One example is Numbers 31:1-54.
I know you are going to say it doesn't say "The Lord commanded them to rape the virgins." But explain it any other rational way.
On The Way Out,
You are right I would. Your charges are demonstrateably false. Please read ALL of the cited material below and explain to me which parts you don't understand. (Taken from Christian Think-Tank)
First of all, let’s look at the specific text they are referring to, in Numbers 31:
Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Take full vengeance for the sons of Israel on the Midianites; afterward you will be gathered to your people.” And Moses spoke to the people, saying, “Arm men from among you for the war, that they may go against Midian, to execute the Lord’s vengeance on Midian. “A thousand from each tribe of all the tribes of Israel you shall send to the war.” So there were furnished from the thousands of Israel, a thousand from each tribe, twelve thousand armed for war. And Moses sent them, a thousand from each tribe, to the war, and Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest, to the war with them, and the holy vessels and the trumpets for the alarm in his hand. So they made war against Midian, just as the Lord had commanded Moses, and they killed every male. And they killed the kings of Midian along with the rest of their slain: Evi and Rekem and Zur and Hur and Reba, the five kings of Midian; they also killed Balaam the son of Beor with the sword. And the sons of Israel captured the women of Midian and their little ones; and all their cattle and all their flocks and all their goods, they plundered. Then they burned all their cities where they lived and all their camps with fire. And they took all the spoil and all the prey, both of man and of beast. And they brought the captives and the prey and the spoil to Moses, and to Eleazar the priest and to the congregation of the sons of Israel, to the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by the Jordan opposite Jericho.
And Moses and Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the congregation went out to meet them outside the camp. And Moses was angry with the officers of the army, the captains of thousands and the captains of hundreds, who had come from service in the war. And Moses said to them, “Have you spared all the women? “Behold, these caused the sons of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, so the plague was among the congregation of the Lord. “Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately. “But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves. “And you, camp outside the camp seven days; whoever has killed any person, and whoever has touched any slain, purify yourselves, you and your captives, on the third day and on the seventh day. “And you shall purify for yourselves every garment and every article of leather and all the work of goats’ hair, and all articles of wood.”
And the division of the ‘booty’:
Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “You and Eleazar the priest and the heads of the fathers’ households of the congregation, take a count of the booty that was captured, both of man and of animal; and divide the booty between the warriors who went out to battle and all the congregation. “And levy a tax for the Lord from the men of war who went out to battle, one in five hundred of the persons and of the cattle and of the donkeys and of the sheep; take it from their half and give it to Eleazar the priest, as an offering to the Lord. “And from the sons of Israel’s half, you shall take one drawn out of every fifty of the persons, of the cattle, of the donkeys and of the sheep, from all the animals, and give them to the Levites who keep charge of the tabernacle of the Lord.” And Moses and Eleazar the priest did just as the Lord had commanded Moses.Now the booty that remained from the spoil which the men of war had plundered was 675,000 sheep, and 72,000 cattle, and 61,000 donkeys, and of human beings, of the women who had not known man intimately, all the persons were 32,000. And the half, the portion of those who went out to war, was as follows: the number of sheep was 337,500, and the Lord’s levy of the sheep was 675, and the cattle were 36,000, from which the Lord’s levy was 72. And the donkeys were 30,500, from which the Lord’s levy was 61. And the human beings were 16,000, from whom the Lord’s levy was 32 persons. And Moses gave the levy which was the Lord’s offering to Eleazar the priest, just as the Lord had commanded Moses. (Num 31.26ff)
……………….
Now, first let me dispose of a couple of the historical mistakes made by the objections mentioned above, and then we can get on to analyzing the severity of the actual event.
First of all, there was no ‘test for virginity’ needed/used. In spite of the elaborate/miraculous one created by the later rabbi’s (ingenious, but altogether unnecessary) using the Urim and Thummim (!), the ‘test for virginity’ in the ANE was a simple visual one:
- Was the female pre-pubescent?
- Was the female wearing any attire, jewelry, or adornments required for/associated with virginity for that culture?
- Was the female wearing any attire, jewelry, or adornments required for/associated with non-virginity for that culture (e.g., veil indicating married status)?
Because virginity was generally associated with legal proof for blood-inheritance issues in ancient cultures (e.g., land, property, kinship, relationships), virginity itself was often marked by some type of clothing (e.g., the robe of Tamar in 2 Sam 13) or by cosmetic means (cf. the Hindu ‘pre-marriage dot’); as was more typically non-virginal married status (e.g., veils, headwear, jewelry, or certain hairstyles). Of course, non-virginal unmarried status (e.g., temple prostitutes and secular prostitutes) were also indicated by special markings or adornments (e.g. jewelry, dress—cf. Proverbs 7.10; Hos 2.4-5).
For example, the erotic art of the ANE shows a consistent difference in hairstyles between women and sacred prostitutes:
“In fact, the physical characteristics of the women on the [erotic] plaques are totally different from those of other female representations in Mesopotamian and Syrian art. As with the clay figurines, they are frequently naked and their hair is loose—none of these traits is to be found in statues or seals that represent women...These groups [associations of cultic prostitutes] were defined by a generic name [the ‘separated ones’], while their specific names of individual associations hinted at their garments, which were particularly luxurious, or odd, their coiffure, or to their general appearance, which distinguished them from other women.” [OT:CANE:2526]
Some of these patterns varied by culture/age:
“Once married, women were not veiled in Babylonia. Legal texts imply that married women were veiled in Assyria.” [OT:DLAM:135]
“The bride was covered with a veil that the groom removed. Married women were not veiled in Babylonia but seem to have had a special headgear; legal texts, however, suggest that married women were veiled in Assyria.” [OT:CANE:489]
In other words, the process of identifying the females who were (a) not married and (b) not prostitutes, either sacred or secular, would have been relatively straightforward—at the precision level required by the event.
