diligently, so that you do not forget the things which your eyes have seen and they do not depart from your heart all the days of your life; rather, make them known to your children and to your grandchildren. (v.9)
After the sadness of loss, I think the Midianite virgins contemplated the righteous nation with their God - the true God, and took hope for the future.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_China#Shang_dynasty_(second_millennium_BC)
The earliest evidence of slavery in China dates to the Shang dynasty when, by some estimates, approximately 5 percent of the population was enslaved. The Shang dynasty engaged in frequent raids of surrounding states, capturing slaves who would be killed in ritual sacrifices...
There were many Sogdian wineshops and Persian shops in Chang'an along with a large slave market. The wineshops were staffed with young girls who served wine to customers and danced for them. Most of the slave girls were 14 or 15 years old. They provided services like sex, dancing, singing, and served wine to their customers in Chang'an as ordered their masters who ran the wineshops. A Sogdian merchant, Kang Weiyi 康尾義 had Indians, Central Asians, and Tokharistanis (Bactrians) among the 15 slave girls he was bringing to sell in the Chinese capital of Chang'an.
Zheng He, the famous Muslim Chinese explorer, was a slave who had his balls cut off to make him more submissive.
Keep and do them therefore; for this will be your wisdom and prudence in the sight of the peoples who hear all these statues and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and prudent people. (Deut. 4:4,5)
Duchess64, I think the Midianite girls mourned sadly, very sadly.
Then they considered the people in whose midst they were now. Maybe they asked -
"What happened to your great leader Moses who gave you all these laws. Where is he ? "
And they explained that God had not permitted Moses to enter into the promised land. For he had angered God and God disciplined him so that he would not be allowed to enter.
The girls may have wondered. "What? The very law giver Moses was not allowed to enter because of his disobedience to God? What kind of people ARE these? "
They contemplated the utter righteousness of Yahweh. And they heard the warnings from the talk and the law, that they were never to set up IDOLS to worship.
They remembered terrifying idol statues upon which their relatives and friends had died in fire. I think they contemplated this tradition:
When you have brought forth children and grandchildren and have languished in the land, and you have spoiled yourselves by making an idol, the form of anything, and have done that which is evil in the sight of Jehovah your God so as to anger Him;
I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that surely you will soon perish from off the land into which you are crossing over the Jordan to possess; you will not extend your days upon it, but you will be utterly destroyed. (Deut. 4:25,26)
The young girls must have thought - "These people believe that if they ever become like my wicked people God will punish them. What kind of godly people these are ? "
You don't think they thought things like that? I do.
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The mixed multitude which assimilated into Israelite culture considered the talk of the Hebrews, their reciting of the law and words of Moses.
The young Midianite girls remembered perhaps the terrifying IDOLS of the Canaanite nations. And they considered the CHANGE into which they were being brought.
So take careful heed to your souls, for you did not see any form at all on the day when JJehogah spoke to you at Horeb from the midst of the fire.
So that you do not spoil yourselves and make for yourselves an idol, a form of any image, a figure of male or female.
A figure of any animal which is on the earth, a figure of any winged bird which flies in the sky.
A figure of anything that crawls on the ground, a figure of any fish that is in the water under the earth; (Deut. 4:15-18)
No terrifying FISH headed god anymore.
No bird faced idol to dread.
No lizard headed god to fear.
No bull headed fiery statute to fear all one's life that the priests might select some child from a family to offer up in sacrifice. And that so that the grain and crops would grow well that year.
Then they may have thought of the fortune tellers and astrologers predicting terrifying things. No more in Israel. No more the stars determining their fate.
And take heed that, when you lift up your eues to the sky and see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you are not drawn away in worship to them and that you do not serve them, which Jehovah your God has assigned to all the peoples under all heaven. (Deut. 4:19)
I think many of them thought - "Now I will have a better life. This God of the Israelites is loving and righteous even though He judged my culture, my scary superstitious culture."
@sonship saidI don't think the young girls would have reflected on their own people as wicked, no.
