by
Keith Hunt
Can a Christian be part of a nation's war killing machine?
If so, then of course it stands to reason that they can also be
part of a "churches" war killing machine. And they say there have
been more "religious wars" down through the centuries than any
other kind.
Those who claim that a New Covenant Christian can be
enlisted in the army and go out to fight and kill, will quote
from the Old Testament. They will quote and remind you of people
like king David of ancient Israel, being a war fighting man. They
will as we saw in part two, quote from passages like Psalm 144:1.
But they often, either from not reading the whole Old
Testament, or from deliberate trying to deceive and lead you to
their way of thinking and I suppose acting in real life, stay
completely away from the recorded fact of the OT that God Himself
would not let David build the Temple for Himself, because as the
Lord said to David, "You are a bloody man." We shall see later
just how bloody indeed he was.
Well there are a number of other things done in the OT,
ALLOWED to be done, by God, that will blow you away. We need to
be able to look at them, though I warn you, you better have a
good stomach. We need to look at them and ask some questions
pertaining for those who today are under the New Covenant age.
Members of churches and their leaders of the Christian religion
need to ask themselves some important questions about what we
shall now discover was ALLOWED to be done by Old Covenant people
of God.
From the book "Journey from Eden" by Kevin James Aaron, under his
chapter called "Rape, Mutilation, and Perversion."
"Even today it would make a bizarre newspaper headline:
PREACHER'S WIFE RAPED!
The story would grow even more bizarre as the details
unfold. It was a gang rape.
The gang was composed of numerous sex perverts. The preacher
gave them permission to rape her. The rape resulted in her death.
The preacher cut her body into twelve pieces and mailed them to
various parts of the country!
Actually the man was a Levite - thus some type of religious
worker - and the woman was a secondary wife, a concubine. But
otherwise, all the details are there - in the Bible.
To begin with, we read that this man's 'concubine' played
the whore against him, and went away from him unto her father's
house' (Judges 19:2). The Vugate simply says she left him; the
Septuagint that she was angry with him; the Targum that she
despised him; Josephus that she was alienated from him. Whatever
the case may have been, the woman had gone to her father's house.
Four months later the Levite went to get her.
As they returned, while spending the night with an old man
in Gibeah, a group of homosexuals surrounded the house demanding
that they 'know,' that is, have sex, with the Levite: 'Now as
they were making their hearts merry, behold, the men of the city,
certain sons of Belial, beset the house round about, and beat at
the door, and spake to the master of the house, the old man,
saying, Bring forth the man that came into thine house, that we
may KNOW him' (Judges 19:22).
In the same words that Lot had used in a similar situation
many years before, the old man answered: 'Nay, my brethren, nay,
I pray you, do not so wickedly.' But what he did instead was
utterly wicked: he offered his own daughter and the man's
concubine to this gang!
'Behold, here is my daughter a maiden, and his concubine;
them I will bring out now, and humble you them, and DO WITH THEM
WHAT SEEMS GOOD UNTO YOU: but unto this man do not so vile a
thing' (Judges 19:24).
Our words fail to properly express the crudeness of the
reasoning here. Imagine turning two innocent women out to a gang
of sex perverts, telling this gang to 'humble' them, to do with
them 'what seems good unto you'!
'So the man took his concubine, and brought her forth unto
them; and they KNEW her, and ABUSED HER ALL THE NIGHT until the
morning: and when the day began to spring, they let her go. Then
came the woman in the dawning of the day, and fell down at the
door of the man's house where her lord (her husband) was, till it
was light. And her lord rose up in the morning, and opened the
doors of the house....and, behold, the woman his concubine was
fallen down at the door of the house, and her hands were upon the
threshold. and he said unto her, Up, let us be going. But none
answered' (Judges 19:25-28).
Oh the heartlessness, the inconsistency of it all! After
being raped all night, the woman fled, no doubt naked, bruised,
and battered, with stains of blood and semen around her bodily
openings. (The details here are so 'abominable,' as Adam Clarke
expressed it, he felt obligated to shroud his comments in Latin
at this point in his commentary.) The woman made it only to the
threshold of the door. When her 'lord' got up the next morning
and found her there, he demanded: 'Up, let us be going.' But she
was dead. It is horribly sad.
