One of the most vociferous criticisms of the Biblical narrative centers around the violence in the Old Testament. Here we try and explain it.

Did God Cause Suffering, or End it?

This might be a surprising take on the topic, but I strongly feel that one needs consider the possibility that the violent intervention of God actually represented an end to the unbearable sufferings of the people involved. This is because it could well be that these civilizations were irredeemably evil. As a result the truly innocent and naïve could not hope for any betterment at the hands of those in power. Even today, we have all around us crime, war, natural disaster and disease. The times are so bad in fact that it drives persons increasingly to take their own lives. Suicidal rates in some communities like the LGBTQ+ are nearing an incredible 50%, but it is well known that depression rates are increasing across all communities.

That would have been the kind of situation that God had to work with…but that was not his nature. As Jesus said “this was because of the hardness of your hearts, but in the beginning it was not so…” . God was dealing with a people that had become hardened beyond redemption, and not only made life hard for others, but for whom life had become unbearable.

There are some clear indicators that this indeed was the reason why these peoples were indeed annihilated. In Leviticus18 God issues decrees are against any form of incestual relationships involving even family members related through marriage, against bestiality, and against infanticide (sacrificing your offspring to Molech) (vv.21-23), and against recourse to sorcery and wizardry. If the Israelites were to practise any of these, they are told:

“Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, for by all these practices the nations I am casting out before you have defiled themselves.” (v.24), “Thus the land became defiled; and I punished it for its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants.” (v.25)

and they are warned to commit none of these acts:

“otherwise the land will vomit you out for defiling it, as it vomited out the nation that was before you.” (v.28).

Again the Israelites warned against these practices in Ch.20 and once again told:

“You shall not follow the practices of the nation that I am driving out before you. Because they did all these things, I abhorred them” (v.23)

God again gives reasons for eradicating these peoples:

“take care that you are not snared into imitating them, after they have been destroyed before you; do not inquire concerning their gods, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their gods? I also want to do the same.’ You must not do the same for the Lord your God, because every abhorrent thing that the Lord hates they have done for their gods. They would even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods.” (Deut.12:30,31)

Violence in the Old Testament- Contextualizing the Times

One needs to completely disconnected ourselves form our current frame of reference in order to understand the times and context of these verses, and to place ourselves in a time with none of the social structures which are familiar to us. We do in this time period, have monogamy, nor the current human rights understanding, nor a Geneva or a Hague declaration , nor a justice system nor prison system, nor banking, nor a welfare state, nor life insurance and so on and on. So when a person finds himself in debt has no way of returning that debt, so he sells himself and his family into servitude. There is not other way for the lender to repay that debt. Further this is the condition that all the nations are at this time, Israel does not obtain preferential treatment.

Further there was no prison system, so enemies had to be killed or deported or risk reprisal, the leader was always killed, life was just organized differently, around different norms. The chapter in David begins tellingly “in the spring, when kings go to war…” War was the way not to avoid enslavement, and it led to enslavement as an outcome. I discuss slavery in detail here Slavery in the Old Testament.

Violence in the Old Testament- imperfect Law, imperfect times

God meets Israel in the state that they are. He does not massively improve that situation until the coming of his Son. In order to build a valid objection to the violence in the Old Testament, one is forced to extrapolate to an age and place that that we can ever accurately conceptualize nor contextualize- which is simply a fact of all historical investigation. As we will discuss further, there is a lot of hidden injustice in the modern world that goes as “normal”, and we could well imagine that it was similarly normative in the ancient world.  

The times were harsh, the Israelites are, in a way, not given any preferential treatment from the surrounding nations. Quite literally in the words of St. Paul himself, they received an imperfect Law:

“for the law made nothing perfect, and a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to God” (Heb 7:9) “Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect” (Heb.11:39,40)

Man was not ready for the full form of love in Christ, God gave man laws in accordance with what he was capable of without Christ. One can offer a manner of objective proof of this, in that countries without Christianity have laws that very much parallel the Old Testament Law and the laws of neighboring civilizations A country like India has struggled to release itself from the cruel caste system to this day in the villages, and it is only a few decades ago the widow-burning was effectively ended by outlawing it, though bride burning over the dowry system continues sporadically. In spite of all its evils, it took colonialization from the West to eradicate or mitigate a lot of these ills.

A lot is made about the Christian conquests of Lands of the Incas and Mayas and Indigenous American peoples, but even these conquests are not without nuance, because there were also priests and missionaries working for the protection of these same people simultaneously. These were hardly civilizations without fault, or even that are conceivable in their present form had they been left alone to continue into the modern world. The Central Americans practised mass human sacrifice while the Indigenous North American normative tales of torture are not the kind I would like to describe, though they are easily researchable.

God adopts the descendants of Abraham, and gradually over several generations and reveals to them the Truth about peace through Jesus. Jesus’ his oral teaching reaches a culmination at Sermon on the Mount, though his physical teaching of peace reaches its culminates on the Cross. The OT laws were imposed upon a people who already had their primitive rather barbaric tribal laws in place, as did the neighboring tribes who practiced child sacrifice, as did the Arabs (it is claimed) 2500 years later allegedly up to the time of Mohammed in early 7th century AD.

God does not at the time seek to change these into Christianity. He merely tempered them into something more acceptable (to Him) than what they already had: JUDAISM. This is also evidenced in the laws regarding the ‘Blood avenger’ existing at the time, a tribal law which still exists in parts of the Muslim world, causing ‘blood feuds’ (Albanian ‘Kanun’). These feuds can play out in a bloody tit-for-tat until all the men of the two involved families are killed. Women are only seen as producers of offspring and are referred to in a discriminatory manner and so are not considered worthy targets.

God takes Every Life, and has Mercy on it too

God saves a human being at the time when the human needs saving. Were he not to do so, then he would arrive at the beginning of life on Earth and then there would be no Free Will, we might as well have been created with the angels. He does the same with humanity, he comes not at the beginning but at the “hour of Salvation”. History had to play out, before history could be saved. That is why the Old Testament is the way it is.

The greatest of all loves, this is what He has for you, would you refuse it because of the Old Testament, when God can Have mercy upon them too? 

Jesus Christ stands as a sort of moral fulcrum in human history…but God can save humans on both sides of that fulcrum. God’s mercy is not limited by humans’ inability to accept his love.

