TILL
Jerry conveniently ignores the fact that the Amalekite attack on the
Israelites (if it happened) occurred when 3 million people with an army of
600,000 were intruding on their national territory. What nation would not
take military action if 600,000 soldiers entered its border? Jerry also
ignores the fact that the Amalekite attack that he is alluding to happened
during the wilderness wanderings of the Israelites, which would have been
about 450 years before Yahweh allegedly ordered Saul to go and utterly
destroy the Amalekites to the point of killing even children and infants in
the civilian population (1 Sam. 15:3). The only reason that Jerry can find
for Yahweh's order to massacre the Amalekites was that Yahweh "remembered
that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when
he came up out of Egypt" (1 Sam. 15:2). If the U. S. army should be ordered
to exterminate a native American population for something that their
ancestors had done 450 years earlier, even Jerry would be outraged, yet this
barbaric story is in the Bible, so Jerry has to defend it.
McDONALD
> Are you shocked at what the Midianites and the Amalekites did to Israel:
"And >so it was, when Israel had sown that the Midianites and the
Amalekites, and
>the children of the east, even they came up against them; and they encamped
>against them, and destroyed the increase of the earth, till thou comest
>unto Gaza, and left no sustenance for Israel, neither sheep, nor ox, nor
>ass. For they came up with their cattle and their tents, and they came as
>grasshoppers for multitude; for both they and their camels were without
>number: and they entered into the land to destroy it. And Israel was
>greatly impoverished because of the Midianites; and the children of Israel
>cried unto the Lord" (Judges 6:3-6)? Does that shock you, Izz? Or is it
>that you are only shocked at the retaliation that God had his children take
>against these nations?
TILL
Jerry again conveniently ignores an important fact. The incident in Judges
6:3-6 happened after the atrocity recorded in Numbers 31, when Moses was
angry with his officers for bringing back Midianite civilian captives, and
told the officers to "kill every male among the little ones and kill every
woman that has known man by lying with him, but all the women-children that
have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves" (Num.
31:17-18). So what happened years later in Judges 6:3-6 could hardly be
used to justify the Midianite massacre and rape in Numbers 31.
Farrell Till
Skepticism, Inc.
jftill@midwest.net