Secondly, the accusation that these girls were for “sex slave” purposes contradicts what we know about the culture and about the event. [But at least one of the writers above--to their credit--added the word ‘presumably’, realizing that the text doesn’t actually say anything about it…]
1. Most girls were married soon/immediately after they began menstruating in the ANE (circa 12 years of age), and since infant and child mortality was so high, the average age of the girls spared would have been around 5 years of age or slightly lower (life expectancy wasn’t a straight line, with childhood risks so high). Of all the horrible things ascribed to Israel in the OT, pedophilia is the one conspicuous omission. That these little kids would have been even considered as ‘sex slaves’ seems quite incongruent with their ages.
And, at this tender age, they would not have been very useful as ‘slaves’ at all! Children raised in Israelite households were ‘put to work’ around this age, sometimes doing light chores to help the mother for up to four hours per day by the age of 7 or 8 [OT:FAI:27], but 5 is still a bit young. Instead, the Israelite families would have had to feed, clothe, train, care, protect, and shelter them for several years before they could make much contribution to the family’s existence and survival. [Also note that ‘slavery’ in the ANE/OT generally means something quite different from “New World” slavery, which we normally associate with the world ‘slavery’, and most of what is called that in popular literature should not be so termed. See qnoslave.html for the discussion and documentation.]
2. Unlike the Greeks and Romans, the ANE was not very ‘into’ using slaves/captives for sexual purposes, even though scholars earlier taught this:
“During the pinnacle of Sumerian culture, female slaves outnumbered male. Their owners used them primarily for spinning and weaving. Saggs maintains that their owners also used them for sex, but there is little actual evidence to support such a claim” [OT:EML:69]
3. And the Hebrews were different in this regard ANYWAY:
“This fidelity and exclusivity [demands on the wife] did not apply to the husband. Except among the Hebrews, where a husband’s infidelity was disparaged in the centuries after 800 BC, a double standard prevailed, and husbands were routinely expected to have sex not only with their wives, but with slavewomen and prostitutes.” [WS:AHTO:39; note: I would disagree with the remark about ‘after 800 bc’ because that dating presupposes a very late date for the composition of the narratives under discussion…If the narrative events occurred closer to the purposed times, then this ‘disparagement’ applied earlier in Israel as well as later.]
4. Even if we allow the age range to be older, to include girls capable of bearing children, the probability is that it was not sex-motivated, but population/economics-motivated, as Carol Meyers points out [“The Roots of Restriction: Women in Early Israel”, Biblical Archaeologist, vol 41):
“Beyond this, however, the intensified need for female participation in working out the Mosaic revolution in the early Israelite period can be seen in the Bible. Looking again at Numbers 31, an exception to the total purge of the Midianite population is to be noted. In addition to the metal objects which were exempt from utter destruction, so too were the “young girls who have not known man by lying with him” (Num 31:18). These captives, however, were not immediately brought into the Israelite camp. Instead, they and their captors were kept outside the camp for seven days in a kind of quarantine period. (Note that the usual incubation period for the kinds of infectious diseases which could conceivably have existed in this situation is two or three to six days [Eickhoff 1977].) Afterward, they thoroughly washed themselves and all their clothing before they entered the camp. This incident is hardly an expression of lascivious male behavior; rather, it reflects the desperate need for women of childbearing age, a need so extreme that the utter destruction of the Midianite foes—and the prevention of death by plague—as required by the law of the herem could be waived in the interest of sparing the young women. The Israelites weighed the life-death balance, and the need for females of childbearing age took precedence.”
[But note that the traditional rabbinic interpretation of the passage is that all females which were capable of bearing children were killed—not just those who actually were non-virginal. This would drive the average age quite low, although the Hebrew text offers only limited support at best for their interpretation.]
[I should also point out that the “for yourselves” phrase (31.18) is NOT actually referring to “for your pleasure”, but is a reference to the opposite condition of “for YHWH” which applied to all people or property which was theoretically supposed to be destroyed in such combat situations. The herem (or ‘ban’) specifically indicated that all enemy people or property which was ‘delivered over to YHWH’ was to be killed/destroyed. By referring to ‘for yourselves’, then, in this passage, means simply ‘do not kill them’. This can also be seen in that this ‘booty’ was not ‘for themselves’ actually, but was distributed to others within the community.]
Third, the accusation that the Midianites were singled out for destruction “because the Midianites worshiped a deity named Baal Peor” is not at all present in the text (actually, NO reason is given in this passage). In fact, the reason for the warfare is explicitly given in 25.16ff as the unprovoked hostility and treachery of Moab/Midian (which we will look at in detail below):
“The LORD said to Moses, 17 “Treat the Midianites as enemies and kill them, 18 because they treated you as enemies when they deceived you in the affair of Peor and their sister Cozbi, the daughter of a Midianite leader, the woman who was killed when the plague came as a result of Peor.”
The reasons are stated in this passage as (1) hostilities taken by the Midianites; and (2) deception of Israel by them, in the ‘affair of Peor’. Nothing at all is said about treating them as enemies because they worshipped a different god…
So, at least we should see that some of the accusation elements above are contra-indicated by the data. There was no need for ‘virginity testing’; rape and sexual slavery is not in the passage at all; and the reason for the combat is not ‘disagreement over religious terminology’…
Rest of Article
