God and Genocide: An atheist answers Matthew Flannagan's trifles about Numbers 31

Atheist bible critics like myself constantly confront Christian "apologists" with disturbing stories in the bible in which God or his followers committed some type of moral atrocity that we are pretty sure the apologist would never try to morally justify, such as child massacre.  We do this in the effort to use the apologists common sense as a tool to get him or her to give up the bible or take a liberal position on it.

In Numbers 25, the Israelites fall into sexual sin with the Midianite, in a place called Peor.

6 chapters later, God tells Moses to take "full" vengeance on the Midianites because they had tempted Israel into sexual sin.  The following quote is long, but the part about killing children for the sake of convenience is found in v. 15-18:

 1 Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying,
 2 "Take full vengeance for the sons of Israel on the Midianites; afterward you will be gathered to your people."
 3 Moses spoke to the people, saying, "Arm men from among you for the war, that they may go against Midian to execute the LORD'S vengeance on Midian.
 4 "A thousand from each tribe of all the tribes of Israel you shall send to the war."
 5 So there were furnished from the thousands of Israel, a thousand from each tribe, twelve thousand armed for war.
 6 Moses sent them, a thousand from each tribe, to the war, and Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest, to the war with them, and the holy vessels and the trumpets for the alarm in his hand.
 7 So they made war against Midian, just as the LORD had commanded Moses, and they killed every male.
 8 They killed the kings of Midian along with the rest of their slain: Evi and Rekem and Zur and Hur and Reba, the five kings of Midian; they also killed Balaam the son of Beor with the sword.
 9 The sons of Israel captured the women of Midian and their little ones; and all their cattle and all their flocks and all their goods they plundered.
 10 Then they burned all their cities where they lived and all their camps with fire.
 11 They took all the spoil and all the prey, both of man and of beast.
 12 They brought the captives and the prey and the spoil to Moses, and to Eleazar the priest and to the congregation of the sons of Israel, to the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by the Jordan opposite Jericho.
 13 Moses and Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the congregation went out to meet them outside the camp.
 14 Moses was angry with the officers of the army, the captains of thousands and the captains of hundreds, who had come from service in the war.
 15 And Moses said to them, "Have you spared all the women?
 16 "Behold, 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. 17 "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.
 19 "And you, camp outside the camp seven days; whoever has killed any person and whoever has touched any slain, purify yourselves, you and your captives, on the third day and on the seventh (Num. 31:1-19 NAU)

Most Christians are justifiably scared of this biblical bullshit, and quickly change the subject by talking about how the new covenant in Christ is one of Grace and we are not commanded to kill each other any more, etc.  Many Christians personally hate the OT.  We grant the concession of defeat.

But some Christians are die-hard apologists and would rather be slowly burned alive, than admit their bible-god was an unconscionably barbaric petulant asshole.  They will split hairs all day long like a jailhouse lawyer, just to get away from the obvious meaning of a biblical text.  Jesus is not found in scripture, he is found in playing word-games, and telling yourself that splitting hairs about what should be inferred or not inferred from what God didn't say, is what the seriously Holy Spirit filled Christians spend most of their daily lives doing.

Two such apologists would be Matthew Flannagan and Paul Copan, evangelical Christian philosophers and co-authors of Did God Really Command Genocide?: Coming to Terms with the Justice of God (2014, Baker Books).

In that book, Flannagan wastes the readers time with some trifling sophistry in the effort to arrive at the conclusion that the actions of Moses in Numbers 31 were more more barbaric than God had intended.  I reply to these absurd trifles in point-by-point fashion:

Number 31:15: “Have You Allowed All the Women to Live?”

The third example Morriston cites to make his point is the defeat of Midian as recorded in Numbers 31. The Israelites fought against Midian, as the Lord commanded Moses, and killed every man (v. 7). After the battle, however, Moses commanded Israel to kill all the boys and every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man. Morriston says Yahweh was angered by the fact that some young Israelite men had worshiped Baal alongside their new Midianite brides, writing, “Not only must the Israelites be punished, but the Midianites must be punished for causing the Israelites to be punished.” God’s stated reasons, according to Morriston’s thinking, are inadequate.

But Morriston appears to have misread the text. First, consider his claim that the text explicitly states that God’s reason for commanding the killing of the Midianite women and boys was “spiritual infection” because “some young Israelite men had worshiped Baal alongside their new Midianite brides.” There are several problems with this.

First is the fact that, in the text Morriston cites (Num. 31:17-18), God himself does not explicitly command Israel to kill all the Midianite women and boys. God’s command to Moses regarding the Midianites is actually recorded in Numbers 25:17-18 and 31:1-2. God explicitly commands Israel to respond to the Midianites’ spiritual subterfuge by fighting against the Midianites and defeating them. The reasons why Israel is to obey isn’t the spiritual infection of women as Morriston says, but rather the fact that Midian has been hostile toward and deceived Israel.

The Numbers 31 text does not explicitly attribute the command to kill the women and boys to God, but to Moses.

 Then maybe you missed the word "full" in Numbers 31:2?  Was that a superfluous word?

Morriston acknowledges this, but suggests three reasons why this observation doesn’t come to much. (1) Moses is regularly characterized as being very close to Yahweh, faithfully obeying his instructions most of the time; (2) Yahweh expresses no disapproval of anything Moses does in this story; and (3) Yahweh himself is the principal instigator of the attack on Midian.

I can give a better reason: first, the "full" in 31:2, as already argued.  Second, the fact that the Midianites successfully enticed the Israelites into sexual sin, just proves the Midianites were not one of the far away nations for whom Mose' rules of warfare allowed to be spared/enslaved, rather the Midianites were one of those "nearby" nations that must, under Moses' rules of war, be "totally" destroyed, since they proved to achieve the sin-enticement result that the mass-annihilation commanded was intended to preempt:

 10 "When you approach a city to fight against it, you shall offer it terms of peace.
 11 "If it agrees to make peace with you and opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall become your forced labor and shall serve you.
 12 "However, if it does not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it.
 13 "When the LORD your God gives it into your hand, you shall strike all the men in it with the edge of the sword.
 14 "Only the women and the children and the animals and all that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourself; and you shall use the spoil of your enemies which the LORD your God has given you.
 15 "Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not of the cities of these nations nearby.
 16 "Only in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes.
 17 "But you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the LORD your God has commanded you,
 18 so that they may not teach you to do according to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods, so that you would sin against the LORD your God. (Deut. 20:10-18 NAU)

Since the Midianites certainly did teach the Israelites to commit idolatry and other sexual sins, only a fool would trifle that because "Midian" isn't specified in the war-book's list of condemned nations, Moses "should have known" that 99% extinction of the Midianites was more than what God wanted.

Flannagan continues:

These responses, however, are inadequate. Consider the last point first. The fact that someone is the “principal instigator” of an attack doesn’t entail that he approves of every single action that takes place within the battle in question.

The fact that a woman is the mother of a 3 year old girl doesn't necessarily mean she loves the girl, but we are reasonable to presume this would usually be the case and require viewing of good evidence before we are obligated to think that any specific mother/daughter case is an exception.

Similarly with 2: the lack of explicit disapproval in the text does not entail approval.

 But the lack of approval also doesn't entail disapproval.  If you wish to claim God disapproved of the higher level of slaughter Moses called for, that is your burden to prove.  Your view of the text is hardly a priori.

31:2 has God saying Moses should take "full" vengeance on the Midianites.  If the result of the war comports nicely with "full" vengeance, then the burden of proof is on the apologist to argue that the the way Moses carried out the attack order was "too full". 

