10 Commandments vs Mosiac law killing sprees

Post Reply New Topic

ince the Ten Commandments specifically mention "do not kill" could we say that the Mosiac Law is evil and in direct contradiction to this? Ater all, many of those so called prophets actually seem to have commanded (almost wrote commended - but it would also work!) killing.

Many parts of those old testament books are drenched in blood!

(Can't disculss with with fundamentalists in family - but any logical mind can see they don't add up?)

Thoughts on this?

You're working from a common misinterpretation of the 10 Commandments. It's supposed to be read "Do not murder."

It's not logically necessary to read that as conflicting with the remainder of the OT. Murder is defined specifically as a form of killing that is both deliberate and unjustified. Accidents happen…doesn't make it right, survivors of accident victims have the right to seek vengeance if the accused doesn't satisfy certain conditions. But it's unfair to put someone to death for something unintentional and maybe even unavoidable. It's the "axe-head" exemption.

Killing CAN be justified and deliberate as well…someone who has committed murder or another crime punishable by death can receive the death penalty. It's deliberate and justified.

Self-defense killing is justifiable. It may or may not be deliberate, but the blood-guilt for self-defense is on the attacker, not the would-be victim.

In ancient times, sex with another man's wife or a woman promised to him was seen as an attempt on his life (this is too complex to go into here, just pointing out that was common in ancient thought). This gets complicated because it requires: 1) There be witnesses to prove it, 2) Rape wasn't involved (to assess the woman's guilt), 3) the man she's married or betrothed to even bothers to press charges. Similarly, survivors of an accident victim don't HAVE to press charges or seek retribution.

Killing is unavoidable in war, and wars CAN be justified. In fact, kings/judges were NEVER to go to war without first consulting advisors from the priesthood. Results of going to war without first determining whether it was the Lord's will were often disastrous for the Israelites and Jews. Prophets sometimes advised rulers and people NOT to resist invasion because invasion and exile were part of God's plan--and people died in resisting and engaging in wars that were not justified.

So…if you want to look at it logically, the Bible makes a case against any form of deliberate killing that is NOT justifiable. The 10 Commandments are very broad. The rest of the commandments are there to clarify exactly what they mean.

Incidentally, the 10 Commandments aren't the first. The first commandment in the OT is my personal favorite.

Hey AngelRho thanks for your response and thoughts!

What about the animals being killed for sacrifice; that wasn't justified was it?

And Elijah (I think it was him) called a curse on some young boys just because they dared to tease him. Imagine if us Aspies decided to call a curse on everyone who teased us? He seems to have had no sense of humor whatever? They were not threatening his life as far as I can recall, so it was not self-defence.

Then miserable old Samuel came along and asked the then King to kill all the animals and the women that from some enemy tribe that I can't recall and don't feel like looking up right now... sometimes they went way beyond the mere killing in battle. Today, there would be an international outcry....

Incidentally I grew up Baptist as well....

Mosaic law is evil. If you practiced it today you'd be rightly arrested. There were Christian splinter groups who read the OT and agreed. They felt the OT god was evil and that Jesus was here to save them from him.

Very cool! We Baptists tend to focus on the finer points of Jesus' teachings rather than nitpicky OT stuff. There are tons of things that don't make sense in the Bible that we tend not to think about, and nobody cares to teach. If you just spend a little time with it, it's not so bad.

BTW, the IMPORTANT parts have to do with salvation. The OT stuff is pretty much irrelevant except to demonstrate where we've BEEN in terms of God's plan for our salvation. You don't get WHY we even need salvation without the OT, you don't get God's repeated attempts to reconcile with us without the OT, and you don't get the abject failure of man to make himself righteous before God. Justification in the OT is through faith in God's future promise; justification after the NT is through faith in what God has already done. If you get that much, you get the OT and pretty much the whole Bible.

Oh, and I don't mean to say that the rest ISN'T important. But everything in the Bible has a purpose, and you have to look at it in that context--WHY is, for example, the Creation account important? To teach us a science lesson? No…whether the Creation story is literally true or not is not as important as the lesson that Yahweh created the universe for His purpose and His pleasure alone; it belongs to Him and He can do with it as He pleases.

Anyway, to your questions…I tend to take things 1 at a time just to keep from getting too bogged down in trying to address too many things at once.

Animal sacrifices…

Depends on what you mean by "justified." It's always justified to kill animals (except humans) and plants for food. It's always justified to kill an animal that's trying to eat you. The short story is that animal sacrifices are justified. When God commands "do not murder," He refers specifically to other human beings. Animal sacrifices are not human beings.

God appointed man as steward over creation…God made everything and gave it to us to take care of it. So wanton destruction of animal life (I'm strongly opposed to trophy hunting…if you're not going to eat the meat or share it, don't kill it) by extrapolation from scripture is wrong.

Given the PURPOSE of animal sacrifice, you can't say that it is justified--since innocent animals have to die as substitutions for our sin, which is unjustified. So it raises the question whether two wrongs make a right…to which the answer is "no."

