NO WAY TO AVOID THE CHOICE. If you were Israel's leadership, and you HAD to destroy the warrior class of males for all the reasons already discussed, then you would inexorably be faced with this decision. And in our case, it was God who said 'do it this way'--the God who makes the difficult decision about the day and manner of our own deaths, for each of us, and it was the God who takes no delight in death (indeed, who intends to destroy it) who decided that this was 'least painful of all choices'.
Wouldn't this be a carte blanche approval of human euthanasia or 'mercy killing'? Wouldn't that be a direct implication of this event (or at least of your approach)?
Actually, this event would not bear on the subject directly, simply because the decider is God. God, of course, is the only agent who bears last-say authority over death. God bears some kind of governance responsibility for every moment of death. And, we know that God sometimes operates in an euthanasia fashion, for His word says so:
The righteous perish, and no one ponders it in his heart;
devout men are taken away, and no one understands
that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil.
Those who walk uprightly enter into peace;
they find rest as they lie in death. [Is 57.1-2]
We even speak of this in some cases of terminal illness of loved ones, speaking of "God ending their suffering".
But Scripture generally warrants that this is a choice and decision to made by the "only wise God", a choice that can only be safely trusted to His goodness, wisdom, and authority.
There is no clear logical warrant to move from "God has the non-derived authority to decide on the moment and circumstances of the death of another" to "a human has the non-derived authority to decide on the moment and circumstances of the death of another".
But if we visualize the horror of the scene—mothers watching children be killed, and children watching their mother be cut down—surely this cannot be right?!
Of course this scene is horrible (!), but to see this in perspective we would need to (1 )put this side by side with equally vivid and emotionally stirring stories about:
1. the elderly Israelite couple, who after suffering under harsh slavery for 60 years in Egypt finally escape miraculously with their grandchild. They gather the first material possessions they have ever owned--given to them by the Egyptians on the night they left--and are following the main body of Israelites. They are overjoyed by their first experience of freedom and hope for a more 'normal' life for their granddaughter. But they are old, and the decades of physical abuse have left them weak. And so they fall behind the main group of Israelites, and they must rest more frequently and longer. And, as the gap widens, they see a dust cloud behind them, chasing them. They fear that maybe the Egyptians are trying again to enslave them, so they jump up in fatigue and anxiety and begin racing toward the Israelites. But they are no match for the marauding Amalekites, who quickly capture them. They watch in horror as their granddaughter is stripped and evaluated for what price she might fetch at the eastern slave market, with crude suggestions as to what 'use' she might be to the plantation slave bosses. They see her bound and tied to the back of the horses, where she will have to walk behind their caravan until exhausted and then thrown into a slave-cart. They are next: the Amalekites strip them of their clothes, take their few belongings, and then cut them down with the sword. Their last images are of their granddaughter screaming for help as she is driven at spearpoint...
And we would need to situate this in the historical "landscape" of the day, in which the "size" of objects in the landscape can be seen in relation to one another.
In this case, we would note:
1. The Amalekite scene examples would have occurred all in one day, and involving a maximum of one to two thousand families.
2. The above example #1 would have occurred over the space of probably an entire year, and involved a couple of thousand people minimum (on a exodus party of 1.5 million people)
3. The above example #2 would have occurred seasonally for over two hundred years (perhaps as long as for 400 years), and involved easily tens of thousands of families.
So, from a perspective standpoint, the actions of the Israelites are of significantly less magnitude and scale than the anti-Israelite actions of the Amalekites--from the standpoint of perspective. If perspective is useful at all, then it is decidedly in the 'favor' of the Israelite response to Amalek
Credits and Sources:
Glen Miller: http://www.christian-thinktank.com/
James Patrick Holding: http://www.tektonics.org/
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"Genocide" and the Bible Part 23 Amalekitesby mdean1215243 views
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