Then, as if this poor woman had not been abused enough, the
Levite - to whom tradition assigned the name Boathook - performed
a gruesome mutilation:
'And when he was come into the house, he took a knife, and
laid hold on his concubine, and divided her, together with her
bones, into twelve pieces, and sent her into all the coasts of
Israel' (Judges 19:29).
Sending these parts to the various tribes of Israel stirred
up war against the tribe of Benjamin within whose territory the
gang rape had occurred. The Levite's explanation was that 'the
men of Gibeah rose against me, and beset the house round
about.....and thought to have slain me: and my concubine have
they forced, that she is dead' (Judges 20:5,6).
Notice how the Levite twisted the facts. He said these men
planned to kill him; the text says they wanted to 'know' him. He
says they forced his concubine, but conveniently does not mention
HE was the one who turned her out to the mob!
The practice of 'cutting asunder,' mentioned in Matthew
24:51, has been known among various people in history. The writer
of Hebrews mentions how some persecuted people were sawed in two
(Heb. 11:37)....."
End of quote for now from Kevin Aaron's book.
I ask you to read the entire account as recorded in Judges
chapter 19 through to 21.
It would seem God permitted these two men to first of all do
this terrible shocking act upon these two women. And the Levite
is allowed to chop up his concubine after her death and send her
twelve parts around to the twelve tribes of Israel. The Levite is
allowed to lie to Israel and get away with it. War is declared
from the other tribes upon the tribe of Benjamin. Benjamin is
allowed to have two victories over Israel, killing thousands upon
thousands of their brother Israelites. Finally God gives Israel
victory over Benjamin. And 25,100 are killed that drew the sword
in Benjamin.
All of this ALLOWED by God, started by some guys who
probably claimed to be "religious" - one was a Levite. No wonder
the last verse of Judges says, "In those days there was no king
in Israel; every man did that which was right in his own eyes."
Now brother was fighting brother, or brothers (plural)
fighting a brother. Hummmm, if you had been of military age when
the USA civil war broke out....would you have taken up arms and
gone out to kill? Who would you have killed for, which side? I'm
sure many on both sides fully believed they were serving on God's
side, the true and only righteous side.
Do we suppose that such "fightings" and "wars" of "religious
righteousness" (even if defended upon as rewarding punishment
upon evil acts of sin and shamefulness, declaring war upon
another nation, because of the sins of a few of that nation's
men) should be the pattern for New Covenant followers of Jesus
Christ, to emulate and practice.
God ALLOWED such conduct at times under the Old Covenant,
but surely the New Covenant Christian must reach for and attain a
HIGHER conduct than that which even many of God's people under
the Old Covenant did not or could not attain, because of the
hardness of their hearts in so many ways.
We shall now see more of the hardness of the hearts of
people under the Old Covenant, even including David. Much of his
goodness and repentant attitude is brought out in the OT, but so
is much of his sins and grave blood-thirsty ways, as to make him
unfit as the man to build the Temple of God, that he so much
wanted to build for his Lord.
Those who take you to the OT and Israel's war machine, as a
justification proof that Christians today can partake in war
armies....well, will they take you to the gruesome nitty-gritty
of what God allowed under the Old Covenant? If you have the
stomach for it, I will show you.
Continuing from the book "Journey from Eden" by Kevin Aaron:
"Following the slaughter of the Amalakites, Saul 'took Agag
the king of the Amalakites alive' (1 Sam. 15:8). But Samuel, one
of the most famous of the Biblical prophets, ordered: 'Bring ye
hither to me Agag the king of the Amalakites. And Agag came unto
him delicately....And Samuel HEWED AGAG IN PIECES' (verses 32,
33). Some translations use the words 'hacked' or 'chopped' him to
pieces.
A curious story is given by Philo. 'God said unto
Samuel....suffer Agag and his wife to come together this night,
and tomorrow thou shalt slay him; but his wife preserve till
she bring forth a male child, and then she also shall die, and he
that is born of her shall be an offense unto Saul' (Philo 58:3).
Years later, when Saul failed in his suicide attempt and
asked a young man to kill him, it was his son that had been born!
