God's Law; Your daughters

reply to post by bitsforbytes

The dust on the floor was probably mostly ashes from the burnt offerings. Burnt animal fats with frankincense and the such to atone sins or to give praise to the Lord. A sweet savor for the Lord.

I don't know why but I love that phrase. Sweet savor. Sounds yummy.

19 Then the priest shall put the woman under oath and say to her, “If no other man has had sexual relations with you and you have not gone astray and become impure while married to your husband, may this bitter water that brings a curse not harm you. 20 But if you have gone astray while married to your husband and you have made yourself impure by having sexual relations with a man other than your husband”— 21 here the priest is to put the woman under this curse—“may the Lord cause you to become a curse[d] 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.”

YUMMY!

29 “‘This, then, is the law of jealousy when a woman goes astray and makes herself impure while married to her husband, 30 or when feelings of jealousy come over a man because he suspects his wife. The priest is to have her stand before the Lord and is to apply this entire law to her. 31 The husband will be innocent of any wrongdoing, but the woman will bear the consequences of her sin.’”

And if the aborted child was her husband's after all...........? Oh right, God never makes mistakes.

I see what you see. God is a teacher who is trying to teach us, slowly. He is teaching us what is righteous in His creation. Alas, we have the power of choice, which is our greatest gift and our greatest weakness.

reply to post by bitsforbytes


I don't see how giving in to the "spirit of jealousy" by forcing your pregnant wife to endure a possible abortion and exile for life is any kind of a good lesson from God.

reply to post by windword


Well, if a man was to be jealous of his wife and he was plain wrong which resulted in his wife being punished unjustly that is Gods fault? Or the jealous husbands fault?

Who is taking actions here God or the fee willed men and woman?

reply to post by bitsforbytes


I don't know, it's Magic water!!!!!

I don't think free will had anything to do with it!

Certainly, the wife didn't have a choice in refusing.

All this does is prove to me that those passages were not God-inspired at all, for where is the justice, mercy and equality in them? Adam and Eve were equal, Adam eats the apple, blames it on Eve, then women were suddenly garbage, controlled, degraded, even stoned to death, as opposed to being shunned or punished in another way? Why does God not begin teaching right there to correct that?

Displaying a young girl's underwear for all to see? How totally controlling, degrading and humiliating no matter at what historic period it happened --and absolutely low-brow human animal in origin. And what punishment for boys who lost their virginity? No test for them. God exempts them? At this point, God would have given some wise counsel about that if He thought it important, but there seems to be nothing to redress the situation of men having sexual freedom with impunity unless caught.

Those sound like the writings of someone with an animal nature but certainly not from someone who's above that; they are the rulings of suspicious, insecure, possessive and controlling men who did not know how to deal with the beauty of women, but not rules emanating from a kind, loving and just God, regardless of an agricultural society or not. My late husband could have done better than that and he was sexist. Sorry but I would never teach that to my children and pretend that it was God-inspired. To me it just is not.

reply to post by windword


You always have a choice. If those around you aren't fearful and are righteous you will get help. Proof, I have helped people who were asking for it.

My kind have always existed.

reply to post by windword


She had a choice before pulling her pants down. No?

reply to post by aboutface


Well that is the just of it. I have faith it is and you have faith it don't.

It's a pretty sick religion.

reply to post by bitsforbytes

She had a choice before pulling her pants down. No?

What are you talking about?

Hey, are you gonna write a thread called "God's Law; Your Husband" or "God's Law; Your Sons"?

It'd be great... Let's talk about an archaic system that humiliates, banishes and dishonors everyone.

Or do Christians harbour misogynist fantasies about the "good old days"

Maybe I'm just tired of hearing women this, women that.

Seriously.. can you imagine being a young girl in those days? And really young, like sixteen, and even if you are a virgin but don't bleed (and it happens) you get stoned to death.

What God thinks that's ok? What community member thinks it's ok? What parent?

Can you imagine how scary it would feel to be female? How is it right?

Why do young girls today,who might happen to be researching conspiracies, have to run across this misogynist crud yet again. Sure, nobody has to read it but even the title is an endless reminder of the inequality.

reply to post by bitsforbytes


You do know human beings wrote those books right? Not God. You talk about free willed men and women. Where is the free will in letting someone you have never known dictate your behaviors? That is not free will, that is being completely controlled by another person.

reply to post by windword


The breaking of the hymen has been seen as proof of virginity by hundreds of cultures over thousands of years. I'm sure they had a way to deal with this eventuality.