Morriston’s argument is an appeal to ignorance; absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

There is no reason, other than fear of one's god looking stupid and sadistic, for pretending the "full" of 31:2 meant something less than the full-scale destruction Moses actually carried out.

It is not uncommon in biblical narratives for authors to describe sinful behavior without expressing explicit disapproval.

But the burden of showing the way Moses carried out this command of God was more extensive and sinful than God wanted, is on YOU.

In most cases, no doubt, the author expects the reader to know certain actions are right and wrong.

Not likely; the originally intended recipients were mostly illiterate, they weren't "readers".  Hence, they likely would accept the story at face value, like every Christian commentator on it did between the 1st and the 18th centuries,  and not trifle about what can be implied by God's failure to condemn something.

Finally, regarding 1, the fact that someone is portrayed in the text as close to God or faithful to him does not mean that every action he is recorded as doing is commanded or endorsed by God. Consider David, or Abraham.

Consider Jesus too.  Do Flannagan's trifles here justify a person's refusal to believe Jesus was always in conformity to the will of God?  After all, just because he was the son of God doesn't necessarily...and so you see the desperation in Flannagan's atomistic analysis.

A second instance of Morriston misreading the text is that not only does he attribute Moses’s reasons to God; he also misstates the reasons Moses does give in the context. The real issue is that the Midianite women had been following the devious advice of the pagan seer, Balaam, who had been explicitly commanded by God not to curse Israel. Balaam had led the Israelites into acting treacherously at Baal-Peor. This is the clearly stated issue (31:16). What occurs, when the background is taken into account, is not that some Israelites marry Midianite women, but rather these women use sex to seduce Israel into violating the terms of their covenant with God—an event that threatened Israel’s very national identity, calling, and destiny. This act was in fact deliberate.

 Then what's your problem with Moses' refusal to spare any except the virgin girls?  

So Morriston’s comments are far off the mark when he insists that the Midianites could not have been trying to harm the Israelites by inviting them to participate in the worship of a god in whom they obviously believed. The whole point of the exercise was to get God to curse Israel so that a military attack could be launched by Moab and Midian. The picture isn’t one of innocent Midianite brides, but acts tantamount to treason and treacherous double agents carrying on wicked subterfuge.

Sounds pretty serious.  But your trifles are still pointless:  If you are claiming Moses required more destruction than what God intended in 31:2, then say so and explain why, quit pussy-footing around with trifles about how God can condemn something without explicitly saying so.  What textual evidence is there to suggest God disagreed with the degree of death and destruction Moses called for? 

And Flannagan's skepticism seems more extreme than is warranted for a Christian bible believer.  n Numbers 31:14, Moses is "angry" with his military leaders for sparing the women.

Shouldn't a Christian believer in bible inerrancy like Flannagan first assume that Moses had expected his men to inflict total destruction?

Once again, if 31:2 has God decreeing "full" vengeance on the Midianites, what textual evidence makes Flannagan so positively certain that the full manner Moses carried out God's orders, effected more death than God wished?

Didn't this Moses and his Hebrews believe in corporate solidarity, the doctrine that holds you responsible for sins of your leader even if you were not personally guilty?  

Didn't this god hold entire cities responsible for murders that went unsolved or idolotry committed by a few (Deut 13:12-18; 21:1-9)?

Didn't the Israelites manifest the same observation of corporate solidarity when willing to spare anybody that might come under Rahab's roof (Josh 2:12-14; 6:22-25)?

Didn't this god refrain from revealing Achan as guilty of stealing the wedge of gold, until after God decided this sin, unknown to Joshua, should cause Joshua to suffer more than the expected number of battle casualties (Joshua 7, i.e., only Achan sinned this way, but God spreads the guilt to the entire nation saying "Israel has sinned...they have taken some forbidden things..." v. 11-12)?

Didn't this god kill off seventy thousand men of the people from Dan to Beersheba, all because David had chosen to take a census of Israel (2 Sam. 24:15 NAU)?

Doesn't this god condition his grace on the children confessing both their own and their fathers' sins (Leviticus 26:40)?

 

Didn't the god Moses served kill a bunch of toddlers and babies with a flood in the days of Noah?  Or maybe Flannagan will trifle that the flood waters  inflicted no harm on anybody below the age of accountability?

Didn't the god Moses served decree that the sin of Adam and Eve should inflict all of their descendants?

 Didn't this god visit the iniquity of the fathers up to the third and fourth generation (Exodus 20:5,6)?

Why should anybody think the killing of the babies in 31:17 was against the will of a god who routinely killed babies for other people's sins?

 13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die.
 14 "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die."
 15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick. (2 Sam. 12:13-15 NAU)

There are solid reasons for saying Moses' actions in Numbers 31 didn't inflict more death than God intended in 31:2:

• Christians automatically presume the sinful human leader correctly conveys God's sentiments, always placing the burden on those who would cry for an exception (i.e., Flannagan blindly presumes just whatever the biblical prophets credited to God, really was from God, and requires liberals or skeptics to overcome that presumption).  So Flannagan cannot coherently pretend that an assumption of Moses' consistency with God is too speculative.
• Moses' god routinely killed children for the sins of their parents, so the call to take "full" vengeance, without further qualification, would naturally be taken to mean the children shall share in the guilt of the parents.
• Moses himself adhered to corporate solidarity.   God should have specified this case was exceptional and limited, if He didn't want somebody who believed in corporate solidarity to get the wrong impression about how extensive the vengeance should be.
• God obviously wanted the Midianite men to die, since he called for battle despite knowing the Midianite men would rise to the defense of their nation. 
• it would be stupid and foolish to suggest maybe God only wanted the guilty adult Midianites killed, and the Hebrews should just walk away from their war victory leaving the orphaned Midianite kids to fend for themselves
• God obviously wanted the death of the adult women who were personally guilty of the sexual sin at issue.  If he didn't what sense would it make to say God wanted Moses to make war with the Midianite men, but not the women who were instrumental in causing the idolatry to take place?
• God or Moses was the author of a war-book that included instructions on how to justify impregnating the female war captives (Deut. 21:10-14).  Moses' sparing of the virgin girls was in harmony with what Moses or God allowed elsewhere.
• God obviously wanted the male Midianite children to be killed, since a) raising them as foster children would likely give rise to possible blood-feud after they grew up (an excuse many Christian apologists hide under), and b) God never makes good on his promises, therefore, God's promises that kids will not depart from proper Jewish teaching if they are raised in it (Proverbs 22:6) could not possibly be taken seriously by anybody faced with such a foster care situation.

Flannagan has no basis whatsoever for his trifling suggestion that the massacre in Numbers 31 was somehow more extensive than God intended.

Therefore, the inerrantist who compares Moses' actions in Numbers 31 to everything else that can be known about him, his god, and his ideas about just war, has no other option but to admit the massacre of innocent children and babies in this dreadful story was the will of God.

Answer to J.P. Holding's Wheel of Stupid: Marriage in Numbers 31, Deut. 21

 
Skeptics have long pointed out the sexual immorality implicit and explicit in Numbers 31 and Deuteronomy 21.  In Numbers 31:18, Moses says the Hebrews may spare from massacre the virgin girls "for yourselves", and in Deut. 21:10-14, the rite for marriage to a female war captive gives no sign of concern for the possibility that the woman might not wish to marry the Hebrew man who just massacred her family.

Holding responds to some of these concerns at Wheel of Stupid Biblical Marriage Series 3 (Numbers 31, Deut. 21)

Unfortunately, many of his videos have commenting disabled, showing us that he intends to offer rebuttal to skeptics in a forum that prevents the reader from conveniently seeing how skeptics respond.

