Please tell me this bible verse does not mean what I think it does!

Originally posted by Akashic
First off I'd like to say that I do believe in a single creator of all things. That being said I would like to provide you with a grain of salt and a link to the death toll in the bible:
dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com...

I dont think you can take any book as complete truth nor do I think anyone on the planet follows even half the laws in their holy books

Thats a very interesting link-thanks for posting.
There is also this link which lists some of the more unhinged,socipathic and homicidal instructions from god to his ´true beleivers´ in the bible:
home.earthlink.net...

I think it's about time for a Christian to speak up.

READ THE SCRIPTURES ABOVE AND BELOW!

Instead of just randomly picking a couple of scriptures or some bs you got from an atheist website, actually read it from the Bible, look at what the ret of the story is saying.

Now to show the verse in context:

13 Moses, Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the community went to meet them outside the camp.
14 Moses was angry with the officers of the army—the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds—who returned from the battle.

15 "Have you allowed all the women to live?" he asked them.
16 "They were the ones who followed Balaam's advice and were the means of turning the Israelites away from the LORD in what happened at Peor, so that a plague struck the LORD's people.
17 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man,
18 but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.

19 "All of you who have killed anyone or touched anyone who was killed must stay outside the camp seven days. On the third and seventh days you must purify yourselves and your captives.
20 Purify every garment as well as everything made of leather, goat hair or wood."

It's not talking about raping little girls as you thought (because you no doubt got it from some atheist site), the indicators that they should have sex with, or rape someone in the Bible is "...and they knew each other", "... and they took them wives", they were actually used as "slaves" (it's more like servants) because God was very uptight about people having sex or giving into marriage outside of the house of Israel for a very good reason, so he would never allow the people to have sex with these girls. I'll let someone else explain that though.

-Lahara

reply to post by The Stand


Very interesting point here. However, a more accurate translation of the verse is:
17"(N)Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately.

18"But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves.
NASB version
essentially, every male enemy was to be killed in order to reduce their enemy. They also killed any woman who had sex to keep their enemy from reproducing. Any woman or girl who had not had sex was spared because they would not reproduce the enemy of God's people. This was a normal strategy of war.

Good thought though, I raise my hat to you.

reply to post by TheRandom1


Random,are you seriously suggesting all the homicidal remarks to be found in Deuteronomy and Leviticus instructing true beleivers to murder adulterers,unruly teenagers,slaves,homosexuals,sabbath workers and non beleivers are just harmless quotes that have been taken out of context or misconstrued in some way?

I think Abraham would have a cow if he knew what he spawned mainly Jews, Christians and Muslims. It's the fundamentalists that don't care about anything but their way and will murder to get it. Sadly the evidence is all over the place All of the children of Abraham are guilty.

Originally posted by karl 12
reply to post by TheRandom1

 

Random,are you seriously suggesting all the homicidal remarks to be found in Deuteronomy and Leviticus instructing true beleivers to murder adulterers,unruly teenagers,slaves,homosexuals,sabbath workers and non beleivers are just harmless quotes that have been taken out of context or misconstrued in some way?

This is why I refuse to get involved in these threads ..it is pretty obvious that they (those who bring this stuff up) dont care about any explanation ..they just want to bait and accuse and blaspheme God at the Christians expense .And of course their only purpose of these threads is to accuse God of demanding murder and genocide .
Look if you want an explanation of what exactly happened in the OT with God and his actions ..then please feel free to ask GOD himself ...as only he really knows why he said and did what he did in the OT ..

While reading through the bible, there's a lot of verses you will connect with emotionally- from feeling uplifted to feeling sick. A lot of people will argue that the bible has been re-written so many times that it is no longer reliable. You will also notice a huge discrepancy between the Old Testament and the New Testament. It seems that the God of the Old Testament is cruel, dominating, jealous, and demanding, while the God of the New Testament is loving, kinder, and more forgiving. The thing to keep in mind is that the bible is a reflection of the times it was written in- back then people faced a far more rough enviroment than we do and were much more primitive and uncivilived. For example, while by today's standards an "eye for eye"- that is, killing someone in cold blood because they have killed- is barbaric (think the electric chair) back then it was acceptable. Another example is greek mythology. People found meaning in their suffering by attributing everyday cruelty to the work of gods and goddesses. It's very hard to accept the entire bible as is, so just find the verses that are touching and uplifting and stick to those : )

I'm always tickled by posts like these.

