Did God tell the Jews to commit genocide?

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franklinstower

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I have always thought that the Jewish people just thought they were being told to kill the various groups they did in the Old Testament and not that God actually told them too. I really can’t accept a perspective that God really did tell them to kill entre groups of people. Can anyone shed light on this topic from a Catholic perspective?

I have also heard that the numbers of people the Jewish peoples killed were greatly exaggerated in some cases. Any light on that subject?
 
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franklinstower said:
I have also heard that the numbers of people the Jewish peoples killed were greatly exaggerated in some cases. Any light on that subject?
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Outdated approaches to the OT used to suggest that we can’t believe what Jews say, because they’re liars and exaggerators. Wanna take any guesses on what kinda folks started those ideas? Wanna take any guesses on how valid those accusations are?
franklinstower said:
I have always thought that the Jewish people just thought they were being told to kill the various groups they did in the Old Testament and not that God actually told them too
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There are a couple of nuanced arguments that we could make, which are situated around the notions of “primary causation” and “secondary causation”, and which address the question you’re asking here. From a more primary perspective, though, I think the critical question to be asked is, “does God simply throw onto the trash-heap those whom He has created in His likeness and image?” If we recognize that the answer to that question is “no”, then we begin to have a whole new perspective on the issue.
 
You need to be more clear on the answer from the second paragraph. Did God or did God not approve genocide according to Catholic thinking?

On the first paragraph I have heard that these exaggerations were quite common as the semitic peoples reworked the facts often to make theological points. According to this line of thinking it was not a lie because every one knew what the exaggerations were meant to convey. It was a known literary device in other words.
 
Gorgias said:
Outdated approaches to the OT used to suggest that we can’t believe what Jews say, because they’re liars and exaggerators. Wanna take any guesses on what kinda folks started those ideas? Wanna take any guesses on how valid those accusations are?
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I’m not familiar with the outdated approaches that you are referring to or the people who stared them, but linguistic hyperbole is, to this day, a feature of the language and culture of Semitic peoples. This acknowledgement isn’t racist unless you attach some sort of value judgment to it.

In order to understand the Bible, we must understand the language and culture from which it emerged.
 
babochka said:
linguistic hyperbole is, to this day, a feature of the language and culture of Semitic peoples. This acknowledgement isn’t racist unless you attach some sort of value judgment to it.
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Ok. I can see that perspective. However, the dismissal of OT narrative, which tends to get expressed as “Jews exaggerate; therefore, we cannot accept Scriptural narrative as if it were believable”, tends toward “racist assertion.”
babochka said:
In order to understand the Bible, we must understand the language and culture from which it emerged.
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Agreed. Is the believability of the OT based primarily on numbers of troop strength, though? Or is it based on the notion of reliance on God? And, is this notion of reliance what is “exaggerated” in a cultural sense?
 
franklinstower said:
I really can’t accept a perspective that God really did tell them to kill entre groups of people.
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God is the one that has given us all life, and He is the one who decides when and how it will end. Why someone dies at the time they do or in the way they do we cannot know, but because we know that God is good we can trust in Him to make the right call on this. Therefore He has forbidden us from murder, because even though someone might seem to deserve to die from our point of view, God knows better, and will cause all of our deaths at the appropriate time.

Sometimes that appropriate time is very early, and sometimes the manner is very violent. Natural disasters and horrible diseases kill entire groups of people many times throughout history. Why, we don’t know. We can only trust that God, from His full perspective and in His innate Goodness only does what is best for us.

And so, as brutal as it may seem from our human perspective, God decided, in His Wisdom and from His Goodness, to command the Israelites to commit genocide against certain specific peoples at certain specific times. How specific it was is worth mentioning, because He made it clear that this was not to be a standard procedure in war, but rather an exception at that time and place in history. For a nation to commit a genocide is and was a grave sin and war crime, and is not endorsed by God or the Church. Still, since God has the right of life and death, He is in a position to give exceptions, and we can trust in His judgment.
 
Is this the official Catholic teaching on the subject though?
 