So I respond to that video here.

Numbers 31

    13 Moses and Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the congregation went out to meet them outside the camp.
 14 Moses was angry with the officers of the army, the captains of thousands and the captains of hundreds, who had come from service in the war.
 15 And Moses said to them, "Have you spared all the women?
 16 "Behold, 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.
 17 "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.
 19 "And you, camp outside the camp seven days; whoever has killed any person and whoever has touched any slain, purify yourselves, you and your captives, on the third day and on the seventh day.
 (Num. 31:13-19 NAU)

  ====================
Here's the backstory:  In Numbers 25, Israelites give in to sexual sin with the Midianites.  There, Moses orders the death of Israelites so involved.  In Numbers 31, God allegedly requires Moses to take "full" vengeance (31:1) on the Midianites.  The Hebrew soldiers make Moses angry as they return from said war with living captives (women and children and some men), and Moses' solution in  31:17-18 is controversial and implies Moses approved of sex within adult-child marriages.

Holding asks why did Israelspare 32,000 virgins in Numbers 31, and parodies the atheist answer as “because they wanted lots of sex”.  Holding then gives the following text:

“Actually since girls were normally married at this time by age 12, that “virgins” here would have been an average age of 5 years old.”

First, Holding cites no sources to substantiate his assertion that girls in the days of Moses were normally married by age 12.  For example, there is absolutely nothing in the Law of Moses that says what age the girl should be married.  Holding here is probably merely drawing upon a generalization by ANE scholars that 12 was the average age of marriage, but given how much the bible-god hates the ways of the pagan nations of the ANE, it is not very biblical to just assume whatever was true for everybody else in the ANE was likely true for Moses too.  If one combines his lack of documentation, with the childish cartoon nature of the video, one gets a pretty clear idea of the mental status of the people Holding is trying to convince, and its certainly not skeptics like myself who have researched these issues. 

Second, many conservative Christian scholars still revere the Keil and Delitzsch Commentary, because what it has to say about the bible remains very scholarly despite its having been written in the 1800’s.  After acknowledging King Ahaz fathered a child at 10-11 years old, they recognize the question this will pop into the mind of the reader, and they go on to cite documentary evidence that prepubescent marriage was normative for middle-eastern families, and this evidence forces Holding, without a rebuttal otherwise, to admit ancient Hebrews were willing to allow marriage at even younger ages than 12:

2 Kings 16:1–4. On the time mentioned, “in the seventeenth year of Pekah Ahaz became king” see at 2 Kings 15:32. The datum “twenty years old” is a striking one, even if we compare with it 2 Kings 18:2. As Ahaz reigned only sixteen years, and at his death his son Hezekiah became king at the age of twenty-five years (2 Kings 18:2), Ahaz must have begotten him in the eleventh year of his age. It is true that in southern lands this is neither impossible nor unknown,33 but in the case of the kings of Judah it would be without analogy. The reading found in the LXX, Syr., and Arab. at 2 Chron. 28:1, and also in certain codd., viz., five and twenty instead of twenty, may therefore be a preferable one. According to this, Hezekiah, like Ahaz, was born in his father’s sixteenth year.
------33 In the East they marry girls of nine or ten years of age to boys of twelve or thirteen (Volney, Reise, ii. p. 360). Among the Indians husbands of ten years of age and wives of eight are mentioned (Thevenot, Reisen, iii. pp. 100 and 165). In Abyssinia boys of twelve and even ten years old marry (Rüppell, Abessynien, ii. p. 59). Among the Jews in Tiberias, mothers of eleven years of age and fathers of thirteen are not uncommon (Burckh. Syrien, p. 570); and Lynch saw a wife there, who to all appearance was a mere child about ten years of age, who had been married two years already. In the epist. ad N. Carbonelli, from Hieronymi epist. ad Vitalem, 132, and in an ancient glossa, Bochart has also cited examples of one boy of ten years and another of nine, qui nutricem suam gravidavit, together with several other cases of a similar kind from later writers. Cf. Bocharti Opp. i. (Geogr. sacr.) p. 920, ed. Lugd. 1692.

Keil, C. F., & Delitzsch, F. (2002). Commentaryon the Old Testament. 

(Vol. 3, Page 283-284). 

Peabody, MA: Hendrickson.

Third, and perhaps most important, if the biblical descriptions of pagan perversions is true (i.e., if the pagan "pass-your-children-through-the-fire" was describing pagans literally roasting their children to death, Deut. 18:10), then we have a rational basis to conclude that these people were so corrupted that not only did they approve of all forms of sex (penetrative and non-penetrative) but that they also had little regard for age  (i.e., pedophilia).   What exactly is the moral difference between throwing one's 5 year old girl into a fiery furnace, and allowing her to be used sexually?  The point is that the pagans likely allowed pedophilia, in which case some of the prepubescent girls would have participated in the sexual sin at Peor, or tried, meaning Moses' willingness to generally spare all the prepubescent girls was grounded in something other than his belief that they remained from of his sexual sin.

These considerations prompt questions Holding doesn't go near answering:

Why does Moses think the existing virginity of these girls makes them worthy of sparing?  Did he think their hymens remaining intact after the sexual sin at Peor (ch. 25) constituted proof that they did not sin sexually with the Israelites?  What fool thinks an intact hymen negates the possibility that the girl engaged in sexual relations?  Wasn't Moses a married man who surely knew that sex and thus sexual sin can take place without penetrative vaginal intercourse?  Or is there a distinct possibility that in the Hebrew mind, only vaginal intercourse qualified as "sex"?

Holding, who thinks the Jews scrupulously preserved the oral traditions that are behind the Pentateuch,  also doesn't tell his readers how the Babylonian Talmud (oldest ancient Jewish commentary on the OT) answers the question of how the Hebrews could tell which girls were virgins in this episode.  Holding and Glen Miller avoid the fire by positing that the clothes of virgin girls would have been different, but alas, the Talmud at Yebamoth 60a-b says Moses had them pass before the ceremonial frontplate and their virgin-status or lack thereof was determined by whether they blushed from embarassment, a thing he would hardly have done if their dress was the conclusive deciding factor:

  It was taught: R. Simeon b. Yohai stated: A proselyte who is under the age of three years and one day is permitted to marry a priest,13  for it is said, But all the women children that have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves,14  and Phinehas15  surely was with them. And the Rabbis?16  — [These were kept alive] as bondmen and bondwomen.17  If so,18  a proselyte whose age is three years and one day19  should also be permitted! — [The prohibition is to be explained] in accordance with R. Huna. For R. Huna pointed out a contradiction: It is written, Kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him,20  but if she hath not known, save her alive; from this it may be inferred that children are to be kept alive whether they have known or have not known [a man]; and, on the other hand, it is also written, But all the women children, that have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves,14  but do not spare them if they have known. Consequently21  it must be said that Scripture speaks of one who is fit22  for cohabitation.23  It was also taught likewise: And every woman that hath known man;20  Scripture speaks of one who is fit23  for cohabitation. You say, 'Of one who is fit for cohabitation'; perhaps it is not so but of one who had actual intercourse? — As Scripture stated, But all women children, that have not known man by lying with him,24  it must be concluded that Scripture speaks of one who is fit for cohabitation.23
Whence did they know?25  — R. Hana26  b. Bizna replied in the name of R. Simeon the Pious: They were made to pass before the frontplate.27  If the face of anyone turned pale28  it was known that she was fit for cohabitation; if it did not turn pale28  it was known that she was unfit for cohabitation.

 The same source continues on, mentioning the Hebrews capturing 400 virgins in Judges 21, and explaining the Hebrews knew they were virgins by making the girls sit on the mouth of a wine-cask, and if a girl's breath smelled like wine, she was judged a non-virgin.  Interestingly, some of the Rabbis felt this earlier barbaric test should have been applied in the case of the Midianite virgins:

Similarly, it is said, And they found among the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead four hundred young virgins, that had not known man by lying with him;29 whence did they know it?30 R. Kahana replied: They made them sit upon the mouth of a wine-cask. [Through anyone who had] had previous intercourse, the odour penetrated; through a virgin, its odour did not penetrate. They should have been made to pass before the frontplate!31 — R. Kahana son of R. Nathan replied: It is written, for acceptance,32 for acceptance but not for punishment. If so, the same should have applied at Midian also!33 R. Ashi replied: It is written, ‘unto them’, implying unto them34 for acceptance but not for

punishment; unto idolaters,35 however, even for punishment.36

13.    She is not regarded as a harlot.

14.    Num. XXXI, 18.

15.    Who was a priest.

16.    How could they, contrary to the opinion of R. Simeon b. Yohai, which has Scriptural support, forbid the marriage of the young proselyte?

17.    Not for matrimony.

18.    That, according to R. Simeon, Num. XXXI, 18 refers to matrimony.

19.    So long as she has 'not known man'.

20.    Num. XXXI, 17.

21.    To reconcile the contradiction.

22.    I.e., one who had attained the age of three years and one day.

23.    Not one who had actually experienced it.

24.    Implying that any grown-up woman is not to be spared, even if she hath not known man.

25.    Which of the Midianite women, referred to in the texts quoted, was, or was not fit for cohabitation.

26.    Cur. [edd.], 'Huna'.

27.    [H] the gold plate which was worn by the High Priest on his forehead. V, Ex. XXVIII, 36ff.

28.    Lit., '(sickly) green'.

29.    Judges XXI, 12.

30.    Cf. supra n. 1 mutatis mutandis.

31.    As was done in the case of the Midianites (v. supra).

32.    Ex. XXVIII, 38, referring to the front-plate.

33.    Why then was the test there performed before the plate?

34.    Israelites, as were the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead.

35.    As were the Midianites.

36.    By the front-plate.

I think this is the part where Holding stops being so confident that the Jews were able to reliably preserve their oral traditions.

Holding next asserts

 “Therefore, this passage (Numbers 31:18) would have nothing to do with any concepts of marriage – and not surprisingly, it says nothing about marriage either.”

The objections are easy and many:  Several conservative Christian commentators assert the spared girls were intended for marriage or concubinage, that is, Holding is giving the false impression to the naïve viewer that his opinion is standard among conservative scholars.

Update: June 12, 2017:  From the wayback machine, I uncovered an old 2015 post of mine at theologyweb.com that the owner of that site deleted, a thread to which Holding had repeatedly replied.  In that thread, in my first post,  I quoted a conservative inerrantist Christian scholar who said the girls of Numbers 31:18 were spared for purposes that included marriage. 

You will say they were only spared to do housework, but bible-believing commentators have already asserted that this sparing in Numbers 31:18 was for purposes that included marriage:

Women who had known men sexually, whether Midianite or sinful Israelite men, were to be considered unclean, since they were the main instrument of Israel�s demise at Baal Peor. Only the young girls would be allowed to live so that they may be taken as wives or slaves by the Israelite men, according to the principles of holy war (Deut 20:13�14; 21:10�14).

Cole, R. D. (2001, c2000). Vol. 3B: Numbers (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 499).
Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

 The point is that when Holding, in his 2017 video, asserts that the sparing in Numbers 31:18 had nothing to do with marriage, this was two years after he was correctly informed that conservative Protestant inerrantist scholars exist who say the sparing was for purposes involving marriage.  That is, Holding expresses his denial position with great confidence despite his knowledge that other conservative Christian scholars disagree with said denial.  It boils down to simple dishonesty.  If Holding wasn't such a dogmatic jerk, so consistently incapable of distinguishing his beliefs from the voice of God, he would probably have made more clear that his denial of marriage-motive in Numbers 31:18 is an interpretation that other inerrantist scholars disagree with.

------------end of update.

The following are from properly credentialed bible scholars, while Holding has no formal education in the bible beyond a master's in library science:

 Only the young girls would be allowed to live so that they may be taken as wives or slaves by the Israelite men, according to the principles of holy war (Deut 20:13–14; 21:10–14). By this they could be brought under the umbrella of the covenant community of faith.
Cole, R. D. (2001, c2000). Vol. 3B: Numbers (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 499). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

31:17–18. rationale for who is put to death. The criteria used to determine who would be executed were two: (1) all the boys must be killed to prevent them from presenting a military threat in the future, and (2) all nonvirgins must die since they have already been contaminated by sexual contact with a proscribed people. Virgins represent an “unplowed field” and may be adopted through marriage into the Israelite tribes (see Judg 21:11–12). It is also possible that they were enslaved or used as concubines. These young women were presumably innocent of the seduction of the Israelites by Midianite women at Baal-Peor (Num 25).
Matthews, V. H., Chavalas, M. W., & Walton, J. H. (2000). The IVP Bible background commentary : Old Testament (electronic ed.) (Nu 31:18-24). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

The adult males are slain, including the king, princes, and Balaam. The women and children are taken as captives along with much booty. Moses is angry with the military leaders when he sees the Midianite women. They, on Balaam’s advice, had turned Israel away from the Lord. He commands the officers to kill all the boys and every woman who has slept with a man. The virgins and little girls are spared; they will be assimilated into the congregation of Israel by marriage. Thus, in the midst of vengeance, there is compassion.
Elwell, W. A. (1996, c1989). Vol. 3: Evangelical commentary on the Bible. Baker reference library (Nu 31:1). Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House.

Only the virgins were spared, because they could marry Israelites and thereby be assimilated into the Israelite community.
Brown, R. E., Fitzmyer, J. A., & Murphy, R. E. (1968]; Published in electronic form by Logos Research Systems, 1996). The Jerome Biblical commentary (electronic ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

The young virgins were spared for marriage (Deut. 21:10–14) and slavery (Lev. 25:44–46)
Hughes, R. B., Laney, J. C., & Hughes, R. B. (2001). Tyndale concise Bible commentary. Rev. ed. of: New Bible companion. 1990.; Includes index. The Tyndale reference library (Page 65). Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers.

 Deuteronomy 21:1-14

10 "When you go out to battle against your enemies, and the LORD your God delivers them into your hands and you take them away captive,
 11 and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and have a desire for her and would take her as a wife for yourself,
 12 then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and trim her nails.
 13 "She shall also remove the clothes of her captivity and shall remain in your house, and mourn her father and mother a full month; and after that you may go in to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife.
 14 "It shall be, if you are not pleased with her, then you shall let her go wherever she wishes; but you shall certainly not sell her for money, you shall not mistreat her, because you have humbled her.
 (Deut. 21:10-14 NAU)

Holding then asserts the following about the regulations in Deut. 21:10-14 for marrying female war captives:

 “In reality, Deut. 21:10-14 is a step up on other law codes of the day which allowed women captured in war to be indiscriminately killed, mutilated, and raped.”

 First, it doesn’t matter if that is true; the Hebrews being slightly more civilized than their pagan neighbors is not the issue:  the problem is the arguments that indicate this marriage regulation takes no concern for the woman’s feelings, ever, which means the sexual consummation it authorizes constitutes rape (to say nothing of the fact that the guy she would be having sex with was part of the mob that had just killed her family and kidnapped her [in 2015 Holding at theologyweb.com, in a post that has since been removed from public access, said it was “personal honor” that would convince such a woman to become willing to have sex with the guy who just killed her family, though he offered no historical, biblical or sociological evidence that a sense of honor would ever cause a woman to replace her disgust for her family's killer with feelings of sexual arousal]).

