Fourth book of the Torah says that the army has to kill women who have known a man but to keep the little girls (women children) for themselves. Here’s some commentary about it:
The little ones — The object of the command to kill every male was to exterminate the whole nation, the cup of whose iniquity was full. For the righteousness of the mode see Joshua 6:21, note. Every woman who might possibly have been engaged in the licentious worship of Peor was to share the fate of the male children, to preserve Israel from all taint of that abomination. The pure maidens could be incorporated into Israel without peril to the national religion. Joshua 6:23-25, notes. They could not be treated as concubines, since the law against fornication was in full force, (Deuteronomy 22:25-29,) but they could be lawfully married to their captors (Deuteronomy 21:10-14).
Well, that’s the difference. This is just Daniel Whedon’s personal interpretation. It’s not included in the list above because those are all explicit - not just one person’s interpretation. Obviously a commentary is subjective by nature. Why open up a solid argument to debate by introducing a lower quality argument based on a subjective opinion?
Here are a few examples of arguments that this entire line of thinking opens you up to:
- “keep” is a mistranslation - the original text says הַחֲי֖וּ, which means “let live.”
- “young girls” is a mistranslation: “young girls” would be ילדות, but instead this says הַטַּ֣ף, which could mean “children” or “families,”
- According to BDB (one of the most widely used English biblical lexicons), sometimes the “word includes (or implies) women as well as children”
- Other commentaries say that they were taken not as wives, but as slave workers.
Why do you want to mess around with all that nonsense? Just use the unambiguous examples from OP’s infographic.
