30 April 2010

David killed every male in Edom

Chapter 80 in Drunk with Blood: God's killings in the Bible.

2 Samuel 8:13-14, 1 Kings 11:15-16, Psalm 60:1

Estimated Number Killed: 15,000 Syrian (or Edomite)soldiers plus every male in Edom (~50,000)

Syrians and Edomites

Table of God's killings

Who has killed more Satan or God?

God's next killing

More information about God's killings, with a chapter on each of the 135 killing events, can be found int the book:

Drunk With Blood: God's killings in the Bible

7 comments:

busterggi said...

As the bible was written before the Crisis on Infinite Earths it is clear that that some of these happened on parallel worlds.

Matthew Blanchette said...

With parallel Gods? Surely, ol' Yahweh wouldn't agree to that...

busterggi said...

Yahweh wouldn't agree but the Elohim outvoted him.

skanksta said...

No, too few !

We have to assume that the bible is inerrant. What may appear like contradictions or inaccuracies to us, CAN'T be actual errors - since god is perfect. How can we understand, what it's like to be the creator of a universe and all life ? You may as well ask an ant to make judgements on human morality.

Therefore...
If it says David AND Abishai AND Joab killed 18k,18k,12k (respectively) in the Valley of Salt - then that's what they did.
TOTAL 48,000

It then says Joab killed every male, so that's what Joab did.
This is more guesswork, but I disagree with your 10k/40k ratio. Most men would be considered of fighting age, only the very young and old wouldn't be imo. So..I go for a ratio of 1/2 - thinking each fighting man would have an average of two boys, (or maybe an old father).

That means a better estimate is 150k.

Steve Wells said...

I like the way you're thinking, skanksta. But I think my interpretation is more likely: it's the same story, just the names, numbers, and nationality of the victims changed from one telling to the other.

I wonder what believers say about this one!

twillight said...

I think a talmudist would agree with skanksta, after what I've read about Solomon's 160,000,000 horses...

MD1985 said...

TNIV : 13 And David became famous after he returned from striking down eighteen thousand Edomites in the Valley of Salt.

It should be Edomites - early translations translated it wrong as Aram-Syria and Edom are almost identical in the Hebrew script.

Resh - ר
Dalet - ד

One letter changes everything :)

Also Joab and Abishai are David's newphews. Joab was the general of one of David's armies and it is likely Abishai served under him - They both served under David - hence it being attributed to him in 2 Samuel.

They are not contradictions.