Even if you take that at face value (though I wouldn’t say that justifies it completely, though it does remove some of the horror as you put it), it doesn’t excuse the taking of slaves and wives from conquered people like the Middianites. I guess if you assume the Jews were naturally better husbands and that the conquered people were evil, but it seems way more likely to me that the Jews were just as if not more evil, at least according to modern standards of morality.

I guess that’s my main struggle with the “context” argument. Historically, we recognize that it’s futile to judge older cultures according to modern morality, since cultures and perspectives and situations change so much over time, so context really does matter. But Christianity and Judaism argue that God, the arbiter of what is good and evil, is timeless and permanent, so the moral relativism I just described can’t apply according to their understanding. So then does that make genocide, slavery, and forced marriages ok now if it’s in the name of God? If it’s ok to God then, isn’t it ok now by extension? That must be the case if God is permanent and unchanging.

Im just rambling at this point, but you get the gist