I don't know what kind of bible you read that.

I find it interesting that the one thing thing thatMIGHT actually be true, is the one thing that's always under attack for one reason or another.

reply to post by The Stand


A quick search brought me to this which explains this incident in detail.

www.christian-thinktank.com...

Please understand that you can not take one verse out of context and hope to understand what what the Bible is saying. You have to look at the whole chapter and maybe even the chapters before and after to get the full meaning if one verse you find seems wrong or confusing.

This verse sounds bad, but once you look at the larger picture it makes sense.

Read all of Numbers 25 through to 31 and it gives an outline of why God had them go to war (yes it was a war ) with the Medianites .

It starts right here ....
Num 25:1 And Israel abode in #tim, and the people began to commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab.

Num 25:2 And they called the people unto the sacrifices of their gods: and the people did eat, and bowed down to their gods.

Num 25:3 And Israel joined himself unto Baalpeor: and the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel.
Num 25:4 And the LORD said unto Moses, Take all the heads of the people, and hang them up before the LORD against the sun, that the fierce anger of the LORD may be turned away from Israel.

Num 25:5 And Moses said unto the judges of Israel, Slay ye every one his men that were joined unto Baalpeor.

Num 25:6 And, behold, one of the children of Israel came and brought unto his brethren a Midianitish woman in the sight of Moses, and in the sight of all the congregation of the children of Israel, who [were] weeping [before] the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.
(Keep reading www.blueletterbible.org...]

Num 31:2 Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites: afterward shalt thou be gathered unto thy people.

Numbers 31: 16Behold, these caused the sons of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, so the plague was among the congregation of the LORD.



Evidently the Medianites were corrupting the Israelites with their idolatry worship and whoredoms ........
So it was an act of war
Yes the bible says Vengence is mine (GODS)sayeth the Lord .
He will REPAY (he promises that ) Whatsoever you sow that shall you reap .....what goes around comes around ....

I am pretty sure there is way more to it than meets the eye .

As I have said before ..the NT says that there is a seed of the enemy who sowed seed in the (Earth) ....(I still believe there was some form of human outside of the garden who Cain went and found a wife from in the land of NOD ) >.. so this seed are the seed of the WICKED ONE (satan) ......they are not a holy and just godly people ...there only purpose is to frustrait Gods purposes ...by causing his people to worship other gods and get sucked up into lust and idolatry ..and every ungodly deed imaginable ..so that they will turn away from God and serve other gods and be lost and end up in hell with them ...(misery loves company )

Mat 13:25 But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.

Mat 13:26 But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit,
Mat 13:27 So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares?

Mat 13:28 He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?

Mat 13:29 But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them.

Mat 13:30 Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.

reply to post by The Stand


The Bible is filled with stuff like this, people in the old testament often slaughtered whole cities in the name of God (and sometimes by the supposed direct order of God)...

Fact is Old Testament eye for an eye God is one mean hombre...

Modern Christianity is a fusion of Christ's teachings and rules/philosophies retained from the old testament (along with whatever the early Catholics added/ took away, mainly they added a lot of pagan traditions, altars, crosses, holidays, saintss/gods, etc)

For some reason Christians can deal with the Cognitive Dissonance without too much of a problem but I had to leave my Christian faith behind when I realized that Christians weren't following Christ they were following a chimera of Biblical interpretations, early Christian traditions (tainted by the Romans/Early Catholics) of both new and old testament teaching...

There is some spiritual wisdom to be found in the pages of the Bible.

IMO if there is a God (and I believe there is a higher power we could call God) he wouldn't be very fond of religion as it exists today, almost all religions have been tainted and used to create guilt, fear, tyranny and death...

