Originally posted by The Stand
Other verses I do not even want to think about because they make me sick as to think god is telling these people to do what I think he is. 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.”
They were doing this because there was apparently a deadly plague among the people they conquered, and unfortunately, the only way they knew how to stop it was to kill anybody there who might have been infected. They kept the girls, because they were the least likely to be infected, and were generally treated as chattel in those times, and as part of the "spoils" of wars.
It seems cruel these days, but the girls were then incorporated into the victorious tribe as members of its own, and might have went on to live as happy a life as anybody did in those days. War used to be a common way for tribes to introduce fresh genetic material into their tribes, and avoid the negative consequences of interbreeding.
You have to read these things in the context of the times, not from your "enlightened" modern perspective. Just imagine what people 3,000 years from now will say about you and your barbaric behavior.
