[demosthenes the elder]

God doesn't change?
Exodus: "thou shalt not murder"
Joshua: "Go, and kill every last one of them, including women and children right down to the newborn" (or words to that effect.

That isn't a fundamental shift in stated policy?
Hoo!

[ShadowAce]

War is not murder

[AnalogReigns]

Murder (personally killing someone) and warfare (when nations fight with nations) are two different things....recognized from antiquity. Deeply engrained middle eastern customs of revenge(meaning it would be the life duty of a surviving child to wreak havoc on an enemy nation)--combined with the incredibly degenerate state of the Canaanites in those days made their annhilation required by God. God as the giver of life....and death, has the absolute right to determine when and where people die--we, on our, own don't.

There is no inconsistancy there--any more than the killing of innocent life (abortion) is murder, while the killing of the guilty (capitol punishment)-- duly convicted in a court of law, is not murder, but justice.

[Nix 2]

G-d has all the power over life and death, and there is a difference between killing and murder which is the whole difference between absolute and moral relativism. You would be questioning the Lord, not the man who followed His orders.
My perception of this article was more along the line of abortion, pedophilia, rape, wanton murder, war for the sake of war without reason or cause.
Just because you read a passage and pull it totally out of context without having studied the history or knowing the circumstances is pretty lame.
As a matter of fact, Jericho was already a destroyed city when Joshua arrived there. No one lived there. It had already been the victim of a devastating earthquake and fire. It is a *hero* story to give Joshua status. The truth is that the Israelites never attacked anyone who didn't attack them first because they asked to pass through lands and were feared because of their strangeness to the territory.
How on earth did you manage to turn a thread about morality into a Jew bashing thread before it even got started? It ain't about Jews. It's about leftist moral relativism. Get it?

[safisoft]

God doesn't change? Exodus: "thou shalt not murder" Joshua: "Go, and kill every last one of them, including women and children right down to the newborn" (or words to that effect. That isn't a fundamental shift in stated policy?

Joshua was acting explicitly at G-d's command.

Exodus 20:13 says, "Thou shalt not kill [ratsach]". The word "kill" does not occur in the book of Joshua, but the word harag does.

ratsach is ALWAYS used to describe what we in English call "murder".

harag on the other hand is used in the Book of Joshua as an act of G-d's judgment. It is most often translated "slay" or "destroy".

G-d does not change. He is always the same...

[jejones]

Then there's Genesis 6:6, "And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart." That would imply that God changed His mind about something, wouldn't it?

[nmh]

God doesn't change. Apparently you don't know him and prefer to take Scripture out of context. Maybe it's time you got to know Him.