Originally posted by Simplynoone

Originally posted by karl 12
reply to post by TheRandom1

 

Random,are you seriously suggesting all the homicidal remarks to be found in Deuteronomy and Leviticus instructing true beleivers to murder adulterers,unruly teenagers,slaves,homosexuals,sabbath workers and non beleivers are just harmless quotes that have been taken out of context or misconstrued in some way?

This is why I refuse to get involved in these threads ..it is pretty obvious that they (those who bring this stuff up) dont care about any explanation ..they just want to bait and accuse and blaspheme God at the Christians expense .And of course their only purpose of these threads is to accuse God of demanding murder and genocide .
Look if you want an explanation of what exactly happened in the OT with God and his actions ..then please feel free to ask GOD himself ...as only he really knows why he said and did what he did in the OT ..

Why does asking a simple question suddenly beget kneejerk accusations of goading,badgering or blasphemy?
What happened to free,impartial,objective enquiry.
Im not going to accuse you of courting victimhood but it is interesting you in no way addressed my point.

reply to post by TheRandom1


Hahahaha, you talk about context, but then you convieniently stop at 20...

Carry on reading more context at 21, where it clearly says the lord ordered moses to do this. That's some context for YOU!

reply to post by The Stand

For example, what does this verse mean? Numbers 31:17-18 “now kill all the boys and all the women who have had sexual intercourse. Only the little girls may live; you may keep them for yourselves.”

The actual translation of this verse is,

But all the women children, that have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

This version is found in the oldest Christian bibles and in the Torah.Newer versions take out the word 'children.' The reason the men and boys were killed because there was too many of them,as stated in verse 14.Virgins,on the other hand,had value,women who had had sex had no value so they too were killed.


People like to think that such verses as 'keep the women alive for yourselves' and 'knowing them' implies that these women became only slaves or wives.But those who know they way of the world are not as nieve as that.Anyone with an ounce of common sense would know that many,if not all,of these women captives would have been raped by whoever they were gifted too.They were nothing more than the spoils of war,to do with as their new masters saw fit.



[edit on 10-11-2008 by jakyll]

Originally posted by TheRandom1

It's not talking about raping little girls as you thought (because you no doubt got it from some atheist site), the indicators that they should have sex with, or rape someone in the Bible is "...and they knew each other", "... and they took them wives", they were actually used as "slaves" (it's more like servants) because God was very uptight about people having sex or giving into marriage outside of the house of Israel for a very good reason, so he would never allow the people to have sex with these girls. I'll let someone else explain that though.

Well God forgot to tell Abraham that.

www.biblegateway.com...

1Now Sarai Abram's wife bare him no children: and she had an handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar.

2And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now, the LORD hath restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai.

3And Sarai Abram's wife took Hagar her maid the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife.

4And he went in unto Hagar, and she conceived: and when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes.

Apparently, if God had a rule about having sex with foreigners, it was a rule that was a flexible one.

reply to post by karl 12



Karl yall are asking Christians to defend GODS actions ..it cannot be done .
We are barely able to make out the simple stuff in the bible ...(Jesus and love etc) ...I believe these are questions for GOD ..not his people ....

And when we even try to give our opinion of it .(which it requires MUCH DIGGING and reading all the way through several books to even get an idea of what was happening at the time and the events that led up to those events etc etc) ........all we hear is well so God was a murderer and commited acts of genocide etc for no reason whatsover and see what sort of God we are worshipping ..that is not fair ..considering we cannot possibly know all of the reasons why stuff happens ..even the word of God does not have everything that happened and the whys and why nots in it .Otherwise like the bible says The World could not contain the amount of books it would take for him to tell it all to us ......
Only God knows why he did what he did ..or did not do what he should have done or whatever .....

God does not need us to defend him anyway ...he is quite capable of defending himself ...so please just ask him ............

And if you have any other suggestions as to how God should have handled things and how he should handle things now ...maybe you ought to have a talk with him yourself .....maybe you know a better way than him eh ?
He is the creator ...I am pretty sure he knows what he is doing and has very good reasons why he does it the way he does it ..