'Before you kill me, tell me, who art thou? And he said unto him,
I am Edab, the son of Agag....And Saul said, Behold, now the
words of Samuel are come upon me even as he said: He that shall
be born of Agag shall be an offense unto thee' (Philo 65:3,4).
Such legends, in spite of their antiquity, have all the
earmarks of fiction and fact mixed together."
End of quote.
Here we have recorded in the OT the story of a great
religious leader of the Eternal God, hacking to pieces someone we
may term an evil man, an ungodly man, the king Agag. Is this
account given to support and prove that New Covenant "church
leaders" should take up the sword and hack to pieces modern
ungodly men. If we are going to look to the OT and many of its
examples of those classified as "men of God" to teach we can
follow them in killing people, whom we may consider "against God"
then surely this is a classic example for us to emulate. Somehow
I do not think too many modern "religious leaders" want to use
this example to teach their followers that leaders can kill "evil
men" in this way. Then maybe somewhere there are a few religious
cultic nuts who do teach this killing for New Covenant leaders
under the name of God.
Not all that was allowed under the Old Covenant is allowed
under the New Covenant.
Quote from Aaron's book:
"Other mutilations mentioned in the Bible include cutting
off thumbs or big toes (Judges 1:6), cutting off hands and feet
(2 Sam. 4:12), cutting out eyes (2 Kings 25:7), cutting open
pregnant women (2 Kings 8:12), and cutting off the very skin from
the body. Though the reference in Micah 3:3, '.....and flay their
skin from off them,' may be understood figuratively, we know that
some tribes, among them the Assyrians, did practice
this.....(Notice from these verses, that some of these things
were done by Israelites to their enemies - Keith Hunt).
Cutting off heads is mentioned numerous times in the Bible
(2 Sam. 20:22....)....When David killed Goliath, he 'cut off his
head....and brought it to Jerusalem' (1 Sam. 17:51, 54). Such was
not only a trophy, but also served as proof that the enemy had
been killed. One of David's successors, king Jehu, had the heads
of seventy sons of a rival king sent to him in baskets (2 Sam.
10:6,7). A woman arranged to have Sheba's head thrown over a wall
to Joab as proof of his death (2 Sam. 20:22).
Following a massacre, it was not uncommon for warriors to
bring back heads or some other bodily part to prove how many
enemies were killed. Sometimes the bodily part would be a scalp,
hand, foot, or ear.
But when Saul offered his daughter to David in exchange for
killing one hundred Philistines, the bodily part he required was
none of these. The part Saul required was the PENIS!
David was to bring back one hundred Philistine 'foreskins'
(1 Sam. 18:25). Bergmann, Gesenius, and other scholars have
pointed out that the word translated 'foreskin' includes the
entire male member: BASR HA-GHURLEH means prepuced penis,
BASR being euphemistic for male organ itself and GHURLEH being
the 'sheath' thereof (Felix Bryk, Circumcision in Man and Woman,
p. 108).
PHALLOTOMY - cutting off the penis of victims - had long
been considered proof of bravery. Egyptian soldiers exhibited
thousands of penises before Ramses 3 following the battle of
Khesef-Tamahu.... (Aaron gives examples of various nations and
their practice of penis collecting, some to vivid and disgusting
for this public Website - Keith Hunt).
It is not a pretty picture. David gets some men together and
heads out towards a Philistine settlement. Coming through the
hills, up ahead they see a group of Philistines - apparently
unable to defend themselves - for none of David's men are killed.
As they move in, a couple men grab a Philistine while David
shoves his sword into his stomach. The man cries for mercy; none
is given. David rips the man's clothes open and grabs his penis,
pulls on it, and cuts it off for his collection. He will need at
least one hundred of these to BUY his woman.
Saul had asked for one hundred 'foreskins,' but we read that
David 'slew of the Philistines TWO HUNDRED men; and David brought
their foreskins, and they gave them in full tale to the king (1
Sam. 18: 27). In the excitement did David kill twice as many as
required? Possibly, but usually the number two hundred is
considered a copyist error. The other verses that mention the
number all say one hundred (1 Sam. 18: 25; 2 Sam. 3:14).