The manner in which the generation of warriors of the Israelites perish in the desert while their babies survive to see the promised land is highly symbolic of this as God says:

“And as for your little ones who you thought would become plunder, your children who today do not yet know right from wrong, they shall enter there; to them I will give it, and they shall take possession of it. But as for you, journey back into the wilderness, in the direction of the Red Sea.” (Deut.1:39,40)

After all, the generation of Israelites have been complaining about precisely this, that their children and their babies will perish in the desert through hunger and sword, whereas God says to them that their babies will, in fact, see Paradise.

The Ten Commandments do not actually apply to God. This might come as a surprise at first, but if you think about it, the reason that one cannot take the life of another is because one did not give it to them in the first place. Same with everything else, it would be absurd to apply to God “thou shalt not steal” when its all his stuff anyway. The 10% we might pay him back is hardly a salary, its representative of our cognizance that all belongs to him. We all have to die in some way or another, and sometimes this is the way, by the hand of God himself. For is death not just a journey anyway? Only for God is it lawful to set us on that journey. Again when we die of heart attacks, cancer, accidental causes, is all of this not in God’s hands. We could ascribe every single death that ever occurred in the world to God individually one by one and ask the same question that we are asking of the Canaanites. Again, if its the babies being killed that are the question then do not untold billions of babies die in the mother’s womb anyway or in the first five years of life even today in Sub-Saharan African countries (approx. 1 in every 9 children).

Herem Warfare- “Purging Evil from the Land”

The so-called herem warfare, in which every living thing in the land is put to the sword is seen first in the book of Numbers, when the Israelites first enter Canaan, around the time that Moses is passing on the baton to his successor Joshua.

Following the initial wars in Numbers, there are further battles that follow the crossing of the Jordan and the destruction in Jericho, particularly in Joshua 10 with the famous incident of the sun and moon standing still until Joshua has the armies of the “Five Kings of the Amorites”, including Adonizedek, king of Jerusalem (vv.10:3,5,12-14). Following that there is herem warfare upon Makedah (v.28), Libnah (v.10), Lachich (v.32), Gezer (v.22), Eglon (v.34), Hebron (v.37), Debir (v.39) as it is summed up “So Joshua defeated the whole land, the hill country and the Negeb and the lowland and the slopes, and all their kings; he left no one remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel commanded” (v.40)

Chapter 11 of Joshua continues in the same vein in the Israelites’ dealings with the kings of Northern Canaan (vv. 8, 11, 14, 19-22). In fact in the rather chaotic situations of typical of the Book of Judges, herem is performed upon deviant Israelite tribes and cities themselves (the Benjaminite city in (vv.20:37,48), the people of Jabesh-Gilead (v.21:10-12), although here there is no direct command from the LORD to do so. This type of warfare continues also into the time of King Saul (eg.1Sam.15:18 against the Amalekites).

Contextualizing the destruction of Midian

Let us examine the context of this incident in which the first of these, the Midianites are put to the sword. The first of these is probably the defeat of King Og of Bashan where it says;

“they killed him, his sons, and all his people, until there was no survivor left…” (Num. 21:35).

This is immediately following the defeat and killing of King Sihon of the Amorites in the same chapter. Deuteronomy confirms that the same method of warfare is undertaken in his case too:
“we captured all his (Sihon’s) towns, and in each town we utterly destroyed men, women, and children. We left not s single survivor…” (2:34), while the destruction of Og too is reiterated (3:6)

When we come to Ch.25, we are told of a terrible incident (vv.1-15) in the history of the people of Israel, when they are allow themselves to be led into idolatry by the people of Midian. The Lord’s terrible anger rages against both the Midianites and the Israelites, and 24,000 of the latter die in a plague sent down upon them retribution (It appears in the passage as though, “Moab” and “Midian” are to an extent being conflated, probably as there was much intermixing). The Lord states his condemnation against Midian (v.16) and the reason for it as specifically being the preceding incidents of that same chapter.

This is the context in which we come to Moses’ command to the Israelites to slay the Midianites, verses which are often quoted in debate in order to show the Judaic God in a negative light. You will see in those same debates that the context we are presenting never gets mentioned. Let’s quote the passage. We note the confirmation that this is in relation to the “affair at Peor” (v.16), which we just recounted from Ch.25:

“These women here, on Balaam’s advice, made the Israelites act treacherously against the Lord in the affair of Peor, so that the plague came among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man by sleeping with him. But all the young girls who have not known a man by sleeping with him, keep alive for yourselves.” (Num.31:16-18)

Herem- “devoted to destruction”

In the incident in Lev.25, we see that it is only the virgin girls who are not killed, even the male children are not spared. What this really does is to completely dismantle the social structure of the pagan culture, so that the surviving do not so much as even see their identity in a male heir or sibling, rather for all events and purposes, their identity is now linked to the Israelites. The verses immediately following the purification rites are the manner in which the Lord commands that the “booty…both human and animal” (v.26) be divided between the warriors, the civilians and the Temple and priests (vv.25-54). It is recorded that there are are 32,000 persons in all, women who had not known a man by sleeping with him (v.35).

The immediate next verses following the edit to slay and concerned immediately (vv.19-24) with purification of those doing the slayings and the purification of the land. We can infer therefore that God’s intention in this is to “purge the evil from the land” (cf. Deut.13:3,17:7,12).

The manner in which the conquest of Canaan is to be undertaken is made clear at the start:

“When you cross over the Jordan into the land of Canaan, you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, destroy all their figured stones, destroy all their cast images, and demolish all their high places. You shall take possession of the land and settle in it, for I have given you the land to possess. You shall apportion the land by lot according to your clans; to a large one you shall give a large inheritance, and to a small one you shall give a small inheritance; the inheritance shall belong to the person on whom the lot falls; according to your ancestral tribes you shall apportion it. But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then those whom you let remain shall be as barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides; they shall trouble you in the land where you are settling. And I will do to you as I thought to do to them.” (Num.33:50-56)

It is clear that no trace of the previous inhabitants is to be left in the land. There is no “kill ‘em all directive”, but we see this in individual situations as we’re detailed elsewhere. The point here is that there is a complete re-creation here in the land of Canaan, as there was at the time of the Flood globally, a “new Creation” of a People of God with nothing to taint it in its inception. It is God’s manner of teaching us that the worship that he has instituted for us, for the Church of God is to be completely unstained as it was intended, as it was instituted at its inception, and the manner in which it was and is always meant to be- “orthodoxy”- “right worship”.