[edit on 10-11-2008 by Simplynoone]

reply to post by The Stand


I can see where you can get confused, if you don't look at the context of this verse. God's "own" people, the Isrealites, had wandered in the desert waiting for God to let them "take possession" of the the promised land in Canaan (present day Isreal. Because his people were pure spiritually, he did not want his people getting contaminated by living in proximity with the destested Canannites who were moraly bankrupt, having sex with relatives or whoever and worshipping Baal, etc. etc. So he had the Isrealites kill all and move in. It didn't work. In the end the Isrealites got as bad as the Canaanites, thus they were themselves punished for turning their back on God by being defeated and exiled 1. by the Assyrians 2. By the Babylonians 3. by the Romans. It wasn't until 1948 in fulfillment of prophecy that the Jews returned to Palestine (Isreal). This is one of the prophecies that had to be fulfilled before Jesus comes back at his "Second Coming".

Originally posted by Simplynoone
reply to post by karl 12

 

Karl yall are asking Christians to defend GODS actions ..it cannot be done .
We are barely able to make out the simple stuff in the bible ...(Jesus and love etc) ...I believe these are questions for GOD ..not his people ....

And when we even try to give our opinion of it .(which it requires MUCH DIGGING and reading all the way through several books to even get an idea of what was happening at the time and the events that led up to those events etc etc) ........all we hear is well so God was a murderer and commited acts of genocide etc for no reason whatsover and see what sort of God we are worshipping ..that is not fair ..considering we cannot possibly know all of the reasons why stuff happens ..even the word of God does not have everything that happened and the whys and why nots in it .Otherwise like the bible says The World could not contain the amount of books it would take for him to tell it all to us ......
Only God knows why he did what he did ..or did not do what he should have done or whatever .....

God does not need us to defend him anyway ...he is quite capable of defending himself ...so please just ask him ............

And if you have any other suggestions as to how God should have handled things and how he should handle things now ...maybe you ought to have a talk with him yourself .....maybe you know a better way than him eh ?
He is the creator ...I am pretty sure he knows what he is doing and has very good reasons why he does it the way he does it ..


[edit on 10-11-2008 by Simplynoone]

Well thanks for the reply,in my experience many agnostics (and even atheists) are as well versed and knowledgable about the bible as many beleivers are.
At least you do not try to defend the homicidal aspect of the god of the bible with claims of misinterpretation or Him being taken ´out of contex´.
To be honest ,for me, stories of a malevolent,vindictive god that kills people (33 million in biblical times alone) and issues unhinged statements like advocating murder of non beleivers and the owning of slaves etc.... just lends credence to the idea that the bible is man made.
Obviously the abrahamic god has not deemed fit to join ATS to defend Himself so I think its only fair that it falls to His acolytes to attempt to explain (and justify) his seemingly malicious,homocidal tendencies.

[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

reply to post by The Stand


jesus had 2 a biological and a spiritual dad biological being king david and spiritual being too holy of a name to say, and no it doesn't mean what you think it might mean.

[At least you do not try to defend the homicidal aspect of the god of the bible with claims of misinterpretation or Him being taken ´out of contex´.
To be honest ,for me, stories of a malevolent,vindictive god that kills people (33 million in biblical times alone) and issues unhinged statements like advocating murder of non beleivers and the owning of slaves etc.... just lends credence to the idea that the bible is man made.
Obviously the abrahamic god has not deemed fit to join ATS to defend Himself so I think its only fair that it falls to His acolytes to attempt to explain (and justify) his seemingly malicious,homocidal tendencies.]


Well your entitled to your opinion and as I said take it up with God.
I believe God has his reasons for everything he does and the mind of man cannot even comprehend how God thinks or why he does what he does .

We cant even comprehend why MAN does what he does can we ?
So how could we possibly comprehend what GOD does and why he does things the way he does ..
We sure cannot comprehend it with a natural mind ...we are physical carnal beings and we have not even figured out even a tiny bit of how physical carnal beings think and why they do the things they do etc .... ...so we sure cannot figure out how the spiritual being of GOD thinks or doesnt think ...