Ethnic Cleansing

pedicab driver,

I know that I’m going to come across as a jerk here, so I’ll go ahead and apologize.
I strongly encourage all people to increase their Biblical literacy. No matter what your religious beliefs, being familiar with the Bible is an important part of being a well educated, well informed, and well-rounded person.
No, God didn’t really “want all non Jews wiped out from the promised land” (“non-Jews” should be hyphenated, and “Promised Land” should be capitalized).
Nathan did not tell David “that God wants him to show no mercy to the non Jews.”
Strictly speaking, there was no such thing as “Jews” at this time. If you want me to explain that further, just ask.
God did not punish “Saul because he spared the lives of women and the enemy king.”
God had a very specific will for the lands between two great rivers called the Nile and the Euphrates. He also had a very specific will for the descendants of a man named Jacob, who was also known as Israel. This was all a part of his much bigger plan for the world as a whole.
God wanted the descendents of Israel to have a home, which they had not had before. Not only did he want them to inhabit it, he wanted them to dominate it. Part of this would be progress towards their permanent establishment as a Nation. As an established Nation, their faith in and worship of Him could also, become permanently established and grow, eventually spreading throughout the rest of the World.
The land that he gave to them was not chosen randomly. It was located right between the two birthplaces of civilization: Egypt and Mesopotamia. It stretched along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, a body of water well traveled by so many great civilizations throughout history and instrumental to the spread of the culture of Greece and the empire of Rome.
The people that already inhabited this land made engaging in every kind of immoral practice a part of their daily lives. For example, they were polytheist, and children were sacrificed to some of their gods by being thrown into a fire. Temples to some of their other gods were staffed by prostitute priests & priestesses (who were brought in as children), and paying to have sex with them was considered an act of worship. Every other form of sexual immorality was common as well.
Like pretty much all of the non-Hebrew peoples (and most of the Hebrew peoples for that matter), the inhabitants of the land had consistently rejected the one true God during their entire history.
Besides, they would've been a constant threat to the Israelites if they had been allowed to remain in the land.
God had instructed the Israelites – starting with Joshua, and continuing through the Judges and the first two Kings of Israel (Saul and David) – to exterminate all non-Israelites that inhabited the land that he had given to the Israelites, with very few exceptions.
The “mercy” thing is really not relevant. The Israelites were being obedient to God in killing these people, and were almost certainly not raping, torturing, etc. and hopefully killed the people as humanely as possible, considering. This is what the Prophets (such as Nathan) would have instructed them to do, had there been any question.
Specifically, shortly before the starting point of this film, God had instructed Saul (through the great Nazarite/Judge/Prophet Samuel) to completely wipe out the Amalekites – the men, women, and children (you can't exterminate a people if you let some of them live), as well as their animals (who had apparently been tainted by the sins of the Amalekites). One of the main reasons for this is said to be because the Amalekites attacked the Israelites after they left Egypt, during a time when both appeared to be living as nomads.
Well, Saul decided that their King could be spared, for reasons that aren’t completely clear. He also kept the best of their animals alive. He claimed that it was so that they could be sacrificed to God, but the fact that he had an army to feed may have been a factor as well.
There is no mention in the Biblical text of Saul sparing the women and children.
This was not the first time that Saul had disobeyed God in the years since God had chosen him as King, so that is why God took the crown from Saul and his family and gave it to someone else, “a man after God’s own heart.”
And no, there's certainly no irony to be found in comparing & contrasting the conquest of the Promised Land and the Holocaust.
I hope that clears things up. If not, please just ask. Actually, what would be even better than that would be to read it yourself.

Christian and Jewish students of the Old Testament and even average church-goers like myself remain troubled by the terrifying wrath of of El-Shaddai; the awesome God who emerged from the deserts to show the ancient Hebrews that there was no other real god but He. God was the One of awesome good, law and order, terrifying vengeance and destruction, but the Compassionate One who offered humans forgiveness.

But we never understood how He could instruct King Saul to kill every one of the Amalekite people, to the last man, woman, child, animal, and of course, their king. Most of us today would quail in terror if these instructions were given to us by God. I tell you that almost all of us could not carry it out. We remain confused and baffled. El-Shaddai is the Creator, not a senseless murderer. But aw, herein lies my own imperfect comprehension of the Infinite Mind. God is above comprehension and far above what we humans would ascribe as good and evil. If person creates something and later destroys it at will, we don't condemn him although we might question his judgement.

It's hard...God remains forever beyond full human comprehension. The muslims understood the terrifying wrath and vengeance of El-Shaddai. That is why so much of their religious practices centers around submissiveness to Him and avoiding stirring up His anger while appealing to His generous compassion and mercy, something the false pagan gods were incapable of showing.

I can truly understand King David, his officers and his soldiers being reluctant to slay the Amalekite women and children after a hard-fought battle. If it was you and now you had in your power a number of attractive young women free for the taking, wouldn't you be reluctant to kill them? Yet King David incurred the displeasure of God for ignoring His order. The strict law and punishment of the Old Testament God reveals itself again when prophet Samuel informs King Saul that he is going to lose everything, his throne, and by implication everything else, his wealth, his lands, his family, and then his own life. You can see why King Saul went into a dark depression afterwards. You would too if you knew for 100% that God had forsaken you.

Today, many people abandon Christianity because they think it's not real. They pray to God, they plead with God, but He doesn't answer them and doesn't answer their desperate pleas for help. El-Shaddai (God Almighty) is no pagan god to be appealed to for material assistance of the flesh. People hope that God will answer them so that they can put forth their requests for help and assistance. In truth, I've done it myself when I was younger, until I understood what should have been obvious. In the Old Testament, when God communicates with a person, it's because God wants something from them, not because He is about to grant a wish. God is not a genie from a bottle. And often God asks very difficult tasks from individuals He contacts. People have forgotten that.

God ordered the complete extermination only of certain tribes on certain occasions, it was NOT ever the general policy of the Law Of Moses as this fictional Nathan implies.

"It's not about money.... It's about sending a Message..... Everything Burns!!!"

"Did God really want all non Jews wiped out from the promised land?"

You have a fundamentally inaccurate conception of the Bible (that's OK, most people do).

It's not a HISTORY book, it's a THEOLOGY book:
- Written in it's definitive form after the babylonian exile, to give the jews a national charter and identity.
- Based on legends, myths, and oral traditions as varied and contradictory as Greek myths (every story has several versions), who were themselves in minor or major order based of foreign myths (creation myth, Deluge myth, all those are based off Sumerian originals, even Deuteronomy law and Psalms borrows heavily off Egyptian originals)
- Redacted to favor the predominant thinking, loyalties, and kings of the time (the David line)
- Coloured to reflect current and recent times (babylonian captivity, Solomon's idolatry and construction oppression, etc).
- Written to justify/rationalize previous and current behaviour (warring with Caananites, why that land should be theirs, etc).
- To give the Jews an uplifting account from a quite dark period (Israel had many gods and even goddesses besides Yawveh who was originally a Caananite God in fact, and Abraham's god was in fact a different god, the Caananite "El", where do you think names such as Israel, Gabriel, and whatever ends with "el" come from and refer to?)

So in light of that, whenever you read an OT passage that doesn't jive with Jesus' message (if you're a Christian and wonder how could his all loving God be the same god as the vengeful god Yawveh from the OT), you have to interpret the OT from the NT's theologic POV, which is also a theology book ultimately.