Multiple interpretations of Old Testament books are permitted to Catholics. Trent Horn wrote a great book that addresses this (and many other topics): ‘Hard Sayings’! I’d certainly recommend it for any bookshelf.
 
franklinstower said:
Is this the official Catholic teaching on the subject though?
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This would be my take on the subject.

If we are speaking of the three omni- Creator and sustainer of the universe and of all that is within it, as the speaker of the words attributed to him in the Old Testament, then presumably the eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent God would have access to knowledge about every human being subject to those commands and the repercussions of carrying out those commands down through all of history and into eternity.

That would mean we, as very limited, very naive, human beings with a very limited slice of knowledge of the entirety of existence, and with very feeble and faulty moral consciences, are in no position to provide oversight to God on what infinite goodness, omniscience and omnipotence would command in any particular circumstance.

It would be silly to even venture a moral opinion precisely because the final authority on an moral matter would be the omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omniscience Creator, if such exists, and not feeble, ignorant and morally decrepit beings such as us.

Ergo, if God exists we are in no position to speak our opinion regarding what he commands.

If God does not exist then clearly he couldn’t have commanded any of it.

The problem is that we cannot argue FROM the supposed divine commands TO the non-existence of God, because if the commands were legitimately Divine commands they would be unimpeachable, and if they were not, the answer is moot to begin with.

So the entire question rests on the prior establishment of the existence or non-existence of God and from there we can move to possibly consider whether those particular commands came from the mouth of God.
 
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Specifically, Trent Horn suggests three potential interpretive approaches a Catholic may apply when examining such ancient texts. (The Church does not tell Catholics which to believe; I imagine you’ll feel most comfortable with approach #2 or #3 below?) Please keep in mind, by the way, that I’m massively summarizing. Trent goes into great detail and nuance and I can’t recommend his book enough.

1. 'Literal Commands, Literal History’
  • Here Trent addresses the approach that takes these texts literally, and examines the argument that God – the giver of human life – has the right to take human life, and to do so in any manner He sees fit: whether He deputizes gradual cell decay, disease, or other humans to carry this out. This approach takes into account the context of, e.g., the Canaanites, who are stated to have committed such wickedness against God that they were going to be visited by divine justice no matter what (e.g. for murdering their children) – and it’s just that rather than sending fire and brimstone from the sky, he sent the Israelites with swords. Also, even on a literal reading, it’s clear that not every Canaanite was meant to be killed (e.g. Rahab, Caleb). This approach also acknowledges the horror of the temporal suffering of the innocents (e.g. children) among the Canaanites, in an ancient ‘total war’ culture between tribes of that whole region, by pointing out that God, who loves each person, is capable of making up any finite suffering with infinite joy.
2. 'Nonliteral Commands, Literal History’
  • This approach involves addressing an ancient mode of speaking about reality, in which basically everything was said to be the will of God or to be commanded by God, out of recognition that technically all existence and action relies in some sense on God’s will enabling it (without distinguishing, for example, between His preferential and permissive will). E.g. someone could see a tree blossoming outside and give thanks that God ‘commanded that tree to blossom’. Under this interpretation, the ancient Israelites did kill entire groups of people, but God did not actually morally direct them to do so, and the way they told stories about their killings that framed God as commanding them, is just an ancient cultural/literary technique.
3. 'Nonliteral Commands, Nonliteral History’
  • God never issued these commands, and they were never carried out. Under this approach, these ancient texts are considered part of the genre of exaggerated, non-literal ‘warfare rhetoric’ of ancient tribes – and the Canaanites are not believed to have been literally destroyed at all. There would have been regional fights, but even many details in the ancient texts make clear that (despite making exaggerated ‘total destruction’ claims) a little while later, the same people still lived there. So under this interpretation, these stories weren’t meant to be taken as literal history on either level: God’s commands, or historical destruction of groups of people. They were meant to communicate something else to Israel.
 
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Please see my comments discussing Trent Horn’s book. The position Theban and HarryStotle are taking is permitted (of the arbitrarily numbered approaches Trent addresses in his book, they fall under category #1) – but that’s not the only position Catholics are committed to hold.

