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You are also faced with biblical passages such as these:
"... their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up." (Hosea 13:16)
"Their children shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled and their wives ravished." (Isaiah 13:16)
"...and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eye shall not spare children." (Isaiah 13:18)
"Then Manahem smote Tipsah, and all that were therein, and the coasts thereof from Tirzah: because they opened not to him, therefore he smote it; and all the women wherein that were with child he ripped up." (2 Kings 15:16)
It is not possible to read these Charles Manson-like passages and at the same time claim that the Bible teaches only reverence for life. Less reverence cannot be fathomed. Any compassionate human being cannot read these horrible descriptions of murder without having the stomach turn. And no amount of rationalizing can justify any of it. Such descriptions render the Bible obscene.
Chirstian apologists will explain, earnestly and patiently, that killing and murdering are not the same thing. The ancient Hebrew words for "murder" and "kill" are different, you see. And there were translation errors made througout the Old Testament, and especially in the Ten Commandments, you see. That means that the commandement should read, "Thou shalt not murder" rather than "Thou shalt not kill," you see. So when God ordered entire communities to be slaughtered, including the babies, he was ordering only that they be killed, not murdered. You see.
This sort of linguistic hairsplitting is intelligence-insulting, and betrays an astonishing callousness. Dead babies are dead babies, and I don't care which Hebrew verb you use to describe how they got that way. The obscenity of the destruction of Samaria, as described in Hosea 13:16 cannot be translated out of trouble; The verse, in its entirety, states, "Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God: they shall fall by the sword; their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up."
Well, that paints a pretty clear picture. You can play Name That Verb forever, but you will never change the monstrous nature of that appalling directive.
Since most of us have never dashed an infant to pieces, it is a challenge even to imagine how one might go about doing it. Try to envision such a thing, and as you do so, freeze your face muscles and go look in a mirror. You will see pain, shock, disgust, and perhaps a bit of nausea. But try not to sidestep this mental exercise. We are talking about the "Holy" Bible here, so let's plow through this.
Imagine, then, grabbing, say, a six-week-old, screaming infant away from its equally screaming mother. How would you "dash" the tiny baby to pieces? Perhaps you would grab the baby by its ankles and swing it, like a golf club, smashing its little head against a stone wall or tree, until its skull cracked and its brains spilled out. That should certainly qualify as dashing in pieces.
As for "ripping up" the pregnant women, it would probably just be a matter of using a sword and stabbing at their swolen bellies, repeatedly, until the fetuses were destroyed and the women were, literally, ripped up and lying, dead, in pools of their own blood.
(At this point, you might want to make note, again, of your facial expression.)
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