The Blog Of Dysfunction

In the aftermath of my previous post, which i invited many friends and batch mates to read and comment upon, here’s what the best friend has to say:

Many people including me are so offended by the violence of God expressed in the Bible. This sometimes, to be truthful shakes my faith in the Bible. After reading your mail I thought about this for sometime and here is my reply:

One of the most horrifying ideas in the Bible is the notion of the “Ban”, an idea that can be traced to many forms of tribal religions in the ancient near East and in other parts of the world as well. Victory in war is given by God and therefore all the spoils of war belong to God, not to the tribe. In many cases this was shown by the ritual killing of the conquered. Traces of this culture remain in the Bible. Example : 1 Samuel 15, the prophet condemns Saul after his victory over the Amalekites because he failed to kill the defeated king Agag and because he spares the “best of sheep and of cattle and the fatlings and the lambs,and all that is valuable”. All of that belonged to YHWH, but Saul spared it out of greed.

violence whether natural or evil is a part of our universe and it is as pervasive as life itself

Other equally horrifying ideas are those that portray rape,and marriage by force as you mention in your mail but violence whether natural or evil is a part of our universe and it is as pervasive as life itself and human freedom. We know God as both the creator and the Saviour of our violent universe. It is inconceivable that God should not be present in violence and associated with or opposed to violence in different ways.

The reader who is concerned with violence must examine the text carefully in order to percieve precisely how God and violence are related. In the old testament, punishment was often decreed by invoking the ‘lex talionis’ : an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

My knowledege of the Bible is indeed weak but from what I remember of the events leading indirectly to the massacre that you refer to, were :”wicked men of the city surrounded the house of a man who was entertaining a guest and his concubine.The men raped the concubine …abused her throughout the night…she finally died and was left at the door.

Again later on we see : inspite of an oath that anyone who failed to assemble before the Lord at Mizpah would be certainly put to death, the people of Jabesh Gilead in direct confrontation to this oath fail to assemble at the appointed site. They break an oath to stand before God himself. There is a reason therefore that all this plunder and loot is occuring. I don’t think that people living in such a cultural setting would have understood in any other way.

God allowed violence of human nature to extinguish the evil of disobedience.

God allowed violence of human nature to extinguish the evil of disobedience. Perhaps my logic is warped. Perhaps a hundered loop holes can be found in my statements and you may debate every line but, this is the only working way I discovered to try to live with the OT.

You CANNOT lift a scene or an event out from every thing else before and after it with out looking at the events leading to it…without looking for the divine solution that follows the carnage.

Comments, opinions and criticisms, are as always welcome.

Image by rauchdickson