I have a bad habit. I like to read the comments people leave on news websites. Often the comments are intelligent and well reasoned, even if I disagree with them.
I came across a comment on the article that I wrote on previously which attracted my notice. The commenter was attempting to give a reason why the Bible should not be taught to children. The specific part that attracted my notice was “Numbers 31:7-18 (Moses and God approves of rape of virgins girls)”.
I was surprised that God would order the rape of virgin girls so being a naturally curious man I did what anyone would do. I googled the verse. Which lead me to the King James Version located here.
The general gist of the verses is this: there’s a war between Israel and Midian (the cause happens several chapters earlier, Midianites were trying to turn the Israelites to their religion and also seemed to carry a plague which wiped out a large number of Israelites) and the Israelites win, they completely destroy the Midianites. They take the women, children, livestock, gold, jewels, etc. back to Moses. Moses is ticked off, the army was supposed to kill all of the Midianites in punishment for what they did. He orders all of the boys killed and all of the non virgin women killed, and the younger women taken as wives.
Yeah, by today’s morality that seems a bit wrong. We get the whole plunder thing, and the taking the livestock thing. We might even be able to understand the killing of the boys and older women thing (since apparently the women were heavily involved in the attempts to sway the Israelites away from God). But lets look at the last part. Now first of all the verse says nothing about rape. It does imply that the girls will be taken as wives though, which I suppose can then be extended to be allowing marital rape.
This though is examining it by today’s morality. I live in an area where less than 500 years ago it was common to get your wife via war. You would be part of a raid on the neighbouring nation and in the course of that raid you would kidnap yourself a wife.
Numbers is believed to have been written either as early as 1400 B.C. or sometime between 1200 and 400 B.C. Regardless it describes events which take place in the 1400s B.C. 3000 years later there were still cultures following the practice of getting your wives via military conquest.
Moses’ allowing of the Israelites to take their wives in war may seem inappropriate to today’s audience, but you need to think about what the moral beliefs were at the time.
ps. I didn’t seem to find any mention of the order coming from God, it seems to have been all Moses’ idea.
1 Comment
March 3, 2009 at 11:20 pm