This is just directly from Wiki on “Herem Warfare” which is a good summary.

“Herem or cherem (Hebrew: חרם, ḥērem), as used in the Tanakh, means something devoted to God, or under a ban, and sometimes refers to things or persons to be utterly destroyed. The term has been explained in different and sometimes conflicting ways by different scholars. It has been defined as “a mode of secluding, and rendering harmless, anything imperilling the religious life of the nation”, or “the total destruction of the enemy and his goods at the conclusion of a campaign”, or “uncompromising consecration of property and dedication of the property to God without possibility of recall or redemption”.

…but Love and Justice too, in the OT

Look at the context for the famous ‘Eye for an eye” verse Ex. 21:22-25, also Lev.24:20 below: 

“When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman’s husband demands, paying as much as the judges determine. If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

Leviticus 19:15 recommends great love towards one’s “kin/ people”:

“You shall not render an unjust judgement; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbour. You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbour: I am the Lord. You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbour, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself: I am the Lord.”

…which passage continues. commanding kindness towards the elderly and towards aliens:

“You shall rise before the aged, and defer to the old; and you shall fear your God: I am the Lord.

“When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” (Lev.19:32-34)

We see the justice in the Law here and that there is no partiality:

“Aliens as well as citizens, when they blaspheme the Name, shall be put to death. Anyone who kills a human being shall be put to death. Anyone who kills an animal shall make restitution for it, life for life. Anyone who maims another shall suffer the same injury in return: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; the injury inflicted is the injury to be suffered. One who kills an animal shall make restitution for it; but one who kills a human being shall be put to death. You shall have one law for the alien and for the citizen: for I am the Lord your God.” (Lev.24:16-22).

Very early in the Biblical story, and right after the verse with the Shema which occurs in the same dialogue (in Ch.6, “you shall love the Lord your God…”), God tells the Israelites why he chose them out of all the nations. He chooses them before they loved him, and even before they knew him. There is no question of the motivations of God here, and it is clearly stated in this foundational and early passage of the Torah. God makes clear his plan to the Israelites, and the reason for all his edicts against profane practices: “to be mine”:

“You shall be holy to me; for I the Lord am holy, and I have separated you from the other peoples to be mine.” (Lev.20:26)

“It was not because you were more numerous than any other people that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you—for you were the fewest of all peoples. It was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath that he swore to your ancestors, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” (Deut.7:7,8)

(Isaiah 43:1) “you are mine”

“Because you are precious in my sight, and honoured, and I love you” (Isaiah 43:4)

“Can a woman forget her nursing child, or lack compassion for the son of her womb? Even if she could forget, I will not forget you! ” (Isaiah 49:15)

“I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands” (Is 49:16)

“Your maker is your husband, the Lord of Hosts is his Name” (Is. 54:5)

“For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great compassion (ū·ḇə·ra·ḥă·mîm gə·ḏō·lîm) I will gather you. In overflowing wrath for a moment; I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love (ū·ḇə·ḥe·seḏ ‘ō·w·lām) I will have compassion on you, says the Lord, your Redeemer” (Isaiah 54:7.8)

“For the mountains may depart; and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed, says the Lord, who has compassion on you.” (Isaiah 54:10)

“as a bridegroom rejoices over the bride so shall your God rejoice over you” (Is. 62:5)

(Jeremiah 31.3) “the Lord appeared to him from far away (or from long ago). I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.”

(Malachi 1.2) “I have loved you, says the Lord. But you say, ‘How have you loved us?’ Is not Esau Jacob’s brother? says the Lord. Yet I have loved Jacob”

Indeed man too, is called to love God in return:

“You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.“ (Lev.19:17,18)

and indeed this love is to be extended even to aliens and respect for the elderly:

“You shall rise before the aged, and defer to the old; and you shall fear your God: I am the Lord.” (v.32)

“When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” (v.33,34)

God’s desire for the Loving Conversion of Sinners

“Moreover, the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, in order that you may live.” (Deut.30:6)

“The LORD is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in loving devotion. The LORD is good to all; His compassion rests on all He has made.” Psalm (145:8-10)

Ezekiel 18.23:

“Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the Lord God, and not rather that they should turn from their ways and live?” (Ez.18:23)

“‘As surely as I live, declares the Lord GOD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked should turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! For why should you die, O house of Israel?’ (Ez.33:11)

“”Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” (Isiah 1:18)

Could God be doing more than meets the eye?

It is impossible for us humans to know what the intentions of God are in these actions but we have shown that it is not necessary that God perform these out of hatred, nor should they even be seen as an injustice. We can go further to propose that God is performing in human history more than that which meets the eye based upon the fact that God is always doing more than meets the eye and what is even comprehensible to us. We might suppose that through these cycles of life and death, apart from the annihilation of populations that have become irredeemable and the end of the sufferings of the innocents therein that we already described, God is using everything as a lesson and a teaching for both the Israelites, those around them and for the ones that are to come, ourselves, as St. Paul points out. An example might be that in commanding the utter destruction of the unholy, whether within the Israelite people themselves, which is seen on multiple occasions, or among the surrounding nations through their destruction, God is impressing upon the Israelite people his uncompromisable stance on purity and obedience. Evil and idolatory are dealt with not through any form of religious syncretism which was common in the ancient pagan religions and even indulged in by the Israelites, rather through removing it from the root and making a “new creation”, which is the real lesson of the destruction and new life whether as we see in the Noah Flood account or in the death and glorious Resurrection of Jesus into which we are baptized and raised ourselves into “newness of life”, once again in the words of St Paul.

Could these be exaggerations?

This might sound like a bit of a cop-out at first, but some recent scholars have made a feasible case for these verses indeed being exaggerations, (some of the attached videos deal with this). The argument is that “war reporting” was always propagandized and therefore exaggerated from what we have also seen in archeological records of the ANE, for example records would always show that other kingdom’s had been “utterly destroyed” and “all killed” when it was clearly not so and sometimes even when the battle might have been lost! That this is possibly also the Biblical case is seen from the fact that even after the “utter destruction” of certain peoples, it is evident that they have not vanished from the face of the earth and there are further interactions with persons from these nations like the Canaanites (haven’t got examples handy, but they do exist).