However, God Himself was the first to make a blood sacrifice to make coverings for Adam and Eve.

Subsequent blood sacrifices are man's way of confessing his sinful nature and guilt before the Lord. God doesn't NEED our sacrifices or for us to offer them. He simply WANTS us to show humility and admit our fallibility and insignificance next to His power and allows the blood of sacrifice to cover our sins. Like I said, God doesn't need our sacrifices. WE, on the other hand, need to offer sacrifices to God in order to acknowledge our guilt and our trust in His love and mercy. It is a reminder to us that "the wages of sin is death."

Also, sacrifices don't end with the spilling of blood and the wasteful burning of meat. Think of it more as a ritualistic barbecue. After the carcass is offered on the altar, the meat is eaten either by the priests or is eaten as part of communion between priests and whoever makes the offering. The priesthood was the exclusive purview of the Levites, and since Temple/Tabernacle activities were full-time jobs while the priests were serving their time, the sacrifices were also their food. Must have been nice to be a priest back then…but on the flip side they were barred from owning real property. Talk about a multi-generational family on welfare! Anyway, there were a few specific instances (I think) in which the meat was intended to be completely consumed in fire, but MOST offerings were meant to be eaten after they'd been "offered" on the fire. Every time I grill out I think about what that was like. Of course, a modern charcoal grill hardly compares…a proper altar NOT in the tabernacle or temple had to be constructed from natural rocks, not cut stones or any other material. It would be cool to have one of those in my backyard, but it's unnecessary.

…

I think you're talking about Elisha, not Elijah. I'll check it out later.

Don't forget that it was God, not the prophet, who sent the bears. The prophet can't manipulate God, but the prophet CAN demonstrate that the Lord is with him by asking of the Lord and receiving. And he knew he could do it. It wasn't about having a sense of humor or not…it was about exercising his duties and the willingness of people to answer God's call to obedience.

That said, it is generally unwise to provoke a prophet who is demonstrably sent by God. I'm not trying to sidestep your question, but I think a more important question is where were the parents, and why was it their children didn't know any better? What happened was a wake-up call to those the prophet was called to minister to. I'll stomp a mud hole in my kids if I see or hear about them treating ANYONE like that. And keep in mind, too, people back then had a whole different view about the proper way to treat kids. If their parents had thought it important, they'd have had a wider range of means of punishing their kids than I do, and some would say even I'm harsh by today's standards.

But, secondly, why assume these were SMALL children who didn't know any better? They were apparently free enough to chase down the prophet, so I'm guessing these kids ranged from adolescence to young adult age. In other words, old enough to know better.

Things were not well in Israel during the times of Elijah and Elisha. God's more extreme behaviors are observed more in the direst of situations when the direction of history isn't going to flow the way God wants it to unless He intervenes directly.

Samuel…

Well, the Israelites were NOT following the commandments. Those instructions had been around since Moses. The completion of the conquest didn't come about until the time of David's reign, and even then the Israelites had been under the influence of those they let live (against the law, btw) to the point that they'd eventually go the way of the Canaanites before them.

As to there being an international outcry…don't forget about where we are in history. Things were a lot different back then we're going to have a difficult time understanding that.

More importantly than that, though, is you're making a pretty big mistake…you're judging God (or God's decisions) under the pressure of contemporary society. What is more important…that God please the world or that the world please God? We're created for God's pleasure, not He for ours. Nor is God concerned for what others think. God wants our obedience and for us to consult Him rather than the "international community" in making out decisions.

Thanks AngelRho, we always learned the nice bits in Sunday School but when I began looking further then things began to not make sense anymore. BTW I am 95% vegetatian mostly because I like animals, but also for health and because it makes digestion easier to be a vegetarian although I do sometimes eat fish and some meat. My sister is Christian and is 99,9% vegetarian, although she occasionally eats fish. Her reason? She loves animals too much to want to eat them.

All of creation / nature needs to be respected, and has a right to life. Compassion is the highest virtue!

So basically my point is that each person can decide what is right for them and what they feel comfortable with or not. Some things are obviously wrong - harming others for instance. Murder, theft and the like. Contemporary society, for instance, tends to get it right most of the time. Slavery, discrimination against sexual orientation, interracial marriage,woman's rights - these are just a few of the things which have changed as we've moved forward and made a society which is more fair toward those who are perceived as "different." When I was a kid women almost always wore hats to church! Now, its not uncommon to encounter female preachers. Therehave been woman prime ministers and presidents the world over, yet some people still frown on a woman preacher?

You are right in saying that it's hard to imagine how different they thought in those ancient days.

We can debate again a bit later - have to get to work soon unfortunately... am not in the US - its 6.15 a m here.

EZ

In Old Testament parlance, whatever Yahweh said went. So if he told you to go massacre a pagan settlement, that's what you did. Basically, don't kill anyone unless it's okay to kill them.

I tend to believe that the bloodshed in the OT has more to do with the Hebrew's perception of God, and not necessarily the truth about him. It wasn't till Christ walked the earth that we were able to hear God's own words directly, and know his real intentions.

