Did The Judge Of All The Earth Always Do What Was Right?

From *The Skeptical Review*, 1998 January /February :

by Farrell Till 

Elsewhere in this issue (pp. 4-5), Roger Hutchinson continues his losing battle to prove that when Yahweh killed David's son, there was no violation of the biblical principle that children should not bear the iniquity of their fathers. This principle was stated in Deuteronomy 24:16, "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin." It was repeated in Ezekiel 18:20, "The soul that sins, it shall die: the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him." My position has been that the killing of David's son for his parents' act of adultery was a clear violation of this principle, but Hutchinson has resorted to all sorts of verbal maneuvers to deny this conclusion.

I have decided that the best way to bury this issue is to let my rebuttal of Hutchinson's latest effort (pp. 5-7) and its predecessor articles speak for themselves as I take readers through the Bible to show other examples of where Yahweh violated his own moral code and held the innocent accountable for the "sins" of others. I hope that Hutchinson will go along on the trip and see for himself that he is trying to ride a dead horse.

Does Anyone See Any Problem Here?

Exodus 20:5,You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, (NIV)

Yet,

Ezekiel 18:20 ,The one who sins is the one who will die. The child will not share the guilt of the parent, nor will the parent share the guilt of the child. The righteousness of the righteous will be credited to them, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against them. (NIV)

Sins Of The Fathers (4)

Till gives a good summation of the facts in this debate in his second response in this post, which Ariel has repeatedly side stepped:

ARIEL

sub 1: As an aside, my reference to an already existing three  year famine is not NEEDED to advance my point. It is based  as follows. II Samuel starts with an introduction that God was  already angry. Therefore God was quoted as offering 7 years  of famine. That means a full 7 years. 3 already and 3 to come  (the 7th is because after 6 years of famine, the ground may  be ready to produce in the 7th but the field must be planted and the crop grown and harvested. Since the people are still  waiting for food in year 7 it is the 7th year of famine).  I Chronicles does not prelude by saying "And God was angry".

TILL
No, the Chronicler didn't say this. In fact, he said that Satan 
had moved David to take the census. This is consistent with 
the Chronicler's whitewashing efforts in which he cut out all 
of the dirt about David and tried to make him look like Mr. 
Goody Two Shoes.

Sins Of The Fathers (3)

Farrell Till continues his rebuttal of David Ariel's evasions:

The lengthy section that Ariel skipped over has been snipped.

ARIEL First I maintain that when David made his speech "I alone  sinned" it was David's opinion and plea which any righteous  monarch would use before his God.

TILL

YOU maintain this, but in this forum we like to see arguments 

to support what one maintains. Such arguments are 

conspicuously absent in your replies. Please understand that 

argumentation by asserting, question begging, and special 

pleading is frowned upon in this forum.

Is it your contention that David was wrong when he said that 

he ALONE had sinned? Furthermore, David asked a question: 

"What have these sheep done?" If David was not the only one 

who had sinned, then state specifically what the "sheep" had 

done and support your answer with textual evidence.

By the way, I hope you will study this posting to take notice 

of how a serious debater will take his opponent's material 

and reply to it point by point.

Sins Of The Fathers (2)

Farrell Till answers David Ariel's reply to Till's first post: ARIEL  MY answer to Mr. Till's question: A) Exodus 30:11-13 states: "God spoke to Moses saying:  When you  take a census of the Children of Israel, according  to their numbers,  every man shall give God an atonement  for his soul when counting  them so that there will not be a  plague among them when counting  them. This shall they  give, everyone who passes through the census, a half-shekel (coin)..." It is Jewish tradition that counting the people will cause a  plague because it expresses a symptom of haughtiness and  general lack of realizing that one must always work on spiritual  growth.

TILL
This may be a Jewish tradition, but you won't find any basis 
for it in  the text you quoted above. The text is stating that the 
"plague" would  come if the census tax of a half shekel of silver 
was not paid by those  who were counted. In other words, the 
census wouldn't have caused  the plague but failing to pay the 
tax would have, so are you suggesting  that if everyone who 
was counted in David's census had paid a half  shekel of silver, 
there would have been no plague? If so, quote the  language 
in the text of 2 Samuel 24 or 1 Chronicles 21 that justifies 
this conclusion?

Sins Of The Fathers (1)

On the old II Errancy discussion list Farrell Till had a debate with David Ariel in which Ariel defended the inerrancy of the Old Testament. Till began the discussion with the following post, May 3, 2002. More of the debate will follow in the coming days:

TILL

David Ariel has agreed to engage in a debate in which he will be defending the inerrancy of the Old Testament (Tanakh). I will begin the discussion by posting what I consider to be an example of biblical discrepancy, which he will then respond to.

In the debate on biblical inerrancy that Mr. Ariel has agreed to engage in, I will not be confronting him with examples like the discrepancies about the number of horses Solomon had or the age of Ahaziah when he began to reign, because these are the kinds of discrepancies that biblicists will pass off as copyist errors. Instead, I will be showing that the Bible contradicts itself on fundamental points of doctrine. In other words, the Bible will claim one doctrinal point here but a contradictory doctrine elsewhere, or the Bible will teach a doctrinal point that important biblical characters, including even Yahweh himself, ignored or disobeyed. These are discrepancies that cannot be dismissed on the grounds that the "original autographs" may not have contained these or that scribes miscopied or such like. They are discrepancies that require sensible explanations, and I will be interested to see how Mr. Ariel fares in giving us those sensible explanations.

In this posting, I am going to recycle an argument that I posted when Joe Carter was on the Errancy list trying to defend biblical inerrancy. It should be interesting to compare what Mr. Ariel says with the "explanation" that Carter posted to a discrepancy in the Old Testament concerning vicarious punishment. The Old Testament very plainly teaches that descendants were not to be punished for the crimes of their ancestors. My purpose in this first posting will be to explicate relevant passages to show that this doctrine was clearly taught in the OT. Then later I will explicate examples that show this doctrine was flagrantly violated with not just Yahweh's approval but sometimes as a result of his own decrees.