Originally created for Everything Quest 1: Sins of the World. Not everything here is historical, so I don't know if it fits exactly in the category, but I'll submit it anyway.
Apologies for quoting different versions of the Bible -- the message is the same though.
Genocide
Deuteronomy 2:32 - 35
The Israelites utterly destroy the men, women, and children of Sihon.
Deuteronomy 3:6
The Israelites utterly destroy the men, women, and children of Og.
Joshua 6:2 (Joshua 6 and Joshua 8:1 to 30)
2 And the LORD said unto Joshua, See, I have given into thine hand Jericho, and the king thereof, (and) the mighty men of valour.
Joshua 6:21
21 And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.
Joshua 8:1 - 2
1. And the LORD said unto Joshua, Fear not, neither be thou dismayed: take all the people of war with thee, and arise, go up to Ai: see, I have given into thy hand the king of Ai, and his people, and his city, and his land:
2 And thou shalt do to Ai and her king as thou didst unto Jericho and her king: only the spoil thereof, and the cattle thereof, shall ye take for a prey unto yourselves: lay thee an ambush for the city behind it.
Joshua 8:8
8 When you have taken the city, set it on fire. Do what the LORD has commanded. See to it; you have my orders."
Joshua 8:24 - 26
24 When Israel had finished killing all the men of Ai in the fields and in the desert where they had chased them, and when every one of them had been put to the sword, all the Israelites returned to Ai and killed those who were in it.
25 Twelve thousand men and women fell that day--all the people of Ai.
26 For Joshua did not draw back the hand that held out his javelin until he had destroyed all who lived in Ai.
Joshua 10:10-27
With the help of the Lord, Joshua utterly destroys the people of Gibeon.
Joshua 10:28
With the Lord's approval, Joshua utterly destroys the people of Makkedah.
Joshua 10:30
With the Lord's approval, Joshua utterly destroys the people of Libnah.
Joshua 10:32-33
With the Lord's approval, Joshua utterly destroys the people of Lachish.
Joshua 10:34-35
With the Lord's approval, Joshua utterly destroys the people of Eglon.
Joshua 10:36-37
With the Lord's approval, Joshua utterly destroys the people of Hebron.
Joshua 10:38-39
With the Lord's approval, Joshua utterly destroys the people of Debir.
Joshua 10:40
40 So Joshua smote all the country of the hills, and of the south, and of the vale, and of the springs, and all their kings: he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the LORD God of Israel commanded.
1 Samuel 15:2-3, 7-8
"This is what the Lord says: Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass ....'
And Saul ... utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword."
All that amounts to an overuse of "utterly destroy". You would have thought that after Moses brought down the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20), with the explicit "Thou shalt not kill" (Exodus 20:13), there would be some kind of objection to killing thousands of people, including women and children. Let's face it - if anyone here today got a vision from God telling him/her to go kill an entire race of people, it's far more likely the person would be declared insane rather than that becoming acceptable justification for utterly destroying cities and tribes.
God exercising the rod of smiting
Exodus 12:29
29 At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner, who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of all the livestock as well.
Exodus 20:5
5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,
Samuel 5:6-9
9 But after they had moved it, the LORD's hand was against that city, throwing it into a great panic. He afflicted the people of the city, both young and old, with an outbreak of tumors. (NIV)
9 And it was so, that, after they had carried it about, the hand of the LORD was against the city with a very great destruction: and he smote the men of the city, both small and great, and they had emerods in their secret parts. (KJV)
-->conclusion? the Lord smote them with testicular cancer...
2 Samuel 24:15
15 So the LORD sent a pestilence upon Israel from the morning even to the time appointed: and there died of the people from Dan even to Beersheba seventy thousand men.
2 Kings 6:18
18 As the enemy came down toward him, Elisha prayed to the LORD, "Strike these people with blindness." So he struck them with blindness, as Elisha had asked.
2 Kings 19:35
35 That night the angel of the LORD went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning--there were all the dead bodies!
Isaiah 49:26
26 I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh; they will be drunk on their own blood, as with wine. Then all mankind will know that I, the LORD, am your Savior, your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob."
Isaiah 3:17
Therefore the LORD will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the LORD will discover their secret parts.
The Lord decides that killing the firstborn of every Egyptian household is an acceptable way to convince the Egyptians to release the Israelites (gee why not just kill the Egyptians outright?), sins are deemed to be hereditary (would you like to be punished for your great-grandfather's wrongdoings?), death, blindness, testicular cancer (maybe), eating of flesh, an obsession with "secret parts"...