  Theologyweb Does your God approve of Rape?
04-15-2015, 01:25 AM #277
jpholding
03-26-2015, 08:16 PM #134
Quote Originally Posted by B&H View Post
Can you think of any plausible argument that a woman might consent 
willingly and freely to sex with a man who is part of the mob that just killed her family?
 ----------Holding: Yeah, stupid...it's called "personal honor".

 
 Holding learned his honor-culture stuff from Context Group co-founder Richard Rohrbaugh.  See my other blog article quoting Rohrbaugh as saying Holding has obviously perverted the Context Group's work on honor/shame societies, and that Holding gives Christianity a bad name and needs serious psychological help

Second, Holding’s effort to argue that this law did not approve of rape, runs counter to the way at least one Christian bible committee translates it. The American Bible Society produced the "Good News" bible, and that one explicitly puts rape into v. 14:

14 Later, if you no longer want her, you are to let her go free. Since you forced her to have intercourse with you, you cannot treat her as a slave and sell her.

Such a Christian translation committee would surely not have rendered this verse to clearly connote rape, if as Holding would insist, the evidence against the rape interpretation was obvious and powerful.
There are contextual reasons to support the rape interpretation:  1) like a rapist, the guy who wrote this law shows no concern whatsoever for whether the woman desires to be married, the rite is to begin if the man desires to marry her; 2) the law is allowing for a man who was part of the army who just killed that woman's family, descreated her idols and carried her off as prisoner of war, to marry her, so it is safe to assume the author is allowing the man to become married to, and thus have sex with the very type of woman most unlikely to ever have sexual feelings for the man, thus further implying lack of consent on her part.

There are grammatical reasons to support the rape interpretation:  In v. 14, the standard translation is "you have humbled her", with the Hebrew anah laying behind "humbled".  This anah appears in the following passages where the context clearly indicates "rape": 

 2 When Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her, he took her and lay with her by force (Hebrew: anah). (Gen. 34:2 NAU)

 24 "Here is my virgin daughter and his concubine. Please let me bring them out that you may ravish  (Hebrew: anah) them and do to them whatever you wish. But do not commit such an act of folly against this man." (Jdg. 19:24 NAU)

 11 When she brought them to him to eat, he took hold of her and said to her, "Come, lie with me, my sister."
 12 But she answered him, "No, my brother, do not violate  (Hebrew: anah) me, for such a thing is not done in Israel; do not do this disgraceful thing!
 13 "As for me, where could I get rid of my reproach? And as for you, you will be like one of the fools in Israel. Now therefore, please speak to the king, for he will not withhold me from you."
 14 However, he would not listen to her; since he was stronger than she, he violated  (Hebrew: anah) her and lay with her. (2 Sam. 13:11-14 NAU)

 7 "They have treated father and mother lightly within you. The alien they have oppressed in your midst; the fatherless and the widow they have wronged in you.
 8 "You have despised My holy things and profaned My sabbaths.
 9 "Slanderous men have been in you for the purpose of shedding blood, and in you they have eaten at the mountain shrines. In your midst they have committed acts of lewdness.
 10 "In you they have uncovered their fathers' nakedness; in you they have humbled  (Hebrew: anah) her who was unclean in her menstrual impurity.
 11 "One has committed abomination with his neighbor's wife and another has lewdly defiled his daughter-in-law. And another in you has humbled his sister, his father's daughter.
 (Ezek. 22:7-11 NAU)

 10 Our skin has become as hot as an oven, Because of the burning heat of famine.
 11 They ravished  (Hebrew: anah) the women in Zion, The virgins in the cities of Judah.
 12 Princes were hung by their hands; Elders were not respected. (Lam. 5:10-12 NAU)

 The standard lexicons say anah can refer to rape:

  Koehler - Baumgartner lexicon:

 —2. to do violence to: a) to rape a woman Gn 342 2S 1312.14.22.32 Ju 1924 205 Lam 511; to abuse Ezk 2210f; bעִנָּה מִשְׁפָּט ( to violate justice, bend, bow Jb 3723; c( to overpower someone Ju 165f. 19 ï nif. 3. כֹּחַ to break Ps 10224, to cram someone’s feet into fetters 10518 (:: W. Thomas JTS 16 (1965 !):444f);

 Holladay lexicon; 

1. oppress, make s.one feel his dependence Gn 1513 & oft.; humiliate Nu 2424, (of God) humble, subdue 1K 1139; ±innâ mišp¹‰ violate justice Jb 3723; humiliate (a woman by forced marriage) Dt 2114; ±innâ nafšô, humble onesf., mortify onesf. (by fasting) Lv 1629; — 2. violate, rape (a woman) Gn 342; — 3. overpower Ju 165f; force s.one into (b®) s.thg Ps 10518.

 Harris says in his Theological Wordbook:

 This verb is applied to the forcing of a woman including a captive woman later rejected (Deut 21:14) or cases of pre-marital relations (Deut 22:29; Gen 34:2). It can be a capital offence (Deut 22:24).

 The rape interpretation of Deut. 21:14 may also be sustained from the larger context of general Hebrew morality, which was barbaric to say the least, in which case we do better to pause before blindly assuming the ancient Hebrews felt the same way about sex as modern white Christian evangelicals. Hebrew patriarchs felt burning to death was appropriate:

 24 Now it was about three months later that Judah was informed, "Your daughter-in-law Tamar has played the harlot, and behold, she is also with child by harlotry." Then Judah said, "Bring her out and let her be burned!" (Gen. 38:24 NAU)

 Moses commands the burning death of a priest’s daughter if she has pre-marital sex:

 9 'Also the daughter of any priest, if she profanes herself by harlotry, she profanes her father; she shall be burned with fire. (Lev. 21:9 NAU)

 God’s will for Achan, expressed before Achan was executed, was to have him and his children burned to death for stealing that wedge of gold, whether Joshua brought about their death by burning or by stoning is irrelevant to the specific desire of God that the burning be the mode of death.

 15 'It shall be that the one who is taken with the things under the ban shall be burned with fire, he and all that belongs to him, because he has transgressed the covenant of the LORD, and because he has committed a disgraceful thing in Israel.'" (Jos. 7:15 NAU)

Holding continues:

 “The strictures humanize the woman and undermine the assumptions which normalized the harsher treatment.  In that sense, it was an effort to reform as well as legislate morality.”

If Holding means that the Hebrew God's approval of rape was an attempt to reform morality, then yes.  Rape is immoral unless it is approved by Mr. Bible-god.

My reply to Jonathon McLatchie on Numbers 31:18 and rape

This is my reply to an article by Dr. Jonathan McLatchie entitled

Does the Bible Support Sexual Slavery? 

An Analysis of Numbers 31:15-18

December 24, 2021

More than two years ago, I participated in a debate in Oxford, England, with atheist YouTuber Alex O’Connor (who goes by the online alias Cosmic Skeptic). The subject was “Why I Am / Am Not a Christian,” which was quite broad. Given the short time constraints of the debate and the breadth of the topic, we were regrettably unable to pursue an explication of our differences with the depth that I would prefer. 

And when I challenged you with a list of possible topics worded in a polite respectful manner, being the very first communication I ever sent to you, you absolutely refused to debate me for reasons having absolutely nothing to do with my ability or inability to significantly challenge you on the merits of your beliefs.  See here.

Nonetheless, I very much appreciated my interaction that evening with O’Connor, including the dinner we enjoyed together before the event.

