Exodus 23:27-28

 

In the short Biblical passage below from Exodus as translated in The New American Bible, Yahweh give strong, graphic guarantee of punishment to the enemies of the children of God, if they honor the covenant between Yahweh and His Chosen People.

 

Imagine if we, under Mavellonialist faith, believe in the good deities so much and genuinely, that Yahweh Himself or other good deities like Jesus actually walk among us, or their prophets and prophetesses walk among us.

 

If we similarly honored literally, sincerely, and fully the living covenant binding between a good deity and De’s people, such powerful, indomitable worldly protection from our enemies might one day be as omnipresent and unstoppable as Yahweh’s protection and intercession in days of yore.

 

Here is the quote: “I will have the fear of me precede you, so that I will throw into panic every nation you reach. I will make all your enemies turn from you, and ahead of you I will send hornets to drive the Hivites, Canaanites and Hittites out of your way.”

 

Here is that same quote from the Holy Bible (KJV): “I will send my fear before thee and will destroy all the people to whom thou shalt come, and I will make all thine enemies turn their backs unto thee. And I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee.”

 

My response: This second translation better pictures for the reader that if God goes into battle with his chosen people, the children of light, literally the fear of God will demoralize the opposing children of darkness, who will panic, lay down their arms in terror, and seek some small hole to crawl into, hopefully to be forgotten or overlooked by the wrath of God on the prowl, to advance in the world the cause of De’s human allies and followers. Nothing and nobody in the universe can withstand God’s wrath when De goes into battle.

 

Now the Hebrews were replacing, with God’s approval, people that lived in the Promised Land; is it morally justifiable that these peoples were deprived of their homelands to make way for Hebrew settlement? If these were good peoples worshiping good deities, even though pagan, then the displacement of them by the monotheistic Yahweh and his chosen Hebrew people, would be hard to justify.

 

If they were wicked peoples, serving evil as well as pagan deities, then perhaps overthrowing them and displacing them is justifiable.

 

Or if that already occupied Palestine really was a Holy Land, perhaps the resisting occupants needed to be pushed aside by God’s people, so the invasion was thus justified.