Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Human Sacrifice? (2 Samuel 21)

I hope nobody glazed over this little gem of a story. The Gibeonites wanted to kill 7 men from Saul's family as revenge or atonement for Saul having virtually wiped out their family/tribe (2 Sam 21:5-6). They arrived at this brilliant idea as a way to stop a 3 year famine that had been plaguing the land. Sounds like crazy "pagan" superstition to me.

From v.14, "After that, God answered prayer in behalf of the land." God didn't seem to object to this or try to stop it. Actually, it was acceptable to him because he apparently ended the famine afterward.

Thoughts?
Posted by at
Labels: , ,

3 comments:

  1. BluebirdWingerWednesday, April 13, 2011 8:17:00 PM

    Apparently, there was "blood guilt on Saul and on his house, because he put the Gibeonites to death." (II Sam.21:1) So it sounds as if God wanted this to happen. Sort of a vengeance thing. I don't understand the ways of these ancient cultures any more than you do, but we do read quite a bit about tit-for-tat and eye-for-eye in the OT. Maybe that is why Jesus came along and said I am putting a new way of thinking into play. Turn the other cheek, walk the extra mile, etc. What was useful for the preservation of the Hebrews in the OT had to be revised for the upcoming "modern" ways of doing things. Unfortunately we still have our blood guilt problems today.

    ReplyDelete
  2. jenThursday, April 14, 2011 6:49:00 PM

    I chose to glide over it. It reminded me too much of that guy Jepthah who said he would sacrifice whatever came out of his door. This time David is sacrificing his relatives. Why can't they say "we'll sacrifice to village idiot" or "hey, we have some prime felons in our prison we'd like to get rid of" It all seems....well, terrible. I am worried next time I stay overnight at one of your houses you'll decided to right some wrong and I might be the main course. Just kidding of course. You really had to keep all of your relatives in check back then because you never knew when something they did would come back and get you.

    ReplyDelete
  3. jenThursday, April 14, 2011 7:09:00 PM

    Sorry, I think I mis-spoke on the relatives being sacrificed. They, who were sacrficed, were at least key players. I thought so. I could be wrong, will welcome any corrections as I did find the books of Samuel convoluted with lots of rich detail. I think I was just trying to stay on track in my readings, thinking I would go back thru at some point to clarify some of my thoughts.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)