You enjoyed having dinner with an atheist?  What fellowship hath light with darkness?  And you call yourself a bible-believing Christian?  Then so is John Dominic Crossan.

I have long viewed O’Connor as one of the more philosophically nuanced atheist thinkers, and I have valued our ongoing private discussions subsequent to our initial public dialogue. 

And what about the opinion of those other people in your Calvinist group, like Sye Bruggencate and Jeff Durbin, or their teachers Van Til, Greg Bahnsen and John Frame, who think anything an atheist has to say in defense of any non-Christian tenet is pure blasphemy?  Wow, I didn't know you valued blasphemy.  Or did I forget that Calvinism and presuppositionalism are houses divided no less than Protestantism is?  

My positive argument in the debate concerned the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection, while O’Connor focused on moral critiques of the Bible. 

Then such a lopsided debate likely had the convenient effect of allowing one side to avoid having to answer the more difficult questions, while had you both been debating a single solitary proposition, the cross-examination would have been more comprehensive.

In his portion of the cross-examination, O’Connor chose to focus on the issue of slavery in the Old Testament. The last of the texts we discussed was Numbers 31:15-18, which was interpreted by O’Connor to endorse sexual slavery. At the time, this was not an issue that I had researched with great depth, though I recognized it as a difficult text. My preparation for the debate had largely been on the evidences for New Testament reliability, and its epistemic relevance to developing a robust case for the resurrection. I therefore acknowledged it as a difficult text without offering any detailed response. 

If you weren't such a cessationist, you would not have needed time to prepare for the subject matter anymore than would the people Jesus described as puppets in Matthew 10:20.  You worry too much.  Just let go and let God. 

If you are not a cessationist, then why didn't the Holy Spirit do for the unprepared you, what He allegedly did for the apostles when they needed to give answers?  Maybe you didn't pray enough?  Maybe you had secret or unconfessed sin in your life?  Or must I assume, contrary to the NT, that the spiritual world had nothing to do with you being less prepared than you wished to be?

Earlier this week, Alex O’Connor uploaded the clip from our debate, in which this text was discussed, to his Cosmic Clips spin-off channel. I therefore thought it an appropriate time to publish an article offering my current perspective on this difficult text. Here is the passage under discussion (Num 31:15-18):

15 “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he [Moses] asked them. 16 “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the Lord in the Peor incident, 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.

The first thing to note about this text is that it is not technically God who gives the instructions. Thus, on the worst case scenario, one may interpret this text as being descriptive of Moses’ command, rather than it being an act endorsed by God. Nonetheless, even supposing (as I think is more likely) that Moses’ instruction carries with it God’s approval, I do not believe it to be as problematic as it might appear on first impression.

Good save:  God told Moses to take "full" vengeance on the Midianites (Numbers 31:2), so it was intended to be a genocide.

O’Connor believes that this text gives permission to the Hebrew soldiers to rape Midianite war captives.

He's not going far enough, Numbers 31:18 constitutes Moses' advocating marital pedophilia.  O'Connor didn't hit you as hard as he possibly could have.  You should thank him for having mercy on you.

However, such an interpretation would fly in the face of every piece of clear moral legislation on sexual relations that we have in the Hebrew Bible. 

How do you expect your "scripture interprets scripture" rule to be the least bit impressive or obligatory on an unbeliever who clearly denies biblical inerrancy and biblical consistency?

Do you the juror demand that the prosecutor reconcile all of his theories of the case with everything the suspect said on the witness stand?  No.

There is no universally recognized rule of historiography, hermeneutics or common sense that obligates anybody to presume moral consistency in a text of theocratic rules that allegedly began in somewhere between 1400 b.c. and 650 b.c., the original text of which most scholars think has been altered numerous times over the centuries, with definite anachronisms?  

There is nothing the least bit unreasonable in the unbeliever-hermeneutic that says that on account of the Hebrew texts admitting they fell into idolatry nearly every day, charging them with inconsistent legislation is about as worrisome as charging the Canaanites with inconsistent legislation.

For example, in Deuteronomy 22:23-27:

23 “If there is a betrothed virgin, and a man meets her in the city and lies with her, 24 then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young woman because she did not cry for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst. 25 “But if in the open country a man meets a young woman who is betrothed, and the man seizes her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die. 26 But you shall do nothing to the young woman; she has committed no offense punishable by death. For this case is like that of a man attacking and murdering his neighbor, 27 because he met her in the open country, and though the betrothed young woman cried for help there was no one to rescue her. [emphasis added]

According to this text, the crime of rape is so serious that it is punishable by death.

Your excluding vv. 28-29 was apparently intentional, because it restores the moral depravity you so desperately try to remove:

 28 "If a man finds a girl who is a virgin, who is not engaged, and seizes her and lies with her and they are discovered,

 29 then the man who lay with her shall give to the girl's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall become his wife because he has violated her; he cannot divorce her all his days. (Deut. 22:28-29 NAU)

The moral depravity here is in forcing the rapist to marry the victim, when in fact this particular legislation does not express or imply that the victim is allowed to deny the marriage.  Trinitarian inerrantist scholars explain that v. 28 is also describing the man taking the woman by force, so that the victim in v. 28 was forced to marry the rapist even though she was forced into the sex act:

22:28–29 At first glance the next example, the rape of an unbetrothed girl, might appear to have been a lesser offense than those already described, but this was not the case at all. First, he seized (Heb. tāpaś, “lay hold of”) her and then lay down (šākab) with her, a clear case of violent, coercive behavior.

Merrill, E. H. (2001, c1994). Vol. 4: Deuteronomy (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 305). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

What fool would trifle that the victim of a "clear case of violent, coercive" rape was also somehow "willing"?  I do not argue that Merrill's view is necessarily correct, only that its existence prevents YOU from justifiably accusing my more negative appraisal as unreasonable.

If the woman failed to scream for help when she was in the city and could be heard, the Jewish law viewed the situation as consensual sex rather than rape, since the woman could have cried out for someone to rescue her but didn’t.

A bit of unforgivable stupidity since common sense dictates that the man could either prevent her screaming by muffling her, or threatening her life.

Thus, both parties were guilty. However, if the sexual assault took place in a rural area where the woman had no chance of being heard, the Jewish law gave the woman the benefit of the doubt and she was not to be considered culpable.

Which is also stupid since nothing about the place the sex act occurred would say anything authoritative about whether she was willing.

One might object here that women captured in war were not afforded the same rights as women belonging to the people of Israel, and thus this consideration offers little help with regards to the text of our study. However, the previous chapter in Deuteronomy concerns the rights of women who are captured in war (Deut 21:10-14):

A text that neither expresses nor implies that the woman had any right to refuse the marriage.  You quote as follows:

10 “When you go out to war against your enemies, and the LORD your God gives them into your hand and you take them captive, 11 and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you desire to take her to be your wife, 12 and you bring her home to your house, she shall shave her head and pare her nails. 13 And she shall take off the clothes in which she was captured and shall remain in your house and lament her father and her mother a full month. After that you may go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. 14 But if you no longer delight in her, you shall let her go where she wants. But you shall not sell her for money, nor shall you treat her as a slave, since you have humiliated her. [emphasis added]

McLatchie continues:

Therefore, while the Hebrew soldiers were permitted to marry female war captives, they were not permitted to rape them or treat them as slaves.

The "Good News" Translation of v. 14 makes plain that this rite involved rape:

14 Later, if you no longer want her, you are to let her go free. Since you forced her to have intercourse with you, you cannot treat her as a slave and sell her.

See here.  McLatchie continues:

 The woman was also to have a month to mourn the loss of her kin prior to getting married. 

