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Comment by lalaland1125 | Hacker News Reader

I guess it's just hard to take that justification of trying to stop child sacrifice seriously when the same text describes the ancient Israelites proceeding to kill all the boys and enslave all the girls from captured Canaanite cities.

It seems like the primary goal of the war was simply conquest, not freeing Canaanite children. With the child sacrifice simply being used to justify that expansionary war.

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Or that the same text said Abraham was totally down with child sacrifice until he was stopped last second.

Fortunately the Bible later explains that Abraham remembered God had told him "Through Isaac shall your offspring be named." and he therefore correctly reasoned "that God was able even to raise [Isaac] from the dead" (Hebrews 11:18-19). At worst, therefore, Isaac would only have been temporarily dead, which was not a feature observed of Canaanite child sacrifice.

Temporarily dead perhaps, but either way, emotionally scarred for life, most likely.

It's hard to take Americans seriously when they say they're for women's and children's rights, when they proceed to kill and rape innocent women and children in the middle east. See how easy that is to do?

I see you didn't read the original comment that started this discussion ...

> Although a lot of things have changed, the nature of human conflict and the desire for power haven't.

I did, I just don't see how that contradicts what I said. The motivations of large groups are generally more complex than some singular reason, and a group can care about bad things that their enemies do even if they themselves do bad things

Indeed.

Moral arguments for war are bankrupt and disguise the truth.

Even today's (self-described) enlightened societies draw a distinction between the lawful killing of the children of enemy nations (as "unavoidable consequences" of war) and the unlawful killing of children by their own parents (at least once those children are outside the womb).

Unfortunately, at the time of the Canaanite cities, there wasn't really much infrastructure for providing welfare services to war orphans, and there was a very real risk that young males of conquered peoples would grow up to seek genocidal revenge on their conquerors. By that standard, offering homes to the female prisoners of war was relatively compassionate.

Of course you see the exact same logic in today's "enlightened societies". Just look at Iraq or Afghanistan to see the same sort of logic of Americans starting a war for supposedly humanitarian causes only to make life worse for everyone involved.

>By that standard, offering homes to the female prisoners of war was relatively compassionate.

More like taking forced brides from among the desirable female captives. I'm sure many in that situation would prefer death. Arguably, sparing the male children their life dominated by genocidal vengeance is the more compassionate action.

>I'm sure many in that situation would prefer death.

I'm not sure anyone today can reasonably say what they thought. The desire for human survival, though, is incredibly strong.

>> offering homes to the female prisoners of war was relatively compassionate.

more likely sex slaves, given the references to young virgins.

I'm no expert, but my understanding is that virginity is not a requirement for someone to be forced into prostitution. More likely the distinction was made because virgins would be young enough to form bonds with the young Israelite men, whereas the older women would not want to start new families.

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