So if they are consistent then everything is OK? The killing destroying does not bother you once he kills consistently. But you yourself says the laws change from the OT times to the NT times. SO he can't really be that consistent.
You need to decide what your argument is. If you want to say 'I don't like it', you'll need to discuss with someone else. I have no access to what you will or won't like and nor do I expect this to tell me what is true about reality.
If you want to talk about whether the Christian God exists, then finding an inconsistency in how he reveals himself might demonstrate that he doesn't exist.
And a change in law doesn't mean that God isn't consistent. He could be consistent and give different laws to different people to achieve different purposes for those people.
Vengeance means revenge. Not punishment.
I was going by the dictionary:
Main Entry:
ven?geance Listen to the pronunciation of vengeance
Pronunciation:
\ˈven-jən(t)s\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Middle English, from Anglo-French, from venger to avenge, from Latin vindicare to lay claim to, avenge ? more at vindicate
Date:
14th century
: punishment inflicted in retaliation for an injury or offense : retribution
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vengeance]
[url]http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vengeance[/url]
God says he is taking out vengeance in other words violent revenge. Its as if the people rubbed god the wrong way and he really had to get back at them.
Not according to the dictionary.
Anyway What was the offence that the Midianites committed to be hounded down and destoyed in such a manner?
I suspect it was partly the evil in their society and partly the effect they had on the Israelites when they introduced polytheism to them and many Israelites suffered from a plague as a result.
But it wasn't god taking out the vengeance. It was humans. The Israelites. On the hearsay of a man named Moses who claimed god was speaking to him. He could have spoken to Moses just the same way he spoke to David Koresh or Jim Jones or any crackpot who might hear voices.
Which is a whole other argument. Needless to say, as a Christian, I do think God did the commanding - taking the word of Jesus that the Old Testament record was a reliable guide to God's intervention in Jewish history.
So if a Hindu moved in next door to you with her idols of Krishna and Shiva would your God feel it necessary to protect you from her idolatrous influences? Would he speak to you and advise you to kill her and her children but request you spare her virgin daughter for you to keep as booty?
And again, you veer off into irrelevancies. This isn't about me.
So what offends god so that we need to go to such extents to eradicate it? We really need to know. As I need to take precautions cos I don't want an army of Jehovah's soldiers entering my house killing us all all taking my daughter and other booty because I unintentionally offended him.
Yeah. Do you have anything else to say about the passage?
Well it was taken as God's share. Why do the priests need virgin girls? Today the catholic church may prefer the boys. But why virgins? What are the priests going to do with them? Couldn't god have kept the women to be servants for the priests, why kill them and the boys?
Jewish priests were not celibate. They could, and did, marry. I suspect some of the virgins were married to them.
The women were those that had led the Israelites into polytheism and I suspect they felt the boys might grow up to fight against them but the text doesn't really say.
Topic: Readings from the "Holy Book"