Oh, ok, so if I kidnap your 18 year old daughter and deal with her exactly as Deuteronomy 21:10-14 allowed a Hebrew man to deal with a female war-captive, then you'd conclude I was treating her "right"?

Daniel Block notes, “This monthlong quarantine expresses respect for the woman’s ties to her family of origin and her own psychological and emotional health, providing a cushion from the shock of being torn from her own family.” 

Then that is respect for pagan theology and idolatry, since the woman's family ties would have been formed in idolatrous contexts.  Gee, is tolerance for her family ties what was meant by a Mosaic author whose purpose in killing her family was his intolerance of idolatry?

[1] Indeed, as John Wenham comments, “In a world where there are wars, and therefore prisoners of war, such regulations in fact set a high standard of conduct.” 

Some would say that making her shave her head and remove her clothes merely adds unnecessarily to the humiliation.  Your idea that this is supposed to be a "nice" thing is absurd, and you'd never conclude any such foolishness if somebody kidnapped your 18 year old daughter today and followed out all the permissions and requirements in that passage.  You only make excuses and hem and haw because nobody has subjected YOU to such degredation.

[2] Furthermore, by becoming part of the people of Israel (and possessing full status as a wife), the women would be delivered from pagan idolatry and exposed instead to Israelite religion concerning the true God, thereby having opportunity to attain salvation.

Meaning: we should be amazed at how the Hebrews who killed her family, acted nice to her after kidnapping her and forcing her into a marriage with one of the people who killed her family.  Sorry, I'm not feeling that.  Try again.

The historical context of the war against the Midianites is also important to bear in mind as we evaluate our text. Numbers 31:16 indicates that the Midianite women “were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the Lord in the Peor incident, so that a plague struck the Lord’s people.” 

Then we wonder why Moses didn't also kill off the children of the Hebrew soldiers who sinned there, no less than he ordered the killing of the children of the Midianites in Numbers 31:17.  But sometimes, demanding consistency from a dictator is out of step with the barbarisms of the ANE.  My bad.

This is an allusion to Numbers 25:1-9, in which we read of an occasion where the Midianites devised a plot to entice Israel into pagan worship involving making sacrifices to Baal and ritual sex. According to Moses, the Midianite women were among those who “enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the Lord” (Num 31:16). Thus, the women who were permitted to live and marry into Israel (that is, those who had not known man by lying with him) were presumably those who had not been involved in enticing the men of Israel into sexual impurity.

Moses is a hypocrite:  he kills the Midianite babies apparently because he ascribed to some type of corporate-responsibility ethic, but he does NOT kill the babies of the Hebrew men who participated in that sin.  How convenient.

Another consideration, often overlooked in discussions of our text, is that we are not informed what happened to young woman who were brought into the Israelite camp but who did not wish to marry the men who had just slaughtered their kin. 

No, the text that allows the Hebrew soldier to marry the daughter of parents he recently killed, neither expresses nor implies the girl had the least bit of choice in the matter.  If the Hebrews were stupid enough to kill her family, we can hypothesize they were also stupid enough to give her as much say in whether to marry, as they gave to her parents on whether to die.

We can hypothesize that they were forced into it anyway, but we can equally hypothesize that they were allowed to make themselves useful as virgins until such a time as someone more suitable presented himself. 

What fool would seriously tell himself that where women of a cult tempt other men to sin sexually, surely the virgins in that cult couldn't possibly be culpable?  Did the Hebrews think only vaginal intercourse counted as sexual sin?  When Moses spared the women who were still virgins, wasn't he taking a chance that in the spared group were a few virgins who had engaged in forms of sex that leave virginity intact, such as fellatio, cunnilingus, anal sex, i.e.,  participating in the Midianite sin but preserving their virginal status?

If he really was taking a such a chance, how can we be unreasonable to say he was just a stupid gullible dictator without any god to make actual truth known to him?

You also have the option of saying they were not dolts, and the reason they deny culpability to the still virgin girls is because the Hebrews honestly didn't see anal sex, fellatio or cunnilingus as adultery or fornication...but you aren't in the business of making concessions that open the door for today's Christians to fornicate without fornicating, right?

This is simply not stated or even intimated in the text. Thus, if there were women who were averse to being married to an interested Israelite soldier, we just do not know what happened.

If you don't know what happened, you cannot render improbable the possibility that they were forced into the marriage.

Moreover, even if on occasion something bad happened — and there is no reason to deny that sometimes it may have — it is not something we are told was done by command of God.

But if there was any forcing, it would have been justified by appeal to Deuteronomy 21:10-14.  So, Jonathan....do you believe that passage is the inspired inerrant word of God, yes or no?

When Moses gave the requirements as recited in that passage, was God speaking through him, yes or no?

In conclusion, though Numbers 31:13-18 is undoubtedly a difficult text, especially from the vantage point of our twenty-first century western culture, the text becomes, upon closer inspection, significantly less problematic than it appears at first impression. 

You can save your campaign speech until after you have shown the Good News "rape" Translation of Deut. 21:14 to be unreasonable or incorrect.  You highly doubt you'll ever do that, right?

The Pentateuch outlined the rights of female war captives, and they were not allowed to be treated as a slave or sex object.

Those who killed a girl's parents forced her to marry one of the guilty Hebrew soldiers, in a way that wasn't quite as barbaric as would have been allowed in pagan cultures.  Congratulations.  I'm experiencing a heart attack right now because of how guilty I feel about my sin.  Nice job.  Do you have any dust and ashes I could borrow?

The Pentateuch also takes a very negative view of rape.

According to the Good News Translation of Deuteronomy 21:14, God must have intended this rite to result in rape.

Most likely, the women who were spared were not involved in enticing Israel into sexual impurity during the incident at Peor. Finally, we are not informed by the text what the arrangements were for women who did not wish to marry an interested Israelite soldier, and so any suggestion of what may have happened is mere conjecture.

But my conjectures cannot be shown to be unreasonable.  Your assumption that the multiple authors of the Pentateuch were honestly trying to give future readers exactly what Moses wrote, is also mere conjecture.  If the Hebrews were as prone to corruption as every page of the Pentateuch says, we have no reason to pretend their scribes were any exception. 

Footnotes
8 thoughts on “Does the Bible Support Sexual Slavery? An Analysis of Numbers 31:15-18”


JOHN RICHARDS
DECEMBER 24, 2021 AT 12:49 PM

Labelling the Numbers text as ‘difficult’ reveals your point of view – that of a presuppositionist.

I don’t find it at all difficult!

It also reveals your assumption that the Bible is a reliable source of information…
Reply


KEVIN ROSS
DECEMBER 24, 2021 AT 9:57 PM

Of course you don’t find it problematic. Your presuppositions ensure that any misunderstanding of the text remains a live option.
Reply



JMCLATCHIE
DECEMBER 25, 2021 AT 4:18 PM

John Richards: Anyone with a cursory familiarity with my work knows of my staunch opposition to presuppositionalism. Contrary to the insinuation of your comment, it is not an entailment of evidentialism that, for one to be rational in holding a belief, that belief can admit no difficulties.
Reply

-----------------turchisrong replies, April 19, 2023

Then you, McLatchie, must confess that it is possible for an atheist to be rational in holding to atheism, even if atheism presents "difficulties".

