OzmO, at this point in the discussion, you are pretty much saying that it is a murder because you say so. You are not giving any valid points in light of what we just discussed above.
If you want to argue whether or not the punishment is out of proportion to the offense, we can do that. But that is not what we are discussing here. We are discussing whether putting to death these 3000 men is murder or not. It doesn't matter if the punishment is out of proportion. They accepted the law and the punishment for breaking it 40 days earlier.
If you want to discuss whether they "should" have submitted to this law and whether they "should" have accepted the punishment for breaking it 40 days earlier, then we can discuss that. But that is not the point. You cannot tell them what they should or should not submit to or what they should or should not accept as punishment because they were free to choose and they chose to submit to that law and they chose to accept that punishment for breaking it.
OzmO, I'm sorry, but I am really not understanding this analogy. Are you asking if the death of Jews during WWII was justified because it was the law of the land where they lived? The answer is NO. Which one of Hitler's laws about killing Jews did Jews agree to submit to and obey, only to choose to break later? How could they have accepted any law that called for their extermination and how could they break it? What law did they break and what were they being punished for? Please explain.
No, it isn't. But that is not what we are talking about here, is it? It is not like they didn't choose to submit to this law and agree to obey it, only to choose to break it later. It is not like God gave them the law and didn't tell them what would happen if they broke it. It was very clear that if they broke it, they would be destroyed. They understood this and chose to submit to the law and to accept the punishment for breaking it. They had a choice and they chose to submit to the law, to accept the punishment for breaking it, then they chose to break it. That is not murder.
If you continue to say that this is murder, then you'll have to say that capital punishment in the United States is murder too. What's the difference?
If you continue to say that this is murder based on the proportion of the punishment, then you are starting to sound like a dictator, who says these 3000 men are not allowed to choose to submit to this law and that they are not allowed to choose to accept the punishment for breaking it because you know what is good for them better than they do. Have you ever lived in a dictatorship? This is the kind of crap that people are submitted to in Venezuela, Cuba and other countries under a dictatorship. The dictator tells you what to choose and what not to choose because "he knows what's best for you better than you do."
We can discuss whether or not anger and jealousy should be God's attributes. But that is not what we are discussing here. If you commit treason and appear in front of a judge for it, the judge might be very angry at you and he/she might be jealous that your loyalties are with the enemy. But that does not mean that sentencing you to death is murder, because you know that the punishment for treason is death anyway. So you can't argue that the judge sentenced you to death because of anger and jealousy. The judge would sentence you to death because that is the punishment for treason, period. Emotion is beside the point here. So putting to death those 3000 men is not murder because they knew fully well what they were doing from the beginning and they made a choice to break the law, a bad choice. And they were punished according to the law which they had submitted to and accepted.
Feeling a bit expressive today loco?
Here's the definition of murder:
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source
mur·der /ˈmɜrdər/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[mur-der] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1. Law. the killing of another human being under conditions specifically covered in law. In the U.S., special statutory definitions include murder committed with malice aforethought, characterized by deliberation or premeditation or occurring during the commission of another serious crime, as robbery or arson (first-degree murder), and murder by intent but without deliberation or premeditation (second-degree murder).
2. Slang. something extremely difficult or perilous: That final exam was murder!
3. a group or flock of crows.
–verb (used with object)
4. Law. to kill by an act constituting murder.
5.
to kill or slaughter inhumanly or barbarously.6. to spoil or mar by bad performance, representation, pronunciation, etc.: The tenor murdered the aria.
–verb (used without object)
7. to commit murder.
—Idioms
8. get away with murder, Informal. to engage in a deplorable activity without incurring harm or punishment: The new baby-sitter lets the kids get away with murder.
9. murder will out, a secret will eventually be exposed.
10. yell or scream bloody murder,
a. to scream loudly in pain, fear, etc.
b. to protest loudly and angrily: If I don't get a good raise I'm going to yell bloody murder.
When you kill 3000 for worshiping a different way, whether it's the law or not, it's murder. Hitler enacted laws that could cause your death for aiding and abetting Jews as acts of treason. That was murder too. It was a wholesale slaughter of 3000 people put to the sword in a fit of anger. It wasn't
one person committing murder and then getting a lethal injection as a capital punishment. So your capital punishment point is weak because we don;t put people to death for the anger and jealous laced frenzy that moses did.
It doesn't matter if they agreed. It was once said you can get 12% of people to believe pigs fly with a poll. Just because somebody agrees to something doesn't justify a transgression of killing them. Yes they were warned, yes they acknowledge that warning. Doesn't matter. Just like getting a lethal injection for burning a flag.
Maybe it's an opinion only or maybe not.
But killing 3000 men for what they did is pure EVIL and WRONG. It is not indicative of the wisdom of God that is shown through so much of the Bible.
