Judges 19-21

[wolfpurplemoon]

Judges has been a pretty grim read, but these last three chapters really up the revulsion.

* A man gives his concubine to a mob and they rape her until she dies. He then cuts her body into 12 parts and sends a part to each tribe of Israel. Which is awful enough.

* They come and ask him why he sent them body parts and he explains, so the tribe that the mob came from (the Benjaminites) is then slaughtered (not without losses for the other tribes though) leaving just 600 men. What the mob did was awful, but the reaction is ridiculously over the top as women and children are included in the slaughter.

* Noone wants to give these 600 men any women to marry, but they can't let a tribe die out so find some virgins in a city of Israel who didn't send any men to join in the slaughter. So everyone is killed expect the 400 virgin women. And then to make up the numbers the rest of the Benjaminites have to kidnap girls from the city of Shiloh.

The excuse for everything that has occurred in Judges seems to be this:

In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

Comments

[zendali.livejournal.com]

Did you notice the similarity with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, Gen.19

I've read that the excuse is a late addition by a deuteronomist, in Deut.12:8 says;
"Ye shall not do after all the things that we do here this day, every man whatsoever is right in his own eyes."

[wolfpurplemoon]

Not sure about the similarities, a lot of what I've read so far has merged into a big blur!

[yukinoomoni.livejournal.com]

Uuuuuuuuuugh I hate Judges. I hate it so much.

[wolfpurplemoon]

I hear you! :)

i hope u find Jesus- the truest friend u will ever love

[(Anonymous)]

I will now have u in my prayers and hope u will come into Jesus' loving embrace. As a shepard holds his new lamb and cares for him his whole life keeping the sheep fed,protected and loved, Jesus offers all of this and the peace that passes ALL understanding-so dont try so hard to ''understand". Can we ever understand that comfort of a lamb of GOD being held tightly and protected from all harm simply because YOU ARE HIS! PRAISE the LORD and be glad of His word-it holds ALL the answers.When you start to believe , you will be hungry for more prayer ,worship and His spirit and love to fill you - the weight of determining a "scientific answer" will NO LONGER MATTER because Christ's love is not scientific ,its supernatural and you will know this the instant He enters your life and makes everything new. May God bless your life- let Him in and you will have peace-that needs no understanding!

Re: i hope u find Jesus- the truest friend u will ever love

[wolfpurplemoon]

I've not got to the Jesus bits of the bible yet, we'll just have to wait and see what I think of those!

Re: i hope u find Jesus- the truest friend u will ever love

[yukinoomoni.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I lol'ed.

I get it now!

[(Anonymous)]

I couldn't understand the lesson behind Judges 19-21. It was very difficult for me to read those chapters, but the way you ended your post lit the light bulb over my head. The Lord has used your post, wolfpurplemoon :) Thank you. Great things seem to be revealed to you! Keep reading.

Re: I get it now!

[wolfpurplemoon]

I don't see that it's a great thing that people without a ruler just go and do awful things, and also I'm not sure that's at all true. If it was then the human species and society would not have survived long at all.

But, thanks for dropping by.

Re: I get it now!

[(Anonymous)]

Keep seeking :) You'll get your answers if you're genuinely looking for them. And when you get your answers, you'll be blown away. And then you're going to meet people with questions. And you'll try to explain, but you won't quite be able to or they won't all understand. It's just something that has to happen in your heart before it happens in your head.

[(Anonymous)]

It does seem a sad thing to think that if we humans didn't have a ruler we would run around and do whatever we wanted but unfortunately that's the case. Today we have laws in place, why do u think we do?how have we survived as a species do u think? We obey laws to survive whether those be the ten commandments (which most of our laws are fundamentally based on) or the rules our communities feel are necessary to protect others and to survive. It's a sad but true fact that we need rules and laws ! Judges just points out that ultimately our ruler is god and if we disobey him then things usually go wrong. Hope this helps x

[wolfpurplemoon]

Yes, there are rules but humans made them! We may be ruled by laws and authority but those authority figures are merely human and have to follow the laws as well. The line from Judges says that the people in Israel did what they wanted because they had no king, who would have been human, not that they did what they wanted because they had no God.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes so you therefore do agree with the verse?
I said ultimately the ruler of everything is god and judges can be viewed in this way. Not that the verse said this but we can see without a ruler/king we do as we want and that can cause chaos. Christians would call god their ruler and king of everything.
I'd argue that our fundamental laws are from god - god gave Moses the ten commandments and are laws today are still based on these, though more are added and changed. Also u may not have come to read it yet but the bible says god puts those in power.

[yukinoomoni.livejournal.com]

In "Judges", it's no secret that the majority of the judges involve actually use the visage of "God" as a mouthpiece, an image and anecdote, for what they, the judges, actually want. By saying that "God is ruler above all" is misinterpreting the entirety of Judges as a text, because in fact the Judges themselves were abuses of the "name of god" when they invoked "him" as their ruler.

The fact of the matter is that there is/was no god, and that these people abused the idea of it to play on people's hopes, dreams and beliefs in order to gain obedience in the name of that god, when really it was more about themselves. using scare tactics, mutilation, murder and rampage, all in the name of this god, was all false; it was in the name of power, for power, for the judges, and god is merely the figurehead, the invisible excuse, to control the populace.

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

Actually, our laws are based on Roman Imperial law, the main text of which was codified by Justinian in the Codex Iuris Civilis in the mid 500s, was rediscovered and adapted in the Middle Ages. Roman law was developed from Greek and other regional legal traditions, not from biblical ones. Even church canon law was derived from the legal tradition of the Empire.

Jewish halakah, or Torah law is based in the OT commandments, all 347 or so of them. In fact, there are three versions of the '10 commandments' in the OT which differ widely.