Whether one hundred or two hundred, these severed penises
were presented to Saul 'in full tale,' that is, the full count or
tally. One can imagine the scene as Saul and others with glee
counted - 1, 2, 3, 4, and on up to the full count....."
End of quote.
Is this event of David buying his bride with 100 cut off
penises, given to somehow teach New Covenant Christians that
brides can be bought with human lives or human body parts? Few,
modern Christians and their leaders would try to use such
recorded practices allowed under the Old Covenant by God, to be
translated and carried over into how New Covenant Christians can
obtain wives no matter what country they are living in, even if
that country still allows some pretty wild practices from ancient
customs.
The truth of the matter is that such an event in the life of
David, which was obviously ALLOWED to be done, God not preventing
it by some sign, miracle, or sending His prophet, to tell David
he could not do such an evil act to obtain a wife, was given to
show that the man whom God called a "man after His own heart" (in
the NT), was maybe in the important basics of salvation, a man
after God's own heart (David had to REPENT deeply of MANY sins),
but was also in many ways a BLOODY MAN, who because of this
carnality, as well as others, was NOT allowed to build the Temple
for God.
Many things in the OT are NOT to be carried over into the
NT. Many things in the OT were from the heart of "the hardness of
the heart" and were ALLOWED, but NEVER sanctioned by God, or were
not the perfect WAY of God that He wanted Israel to follow
and practice from the beginning.
Quote from "Journey from Eden" by Aaron:
"A form of sexual abuse that was common in the ancient
world, and especially degrading, was that of soldiers raping
captive women following battles. In some cases these were the
wives and daughters of the men they had just killed! Several
Biblical passages refer to this practice....Lam. 5:11....Isaiah
13:16....Zechariah 14:12.
It was not uncommon for conquering warriors to be given
women as part of their pray. In the book of Judges, Sisera's
mother, worried because he had not returned from battle, hoped
the delay was only because of the time required to divide up the
prey and girls among the soldiers!
'The mother of Sisera looked out at a window, and cried
through the lattice. Why is his chariot so long in coming? Why
tarry the wheels of his chariots? Her wise ladies answered
her....Have they not sped? Have they not divided the prey; to
EVERY MAN A DAMSEL OR TWO?' (Judges 5:28-30)."
End of quote.
Are you GETTING IT? Are you UNDERSTANDING the WHOLE context
of military practice and life under the Old Covenant in ancient
Israel? It was the practice for Israelite men in war, to divide
the prey, which included dividing up the damsel women, one or two
for each man.....and sport....!
Well what is knew under the sun? Have not men of war done
this, had sport with the damsels of the people and nations they
fought and beat? So, it was no different with the men in Israel's
war machine.
Now, REMEMBER, Israel had a war military machine for a total
of many centuries from the time of Moses to the captivity of the
house of Judah by the Babylonians in 604 B.C. And within all that
practice of war with nations, was the dividing of the damsels
among the military men, after the battle was won.
And REMEMBER, this WHOLE scene of the practice of war was
ALLOWED by God! God ALLOWED not only Israel to have a military
war machine and fight battles, but He ALLOWED the men of that
military to divide up the damsels of the defeated nation, among
the men of Israel.
If we want to quote Old Testament passages to proof text our
idea that New Covenant Christians can be a part of their nation's
war machine, then we must from the whole Old Testament context
say it is okay for those military men to divide up the damsels of
the conquered nation. What makes the one part righteous and holy
and justifiable for New Covenant Christians, but the other part
evil and sin? God ALLOWED BOTH parts under the Old Testament, to
be practiced as part of the whole of life within Israel and its
military practice. You can find no verse in the Old Testament
where God divided the two parts of fighting and prey/damsel
dividing, into righteousness and sin, or good and not so good,
or, can do the one with head held high while you do the other
with head held low.
We shall see in the fourth part of this study that God did
institute a law if an Israelite soldier wanted to MARRY a woman
from among war captives, then we shall also see a passage, which
shows orders given by Moses, to the military men, that once more
I have to say I am humanly SHOCKED to read, actually disgusted to
read, and have no answer for you....another one of those question
I shall have for Jesus when He returns, for the apostle Paul
said, we do at times look through a glass darkly. What Moses did
in the context of the military is to me most very dark.
...........................
Written May 2003
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