Inerrancy and mass slaughter

I want to move past this particular topic as it is a bit of a rabbit trail… one last observation and I will move on to other topics, else we need to start a separate thread.

I would observe that anything “sexual” in nature in Numbers 31 is a result of assumptions and imagination one brings to the text. The girls are to be “kept for yourselves.” That could mean lots of things, but one thing pretty obvious it does not mean is “for immediate sexual use.”

Clearly, if the only girls left alive were those who had not reached sexual maturity (“not known a man by lying with him”) we are talking about a group of female children that even the pagan Midianites recognized were too young for sex. If so, then to answer Christy’s question (“What do you think virgins taken as plunder were used for?”)… servant girls, I would imagine in all likelihood. Certainly not for sex, at least not anytime soon after said conquest.

Christy’s and others language, whether intentional or not, seems to portray a situation wherein each of these children (which includes the infants and toddlers) was immediately used for sex… perhaps within days carted off to some man’s house after an immediate marriage ceremony and had conjugal sex forced on them against their will, the tears of losing their father and mother not yet dry.

For the vast majority of these survivors, we would be talking about marriages (assuming they married) only after years of holding some entirely different status, of having had years to assimilate and adapt to their new culture and go through a process of betrothal perhaps not dissimilar to any other young Hebrew maiden or at least a Hebrew household servant girl. I have no idea what that specific status was. I would imagine as household servants for those children old enough, for the much younger, perhaps cared for within individual households. But the one thing they were not immediately going to be was wives - They were simply too young for that. whatever “kept for yourselves” meant, the one thing it could not mean was “for immediate marriages” or “for immediate sexual purposes.” Interpreting Numbers 31 in the darkest and most uncharitable way, one could at most say that sexual use of these girls may have been the long-term objective.

But even on this most uncharitable reading… keeping a 3 year old girl alive even on the sole expectation that, when she is old enough, she may be a good marriage prospect for an Israelite man someday… does not fit within my definition of ”rape.”

If we insist on critiquing the entirety of Israel’s marriage customs, especially involving captive women, as institutionalized rape, I am not interested in arguing that point further, as to my reading it requires far too many assumptions and uncharitable interpretations and unwarranted comparisons with other worst-case practices, and seems to me quite ethnocentric. But if one wants to so understand it as such, then by all means please feel free, I will not argue that point here.

I will observe, though, that the one time that such purported institutionalized rape did not occur was in the immediate aftermath of Midian’s conquest as recorded in Numbers 31. All the women old enough to have had such supposed institutionalized rape forced on them had been killed. If such purported institutionalized rape did ever happen to the Midianite girls, it would not happen until quite some time - years in most cases - after the events recorded in Numbers 31.

Thus I maintain that “rape” by any conceivable definition can simply not be found in Numbers 31 on any fair reading. What they did was bring home a train of captive children.

And to borrow from Herodotus, “So much for Numbers 31.”

That’s the crux of the issue though isn’t it? Was Moses using his God-given authority to institute what he thought was the best scenario or was he relaying a divine command he received directly from God?

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No, we aren’t talking about children. In Num. 31: 18, the Hebrew is haṭ·ṭap̄ ban·nā·šîm “the young women.” In Num 31:35 the Hebrew is 32,000 han·nā·šîm “women.” Not girls. Not infants. Talk about bringing assumptions to the text. How does a “woman who has not slept with a man” equal a pre-pubescent child? Women are, by definition, post-pubescent. And I’m fine to let the rabbit trail die. :slight_smile:

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Some of several Moses cartoons I found on the Internet–

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???

Christy, I don’t know how to respond politely. This is completely erroneous. I’ll bite one more time, if only to debate the Hebrew.

haṭ·ṭap̄ (ṭap̄) means “children.” I’m not sure what more needs to be discussed… So yes, we’re talking about children.

but in case that isn’t clear enough…

  • “haṭ·ṭap̄” (הַטַּף) (which is simply ṭap̄ with the He (“the”) prefix) simply means “children.” This is not remotely disputable. We are most certainly talking about “children.” The same word is used in v. 17, the very verse preceding, along with “male”, to specify they were to kill all the male children. (כָל-זָכָרבַּטָּף, literally “all the males within the children”, using the Beth (“in/within”) prefix to specify the males within the larger category of “children”)

  • conversely, v. 18 also uses the Bēth prefix, Beth with nashim (women), to specify you are to take the hattap/children of/from the nashim/women. Nashim is include pd here to specify/modify what kind of children: women children as some translations use,

Every use of (hat)tap that I could find, without exception, is translated as “children”, “little children,” or “little ones”. The only exception being here in num31, where the fact that it is describing only female children, is thus translated “little girls,” “women children,” or the like…

Of the 51 translations available at Biblegateway (Numbers 31:18 - Bible Gateway)…

  • 17 translate hattap banashim as young girls,
  • 16 translate it as simply girls
  • 6 as women children or women-children,
  • 3 as young women
  • 2 as young female
  • 1 as female children
  • 1 as women
  • 1 as females
  • 1 as little girls
  • 1 used a hyper literal the children among the women
  • And 1 used an odd infants among the women

Even the reliably progressive NRSV goes with “young girls.”

As for the scholarly lexicon…

https://biblehub.com/str/hebrew/2945.htm

The standard Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew Lexicon gives all this under ṭap̄, specifying the word unambiguously means children, and including clarifications of the 2 gender-specific formulations in Numbers 31 that adjust the translation to “young boys” and “young girls” respectively…

Brown-Driver-Briggs

טַף42 noun masculine collective children (as going with quick, tripping steps; Ethiopic Di1251) — טַףJeremiah 41:16 11t.; טָ֑ף Jeremiah 40:7 5t.; suffix טַמֵּנוּGenesis 43:8 5t.; טַמְּכֶם Genesis 45:19 10t.; טַמָּם Genesis 34:29 6t.; never construct and never plural (in Genesis 47:24omitted by ᵐ5, compare Di); — children, little ones , Genesis 34:29 (E) + 18 t. J E (Genesis Exodus Numbers), also Deuteronomy 1:39 8t. D (including Joshua 1:14; Joshua 8:35); P only Numbers 31:9,17,18, where note זָכָר בַּטָּ֑ףNumbers 31:17 = young boys , and הַטַף בַּנָּשִׁים Numbers 31:18 = young girls

—————

So yes, we are most certainly talking about children. Yes, “girls.”

Is there anything further to discuss? Besides who it is that may be bringing said assumptions to the text?

I do learn things from you–and while I’m not sure of who’s correct on the “virgin” thing (I’d like to review how we interpret those roots in our Bibles, eg the Isaiah “virgin shall be with child”), that would make me feel better if so. It doesn’t take all the problem away, but lessens the problem in one instance. Thank you.

I’m puzzled here. I am curious why that would be so? Because drowning and instant death (presumably, from an angel) are less painful? Because many of us die, every day, and attribute it in part to God? I hadn’t thought of that fully enough. God doesn’t rejoice in the death of the wicked (still less in the death of the innocent), so I know He wouldn’t be happy in any case–but it’s an interesting psychological phenomenon, as the protagonist says in “The Gods Must Be Crazy” (which I highly recommend, by the way).

Back to the main course–I’m happy to “read” Packer (actually, Randal Rauser recommended one of his pamphlets to me) but can’t do that by regular reading. What do you think of the “Taking God Seriously”?

Randy, I obviously know nothing about it, but am reading a book written by a Jewish rabbi,Moshe Avraham Kempinski, discussing Isaiah 7:14 where he states," (the Christian) translation of the word almah is virgin while the (Jewish) is “young woman” or “maiden” . The Hebrew word bitulah means ‘a virgin.’ " He goes on to discuss it further, He also takes issue with how the Septuagint was translated, with it being unknown who did the translation of Isaiah, and bias may have been present.
So, different word, but still a conflict in translation. This translation stuff is hard.

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I take it all back that v. 18 does not include children!

But there is no chidren/young modifier in the verse about the plunder (35), just the word for women, so I am entirely unconvinced that this group referred to only pre-pubescent women. Especially when you combine it with the Deuteronomy passage that had specific instructions about what to do when the men sexually desired one of the captives.

This is largely true… almah generally means young maiden (and can mean virgin depending in context)… except he errs in attributing it to Christian interpretation. The authors of the Septuagint some 200 years BC used the Greek word for “virgin.” So Christians that translate Is 7:14 as “virgin” are following the precedent of respected Jewish scholars…

But there is no ambiguity whatsoever that tap means “children.”

Except that he states the known rabbis only translated the 5 Books of Moses, and it is unknown who translated Isaiah into Greek, thus it lacks the provenance of the former.

There doesn’t need to be. They already clarified who was alive and who was dead.