It sounds to me like interpretation #2 or #3 may be intriguing for you to look into, and I share them just in case it helps you settle your heart that you don’t have to believe something you find ‘horrible’ to be Catholic. Catholics are permitted to interpret this OT passages according to interpretation models #2 and #3, and there are even good reasons to support those interpretations. Not that, by saying this, I mean to discourage anyone from believing the first interpretation (which is also permitted for Catholics).

Basically, Jesus Christ is the Word incarnate. In Him, the truth took on flesh. And He is the core of our faith, our Church, and our hope. When it comes to interpreting the Old Testament, we look back with the light of Christ. And it’s also important to understand the genre and cultural context of different ancient texts, when we enter into trying to understand the way(s) God was walking with Israel, baby step by baby step, from the beginning.

Anyhow, yeah: just really wanted to share this since you asked for: “The official Catholic teaching” on this. And there just honestly isn’t one. It’s one of those areas in the ‘not necessary for salvation’ category where the Church does not go outside her authority in declaring a single interpretation that all Catholics must abide by.
 
Theban said:
And so, as brutal as it may seem from our human perspective, God decided, in His Wisdom and from His Goodness, to command the Israelites to commit genocide against certain specific peoples at certain specific times.
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And yet, they didn’t. And nevertheless, God didn’t punish them for these purported ‘transgressions’. So… what does that tell you about whether they defied the will of God? 😉
 
I struggled with the one where they convinced their enemies to become circumcised like themselves and they did only for them to kill them when it was the most painful for them. That kind of seems like asking an enemy nation to become baptised and then killing them?
 
We might do well to remember the social reality of OT times. A lot of it was “kill or be killed”. If your own tribe wasn’t killed it might have been forced to assimilate, which would mean losing its own culture and its own ability to worship God.

It’s only been in the last few centuries that much of the world has been able to develop models for economics and peace that do not rely, to some extent, on mass killings or mass assimilations.
 
Yes, that’s my take as well. I’ve heard that the Talmud goes more into the details about these wars, and says that the Israelites were very lenient as far as genocides go, and that they allowed people to flee as long as they left the country, with most of the women and children gone long before the attack. And I’m sure that no individual soldier who chose to spare a group of stragglers out of mercy is condemned for it, quite the contrary. At any rate, if it was good that any one of these people should go on to live, then we can be sure that God would have let them go on living.
 
This was certainly the post I was looking for. Thank you for it. I will maybe read this book at some point. This question did not come from me but from speaking with an atheist who uses those scriptures to attack Christianity. I had honestly already resolved it in my heart and mind years ago. I would like to share what I have thought for a while though because I do not think it fits in with 2 or 3.

I think the semitic peoples at that time probably thought God was telling them to root out and kill all those people but that they were wrong about that. I think this in the context of a movement towards Christ over thousands of years that finds humanity becoming increasingly more moral.

These stories happened in brutal times and even though they were being guided by God they were receiving that guidance with a healthy mixture of misunderstanding and in the context of a dangerous world.

This 4th option seems more likely to me but problematic if one is trying to maintain the credibility of the texts.
 
franklinstower said:
I think this in the context of a movement towards Christ over thousands of years that finds humanity becoming increasingly more moral.
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This is also how I see it. Humanity is obviously having a learning experience as the centuries go by. If that hadn’t been the case, then Jesus’ teachings on loving your neighbor and forgiving 70 times 7 wouldn’t have been seen as a whole new concept when Jesus first taught them.
 
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It might be worth noting that God’s command to Moses just before the Israelites entered the promised land was to “drive out” the people of Canaan and destroy the idols that they left behind.

"And the Lord said to Moses in the plains of Moab by the Jordan at Jericho, “Say to the people of Israel, When you pass over the Jordan into the land of Canaan, then you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, and destroy all their figured stones, and destroy all their molten images, and demolish all their high places; and you shall take possession of the land and settle in it, for I have given the land to you to possess it. (Numbers 33:50-53)
 
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