But even those were not new or unique. Ancient Mesopotamian law codes (like those of Eshnuna, Hammurabi, etc.) predate the biblical commandments, and in most cases were far more sophisticated. Mayan law codes, which were developed entirely independently of 'Western Civilization' are also far more comprehensive and sophisticated than the biblical laws.

Humans make laws because laws are the foundation of society. Society is, almost by definition, the act of surrendering some individual freedoms in exchange for the benefits of living as a group. Laws are the mechanism by which individual needs are balanced with the needs of a group. Period. Even social animals could be said to have 'laws,' or demands upon behavior which are imposed by the group. Single lions, or wolves, for example, exhibit different behaviors than those living in a social group. It has nothing whatsoever to do with god, or gods, or even 'morality.'

In fact, history tends to demonstrate the fact that only when laws (or rulers) are associated with a god or a religious faction do they become monstrous. The reason Roman law became the foundation for law in the western world was that it was an almost purely secular law code, designed to maximize the actual, living , practical benefit to all its citizens while keeping disorder to a minimum (the goal of all societies) It neither sought nor claimed any divine endorsement. It was therefore free to be revised, improved, expanded, as the need arose.

When a legal system or a ruler fancies itself to be somehow divine in origin or sanction, it hovers dangerously near to megalomania, and can no longer see its own shortcomings. It becomes free to murder, plunder, annihilate as it wishes, having, after all, the supposedly highest authority to do so. The violence of the OT reflects this.

[saveau.livejournal.com]

*cough*

[troll]

You are clearly an anti-Semite and a Very Poor Philosopher.

[/troll]

:-P

[(Anonymous)]

I'm sorry, did you have a substantive factual point to discuss? And what part exactly makes me anti-Semetic?

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

(Pardon - I accidentally replied anonymously.)

So tell me, what exactly I said that makes me anti-Semitic? I'm quite interested to know, since I minored in Jewish Studies, and one of my areas or research is the Jewish experience in the middle ages. Did you have a factual point to debate? Do you have a quibble with my history, or is this a personal issue for you?

[mythfish.livejournal.com]

I think that was sarcasm or some other attempt at humor. :)

[saveau.livejournal.com]

There is a group of trolls that hang out in the atheist comms and love to throw those accusations about, especially when someone makes a substantive point (one of their contentions is that to be against religion is inherently anti-Semitic). They then run back to their own comm to congratulate each other for having done so. I was sarcastically imitating them as an ironic salute to your very articulate post. I thought they were sufficiently well-known that the ironic humor would be be self-evident; that they are not so known to you makes me a bit envious of you. I apologize for the misunderstanding.

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

Sorry, and I'm so glad! (I actually went to your profile, and was quite baffled!) I half-wondered if that were the case, but I have gone on the assumption that someone was joking before and been wrong, so.... ROTFL!

Thank you, and I'm glad to meet you!

Roman Law a success?

[(Anonymous)]

And what happened to Rome, the epitome of a "law" state? I would argue that when a legal system or ruler fancies itself to be free of divine sanction or origin, it is doomed to fail. Even worse, if it goes against Israel or blasphemes God.

Re: Roman Law a success?

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

Well, considering that the Christian Church from about 300 or so onward built its own laws on those of Rome, as did what you would no doubt refer to as 'Christendom,' I'd say that Roman law was pretty successful. In fact, all of Christian Europe clung to the idea (to say nothing of the socio-political, legal, and administrative structure) of Rome well past its demise in fact. Given that the last "Holy Roman Emperor" abdicated the throne in 1806, I don't think 'Rome,' in its totality as concept, ideal and methodology was really what one could call doomed.....

Nice try. Why don't you crack a history book once in a while?

[(Anonymous)]

This is what I get from Judges:
Judges shows sin, rape, violence and bloodshed. Why did this happen? The answer is simply because every man was doing that which was right in his own eyes. God's law was set aside (as in OT law- lets not get into where our laws today originate from...we are talking about judges in the bible so it is their law which then was gods law). Each man thought he knew better than his neighbour and even better than God as to how the human race should live. Even the religious leaders in judges taught falsehood and directed people away from the law of God.

Judges depicts how people fell into sin, were enslaved by an oppressor, cried out to god for help and god sent a leader (or judge) to deliver them. At the end of this cycle they were faithful and stable, but it wasn't long before people slipped back into the same vicious cycle.

I have difficulty with judges myself, but from reading it shows me what can happen to a society when its citizens do whatever they choose and blind themselves to the needs of others. It is a good lesson to learn whether you are a believer or not.

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

No, Judges shows a deeply interpreted account of a loose confederacy of patriarchal tribes returning to inter-tribal squabbling in the absence of a strong leader, whereupon a series of bloodthirsty warlords took on the dubious mantle of supposedly divine leadership to make a series of power grabs and brutal offensive as well as defensive wars. At that point in history, the Yawehist sacrificial cult was still rather a small player regionally speaking, and plenty of other cultural groups existed alongside it, cross-pollinating and cross influencing each other. If you think that at this point the 'Israelites' comprised anything like a single, cohesive, socio-political body, you are very mistaken. There were many, many tribes and localized cultural groups shifting throughout the area at the time, and for centuries before and after.

Incidentally (operating on the assumption that this is the same anonymous poster to whom I was earlier replying) you are the one that set out OT law as the foundation for modern law, and therefore tried to spin it into some sort of 'fundamental natural law' which is everywhere acknowledged as the core or human law. As that's incorrect, I addressed it. If you want to have a different discussion that's fine, but you went there.

[vequenor.livejournal.com]

Ah, opinions are wonderful things.