Reply to Did the god of the bible kill people?

Forum Index » Religion

Reply to "Did the god of the bible kill people?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Genesis 38 1-10.  This on baffles me to no end (new International Version)

Judah and Tamar

1 At that time, Judah left his brothers and went down to stay with a man of Adullam named Hirah.
2 There Judah met the daughter of a Canaanite man named Shua. He married her and made love to her;
3 she became pregnant and gave birth to a son, who was named Er.
4 She conceived again and gave birth to a son and named him Onan.
5 She gave birth to still another son and named him Shelah. It was at Kezib that she gave birth to him.
6 Judah got a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar.
7 [b]But Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the LORD’s sight; so the LORD put him to death.[/b]
8 Then Judah said to Onan, “Sleep with your brother’s wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to raise up offspring for your brother.”
9 But Onan knew that the child would not be his; so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother.
[b]10 What he did was wicked in the LORD’s sight; so the LORD put him to death also.[/b]

Two kills right there, one completely random and inexplicable, the other highly dubious to say the least[/quote]

Not quite. [b]The killing of Er was not “random.”  God killed Er because Er was evil, [/b]although what evil things things Er did is reported only in the Midrash, not in the Bible. There’s nothing “dubious” about God’s killing of Onan. Ancient Jews practiced levirite marriage, according to which if a married son dies without offspring and the dead man has a younger brother, the brother must marry the widow and produce a son. The son would be considered the son of the deceased brother and would displace the biological father in the line of inheritance. This was a very bad deal for the deceased’s younger brother, who would have to expend his own resources to raise a son who would displace him. Levirite marriage is codified in Deuteronomy 25:5-10. By the time Deuteronomy was written, the practice of “halitzah” had been established. With “halitzah,” the younger son is allowed to refuse to marry the widow, but this is considered dishonorable. Under halitzah, the younger son and the widow go before the elders, the younger son says he does not want to marry the widow, the widow then castigates the younger son as dishonorable and spits in the younger son’s face. But in the time of Genesis, halitzah did not yet exist and the younger son was absolutely obligated to have a son with his older brother’s widow. Failure to do so merited death. Ashkenazi Judaism ceased to follow levirite marriage long ago but it is still practiced in some Sephardic communities. [/quote]

How? You're not even the slightest bit curious what he did?  And the passage doesn't say he was evil. It says he was "wicked in the LORD's sight."  So God killed people who did stuff he didn't like.  And he created them BTW. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics