This is a slightly edited version of an excursus I wrote in this week’s notes for the Bible Survey Class I’ve been teaching at my church. Follow that link for more information on the class. Also, I’m well-aware that the second half of this is exactly the “angle” talked about in the venerable Pete Enns’ recent blog post. I wrote this before he posted that, but still, I wanted to put it up on the off-chance this articulation might be helpful to others.
In the books of Numbers and Joshua, God commands the Israelites to commit genocide on many different people, including their women and children. He also commands them to forcibly enslave others. And in still another story, he commands Moses to take the remaining virgins of this particular people of which they disobediently did not kill all, and divide them evenly among the soldiers and the “rest of the Israelites”. We can only imagine what for.
A few quick thoughts:
the long way home | the blog of Paul Burkhart 