THAT ASS

are rape and genocide bad?

I can’t see how it was done because of venereal disease. Yes, Israelite men were having sexual relations with the Midianite (and Moabite) women, but these liasons were regarded as unlawful in and of themselves (the act). The lure of settling down with them instead of with their own women was considered a way that “Israel” would / could be taken away permanently; Israel’s continued existence threatened. Anyway, those peoples in a tribe under the herem (Yahweh war) were to all be killed in the conflict, with no exceptions. Those actually occupying the land these Israelites believed was promised them by their God, YHWH, such as the Hittites, Jebusites, Amorites, Canaanites, Parazzites, and Hivites, were not to be spared. None of them. The Midionites were not in the land, and the young women were spared death (as otherwise would have been the case) and instead were taken as prisoners. I suppose the young males, already, or soon to become teenagers, could and would have been inclined to take revenge in the not too distant future, desiring to reinstate the ways of their fathers.

The Biblical reason is stated earlier, in Numbers 25: 18. The Midianites were in the land of Moab. They helped give the Moabites military advice. The Moabites worshipped the war god, Chemosh, and both were engaged in the worship of the fertility god, Baal, which in these days of Moses’ time involved religious sexual rites – temple prostitution & veneration of the dead and ceremonial meals, for and to that god and his female consort, Asherah. As best as one could tell, the call for the elimination of these people was in sync with Moses’ realization that the Hebrew people would eventually become apostates to their God, YHWH, if the whole Midianite way of life was not destroyed. Their God, YHWH, had already cursed them, the texts says, and worse was believed to come if the Hebrew civilians had the chance to embrace these gods to any further a degree.