God certainly was not above meting out his harsh punishment, not on non-believers but rather on infidels from tribes and peoples opposed to his chosen one.
No Mercy
Deuteronomy 7:2
2 And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them:
Deutenomomy 20:13-14,16
13 When the LORD your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it.
14 As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the LORD your God gives you from your enemies.
16 However, in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes.
Judges 18:27
27 Then they took what Micah had made, and his priest, and went on to Laish, against a peaceful and unsuspecting people. They attacked them with the sword and burned down their city.
Sexism
1 Corinthians 11:7 - 9
7 A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man.
8 For man did not come from woman, but woman from man;
9 neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.
1 Corinthians 14:34 - 35
34 women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says.
35 If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.
Slavery
Joel 3:8
8 And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off: for the LORD hath spoken (it).
Morality?
Numbers 31:17
17. Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.
18. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.
This is exactly what it sounds like - kill everyone except the virgin girls ...
Numbers 31:31-40
Note that amongst the plunder are 32,000 virgins. read line 40 to figure out that they sacrificed 32 of these to the LORD.
Judges 21:11-12
11 "This is what you are to do," they said. "Kill every male and every woman who is not a virgin."
12 They found among the people living in Jabesh Gilead four hundred young women who had never slept with a man, and they took them to the camp at Shiloh in Canaan.
Judges 21:14-23
The 400 virgins captured above prove to be insufficient, so the Benjaminites hide in the vineyards and kidnap "the daughters of Shiloh" as they come out to dance and celebrate.
uhuh. Raping of women in recent wars? It's certainly not new. Heck, if the chosen people of the Lord can do it, why not everyone else?
1 Kings 11:3
He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray.
--> The wisest guy in history (King Solomon) had 700 wives and 300 concubines!
Revelation 14:1-4
Heaven is meant to be filled with 144,000 virgin men who did not "defile" themselves with women.
which means that there's probably going to be many billions of unlucky men and no women in heaven. uhuh. righty.
Just plain despicable
Judges 19:22-29
A group of sexually depraved men beat on the door of an old man's house demanding that he turn over to them a male house guest. Instead, the old man offers his virgin daughter and his guest's concubine (or wife): "Behold, here are my virgin daughter and his concubine; let me bring them out now. Ravish them and do with them what seems good to you; but against this man do not do so vile a thing." The man's concubine is ravished and dies. The man then cuts her body into twelve pieces and sends one piece to each of the twelve tribes of Israel.
That's a whole lotta casualties
2 Chronicles 13:3,17
3 Abijah went into battle with a force of four hundred thousand able fighting men, and Jeroboam drew up a battle line against him with eight hundred thousand able troops.
17 Abijah and his men inflicted heavy losses on them, so that there were five hundred thousand casualties among Israel's able men.
This account, if true, would dwarf the number of deaths at any other recorded single battle in history. Not even the D-Day landing at Normandy or the atom bomb bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki resulted in anywhere close to this number of casualties. Occam's Razor suggests that this story is false but don't waste your time trying to explain this to a fundamentalist Christian.
Foreskin mania
When David married the daughter of King Saul, the King asked for 100 foreskins of dead Philistines; David brought him 200 as a dowry (1Samuel 18:25-27).
Joshua 5:3
3 And Joshua made him sharp knives, and circumcised the children of Israel at the hill of the foreskins.
Update (December 15th, 2000) - for mblase:
I have but one thing to say. Waging war does not make killing innocent children (genocide) nor rape nor slavery nor mutilation of corpses (foreskins) acceptable in my book. You are welcome to disagree.
Update (February 4th, 2002) - for mblase again:
You say in both your /msg to me and in your writeup and, I quote:
You say you don't think these sorts of actions are ever acceptable during wartime, for any culture? There are plenty of pacifists today who think that war of any sort, even killing a soldier in self-defense, is unacceptable. Refer back to my last point.
In this multicultural society, this sort of approach is looked down upon and considered an "atrocity" without any further consideration. Whether that should be the case or not is an issue for another node.
Whether you believe this is cultural elitism or not, I currently live in a society where the vast majority of people would agree that committing those acts of genocide, rape, sacrificing of virgins and so on in a war setting would not be considered acceptable. For your information, I happened to be in Australia when I noded this. I do also believe, that most of the other modern countries I have personally visited (including but not limited to the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Holland and several places in South East Asia) also have similar standards. If you find that, in your own personal moral standards, some of these practices are acceptable, please go ahead and find like minded inviduals such as yourself and form a new country somewhere else.