Does God Hate Humans and Determine their Actions?

Genesis 30:22 says “Then God remembered Rachel, and God heeded her and opened her womb”. It should be obvious from verses like this that in the OT emotions and human acts that are ascribed to God like regret/jealousy/hatred etc. so on should never be taken as literal. The fact that God could not have “forgotten” Rachel, that he had to remember her again should make this obvious.

God “Deluding/ Misguiding/ Deceiving?

When St. Paul says “God sends them a strong delusion” (2 Thes.2:11), he means that God allows these persons to become deluded. Ultimately everything is from God and everything that comes to man directly or indirectly is from God. Good comes directly from God, while evil comes indirectly through the agency of others. This is the sense in which Isaiah 45:7 states “(God) creating both good and evil/woe”, which simply implies that everything that there is, is created by God.

Christians would take something like the religion of Islam itself with its inherent opposition of Christian teaching to be an example of such a “strong delusion”: It is full of miracles that are not quite miracles, prophecies that are not quite prophecies, books that are clever but not quite correct, and practices that seem monotheistic, yet the focus divided materialistically…just enough to preserve the illusion. The reason for the allure of Islam, which advertises sensual gratification is already stated by Paul in the first chapter of the same letter, so not only has he explained himself, but also his prediction has been fulfilled:

“for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened.Claiming to be wise, they became fools; and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions.

Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done. They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die—yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them.” (Rom.1:21-32)

There are very specific instances in which similar sounding “deceiving” language is used, but again always related to specific contexts and persons and therefore in these cases it readily lends itself to being read as God actually permitting those persons to be deceived by others or by demons (Jer.4:10, 1Kin.22:20-22, Ez.14:9-11, Is.37:6-7, 19:14).

God Hardens Hearts?

The Bible contains the notion of God apparently permitting those who are bent upon evil to pursue their chosen path, particularly so in the case of Pharaoh. A similar account is also seen in the Book of Joshua (vv.18-20).

Got Questions says: “First, Pharaoh was not an innocent or godly man. He was a brutal dictator overseeing the terrible abuse and oppression of the Israelites, who likely numbered over 1.5 million people at that time. The Egyptian pharaohs had enslaved the Israelites for 400 years.

A previous pharaoh—possibly even the pharaoh in question—ordered that male Israelite babies be killed at birth (Ex.1:16)…Second, on least a couple occasions, Pharaoh hardened his own heart against letting the Israelites go: “But when Pharaoh saw that there was relief, he hardened his heart” (Ex.8:15). “But this time also Pharaoh hardened his heart” (Ex.8:32)… As the plagues continued, God gave Pharaoh increasingly severe warnings of the final judgment to come…(At the end of the Biblical account of him) it does not state whether Pharaoh was drowned or not.

This means that Pharaoh has the choice to convert, and this is rather important consideration…In Ps.136:15, we find that God “overthrew Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea.” The Hebrew word translated here as “overthrew” is na’ar, also found in Ex.14:27. It does not mean “to drown” or “to toss or tumble about as in the water” as some have attempted to assert. It simply means “shook off” as is mentioned in the margins of many Bibles and in the Brown, Driver & Briggs Hebrew Lexicon. (Neh.5:13 illustrates how na’ar should be translated: “Then I shook out the fold of my garment. . . .”) Therefore, these verses simply say that God shook off the Egyptians, including Pharaoh, from their pursuit of the Israelites.

Theologically there is clear intentionality in God’s actions- they are directed against those who have freely turned away from truth and goodness. Thus it cannot be said that it is God who directs away from virtue. We will say more about Pharaoh in the section about Jacob and Esau in the following.

Hatred for one’s Enemies?

The Psalmists sometimes speak of hating one’s enemies. This “hatred” is being expressed for those who had not regard for God’s commands, not wanting to fall into their influence through associating with them. He could not tolerate being drawn away from God’s ways, out of his great love for God. The whole Christian economy of fellowship wherein one is lovingly called to convert others through our love for them is not revealed in the OT, and the reason is that the Love of God in its entirety is not yet revealed as it was to be in Christ Jesus, nor was the final outcome of man revealed or the manner in which we are all dearly loved each as God’s children.

Rather the Law was known to all, it was known prescriptively, and it was each man’s responsibility to follow it’s edicts. There is actually no specific commandment of love in the OT, the commandment is the practises of the Law, the “works” referred to in Romans 9 which we discuss next.

“Hated Esau”, “Prepared for Destruction“, Pre-destination in Paul’s writings

The CCC states (600) “To God, all moments of time are present in their immediacy. When therefore he establishes his eternal plan of “predestination”, he includes in it each person’s free response to his grace”. The Jerome, while noting this, adds further in the commentary to Ephesians, “Having been destined by God (1:5), the “holy ones” have an essential role in this scheme; they have already received their divine inheritance (1:11). The past tense of the verb “destined” in verse 11, literally “appoint by lot” suggests that God’s benefits, specifically salvation, have already been realised and granted to believers, Though not without a future dimension, Ephesians emphasizes what has already taken place, a perspective called “realized eschatology”…” (1671).

The story of Jacob and Esau story is intended as a metaphor by which God shows how he distinguishes those who come under the promise which is to be his covenant and those who do not. Also there are those who will have a decidedly torrid life, and those who live a charmed life, even though they have done nothing wrong as babies.

None of this impacts negatively on their eternal outcome. But in the case of Jacob and Esau this is detailed in the same verse, as seen in the parenthesis: “(so that God’s purpose of election might continue, not by works but by his call) …” (Rom.9:11). Further this is given as a specific instance rather in the special setting of the covenant rather than general. Romans 9:11-17 can be very hard to read, and sound like there is a lack of free-will accorded to the human characters in the narration. Let’s quote them here in full:

“Even before they had been born or had done anything good or bad (so that God’s purpose of election might continue, not by works but by his call) she was told, “The elder shall serve the younger.” As it is written, “I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau.” What then are we to say? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”

this is a reference to Malachi 1:

“I have loved you,” says the Lord. But you say, “How have you loved us?” “Is not Esau Jacob’s brother?” says the Lord. “Yet I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau; I have made his hill country a desolation and his heritage a desert for jackals. If Edom says, ‘We are shattered but we will rebuild the ruins,’ the Lord of hosts says: They may build, but I will tear down, until they are called the wicked country, the people with whom the Lord is angry forever. Your own eyes shall see this, and you shall say, ‘Great is the Lord beyond the borders of Israel!’ ” (Mal.1:2-5)

The verse from Romans is thus asserting that election to a divine calling is based not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy. For the scripture says to Pharaoh, “I have raised you up for the very purpose of showing my power in you, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.” So then he has mercy on whomever he chooses, and he hardens the heart of whomever he chooses.”

