“And levy a tribute unto the LORD of the men of war which went out to battle: one soul of five hundred, both of the persons, and of the beeves, and of the asses, and of the sheep:”
King James Version (KJV)
Derek Philip's comment on 2020-05-24 17:01:01:
God is love. He does not punish sin. He does not have to. What you sow you reap. Sin brings death all by itself - the second death that is. We all experience the first death which is the bruising of the heel of the seed of the woman (dual application, our experience and Jesus experience). We will be resurrected however. Another story.
Derek Philip's comment on 2020-05-24 16:56:47:
The lesson in this chapter is about what happens when we disobey God. To save us form our own weakness and bring us back into harmony with Him after we disobey usually causes heartache. I am sure it was hard for the soldiers to have to kill the women and children but if it were not done worse consequences would have resulted.
Remember Genesis 3, when man sinned? For man's sake we read that God moved him out of the garden and the earth was "cursed". Man had to eek out a living the hard way... God didn't really curse the earth himself, it was a natural result of the consequences of sin. This is a hard concept for us to understand. God was uttering what he knew would happen, its God's foreknowledge. Not predestination.
Israel was never to go to was to enter the promised land. God had "appointed" hornets to drive out the people ( natural disaster I interpret it as (Ex. 23:38 And I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee and Deuteronomy 7:20
Moreover, the LORD your God will send the hornet against them until all the survivors and those hiding from you have perished.)..
The earth itself revolts against us because of our sin. We do things that upsets the balance of nature - like climate change. And all the mining and drilling for oil etc... upsets the equilibrium of the earth and causes problems (which scientist never tell us about).
So Israel's disobedience disrupted God's plan and set in train a series of unfortunate events that resulted in Israel having to go to war - because they believed that was the only way to conquer. They did not trust God's way.
In this case, Moses told the men these adult women caused a plague among you before and many die. You want that to happen again? They had to die. The male offspring would become warriors to avenge their fathers who Israel killed - they had to die too (consider Moses himself re killing the Egyptian). The other females would become servants.
Diana Herec's comment on 2014-02-07 09:03:56:
I was wondering if there was human sacrifice meant by 1 in 500