PJ Media

I realize people think the Bible has many htings about genocide and it does, but that does not mean it is a homogeneous book. My opinion you probably would not understand so I won’t say it. The point is you cannot use the parts of it that are for such things to say that God wants those things in the earth so obviously it must be wrong. You can say that God would not do that, but apparently none of the prophets took the Mosaic tradition as meaning anything like that so I don’t know what you might think about that.

Amos 9:7 clearly says that God is Lord over all the earth and protects everyone. He brought the Philistines up from kapphtor along with the cushites just as he brought the Israelites out of Egypt. This would have been in the seventh century. Jonah obviously preached to the ninevites even though they were Israel’s enemy. Elisha did not have the arameans desetroyed when they were captured by the cupernatural power of God, but let them see that power and let them go.

Ezekiel 32 says that everyone who spread terror in the earth will go down to the pit in shame. It also says that ezekiel should weep and pray for them. It often says weep and pray over moab and other areas.

Lamentations says that God does not approve of anyone oppressing anyone. Nor does he willingly afflict anyone. It says to deny a man his rights before the Most High is not hidden from him.

The Psalms say this. Psalm 76 specifically says that God protects the poor in all the world. Obviously there are the prophecies of bringing peace to all people.

Then one looks at the history of David’s reign. People like to say that David just wanted to conquer and was a most horrible person. That’s funny, he apparently conquered the two smallest states in the world which probably brought an economic bounty of crap. If one looks at Moab and Edom one will see that they together are about a quarter of the size of Israel together. The other wars were fought against an old enemy called the ammonites who had fought Israel just a few years before. They then blatantly insulted David’s ambassadors and brought troops against Israel, knowing that he would attack since they probably were going to. I do not know how else one would read it. Earlier, according to one historian I read, David had peacefully brought in the Philistines, conquering one city. He earlier conquered Jebus which became Jerusalem, and did not put anyone to death, but apparently they accepted YHWH. That can be seen because of Araunah the Jebusite at the time of the plague when he gave david his field for the building of the temple. The Jebusites were canaanites and were supposed to be killed. Apparently Araunah was not even a slave. There was also a Biblical injunction to destroy Tyre and Sidon, and I guess all of Phoenicia, coming from Joshua. Yet David has an alliance with Tyre. Hiram king of Tyre makes the temple for Solomon. Why would the people who put the final form of the Bible together put that in there, if it was a big deal why was it not left out of other editions, since we know that there were fuller editions of the Bible circulating until finally they settled on the Masoretic text?

The conquering of Damascus comes because of self defense in the war against Ammon. The Arameans had fought to ruin Israel along with Ammon. If David wanted to conquer everyone why did he leave the bigger of the countries which was Ammon and even want peace with it. In fact, the Bible says that David was extremely mad that they did not accept his offer of peace meaning he expected them to attack. Why wouldn’t he, they already had done that in the time of Saul. It’s pretty stupid anything else.

finally those who wrote the whole thing after the exile, apparently saw fit to say that God does not think worship of himself has anything to do with violence. Israel had just become a great country after the time of David, but God tells him he cannot build the temple because he has shed much blood. Solomon builds the temple and is a man of peace. This is what proclaims God’s glory in the world because at the end of I Chronicles David says the temple must be glorious so all the people’s of the world will see it. God gave Solomon wisdom because of his glory and this is what Sheba sees as the thing that is most wonderful. God’s glory is in the peace that God gave Israel through God’s wisdom.

People say that Solomon was an oppressor, so just in case I’ll answer that. What the Bible says makes mroe sense than anything else. It does included the fact of the forced labor of the Israelites when the Northern tribes revolt, but still this still was not permanent. ISrael had all kinds of money during this time, even the farmers fields were overflowing with produce because of the iron tools they were then using. silver was as common as stones in Jerusalem. So I guess Solomon did oppress a little, but it was temporary and still only four months out of the year. There were other people among the people who the Israelites had not killed in the genocides that were forced laborers all the time.

The people of Israel did not care much about keeping their empire because they obviously did not fight to keep it, but instead they split the country into two. Those in Judah did not go try to bring the country back together, but instead, after going out to war went back home because a prophet said it was from the Lord.

It’s not all about violence.