So much here already covered.

Try to keep it short.

1. "Do not kill" more accurately translates into "Do not shed innocent blood" (often interpreted as "murder").

2. This doesn't include killing in self-defense, execution of criminals found guilty by "due process" where death is the penalty for the crime or killing via accident where death was not a foreseeable outcome (e.g., okay if your bull gores someone the first time, but if the bull regularly gets out and tries to attack people, you could be put to death if the victim dies because you knew the bull was a threat and chose not to solve the problem before someone died).

3. Preemptive killing the enemies of God was permissible...but only when God gave permission. If they attacked first, it was killing in self-defense.

It's the last bit many get confused about. A God saying "do not kill" (sic) ordering people to kill.

When you understand that to God, all of time is visible, so He can see all things as they have/are/will happen, God can pass judgement on a people for what they WILL chose to do if not eliminated. Think of it along the lines of the movie "Minority Report" where people were arrested and put in stasis for crimes they were going to commit...except God's incapable of being in error about what a person will do in the future. If you trace bloodlines, you can see how all of Israel's modern problems can be traced back to commands to utterly extinguish the enemy which Israel FAILED to perform as instructed.

Keep in mind that this only happened for the Children of Israel. Jesus established the dispensation of Grace, so we no longer put people to death for the sins they commit...they have until the end of their lives to get right with God or face judgment. God never instructed non-Jewish cultures/nations to kill their enemies...nor would He at this point in time. This is where many Christians find moral objection with military service and participating in wars. God is silent on if one enemy deserves to die or not, and every nation makes their enemies look like the bad guy who must be destroyed. Unless your nation has been invaded and they are torturing/killing people and your actions against the enemy would be in self-defense, most all military actions have everything to do with money and resources and nothing to do with morality.

^^^
But killing children, too? That's hard for me to swallow that the God who humbled himself to become a poor man, and to die on a cross for our sake, would be capable of such a thing.

You're a product of the times you live in, though. Is it correct to judge God based on YOUR standards or YOUR understanding, or is it correct to accept that God knows what He's doing? We don't know precisely God's reasoning, but we don't doubt that God is reasonable. All we have are best guesses according to what's written elsewhere in scripture.

One argument I've heard and tend to agree with is that wholesale slaughter of Canaanite children was comparatively merciful in comparison to, say, enslaving them or adopting them after having them witness the killing of their parents. If I were one of those kids and had lived, I'd definitely grow up wanting to seek revenge. It doesn't make sense leaving the kids if they really do pose a reasonable threat. Not to mention that the Israelites would have had to support them, which even despite the land being able to support them would still have compromised the food supply critical to the early process of nation-building. Forced labor would have been an ethical conflict given Israel's history in Egypt, not to mention cruel and still wouldn't have mitigated the risk of rebellion later on in any meaningful way.

It also sends a message. Don't mess with God's people or you AND your children will suffer. You want your children to live? Either change your ways or get out of God's way. While I agree that killing children is more merciful than the available alternatives at the time, I find this explanation to be much simpler and more compelling. I don't think that people back then would have been really less horrified by what happened than we would, but the surrounding nations would have gotten the message that God Himself has shown up in Canaan. Get out of Israel's way (evacuate), repent, and learn Israel's ways. Allowing yourself, and especially allowing your children, to be slaughtered is just senseless when you have a way out.

And that's the other thing…those people had PLENTY of warning. They'd heard about what happened across the Jordan when the Israelites met opposition. What happened to Jericho was no secret. Anybody could see what was coming. There was time to leave and avert disaster. If you KNOW an enemy is approaching that you cannot defeat AND who has God on their side and you have the opportunity to escape, get on your donkey, horse, or camel, take what you can, and just go. It's not worth your or your children's lives.

"We can not have a next generation of avengers."

-Heinrich Himmler, in justifying the killing of Jewish children.

Sure. And exactly what happened to Herr Himmler?

You are correct, sir.

Elisha was the bald one who was sensitive about it. Elijah was the hairy man that came before him.

Suicide after surrendering to the Allies.

Sure. And exactly what happened to Herr Himmler?[/quote]

Suicide after surrendering to the Allies.[/quote]
Exactly. So much for the "final solution."

Let's pretend that the Holocaust is in the same scriptural context as the invasion of Israel and the period between the conquest and the exile. In order for it to be effective, it has to be ordained by God to happen. So we can infer that the success of the Nazis was not ordained by God judging by the results. Maybe if Germany's leadership had truly consulted the Lord on their decisions to go to war, they might have known that the Holocaust was not God's plan. They might have realized that the allies were willing to grant some concessions early on to avert war and reevaluate their treatment of Germany in demands for reparations (I believe THIS part of Nazi doctrine was justified if it had been sincere, but we know that it was largely a pretext for scapegoating Jews and annexing territory).

Had it BEEN in God's plan, the Germans would have succeeded. Himmler failed. What does that indicate about God's will?