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Difficult Passages

What Israel Did

A few examples:

Deut. 2:  They destroyed towns of King Sihon...killing men, women, and children...leaving no survivors.  The context would seem to indicate this was done with God's blessing.

Numbers 31: Instructed by God to take vengeance on the Midianites, Moses gives instructions to kill all boys and non-virgin girls while saving the virgin girls for themselves.

1 Samuel 15: God instructs Saul to destroy the Amalekites, not sparing children and infants.

I think it safe to say that the followers of Jesus are unanimous in considering infanticide to be a gross violation of God's moral code.  How does that square with these passages of God-sanctioned infanticide?  I don't have a good answer.  One unsatisfying answer is that these sorts of things represent an ancient people using God to justify there barbaric actions.  I'm not ready to accept what that says about the reliability of scripture.  Another answer is "who is the clay to question the potter", God can do what he will regarding life and death.  That's not satisfying either, but is probably where I am at this point.

Elisha and Laws of War

From David Plotz's discussion of 2 Kings chapter 3 in his Blogging the Bible series:

Another appalling war. The bad king of Israel allies with good King Jehoshaphat of Judah to attack the Moabites. The armies end up in the desert without any water. The Israelite king begs Elisha to save them. Elisha says he would let the Israelites die without a second thought, but because he admires Jehoshaphat, he'll help. Elisha then reveals himself to be the Funky Prophet: He can only conjure the power of the Lord when music is playing. A musician is summoned, and Elisha delivers a lifesaving flood of water. Here's the bad part. Elisha also orders the armies to block every Moabite spring, cover Moabite cropland with stones, and chop down every Moabite fruit tree. They do it, and triumph. But let's hearken back to Deuteronomy, chapter 20, when the Lord establishes laws of war. One of them, explained very carefully, was that you may not cut down enemy orchards. The trees are innocent parties and must be left unmolested. Cutting down fruit trees is a 50-year war crime, ruining the lives of your enemy, as well as their children's and grandchildren's lives. This is presumably why God banned it so emphatically. So, it's confusing and tragic that He encourages it this time. (Alternative theory: Elisha is a false prophet, and these were not God's orders.)

The passage from 2 Kings 3:14-19


The passage from Deuteronomy 20:10-20


What do you think? Why would Elisha encourage them to cut down all the trees in violation of the Deuteronomy passage? I don't know...when I read the passage from 2 Kings, it isn't obvious to me that Elisha is encouraging or commanding but rather simply predicting. Approval of cutting the trees doesn't seem to be necessarily implicit in his statement...though I would probably assume it but for the Deuteronomy passage.

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