I cannot believe that thrusting a spear through the body of a woman ever
stayed a plague;1 that any good man ever ordered his soldiers to slay
the men and keep the maidens alive for themselves; that God commanded
men not to show mercy to each other; that he induced men to obey his
commandments by promising them that he would assist them in murdering
the wives and children of their neighbors; or that he ever commanded a
man to kill his wife because she differed with him about religion;2 or
that God was mistaken about hares chewing the cud;3 or that he objected
to the people raising horses 4 or that God wanted a camp kept clean
because he walked through it at night;5 or that he commanded widows to
spit in the faces of their brothers-in-law;6 or that he ever threatened
to give anybody the itch;7 or that he ever secretly buried a man and
allowed the corpse to write an account of the funeral.
Forty-ninth. Does it necessarily follow that a man wishes to commit some
crime if he refuses to admit that the river Jordan cut itself in two
and allowed the lower end to run away? Or that seven priests could blow
seven ram's horns loud enough to throw down the walls of a city;8 or
that God, after Achan had confessed that he had secreted a garment and
a wedge of gold, became good natured as soon as Achan and his sons and
daughters had been stoned to death and their bodies burned?10 Is it not
a virtue to abhor such a God?