The perspective of the narration is clearly stated in the parenthesis and should not be ignored on pain of misinterpretation: “(so that God’s purpose of election might continue, not by works but by his call)”. What is being said is that nothing might be gained except through heeding the “call” of God; our human exertions do not “obtain” Heaven for us through their own merits. God will indeed have mercy on whom he has mercy and he has mercy on those that answer that “call” to covenant relationship with him. Those that refuse his call are in the situation that is equivalent of having been “prepared for destruction”, since they will serve no other purpose.

This discussion of “Faith vs works” is extensive in Paul’s writings, especially here and in the Letter to the Galatians in which he cautions persons against the belief that mere “works of the Law” can “earn” a place in Paradise, which had been the situation under the Old Covenant in which atonement for sins (though not Heaven explicitly) and membership of the community of believers was maintained in this manner.

The chapter continues further in this vein:

“Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use? What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath that are made for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory-…” (Rom.9:21-23)

The verse has “objects…that are made for destruction”; however this might be simply read as the fact that God has made them although He knows they are destined for destruction. Once again, such a reading is possible because it is the consistent theme of the Bible that he desires that sinners repent (we quote some of these verse from the OT below). A God who singularly acts for the purpose of the conversion of sinners could not also literally desire the destruction of sinners, this would be a poor reading of the Bible. If that was by any means unclear in the Old Testament, (and I don’t think it was, for I have not seen Jews interpret the Tanakh in this manner), then it is certainly put beyond doubt with the advent of Jesus.

As you can see, St. Paul is explaining this from a “Salvation through Grace” perspective. Esau may have been impressive with his physical prowess, enough even to impress his father Isaac, but what can we say of his heart? Was it not the same with Kane, who also offered sacrifices, but his heart was far from God. Isaac was close to God and it is not hard to imagine that he knew that the one he had blessed was not, in fact, Esau. He was possibly quite content that the Lord should arrange things in this manner through his beloved Rebecca. Does he not state “the voice is that of my son Jacob…”? Do parents not pretend not to know where their children are when they play hide-and-seek all the time? Further due to the disguise he would have an excuse to give to Esau, who would otherwise never have accepted the decision. But that’s me speculating.

St Paul tells that the same is the case with Ishmael and Isaac, that it is the through the promise of God that we are saved, and that is what Isaac represents- the son that was promised to Sarah. Nor is it through any “right of birth”, as was Esau’s claim to the blessing. So also we are not saved merely through being born into a Christian family or being called Christian by name. We need true Faith.

Here we can also see that when God “hates” Esau, it must be merely referring to the fact that his purpose was going to be fulfilled through Jacob, and that this had been decided even before Esau was born. That in itself is not a curse upon Esau, because Esau is free to live a good life, prosper and be faithful to God. But Jacob was always going to be Israel, because God chose him, not because he chose God, just as God could have chosen anyone we wanted, but he chose Abraham as our Father in Faith. The passage from Malachi is asserting how the people of Israel are favored over other nations, including Edom, the nation of the descendants of Esau, his brother. There are many nations in the world even today which seem to have disproportionate and seemingly irremediable suffering. However this is a collective fate of a nation, and does not bear upon individuals’ souls.

In the case of Pharaoh this is a bit more extreme, because Pharaoh is actually evil. It is said God “hardens his heart”. Perhaps we can say that God knows that Pharaoh will die unrepentant, but in the encounter with the Israelites, it only serves the greater purpose of God, that his glory be known. Perhaps it would make the issue clearer were we to ask if Pharaoh would have repented and become a good person had God not “hardened his heart”, and if the answer is in the negative anyway, then it is easier to understand how God has worked his purpose through him in spite of his evil intent.

The passage from Romans seems to inquire as to “why it is that God finds fault with people, when in fact he has seemingly willed their defiance” (v.19), which is really the question “Why is God finding fault with the person he created knowing he will be damned”. There is a difference in the two ways of asking the question, and that is the difference of course, between divine foreknowledge and determinism. “Who can resist his will? (v.19)” refers to the will to create them, and possibly the will to allow them to become deluded. So also the phrase “it depends not on human will (v.16)” does not mean that human will is over-ridden, rather that that it is a matter, as we have already seen, of election (v.11). The human being cannot simply defer to performing what they consider as “good works”, rather they must accede to the call of God. This is what calls all religions to the Truth of Christ, rather than their own perceived “goods” of their individual teachings.”

Similarly, verses from Paul that speak of predestination and similarly explained from the point of view of divine foreknowledge rather than a deterministic sense which is incongruous with respect to the rest of the context of Christian teaching.:

“For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will…” (Eph.1:4-5)

“For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called…” (Rom.8:29-30)

I talk about predetermination here Foreknowledge of God, Pre-Destination and Free Will

Wrath of God upon Sinners in Hell

“Hate of God” can be interpreted as what befalls a sinner at death, when a sinner is finally separated from the Love of God. There is not a single verse in the New Testament which gives an instance of a direct attack of God in the lives of one of such “objects of hatred”. In Romans 1, while in verse 18 it is stated that the “wrath of God is revealed against the ungodliness and wickedness”, yet on three occasions  immediately following God states that he merely “gave them up” to their passions (verses 24,26, and 28), rather than actively punished them.

There is a clear indication that God allows evil persons to fall into the fruit of their own sin and suffer the consequences of evil of their own and others’ doing. We can see that God is not attacking these persons at any point. Similar language is also used in OT verses like Psalm 5:5,6.

One can therefore safely make the case that the verses that speak of “wrath of God” toward sinners speak of what will befall them after death, not before. Here there is no mistaking the disaster that befalls evildoers. But even that is not a case of God “hating” anyone. I’ve dealt with this more fully in the article on Hell, why God is not required to literally “hate” anyone in any instance. But the outcome of Hell is the result of refusing the Love of God. The reprobate sinner then chooses for themselves to be outside that love.