Nothing to do with murder, stoning, even slavery or control of another person depicts God, just some very bad intentioned evil people who wrote that, and I'm not even going into texts of that nature to see what the metaphors might be. Evil wrote that.

Yeah all the nice stuff in the bible..........god wrote it.

All the bad stuff......written by men....

.....or all of it was written by a gang of ignorant desert dwelling murdering pillaging Jews?

windword
I don't believe in magic "smart" water.

I don't claim to believe in it either. I've already told you that.
But as I've also already told you; the fact that the people of the time did have that belief gave a woman a realistic chance of rebutting the charge of unfaithfulness.
Giving a woman some way of rebutting the charge was a great deal better than allowing her to be condemned automatically because the man was infected by jealousy.
It gave her an escape route, which was better than not having an escape route.

I also don't believe in a "God" that would support the stoning of young women

And the whole point of some of these laws is to find ways of STOPPING them from getting stoned.
Can't you see that any law which stops them getting stoned is an improvement on having no law at all which stops them getting stoned?
That is not "support" at all, but trying to put forward ways of getting them away from the practice. But a society can't be changed suddenly, so it has to be changed gradually.
You need to look at these gradual developments like a young bachelor looking at his monthly house-cleaning. Not "This is bad, because it doesn't match up to a perfect standard", but "This is good, because it is a vast improvement on what it looked like previously".

Pauligirl
Chance? Seems like God could have come up with a better idea than that.

It's not just a question of what God could "come up with", but also of what ideas the people of the time could be willing and able to take on board.
And even an escape route dependant upon tossing a coin gives a woman better chances than having no escape route at all.
These laws don't have to be perfect to be an improvement on what would have been there otherwise.

poet1b
Doesn't mention any punishments a man should face if he has sex with his wife handmaiden.

Yes, I remarked on that point in the OP.
Obviously this was a patriarchal society, like the other societies of the region of the time, and these laws don't try to change that overnight.
I suggested in the second post that God takes people as he finds them and then sets about improving them, and that's what's happening here.
I pointed out various ways in which women were being offered improved protection.

reply to post by DISRAELI

I don't claim to believe in it either. I've already told you that.
But as I've also already told you; the fact that the people of the time did have that belief gave a woman a realistic chance of rebutting the charge of unfaithfulness.
Giving a woman some way of rebutting the charge was a great deal better than allowing her to be condemned automatically because the man was infected by jealousy.
It gave her an escape route, which was better than not having an escape route.

So, you think that the purity ritual was just a ruse to placate a jealous husband, and it really only worked if the culpable woman was so unnerved that she had a mental breakdown and aborted out of guilt?

And the whole point of some of these laws is to find ways of STOPPING them from getting stoned.
Can't you see that any law which stops them getting stoned is an improvement on having no law at all which stops them getting stoned?
That is not "support" at all, but trying to put forward ways of getting them away from the practice. But a society can't be changed suddenly, so it has to be changed gradually.
You need to look at these gradual developments like a young bachelor looking at his monthly house-cleaning. Not "This is bad, because it doesn't match up to a perfect standard", but "This is good, because it is a vast improvement on what it looked like previously".

Wait a minute! The Israelites came out of Egypt. They weren't stoning people in ancient Egypt!

Capital punishment in Egypt can be traced back to the ancient Egyptian civilization, where the death penalty was carried out against those who broke the Ma'at, a law which forbade crimes such as murder, theft, sacrilege, attempts on the life of the Pharaoh, and spying. Methods of execution included beheading, sacrifice, and drowning in the Nile in a closed sack.
en.wikipedia.org...

Also, Egypt was extremely progressing in their treatment of women!

Unlike the position of women in most other ancient civilizations, including that of Greece, the Egyptian woman seems to have enjoyed the same legal and economic rights as the Egyptian man-- at least in theory. This notion is reflected in Egyptian art and historical inscriptions.

It is uncertain why these rights existed for the woman in Egypt but no where else in the ancient world. It may well be that such rights were ultimately related to the theoretical role of the king in Egyptian society.
www.virtual-egypt.com...

It seems to me that the Israelite culture went backwards for the worse, not forward for the better.