Here is a quote from a leading New Age Atheist.
Due to confusion from other threads on this very issue. I will in detail speak on this issue.
Most Christians believe the Bible to be the Word of God. To be true. And God to have certain characteristics like all loving but also all just. This is the typical belief. And for the time being I will assume we do not need to go into Biblical evidence or on how we can know the Bible to be true. I will start with that conclusion that the Bible is 100% true.
So with this in mind it is intellectually honest for people to question scriptures that deal with the killing of woman, children, God causing miscarriages, or a raped woman is forced to marry the rapist, or even slavery is brought up by critics. Now remember we say the Bible is true and the Word of God.
I will list 1 example of each.
1 Samuel 15:2-3, 8 New International Version (NIV)
2 This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt.
3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”
8 He took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his people he totally destroyed with the sword.
Numbers 5:21-22 New International Version (NIV)
21 here the priest is to put the woman under this curse—“may the Lord cause you to become a curse among your people when he makes your womb miscarry and your abdomen swell. 22 May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells or your womb miscarries.”
“‘Then the woman is to say, “Amen. So be it.”
Deuteronomy 22:28-29 New International Version (NIV)
28 If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, 29 he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.
Exodus 21:20-21 New International Version (NIV)
20 “Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, 21 but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.
Those verses will fill your church pews wont they?
I'll start with 1 Samuel 15.
Let us remember God is Holy. A Holy being is perfect. God cannot sin but is all good and loving. But being Holy he must be just because sin cannot dwell with God. Adam cursed all of mankind.
Romans 5:12 New International Version (NIV)
12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—
Was the Amalekites innocent? In God's eyes no one is innocent in less you in the OT followed the ceremonial sacrifices or in the NT put faith in Christ who became the ultimate sacrifice.
This was a point in history, a season in history, where God is the immediate king of a people, Israel, different than the way he is the king over the church, which is from all the peoples of Israel and does not have a political, ethnic dimension to it.
With Joshua there was a political, ethnic dimension, God was immediate king, and he uses this people as his instrument to accomplish his judgment in the world at that time.
The Amalekites was heavily pagan and seeping so deep in demonic evil for a very long time and God patiently waited as he does with any nations judgement in the OT. Their time had ran out and when God decides to judge a nation he is Just for doing so.
When God takes life he isn't a murderer but is well within his resume as the creator of life. Dealing with the Amalekites, Saul failed to kill all as God commanded and the Amalekites just a couple of decades later, there were enough to take David and his men’s families captive (1 Samuel 30:1-2). After David and his men attacked the Amalekites and rescued their families, 400 Amalekites escaped.
If Saul had fulfilled what God had commanded him, this never would have occurred. Several hundred years later, a descendant of Agag, Haman, tried to have the entire Jewish people exterminated (see the book of Esther).
So, Saul’s incomplete obedience almost resulted in Israel’s destruction. God knew this would occur, so He ordered the extermination of the Amalekites ahead of time.
I will add in time 3 more explanations of the next 3 scriptures critics like to pick out. I'll post this first one. Feel free to add more details for the new in faith.
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
Richard Dawkins, The God DelusionDue to confusion from other threads on this very issue. I will in detail speak on this issue.
Most Christians believe the Bible to be the Word of God. To be true. And God to have certain characteristics like all loving but also all just. This is the typical belief. And for the time being I will assume we do not need to go into Biblical evidence or on how we can know the Bible to be true. I will start with that conclusion that the Bible is 100% true.
So with this in mind it is intellectually honest for people to question scriptures that deal with the killing of woman, children, God causing miscarriages, or a raped woman is forced to marry the rapist, or even slavery is brought up by critics. Now remember we say the Bible is true and the Word of God.
I will list 1 example of each.
1 Samuel 15:2-3, 8 New International Version (NIV)
2 This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt.
3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”
8 He took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his people he totally destroyed with the sword.
Numbers 5:21-22 New International Version (NIV)
21 here the priest is to put the woman under this curse—“may the Lord cause you to become a curse among your people when he makes your womb miscarry and your abdomen swell. 22 May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells or your womb miscarries.”
“‘Then the woman is to say, “Amen. So be it.”
Deuteronomy 22:28-29 New International Version (NIV)
28 If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, 29 he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.
Exodus 21:20-21 New International Version (NIV)
20 “Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, 21 but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.
Those verses will fill your church pews wont they?
I'll start with 1 Samuel 15.
Let us remember God is Holy. A Holy being is perfect. God cannot sin but is all good and loving. But being Holy he must be just because sin cannot dwell with God. Adam cursed all of mankind.
Romans 5:12 New International Version (NIV)
12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—
Was the Amalekites innocent? In God's eyes no one is innocent in less you in the OT followed the ceremonial sacrifices or in the NT put faith in Christ who became the ultimate sacrifice.
This was a point in history, a season in history, where God is the immediate king of a people, Israel, different than the way he is the king over the church, which is from all the peoples of Israel and does not have a political, ethnic dimension to it.
With Joshua there was a political, ethnic dimension, God was immediate king, and he uses this people as his instrument to accomplish his judgment in the world at that time.
The Amalekites was heavily pagan and seeping so deep in demonic evil for a very long time and God patiently waited as he does with any nations judgement in the OT. Their time had ran out and when God decides to judge a nation he is Just for doing so.
When God takes life he isn't a murderer but is well within his resume as the creator of life. Dealing with the Amalekites, Saul failed to kill all as God commanded and the Amalekites just a couple of decades later, there were enough to take David and his men’s families captive (1 Samuel 30:1-2). After David and his men attacked the Amalekites and rescued their families, 400 Amalekites escaped.
If Saul had fulfilled what God had commanded him, this never would have occurred. Several hundred years later, a descendant of Agag, Haman, tried to have the entire Jewish people exterminated (see the book of Esther).
So, Saul’s incomplete obedience almost resulted in Israel’s destruction. God knew this would occur, so He ordered the extermination of the Amalekites ahead of time.
I will add in time 3 more explanations of the next 3 scriptures critics like to pick out. I'll post this first one. Feel free to add more details for the new in faith.
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