The opposite of Love is Hate, but it is not an active hate in the case of Hell, rather as we just describe, the absence of the Love of God. This is no small matter for the reprobate, for there is no greater disaster that can befall a person than the absence of God, because God is every Good in existence, and the departure of God is the departure of everything that is Good. This “hate” of God is no more than the separation of the sinner from Himself, in accordance with his Justice.

God visits the Punishment of the Fathers upon their Children?

“He will visit the iniquity of the fathers on their children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.” (Ex.34:7)

This get raised as a critique of Christianity. In reply, there is not a single particular instance in the entire history of the Bible where God statedly punishes a child for the sin of their father. However it is certain that poor moral choices made by a previous generation lead to tremendous suffering in a subsequent one, even to the point of abject misery, cities being laid siege upon with the attendant human catastrophe of entire populations starved to almost to death to the point that they become cannibalistic, or at least some of them do, and subsequent massacre, enslavement and exile.

If it is considered that the children of this generation did not commit the specific sins of their father who forsook the Lord, then the meaning of the verse is indeed apparent. God does not intervene visibly to save those nations from the fates that befell them. We see subsequent generations bearing the cost of selfish decisions made by their politicians all the time today, there is nothing new here. All the worst wars in history are caused by it.

Did God “Regret” Creating?

Some claim that Scripture shows God having second thoughts about His creation: “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, ‘I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them’” (Gen.6:5-7)

When used of God, regret incorporates the thought of compassionate grief and an action taken. God was not showing weakness, admitting an error, or regretting a mistake. Rather, He was expressing His need to take specific, drastic action to counteract the wickedness of mankind: “Everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil” (Gen.6:5)

We can surmise that God decreed Judgement upon an entire generation at the time, yet this is symbolic for the times to come, as is also the consistent theme in the gospels, to serve as a warning for the coming generations, especially in our times for us who have received the fullness of Revelation. When those who are to be sent to Hell are sent to Hell, it will in a manner have been a “regretful” thing that they were ever created. This is not an emotional regret but rather “regretful” in the sense that it is an adverse outcome.

Lives at whose futility we can all shake our heads at, the kind of emotion that we feel when we see an inveterate criminal, drug addict or alcoholic. God in a sense, once all hope is lost for a soul, “throws up his hands” in an admission of the futility in attempting to convert them. Why were those particular people killed? This I have already answered in the previous section of divinely ordained violence. In the Flood those people that drowned had a regretful outcome but only symbolically, God is just and his mercy protects the innocent in eternity. Read also my account of the The Flood Account: Literal or Metaphor?

For a full description of the theology of Love in God see here: The Absolute Love of God. The alternate view of a God who loves and hates alternatively can be read here: https://respondislam.net/2022/01/08/whom-does-allah-love/

Why the seeming change in the NT?

The obvious question, and one that is asked frequently, is the seeming change of tone in the New Testament. Let us examine this issue in more detail…

Morality in all other religion is legalistic

The OT deity does seem quite violent at times to us. If someone commits serious crime him he would seemingly readily have them killed and end their story right there. Further, the demand for purity is related to ritual observance, like fastidious washings prior to prayers, various rulings on involuntary bodily functions that can invalidate those rituals and various other edicts that enter into every aspect of daily living. The difference between the OT and some other legalistic religions lies in the fact that in the latter (which I will not name), these acts are integrally what takes the believer to Heaven, while on the other hand in Judaism the ultimate end of the believer remains shrouded in mystery.

Yet in this sense the OT remains a legalistic religion, and although we do find God confessing love for his people, rather one cannot confidently state that love as we would understand it in the Christian sense is the overarching theme in it- rather the theme is obedience to the Law. There is still slavery, harsh treatment of foreigners and so on.

Unconditional love would be incomprehensible

The language of reward and punishment for obedience and disobedience would seem to be appropriate to the world of the Ancient Near East. Any language of unconditional love for sinners that God had “come to save” would have seemed incomprehensible in their context. God does not, in this context demonstrate either unconditional love, and nor a universal desire for salvation in the manner of Jesus’ later stated intent “I have come not to save the righteous but sinners”. Even the salvation of souls and life after death is not made clear and one’s fate after death is left vague and obscure, and only begins to develop from the time of King David. As we see in some pivotal verses from Deuteronomy, what the Israelites are promised in return for obedience to the Law is “length of days” (Deut. 30:20).

In non-Christian societies, the heights to which the human virtues are attainable are manifest in what are help up as epitomes of virtue in those very societies. So in the absence of Jesus we have the OT morality of the Jews and all the debates that arise from there, or the moralities of other non-Christian societies that existed then and now, as well as today’s religious society, its own ideals, moral standards and justice. A Christian examining these societies, individually if necessary, can establish in his own understanding as a firm fact what kind of morality humanity is capable of in the absence of Jesus.

Or a Christian could establish the truth of this situation from the opposite perspective also- Jesus’s unconditional loving sacrifice is incomprehensible outside of Christianity, this is a fact, and his death on the Cross ostensibly “for us” faces uniform ridicule outside that Faith (cf.1Cor.1:18,23). The usual comprehension of what unconditional love would look like is a sort of utopian creation which is simple from all noxious stimuli, and no alternate morality-building paradigm.

Through in-Dwelling, Humans must become what they were not

As it turns out, this total failure of human morality to progress after a point is not remedied through more wise sayings in a book. Human beings are called to become something that they simple never were before, as we have established through these very examinations of morality in every extra-Christian setting throughout history, past, present and to come. Rather when God is accepted, and for who he really is which is Jesus, it is not just “one more belief” that is accepted among many. Rather God really is accepted and it is the only time that God ever was accepted, into the soul of the Person.

When a Christian is asked “why was your God not loving in the Old Testament?”, we are not simply asking why he simply didn’t find less jarring ways of getting people to obey him. We are really being asked (and even if not, this is the position that we are defending), why God had not “come not to save the righteous but sinners” earlier in the narrative. In fact God employs the least jarring means to get persons to obey him- he lets them be as nasty as they want, and directly to him, as come down among them and stripped of all divine privilege. Like a little kitten that there can be no excuse whatsoever for torturing, Jesus is saying “I just want you to be nice because you have first seen how nice I AM”.