The young girls must have thought - "These people believe that if they ever become like my wicked people God will punish them. What kind of godly people these are ? "
You don't think they thought things like that? I do.
When does that ever happen in reality?
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I don't think the young girls would have reflected on their own people as wicked, no.
When does that ever happen in reality?
In comparison the contrast, I think, was noticed.
Israel was an atypical nation. So I am not prepared to offer other examples elsewhere.
Your reasoning - "Israel was just like everyone else."
I don't think it was in all respects just like everyone else.
At least not recently after that Mt. Sinai encounter with God.
@sonship saidNo, my reasoning was that 'the girls' were like everyone else. We never think of our own people as wicked.
@Ghost-of-a-DukeI don't think the young girls would have reflected on their own people as wicked, no.
When does that ever happen in reality?
In comparison the contrast, I think, was noticed.
Israel was an atypical nation. So I am not prepared to offer other examples elsewhere.
Your reasoning - "Israel was just like everyone else."
I don't ...[text shortened]... espects just like everyone else.
At least not recently after that Mt. Sinai encounter with God.
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No, my reasoning was that 'the girls' were like everyone else. We never think of our own people as wicked.
You don't think something within them was repulsed by some of the Canaanite practices ?
Ruth the Moabitess clung to Naomi the Israelite women with whom she lived in her exile from Israel, a daughter-in-law.
And she [Naomi] said, Your sister-in-law has now returned to her people and to her gods; return with your sister-in-law.
But Ruth said, Do not entreat me to leave you and turn away from following after you. For wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you dwell, I will dwell; and your people will be my people, and your God will be my God.
Where you die, I will die; and there will I be buried. Jehovah do so to me, and more as well, if anything but death parts me from you.
And when Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, [back to Israel], she ceased speaking to her about it. (Ruth 1:17,18)
@sonship saidThe environment/culture we grow up in becomes our 'normal' even if those on the outside view our normal as barbaric. Again, we do not view our own people as wicked. That simply isn't the way people or society works.
@Ghost-of-a-DukeNo, my reasoning was that 'the girls' were like everyone else. We never think of our own people as wicked.
You don't think something within them was repulsed by some of the Canaanite practices ?
Ruth the Moabitess clung to Naomi the Israelite women with whom she lived in her exile from Israel, a daughter-in-law.
And sh ...[text shortened]... ned to go with her, [back to Israel], she ceased speaking to her about it. (Ruth 1:17,18)
Even the Incan people who practiced Qhapaq hucha - human sacrifice (mainly using children) wouldn't have viewed this practice as wicked (as alien as that seems to modern morality). To them, children were simply selected due to their purity and in accordance with their shared beliefs.
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Even the Incan people who practiced Qhapaq hucha - human sacrifice (mainly using children) wouldn't have viewed this practice as wicked (as alien as that seems to modern morality). To them, children were simply selected due to their purity and in accordance with their shared beliefs.
I think your theory makes social reform beyond the realm of possibility.
That's not the way things work either.
Rome stopped gladiator spectacles after a long time.
Europe, South America, and Caribbeans stopped slave trade after a long time.
The forbidding of women's right to vote came to a cessation after a long time.
Apartheid in South Africa ceased after a long period.
While Canaanite societies may have been unreformable as a whole in the conquest of Canaan, individuals might reform in their attitudes.
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Would Sonship encourage Christian missionaries to contact the Sentinelese?
This depends on the calling from God for someone to consecrate to this outreach.
Through Gates of Splendor by Elisabeth Elliot is the book of their outreach to a tribe in South America (Ecuador I think). Her husband and other missionaries lost their lives in doing so.
When the wife of slain husband Jim Elliot was giving lectures about the experience the very man who had speared her husband to death was her friend and was won for Jesus Christ.
She lived among them AFTER her husband had been killed and that WITH her young daughter child.
I have not read "Through Gates of Splendor" but I have heard tapes of Elizabeth Elliot speak to Christian congregations.
Books by this dedicated Christian woman -
https://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/[WORD TOO LONG]
Webstite http://www.elisabethelliot.org/