Look, language is a bit more fluid than that where you must make one word only have one connotation or exact referrent. the word for women is a general term as should be obvious… In v17-18, there was a distinction made between two Groups of “women”:

  1. Women” who had known a man, and

  2. Women” (נָּשִׁים / nashim) who were children (טַּף / taph) and had not known a man.

And yes, in v 35, it references those same women who were still alive, and uses the same word for those “women” (נָּשִׁים / nashim) that was used of that same group in v 18.

Besides the language involved, basic reading principles and context says that this group of “women” (נָּשִׁים / nashim) in verse 35 is the same group as the “women” (נָּשִׁים / nashim) in verse 18, since all the other women were dead.

?

Why in the world would you reframe the rather courteous language of Deut 28 into that crass paraphrase?

Deuteronomy spoke in rather polite language of a man simply finding a captive woman beautiful and desiring her as a wife, and you rephrase that quite uncharitably as the crass and uncharitable “the men sexually desired one of the captives…”

And you think I’m the one importing assumptions or an agenda into the Scripture here?

Sure, my only point is that, whoever translated Isaiah into Greek somewhere around 200-150 BC, and chose the “virgin” word… it wasn’t a Christian… no?

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Because that is what I think it is talking about euphemistically. Isn’t that what finding a woman beautiful and “desiring her as a wife” is about? I find it hard to imagine that they were making these beauty judgments based on the captive woman’s charming personality and sense of humor. They probably didn’t even speak the same language.

Plus it is a further indication that the women taken captive were of marriageable age (within a month), not toddlers.

Perhaps, but it is not in the text. I think we can agree who is importing assumptions into the text here, then.

This should not even require discussion… but Deuteronomy’s general guideline on how to marry captive women has absolutely no bearing on the age of the children in Numbers 31… especially considering by any interpretation (critical, traditional, Jewish, evangelical), Deuteronomy was written well after the time of the events recorded in Numbers 31.

And spoke to their way of life. It did not introduce the idea of marrying conquered slaves into a cultural vacuum.

I had to look it up as I’m not familiar with that work of his. I’d recommend any book of Packer, but from looking over it’s table of contents, this book doesn’t really touch so much on the particular topics of our discussion.

For our purposes I’d much more strongly recommend “Knowing God.” He addresses two significant items we’re discussing… the character of God when it comes to questions of wrath and retribution, and God speaking through his written word. Not nearly the fuller treatment in “God has spoken,” but in general I think it would be profitable for our discussion.

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Great, I’ve been wanting to read that. My mom has a copy; but I’ll try to listen. I am sorry-- I could not find the other book you suggested on audio anywhere, even CBD.com. Thanks.

No worries. I just started to listen to it again myself. Audible is amazing.

In other news, I’m trying to write some things to wrap up our larger discussion… not to end it per se, but to consolidate where we’ve gone and lay out in a focused way my perspective, based on all the discussions thus far. I apologize in advance for the length, brevity as you’ve noticed is not my strength.

Once I’m done I’ll post 3-4 posts together sometime over the next few days. Also, as I’ve been swamped, please let me know if any outstanding questions you’ve asked me that I haven’t addressed, seemed like there may have been but I can’t recall at present.

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Thank you for your willingness to go with the other book. I, too, enjoy Audible (though I enjoy reading a paper book sometimes, too).

Why, yes, thank you for reminding me–the more I think about it, the more it seems to be a fruitful question–at least, potentially. Earlier, we’d discussed the Euthyphro dilemma–does God draw a line at behavior? For example, would there be an action He would not make us do? It seemed that rape was one that we agreed on, though not killing children.

  1. Does God follow a moral code?
  2. If so, there’s the Epicurean dilemma–if He’s good, He can’t be all powerful, because everything (death to the innocent, rape, etc) occurs. But, what are exceptions that would allow Him to be all-powerful and good? Allowing for personal choice, the Fall, Satan, a fallen creation that groans–these imply that He could have chosen to avoid intervention (Oord seems to have something to say on this that would fit with evolution, and not with the YEC theology).

But if we would do anything He said, and He asked us to do something we agree is evil, like rape?

How would we differentiate Him from Satan? Not to make it too crass, but would the only difference be the degree of strength?

Thank you for the thoughts. I appreciate your impression.

And no amount of spin can hide the fact that it was not done at God’s command but rather written as an excuse of gross immorality by someone skilled at passing it on to future generations.
Al Leo