What Unconditional Love does looks like

Unconditional Love really is that special, so special that it is completely out of the range of humans, not only in terms of achievability but literally in terms of very comprehensibility. This can, as we have been saying, seen from the fact that no one outside of Christian paradigm believes in it. No one outside Christianity believes in the unconditional love of man for man, nor of man for God, nor of God for man.

The world and all its religions do not comprehend that a man could remain faithful to his wife no matter what rather than divorce her, as for a woman a man, it could not comprehend that sinners can actually be loved in a real sense and even those that are one’s attackers, nor does it comprehend that man might not even do his spouse the indignity of using a contraceptive (my apologies to those Christians that do not have a fixed teaching on contraception), nor using his own body even in the pleasure of the thoughts of a woman/man that were not their spouse in masturbation and lust. It could not comprehend that a man would preserve the life of their unborn child no matter what the cost even to their life, and it cannot comprehend that a man give his life up for no more than to preach the Gospel of Christ.

So also the world and all its religions could not comprehend that a man could love God in exclusion and even to the contempt of all other loves and would love all others only in the love of God, it could not comprehend that a priest of God give up pursuit of all earthly pleasures out of the love of God, nor could it comprehend that a man desire nothing else in Heaven but God, and that all other desires that divided the attention of his gaze from God could be despicable to him.

What God Did

It is not that God cast the ancient world into a moral regression, rather it is not without cause that we can hold the view that the world would have continued to be morally regressive if not for the advent of Christ and the civilisation and values that he inspired. He did so “at the right time”, and that time was his Birth, at the fulfilment of all prophecy.

God gave to the people of the Old Testament laws and commandments that were commensurate with their abilities until such a time as the first Christmas. If it is surprising how little man was capable of without Christ, then we can appreciate just how much Christ impacted morality in man. In all this before the first of us takes the moral high ground let us reflect on just how far away from being anything Christ like we are even to this day, before casting the first stone upon his teaching.

It was into this primitive and savage world that God was to introduce love. He did not send Jesus into civilized society, rather Jesus caused society to become civilized. Had He been, He might have received a fair trial, or had a successful career as a tele-evangelist! God gave the Israelites the Ten Commandments, but there is ample evidence that they had trouble even keeping to these. God did not let these go unpunished, they were severely punished severely and on multiple occasions. God did not “condone” their transgressions.

But they were a nation at constant war, and the slave trade was part of that war. Into this system, God introduces stipulations, He prevents a slave being killed, he introduces ways in which they can be freed and time-constraints upon their bondage. But most importantly He does this, He includes them in community. They are as much part of Israel as the rest of the nation. They rest on the Sabbath and are subject to all of the Commandments.

If eternal reward is not promised, neither is it clearly stipulated for the rest of the community. What God did do, and over the millenia, was to provide a reason and the theology which led to the abolition of slavery. Remember that William Wilberforce was driven by his evangelical ideals and the Quakers played a great part in the eventual abolition of slavery in 1833.

God has not “Improved”

I once replied to an atheist: “If you thought God was despotic then, then He’s every bit as despotic now, for does He not still hurl people into Hell for all eternity? He is quite unapologetic about this even in the NT. My contention, of course, is that God never changed, those who regarded Him as tyrant need hardly now regard Him as a saint. If He killed toddlers then, then neither does He save dying toddlers now, He merely changed the standards we were to expect of ourselves. On the other hand we have as much difficulty keeping even to the basic 10 commandments than the ancients did back then. The God of the New Testament is not actually any better than you think that He was in the Old. I can quote verse after verse from the NT where Jesus promises the most horrendous punishments for the “trivial” crime of unbelief:

“…to Hell where the fire does not go out and their worm does not die” (Mark 9:44).

“Do these two comments NOT imply that Jesus “changed his mind” about how to deal with humans at a “different age” or time?” I don’t see why you think there was a change of mind, as opposed to a PLAN. That’s two different things. When a father lets his 5 year old run around naked, but asks his teenager to cover up, that’s hardly a “change of mind”. That’s a plan. Take another example of a father who when his child is young, spanks him. then when he is a teenager, merely admonishes him. Finally when he is an adult, he leaves him be, considering that he has now done everything he can for him. The father has not changed, his son has grown.

The “endemic failing” of atheists, that I refer to, is the inability to conceive that if a God did exist, then it would be nothing for him to end earthly lives. What is it about the life that God gives that He cannot take it away? However if you cannot grasp this, then I fear I will never convince you of God’s love. And what about consigning sinners to Hell? Should a loving king not also mete out justice? Do love and justice stand in contradiction for a king, should he not confine to the deadly dungeons even his own loved ones who have deserved the punishment.

God’s justice isn’t relative, it is absolute, since in the final outcome, Heaven and Hell are absolute, and Judgment Day is universal. Hell is equally horrendous no matter which Testament you come from! God doesn’t change from the OT to the NT, but he teaches his people how to change. He does not do it by ‘updating’ the Law. He does it by his example on the Cross. He shows his people how to love absolutely by demonstrating absolute love. “many kings and prophets have longed to see..”

Do we have the Moral High Ground Today?

How much better are our times, really, as compared to the old. We’ve certainly found ways of chemically reducing our painful experiences, but we must also remember that the previous peoples were much more hardy than us, since they were outdoor people, and who worked and fought with their hands. I don’t think we can quite compare the subjective perception of present peoples with those peoples directly without committing grace error.

I feel certain that our current societies, especially the developed one have a heightened sensitivity to pain, simply from not being exposed to very much of it, and further a decreased tolerance to emotional injury and deprivation, since they are not faced with the same kinds of emotive situations in the protected environment of the modern justice system (thank God for that). But how does the pain of our times really compare to those of old? The truth is that we will never fully know, but we can attempt some simple comparisons nevertheless.

Let us take some examples: any revulsion we might feel for the practice of stoning adulterers in ancient Israel we should also reserve for a partner whose life is destroyed by a cheating spouse, for the terrible exploitation that is rife and remains unseen in the pornography industry and the suffering of a couple that undergoes voluntary abortion of a child (perhaps it will be easier to identify with the pain of  one of the partners should they have not been consenting of that abortion procedure).

