Steve I sure need help with my homework on this. Please reply in next 24 hours how it is out of context.
Deut. xx. 10-16
10 When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it. [Good scheme!]
11 And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found
therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee.
12 And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it:
13 And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thy hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of
the sword:
14 But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou
take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thy enemies, which the LORD thy God hath given thee.
15 Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations.
16 But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive
nothing that breatheth.
The injunction to proclaim peace unto a city about to be attacked and plundered strikes me as a particularly brilliant idea. When
you go to rob and murder a man, just tell him to keep cool and behave like a gentleman and you won't do a thing to him but
steal all his property and cut his throat and retire in good order. God always seemed to fight on the side of the man who would
murder most of his fellow-men and degrade the greatest number of women. He seemed, in fact, to rather insist on this point if
he was particular about nothing else. And, by the way, if you had happened to live in one of those cities, what opinion do you
think you would have had of Jehovah? Would he have impressed you as a loving Father? |
