What IS good, and how do we determine it?

[Randy Carson]

Your eisegesis is required by your presuppositions.

By all means, please tell me what presupposition(s) are required to conclude God orders rape based on the following:

2 Samuel 12:11-14 NAB: Thus says the Lord: 'I will bring evil upon you out of your own house.  I will take your wives [plural] while you live to see it, and will give them to your neighbor.  He shall lie with your wives in broad daylight.  You have done this deed in secret, but I will bring it about in the presence of all Israel, and with the sun looking down.'  Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the Lord."  Nathan answered David: "The Lord on his part has forgiven your sin: you shall not die.  But since you have utterly spurned the Lord by this deed, the child born to you must surely die."  [The child dies seven days later.]

Because of David's sin with Bathsheba (adultery, btw - or does God condone that, too?????????), God threatened to punish David by taking away his kingdom and his wives, etc. This would have been a very public humiliation for David. David did repent, but where is the rape in this passage?

There is none.

Deuteronomy 21:10-14 NAB: "When you go out to war against your enemies and the LORD, your God, delivers them into your hand, so that you take captives, if you see a comely woman among the captives and become so enamored of her that you wish to have her as wife, you may take her home to your house.  But before she may live there, she must shave her head and pare her nails and lay aside her captive's garb.  After she has mourned her father and mother for a full month, you may have relations with her, and you shall be her husband and she shall be your wife.  However, if later on you lose your liking for her, you shall give her her freedom, if she wishes it; but you shall not sell her or enslave her, since she was married to you under compulsion."

The Israelite men could have simply raped the women and left them to fend for themselves or kept them as sex slaves - like the men of other nations did with their captives. But that's NOT the standard that God set; He commanded the Israelites that they must take the women as their wives. What privileges would a wife married to an Israelite man have? All the same rights and privileges that a Jewish woman would have.

If you can't see that as an improvement, then it's because you don't WANT to see it.

Judges 5:30 NAB: They must be dividing the spoils they took: there must be a damsel or two for each man, Spoils of dyed cloth as Sisera's spoil, an ornate shawl or two for me in the spoil.

Sisera was a Canaanite...not an Israelite...he was killed by an Israelite woman, Jael. But the verse you quoted is actually from Sisera's mother wondering why her son was not returning home more quickly. The song says:

28 “Through the window peered Sisera’s mother;
   behind the lattice she cried out,
‘Why is his [Sisera's] chariot so long in coming?
   Why is the clatter of his chariots delayed?’
29 The wisest of her ladies answer her;
   indeed, she keeps saying to herself,
30 ‘Are they not finding and dividing the spoils:
   a woman or two for each man,
colorful garments as plunder for Sisera,
   colorful garments embroidered,
highly embroidered garments for my neck—
   all this as plunder?’

So, you see that it was the CANAANITE MOTHER who believes that her son, Sisera, is taking "a woman or two".



This is the sort of behavior engaged in by OTHER NATIONS that I have been pointing out to EVERYONE in this thread all along. God commanded Israelites to live by a higher standard because:

GOD DOES NOT CONDONE RAPE. THE CANAANITES DID.

Thank you for bringing this passage to my attention.

Zechariah 14:1-2 NAB: Lo, a day shall come for the Lord when the spoils shall be divided in your midst.  And I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem for battle: the city shall be taken, houses plundered, women ravished; half of the city shall go into exile, but the rest of the people shall not be removed from the city.  

Zechariah is prophesying against ISRAEL. Iraelite women will be ravished by the men of other nations.

Zechariah 14:1 (NIV)
A day of the Lord is coming, Jerusalem, when your possessions will be plundered and divided up within your very walls.

And when that prophecy was fulfilled, Israelite women were ravished by the men of other nations who did not treat women as well as God commanded the Israelite men to treat them.

Again, thank you for illustrating the differences between God's people and the other nations.