Faith Versus Reason: Why Is The Bible Silent on Barbarism ?

To many the words of the Hebrew Bible are the perfect literal words of the living
God, and as such contain no contradictions, errors, omissions, mistakes,
misrepresentations, or non factual statements. But is this true? Is the Bible really
true and accurate and the highest authority for morality of all humans? In this
article we shall a review a number of inter-related incidents described in the Bible
and address the question as to whether is indeed a source for morality and guidance
of all humans of all generations. The outcome of such questions are indeed profound
because if the omniscience and omnipotence tests fall short then one can argue that
He is therefore not God, and if so it can be further inferred that there is no God.


First we shall pick up the narrative in Second Book of Samuel Chapter 11, after
David the King of Israel has engineered the death of a soldier called Uriah in order
for him to take Uriah?s wife, Bathsheba. At this juncture the prophet Nathan rebukes
David.

12:7 And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man. Thus saith the LORD God of Israel,
I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul;
12:8 And I gave thee thy master's house, and thy master's wives into thy bosom, and
gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would
moreover have given unto thee such and such things."

COMMENT: So god takes credit for already David?s multiple wives? Does god support
polygamy or not.? And does he approve of one man taking other people?s wives, or not
because here apparently God is saying he made it happen for David.

12:9 Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the LORD, to do evil in his
sight? thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and hast taken his wife to
be thy wife, and hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon.
12:10 Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thine house; because thou hast
despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife.
12:11 Thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine
own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy
neighbour, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun.
12:12 For thou didst it secretly: but I will do this thing before all Israel, and
before the sun.

COMMENT: So the punishment for taking someone?s wife is to have his multiple wives
have sex with somebody else in public. What? So are others to bear the punishment
for the sins of a person? Is this the justice system of Yahweh? And why should it be
his wives? Why should women suffer for the deeds of their men? Is that how Yahweh
operates? But we may give credit that at least a warning has been issued.

We shall now pick up the narrative in the Second Book of Samuel Chapter 14, where
Absalom a son of King David rebels and attempts to make a coup de-etat to overthrow
his father and seize power.

16:15 And Absalom, and all the people the men of Israel, came to Jerusalem, and
Ahithophel with him.

COMMENT: So now Absalom enters the capital City to take power after his successful
coup. Kind of like jerry rawlings riding on the back of a military vehicle on
December 31 1981.
16:20 Then said Absalom to Ahithophel, Give counsel among you what we shall do.

16:21 And Ahithophel said unto Absalom, Go in unto thy father's concubines, which he
hath left to keep the house; and all Israel shall hear that thou art abhorred of thy
father: then shall the hands of all that are with thee be strong.

COMMENT: So now Absalom asks the prophet what to do next once he has now taken
power. And the prophet says he should have sex with his father?s wives to prove he
is the new king in town. This is interesting.

16:22 So they spread Absalom a tent upon the top of the house; and Absalom went in
unto his father's concubines in the sight of all Israel.

COMMENT: wow. So the sex takes place in public, under a tent on top of a building
and the citizens watched. So this is the counsel of the prophet representing God?
And if not how come god did not do anything to stop this barbarism? Were the women
involved doing so of their of their own free will? Were they consulted before
taking part in this insane act? Or they were simply raped. Not only raped but
stripped naked in public and then raped. One can imagine these vulnerable women
attempting to resist and be given dirty slaps and maybe even blows and then bending
over to receive this strangers penis, and all this in public view of who knows how
many spectators. So is this a lesson for us to follow today? How come an omnipotent
god did nothing to help these helpless women? Are any of the Christian apologists on
this website ready to have their daughters and sisters treated in this manner, after
all it can be done on the advise of god for some divine purpose. But is this act
being done in the name of god, really? well the next verse says ?.
16:23 And the counsel of Ahithophel, which he counselled in those days, was as if a
man had enquired at the oracle of God: so was all the counsel of Ahithophel both
with David and with Absalom.

COMMENTS: So at least to the Israelites once Ahithopel said so or approved of an act
it was assumed to be legitimately from God. And apparently this act was done to
redeem the memory of Uriah who was intentionally set up for the kill so his wife
could be snatched by another misogynistic illiterate village king called David. And
in all this the supposedly omnipotent deity Yahweh is unable to protect the
vulnerable, but actually has his prophet justify that this dastardly act of
punishing women for the sins of their husband is somehow justified. What a sick,
perverted, stupid, illiterate, and criminal deity this Yahweh character is if he
really made this happen. Or if he did not make it happen but was unwilling or
powerless to stop it ten he is malevolent , and no god at all.

As we all know such bible passages are rarely read in Christian churches these days
so many if not most Christians may not be aware of such profane acts sanctioned by
their gods. Instead Christians are bombarded today with cherry picked quotations
regarding how they can become rich overnight without any work, or how barren women
can be fruitful without stepping into a gynecologists? office, etc etc, and all the
quotations are spoon fed by the pastors as most Christians do not even read the
bible for themselves anymore.

It turned out that Absalom?s coup de-etat was not successful in the long term and
David returned to beat back the rebellion and reclaim his post. When he re-entered
Jerusalem with his army he went straight to his house where he had left his ten
concubines who had been subjected to sexual intercourse by Absalom in public by the
commandment of Yahweh through his prophet Ahithopel. The narrative is as follows.

20:2 So every man of Israel went up from after David, and followed Sheba the son of
Bichri: but the men of Judah clave unto their king, from Jordan even to Jerusalem.
20:3 And David came to his house at Jerusalem; and the king took the ten women his
concubines, whom he had left to keep the house, and put them in ward, and fed them,
but went not in unto them. So they were shut up unto the day of their death, living
in widowhood.

COMMENT: So the women are put in jail, and David refuses to have sex with them ever
again so they lived as widows till the day they died. All this for what? For being
raped in public, because there is no evidence the women had consensual sex with
Absalom. And yet again Yahweh does nothing, like reminding David that the women were
actually raped by force, on top of a building, so everybody could watch, according
to the instructions of him Yahweh? So how did Yahweh get to this? Turning justice
and decency upside down, such someone gets raped and then they are rather punished
with jail time for getting raped. This sounds like getting crippled in a car
accident but then you get put in jail because someone else was not observing the
driving regulations. What?

So at this juncture we shall call on the Christians and other faithful to come
forward and explain these insane acts that have either been performed on commandment
from God or were performed in his name and yet he offered no counsel for the
perpetrators to stop their criminal acts. We need an explanation why archaic notions
that women are responsible for the sins of men is not refuted but rather supported
by the bible. This is the same notion that sends countless innocent, poor, and
vulnerable women and children to witch camps across Ghana in the 21st century, all
based on ignorance. So why does the bible condone this idiocy? How come not a single
word of condemnation is provided against these acts of illiteracy? Is it because the
bible was written by ignorant ancient tribal patriarchs? Or was the bible indeed
written by the living god or under his inspiration, as an inerrant and perfect
document? Is the public rape of ten innocent concubines and their subsequent
imprisonment a divinely inspired incident? As usual Christians will tell us that we
are misinterpreting the bile and that the story has a figurative or allegorical
meaning and not literal. So also we would like the faithful to advise us which
specific parts of this story are literal and which ones require prayer to get the
correct meaning.