This is one of the go to passages among some atheists when they want to show how despicable God is, and how the Bible is evil. To be clear, the passage is a doozy. To try to justify the passage really is a pointless endeavor.
A quick point though. This passage is attributed to Moses, as the meme correctly points out. It is not a command of God, but one of a political leader.
To understand the passage though, we need to know the historical context. What Moses is commanding here is really a common military tactic of the time in the ancient Near East. Sadly, it’s one of those times in which the ancient Israelites just did not overcome their historical context.
The practice makes some sort of military sense though. When thinking of the ancient Near East, we are talking, often, about a lot of smaller tribes who are connected to other tribes. Conquering one tribe didn’t conquer all of the people, so the threat was still there. To counter this threat, conquering tribes would massacre the group the defeated in order to limit the possibility of a future attack.
That doesn’t justify the practice, but it does put it into a historical context. As for the final portion, it’s actually verse 18, and a better translation would be, “And all the little ones of the women who have not known lying with a male, let live.” It’s an odd phrasing, but the Hebrew itself is just as odd. This translation does take some of the bite out of the verse, but the implication is still there.
The reason they are allowed to live is because they could then be married into the Israelites, and then produce Israelite babies, which furthered the growth of the tribe. Again, not a justification, just a clarification of the historical context.
So yes, a doozy of a passage, but there is also a lot more to it. As a whole, the passage isn’t a problem unless one takes a very strict stance on the Bible. Such a position though really is a minority view.
