22 February 2010

The Lord delivered the Moabites

This is a boring one. But since the Bible gives God the credit for this killing, so will I.

Here's the story.

Elisha tells the Israelites that God will deliver the Moabites into their hand.
The LORD ... will deliver the Moabites ... into your hand. 2 Kings 3.18
And when he does, God wants the Israelites to chop down the trees, ruin the wells, and destroy the land.
Ye shall smite every fenced city, and every choice city, and shall fell every good tree, and stop all wells of water, and mar every good piece of land with stones. 3.19
So the Israelites kill the Moabites, their trees and crops, and ruin their cities and wells.
The Israelites rose up and smote the Moabites, so that they fled before them: but they went forward smiting the Moabites ... And they beat down the cities, and on every good piece of land cast every man his stone, and filled it; and they stopped all the wells of water, and felled all the good trees. 3.24-25
Finally, the Moabite king sacrificed his son as a burnt offering in a desperate attempt to stop the massacre. And it seemed to work, too, since the Israelites stopped killing after that.
Then he took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt offering upon the wall. And there was great indignation against Israel: and they departed from him, and returned to their own land. 3.27
Since God helped the Israelites smite several Moabite cities, I'll guess 1000 Moabites were killed in five cities, for a total of 5000.

God's next killing: A skeptic is trampled to death

6 comments:

Matthew Blanchette said...

Great indignation against Israel, huh? I guess somebody finally decided to stand up to their genocide...

skanksta said...

Yahweh won't be too happy with you if you only give him 1,000 for this one, Steve!

They were commanded to smite every fenced city and every choice city.
The (holy, inerrant), text says they "beat down their citieS" plural.

Furthermore, it's a certainty that more Moabites would have died from the deforestation and well-poisoning which were specifically instructed by Yahweh.

Judging by the apparent population of the ME at this time according to the bible, (what with armies larger than cold war Russia, more casualties in a day than on the Somme &c), you could make a case for it being millions.

I don't think it SHOULD be that high myself. I like your policy of only including the absurdly exaggerated numbers when they're given, but surely cities (pl.) suggests at least, I don't know, say, five x your usual 1,000 per city ?

twillight said...

Oh, Yahwe's wars back then!
How pure and smooth they went!
Look at 'em nowdays!
Iraq is a total failure. Maybe it's time to sacrifise one of the presiden't daughters?

skanksta said...

No!
The wars are going wrong because the US is not worshipping Yahweh properly.
I mean, how many times does he have to have his animal sacrifice instructions ignored ?!

Steve Wells said...

skansta: I've increased the count from 1000 to 3000 -- 1000 for 3 cities. Does that seem reasonable to you?

Steve Wells said...

OK, skanksta. I've upped it to 5000, but that's all I'm giving Yahweh credit for in this killing.

But check the numbers of the other killings and let me know if I should change any before they are set in stone, so to speak.