Yahweh Is No Ares

One of the more misunderstood and even feared aspects of Biblical morality is how it clearly permits warfare.  When someone assumes that war inevitably entails cruelty inflicted on the opposing side and perhaps also on neutral parties, this will seem heinous to them.  The entire matter of what makes something cruel or unjust aside (and emotion and consensus are as irrelevant here as they are to all other objective truths about things beyond emotion and consensus existing), it is apparent that warfare does not ever have to be conducted out of sadism or selfishness.  Indeed, this is the kind of warfare allowed by Mosaic Law.  Yahweh, as described by the Bible, is certainly no Ares.

To clarify an important fact up front, issues like rape of enemy soldiers or noncombatant captives actually pertain to how individual soldiers behave, not to the inherent nature of warfare itself.  After all, there is not anything about the fundamental nature of engaging in battles and using physical force, weaponry, or technology to kill enemies that involves rape or other forms of abuse.  All the same, the plain Biblical denouncement of rape as an act that deserves execution (Deuteronomy 22:25-27), homosexual intercourse as an act that deserves execution even when it is not non-consensual (Leviticus 20:13), and immediately having sex with prisoners of war as an exploitative act (Deuteronomy 21:10-14) all prohibit rape of any kind, inside or outside of a war context.

As for actual warfare, Deuteronomy 20:10-12 goes so far as to demand that the Israelites offer peace to an enemy before starting a battle with them.  It is one thing to preemptively attack a bloodthirsty, egoistic enemy force that needs to be stopped before it can spread more gratuitous or unjust destruction.  There is no obligation to be gracious or kind when one's life or safety is at stake.  In other cases, the Bible insists that it is immoral to refuse to offer the other faction a chance to avoid whatever killing might occur on the battlefield completely.  Unsurprisingly, this detail is left out of almost all arguments against Biblical ethics--not that conscience and cultural expectations have anything to do with why something is morally wrong if such a thing as morality exists.

Nowhere in the Bible is the kind of warfare so easily found in historical documentation of nationalistic, imperialist, or otherwise selfish cultures prescribed or defended.  Genocide is not automatically immoral by default just because it involves mass killings, not unless killing itself is inherently immoral (and there is absolutely nothing to believe in this based on other than emotion and societal norms).  By Biblical standards, killing alone is not immoral, so there is no internal justification for objecting to mere killing; since conscience is just emotion and cultural preferences are just social constructs, neither of these has any validity on any matter.  The historical evidence in favor of the Bible's veracity makes Christian ethics the only moral framework that can actually be evidentially supported.

Nevertheless, Biblical morality is utterly opposed to militaristic emphasis of armed might over philosophical and moral soundness.  Yahweh is no Ares no matter how much the Biblical text is misrepresented by imbecilic thinkers inside and outside the church.  The deity of the Bible is neither opposed to all warfare at the expense of self-preservation nor anything but opposed to military conflict beyond specific situations like societal self-defense against unjust invaders.  As in times outside of war, all wartime kidnapping (Exodus 21:16), murder (Exodus 21:12-14), and rape (Deuteronomy 22:25-27) are capital offenses in Mosaic Law.  It is not as if either cruel abuses of enemies or the violation of the rights of noncombatants are ever tolerated to the slightest extent even when the Bible prescribes or allows for warfare.