We can’t even pass legislation on smoking in our societies, a known killer that openly walks our street, leave alone the stamp out illicit substances. I have seen babies born deformed because the mothers drank and smoked during pregnancy, we do not even have the moral fortitude to legislate against this. We rile against the OT where it was permitted to beat the child in order to discipline it, while today we imprison children whose parents never cared to instill self-discipline at all and nor is that discipline learned in society.

We rile against the OT stipulations that prevent even a rapist from abandoning their victim without marrying then while our indignation should be also reserved for those parents that leave their spouses, content for their children to grow up not knowing the love of a parent. I have seen children shrieking on the floor of the hospital, children abandoned in foster homes, where it was evident that the reason for their distress was that they did not receive just that- parental love, the very relation that the admittedly harsh OT Law is trying to preserve and even foster.

Perhaps we can temper our indignation if we accept the possibility that these laws are attempting to make the best of a difficult social situation and provide deterrents against similar incidents recurring. Take the harsh-seeming rape laws of the OT: is taking a woman against her consent any better than gaining her trust only to betray her after she has been used? Is betrayal of trust any better than denial of consent? Are not both a kind of rape? Is it moral to abandon a sexual partner after having promised them everything? We know full well of the trauma that jilted lovers suffer, that they can be pushed to the point of murder and suicide is very well attested.

Entire families have been wiped out by fathers who have been denied access to them or because a new partner has been taken. These jilted fathers (they are admittedly usually fathers) then either kill themselves or hand themselves in, there is not usually any criminal intent in these “love crimes”.

We’ve already discussed the tremendous sufferings that are borne by those that face existential suffering of depression, and the rising rates of it, the tremendously high rates of suicide among some communities like the LGBTQ+. What a “rising rate of depression” simply means is that there is a rising rate of those that consider life in the present day unbearable and death to be better than continued existence. That itself is a powerful attestation that the present times are not as happy as we might like to think or as is easy to obtain an impression of due to the veil that technology casts over it.  

How did Atheists “Improve” World, then?

Let’s take some examples, I do wonder what atheists had to do with the development of this new world order, for they do claim to have forged a new age of “Enlightenment” in the 18^th century. Which one of these was it who discovered that it was more loving to take a beating, than to let a fight escalate? Actually we already had that, it was way back in AD30 when Jesus became the ONLY public figure to say “turn the other cheek”! Taking one on the chin, is definitely not an atheist invention then. Surely they must have made some contribution to society, what empathy for one’s wife, that one might not abandon her when she is past her prime and the beauty of her youth has been ravished- not a word can be found in athiest doctrine, but wait! Hark! A distant sound! A rabbinic voice echoes clearly across the ages “Anyone who divorces his wife is guilty…” ”…if you so much as look at a woman with lust you will be guilty of adulery…”

Or did atheists invent the dignity of a woman, the dignity whereby she may not be seen merely as an object for sexual pleasure that she might not be dressed merely like meat on a shelf/ or a turkey at Christmas. Did they? NOT A WORD! But listen! “Anyone who looks at a woman lustfully is guilty!”, and “Dress modestly”. Oh well that’s all very idealistic and Platonic, but we aren’t really hurting anyone, are we, But what about stuff that really hurts, atheists have laws against that, don’t they? Prostitution, pornography, do they? Wait, there’s something calling from across the yonder “Would you join your members with that of a prostitute?” and “No fornicator can enter the kingdom of Heaven”. Look at what your God has established as the rule of his righteousness.

If Christians “condone” God’s directives in the OT, it is no lie to say that the sentiment is one born of humility, more than any other, a humility of acknowledging that we are unfit to judge past times. It also includes the acknowledgement that such a feat is not insurmountable to a “Universal Mind”, such as that of God. The fallacy of the atheist position is to judge Christians of today based on ancestral practices, while failing to evaluate their current practices in the light of the present day. It is the fallacy of condemning God based on his directives to an ancient community, while failing to grasp that the principles of the Bible which are eminently suited to the present time, might not have been ideal all that while and time ago.

We now live in a civilization that is conditioned by its Christian heritage. Or did atheists really improve the world in the manner of prohibiting crime and murderer? That’s in the Ten Commandments! Even were it true that we live in  a more secure and civilized world today, that is the result of technology, and the necessary technology advancement of a rational species, not the result of atheism by any means. The overwhelming majority of human beings still subscribe to a religion today.

Does God really love us unconditionally, with the kind of love we would expect from a mother for their child? We examine the verses that come up as objections to the Christian notion of a God of Love. Does God hate us, does God regret that he ever created us?

Since the loss of human life in the Flood also raises questions for many, I’ve written about that here: The Flood Account – Literal or Metaphor? and the difficult issue of Biblical slavery here Slavery in the Old Testament

Summary and Conclusion of Violence in the Old Testament

To summarize the argument, everyone dies, many of whom while suffering painfully. This is a fact of the human condition. This might be a reason to question the very existence of God per se, which argument I address here Problem of Evil, however if we have accepted the existence of suffering that God could potentially prevent, then there is no reason why we cannot accept this sort of suffering that God actually inflicts. What might make it uncomfortable is that in the OT we see the visible hand of God as effecting or commanding these acts. This does not also imply that God does not have a genuine affection for humanity, rather his love is so great that he plans for us a life which far outweighs all of this pain and sorrow. He does this through his intervention in the Person of Christ.

When God decides its time to go, its time to go. That applies to everyone, not just the Amalekites, even to you and me. Anyone can die violently or at least suddenly, right?        These guys approach the argument in the wrong direction. The arguement should be if there is a God, is it okay for him to decide when someone dies? Is it possible to say no? Of course not.  The next possible question is will they receive justice? Again, where’s the problem? You have the same problem when anyone dies suddenly, is the same problem when babies die before the age of accountability and when babies are born still born.  The only remaining question is does God will just live with them?   It’s exactly the same question for the genocide. I mean God decided when it was time for Moses to die did he not? Just an example. Suppose Alex Connor gets a heart attack in the next 5 minutes (God forbid). Now what, is it also wrong for atheists to get heart attacks?

This is Luis Dizon’s article summarizing the various views: https://reasonandtheology.com/2021/06/24/explaining-the-conquest-of-canaan-six-approaches/

and his related article: https://reasonandtheology.com/2021/06/23/selective_christocentrism/