============================continuing:

PETER
DECEMBER 24, 2021 AT 2:53 PM

Definitely appreciate addressing this. It really is an uncharitable reading that doesn’t even make sense (e.g. Kill the Canaanite non virgin women and Isrealite men for inappropriate sexual acts, and keep the Virgin women so you can… Do more inappropriate sexual acts!??!?), so it’s nice to see a complete response to it.
Reply


JESSE
JULY 22, 2022 AT 2:00 AM

Remember the sexual idolatry of Balaam’s sin led Israel to experience a plague, for which Moses killed many Israelites, both to punish the sin and to stop the spread of disease. Notice the emphasis on the cleansing rituals to ensure they did not carry back to the camp any plagues; ie STD’s. Sexual idolotry. Orgies. Even with children. Remember these tribes which surrounded Israel were accused of cannibalism and human sacrifice of children as well as incest and bestiality, and archaeological findings do support those claims.
Reply



DAVID MADISON
DECEMBER 26, 2021 AT 10:02 PM

The world in which God revealed Himself was very different from today’s world. It was a world in which warfare was common and the consequences for defeated peoples were often terrible. Marrying the men who had conquered you is not a particularly attractive option but it is better than the alternative. What we often find in the Old Testament is a way of doing things that limits harm.

Atheists are dismissive of this. Their usual response is to ask why God didn’t just come along and impose modern values on the people who lived 3000 years ago. This is remarkably shallow. Life was brutal 3000 years ago. The reason why it was brutal is that this is what human nature is capable of. And it still is. Christianity offers us the hope of deliverance from our corrupt nature but this hope is not something we have any right to expect.
Reply

----------------------------------------turchisrong replies, April 19, 2023

Their usual response is to ask why God didn’t just come along and impose modern values on the people who lived 3000 years ago. This is remarkably shallow. Life was brutal 3000 years ago. The reason why it was brutal is that this is what human nature is capable of. And it still is. 

Then how do you explain God preventing the pagan prophet Balaam from cursing Israel in Numbers 22:38, 23:8, 12?  Wasn't life during Numbers 22 equally as brutal as it was in Numbers 31?

What we find here is that your God has no excuse:  Not only can God prevent pagans from sinning, the fact that he did so at least once proves that he is far more willing to violate human freewill than today's freewiller Christians wish to admit.  

And God can cause pagans to both know his will and obey it even if they are idolaters.  See Ezra 1:1.

So the skeptic is reasonable to say that your god is sadistic:  he clearly does have a viable way of preventing humans from sinning, but no, he prefers to take the route that causes unnecessary misery and bloodshed.  Sort of like the fool who has a choice between drawing money out of his account to pay the rent, or robbing the bank to pay the rent, and he chooses the latter despite the former being entirely sufficient to the purpose.

Update on "Does your God approve of sex within adult-child marriages?"

I've been publicly attacking the biblical inerrancy doctrine since 2003.  The vast majority of inerrantists presume that the bible-god views pedophilia as a sin.  So to attack that view, I've been arguing for the last 20 years that this understandably popular doctrine has no support in the Mosaic Law.  The inference, that Christians seek to avoid like the plague, is that God doesn't condemn sex within adult-child marriages as sin, because he doesn't think such activity is sinful in the first place.  The whole notion that god thinks an act to be sin, but has nowhere plainly declared so, is theologically problematic.

The attack comes mostly in the form of arguing that Numbers 31:18 is not merely authorizing Hebrew soldiers to use underage girls as "house servants", it is also authorizing Hebrew soldiers to both marry and sexually consummate such marriage to such underage girls (i.e., sex within adult-child marriages, i.e, pedophilia).

17 "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.  (Num. 31:17-18 NAU)

As you can imagine, Christian apologists have for more than 20 years been hitting me with everything they can possibly think of to justify their tendency to create god in their own modern western democratic image, in their effort to show that by some strange coincidence, the Old Testament YHWH just happens to hate pedophilia equally as much as today's Americans do.

The link-fixes that appear below are some of my reasons why such attempts to avoid biblical moral disaster fail, and therefore, my view (that YHWH had, in the days of Moses, approved of sex within adult-child marriages), remains reasonable.

These arguments do not prove that Christians are wrong in how they interpret the bible.  The arguments only show that us atheists/skeptics can be reasonable to interpret the bible the way we do. That is, these arguments refute the Christians who characterize my view as "unreasonable".  They may hate that view, but they are absolutely paralyzed from proving it to be unreasonable.  None of my views arise from improper exegesis.  Thus they are forced to say the view is reasonable no matter how distasteful or religiously incorrect they think it is.

If you disagree, then your job is not to show that I'm "wrong" (because I don't claim I'm right), your job is rather to show that my arguments fail to establish the reasonableness of the interpretation I advocate.  That's a much more difficult goal to reach, for daily reality tells us we can possibly be reasonable even if wrong.  Only a stupid fool insists that everytime somebody gets something wrong, it is because their method of truth-seeking, if any, was unreasonable.  No, sometimes we make innocent mistakes.  

Reasonableness can arise from accuracy, but it by no means demands accuracy.  Therefore, "you are wrong" is not sufficient to show my views to be unreasonable.  You must show that my exegesis is so poor that no person concerned for truth could possibly condone it.

If you can't do that job, then you must live with the knowledge that yes, at least some atheist bible critics, even if not all of them, can possibly be reasonable to view the biblical YHWH has having approved of sexual relations within adult-child marriages back in the days of Moses.

Does your god approve of pedophilia? Part 1: sin is transgression of God's law

-------In this entry, I argue that Romans 7:7 forbids the notion that we can know sin without the Mosaic law, therefore, if in fact the Mosaic law doesn't clearly condemn pedophilia, then you have no biblical justification for saying God thinks sexual acts within adult-child marriages are sinful.  The truth is that Romans 7:7 is itself false, but as a Christian, you don't have the option of winning the debate that way, you are forever stuck with what Paul meant with his words.

Does your god approve of pedophilia? Part 2: We can know what sin is by our conscience?

------In this entry, I argue that because the bible founds the human conscience upon the Mosaic law, it is reasonable to deny that the OT YHWH thinks "conscience" is a way, independent of Mosaic law, to establish any act as sinful.  Thus if your conscience bothers you when thinking of pedophilia in 2023, we are reasonable to conclude this "pang", even if it came from the NT God, did not come from the OT YHWH.

Does your god approve of pedophilia? Part 3: We can know what sin is by intuition?

----forthcoming

Does your god approve of pedophilia? Part 4: "In non-essentials, liberty"

----In this entry, I argue that if my opponent is the type of Christian who believes in the popular conservative maxim "In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; and in all things, charity", then because the Mosaic Law fails to clearly condemn pedophilia, what a Christian in your congregation thinks God's opinion is concerning sexual relations within adult-child marriages, constitutes nothing more important than a "non-essential".  Thus if a Christian in your church in 2023 thinks God doesn't condemn sexual relations in adult-child marriages, we are reasonable to view you as under an obligation to give that Christian liberty of conscience on the subject, meaning, we are reasonable to condemn you if, because of his viewpoint on the subject, you ever disfellowship or excommunicate him.

Does your god approve of pedophilia? Part 5: God establishes all the secular laws

----forthcoming

Does your God approve of pedophilia? Part 6: God expects Hebrews to use their "common sense"

----In this entry I argue that nothing in the bible indicates God ever expected anybody to use their "common sense" to fill in moral gaps created by omissions in the Mosaic Law.  Thus we are reasonable to presume that silence in the Mosaic Law means silence from YHWH...a god that seems to have a need to condemn nearly everything he sees.

Does your God approve of pedophilia? Part 7: Ezekiel 16 establishes nothing except more apologetics embarrassment

------In this entry I argue that, contrary to the hopes of many apologists, nothing in Ezekiel 16 renders unreasonable my view that the in the days of Moses, YHWH approved of sexual relations within adult-child marriages.