The Midianite men were killed because they instigated the seduction. They devised a state sponsered mass temptation and sexual seduction of Israel males which was unprovoked. In the scheme they used sex as a weopon.
The passage is very clear on who was spared. What you are doing here is basically a simple regurgitation of your source. In order to defend the genocide you are breaking up the mass killings into 4 groups and then justifying the killing of each group with non-Biblical apologetics.
Non-Virgin were all killed. You justify this by claiming that they were ALL the seductresses of Israel. As far as I know, there is no claim in the Bible or otherwise to support this statement. It is very probable that there were many non-virgin women who did not participate in the seduction of Israel.
Adult men were all killed supposedly because they were a military threat and the masterminds of the temptation.
Babies were killed because .... The only reason I can find at your apologetic site is ad-hoc reasoning that keeping them alive would have placed an undue burden on the Israelites and that killing them was euthanasia. So I guess this is tacit approval of infanticide? There is also no support for this contention in the Bible at all. Nearly all the support for this is extra-Biblical and therefore completely apologetics. Not only that, it is really a disgusting way to try to claim that these killing were justified.
Virgin girls are spared and the only clue we are given to why is
because of their virginity! Apparently these captives are valuable enough to the Israelites and that value is directly associated with their virginity. I'll grant that this is not an explicit documentation that these girls were raped but I am sure you can see why it may be implied.
Regardless, there is no charge that the girls were to be raped either from Moses or from God.
Indeed it never says, "and then they raped them" but given the other textual evidence that we have, it is only the modern "inerrantist" Christian who must save some ideal picture of God in order to preserve their faith that ignores the obvious implications of the verses in discussion on this thread.
That is besides the point that to the Israelites, having sex with these girls as the spoils of war would not be considered rape to them. These girls were now their property that were rightfully given to them. They wouldn't call what they did rape and therefore would not have recorded it as such.
You already conceded that no such verse specifies that.
You seem to have a very hard time understand what I say. I made NO SUCH CONCESSION. What I said is that
no one has made the claim that there is a verse in the bible that commands rape. There ARE verses in the bible that imply that actions were taken by the Israelites that by modern standards would be considered rape. The scriptures imply that the Israelites forced their captive virgin girls into sexual relationships against their will and only apologists don't seem to get that impression from a direct reading of the text.
On the other hand it may be hard for you and I to imagine that a society's depths of degradation could warrant such a severe quarintine.
Slaughtering babies is murderer. Period. Slaughtering everyone with the exception of some based on aspects of their sexuality is directly suspicious.
You can assume that your ethics exceeds those of the God of the Bible.
I have never made such an assumption and I would ask that you kindly take that statement back. You know both nothing of my ethics or how I compare my ethics to that of the God of the Bible except what I have implied by our discussion of this one particular part of the Bible.
Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)
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