God's chastisement in Bible

[Robster7]

I have wondered about passages in the prophets in which for Israel’s sins, God chastises them. For example, for idolatry and general unfaithfulness to the covenant, Israel gets invaded by Assyria, Babylon, etc.

Sometimes, it seems as if God made the king of Assyria or Babylon get up and go invade and destroy Israel, which the kings on their own had no intention previously of doing.
That is he actively deliberately directed them to do so. It would seem if this is the case, that God caused the evil of Israel’s destruction.

Is this more a matter of the way folks would have interpreted events according to their limited knowledge of how God acts?

Does God actually make people punish others,
or is His chastisement more a backing away from the situation, a withdrawal of His protection–that is, letting the chips fall where they may? Seems similar to a mother or father, after admonishing a child to mend his ways, backing off and letting consequences take their course. This seems more likely to me.

Is this valid theologically? How does the magisterium look at this?

 

[SilentKnight]

Rob,

Very good question. One to which I’m not sure the magisterium has provided an answer. (Maybe it has. I am simply not aware of one.) It’s an issue that I myself have contemplated a great deal, coming ultimately to the conclusion that you have.

On the one hand, God is sovereign. He’s God. So, “technically” speaking, He gets to do anything He wants. If He wants to make a 20 story building uproot and jump into the lake its sitting near, He can do that. If He wants to make the army of one country rise up without any provocation and attack another land “just for kicks”, He could cause that to happen.

One of the problems, though, with “taking this doctrine to the extreme” is that then the question arises, “What is morality?” First and foremost, it is “acting like God”. Not, of course, that we are God, but that we love like He does. Jesus tells us to “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect”. That’s a nice thought, but what does it mean if the heavenly Father “blows things up” at will and does all manner of other weird or other things that distinctly comes across to us as “evil”?

It is for this reason that I cannot escape thinking that when the Scriptures speak of God “causing” one king to rise against His people, or “hardening” Pharoah’s heart, for example, the message that’s being conveyed is not that God is “doing evil”, but rather than God is in control. In one manner or another (and the exact manner may well vary from text to text, from passage to passage), God’s hand “guides” the events of human history.

What this means specifically in some cases is as you have posited, that, more often than not, God simply withdraws His protection from a given person or people and then, as you said, “lets the chips fall where they may”. And this not randomly or capriciously but with the express design and purpose of accomplishing His ends (which in some cases is indeed the punishment of a people).

SK

 

[tito]

Hi, Robster7 & SK This is a question that bothered me before as to how God can be impartial, love mankind and order the invasion of Canaan by the Israelites. God can be no less good and loving to others in order to have absolute perfections.
God promised Abraham and his descendants the land occupied by the Caananites. In Gen 15:16 a promise is made to Israel that in the fourth generation after they are in Egypt they will come out (350y) “for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full”, in other words, they have that much time to turn from their ways (1Kings 21:26, idolatry and perversions attached to it) before the cup of His indignation is full and runs over.
There is another verse (could not find it to show you) where God is telling the Israelites that the reason He is destroying the amorites (generic for caananites) is not because of Israel but because of their wickedness and that the Israelites are the instument He is going to use in their judgment! Shows longsuffering on the part of God.
Likewise in Isaiah God gives the Israelites, both the Northern and the Southern Kingdoms, that judment is coming unless they turn from their evil ways and they didnot. So Assyria came, then Babilonia came and the Jews wound up in exile, in Captivity for 70y. Isaiah’s prophecy about Cyrus and his Medo-Persian victory over Babylonia was pronounced 150 before it even happened.
Even in the case of Pharaoh, God from the beginning tells Moses that Pharaoh will not let His people go. It was a sin of Pharaoh’ s will vs. God. Also note that during the many plagues it is said that Pharaoh hardened his own heart! What hardens the heart? SIN does. Finally God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. Pharaoh (Ex 5) is quoted, saying: “Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go”. Certainly he did not know the One true God, he spoke truth, but ultimately justice prevailed for just as Pharaoh ordered the abortive-killing of the male israelite children so the first born of the Egyptians also were taken.
And as SK says, God may withhold His hand of protection and things may happen that could have been prevented by repentance. In any case, for God to be who He is there can be no ocassion where His judments are unjust or undeserved.

 

[D_M]

I don’t think that the withdrawing of the hand works, although it is an interesting idea, because we know for example that God sends angels in some part of the old testament who wipe out massive numbers of people, and we are assuming that the angels are only doing this because God has instructed them to do so.

The Chaldeans were worse sinners than the Israelites, and they would be punished in their own time, but God could still use them here to punish His people when they needed to be punished.

God causes death and destruction and harm, but only out of love, in the manner that a father disciplines a child… that is to say, He does so in order to make us better.

Hebrews 12:5-7 And have you forgotten the exhortation which addresses you as sons? “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor lose courage when you are punished by him. For the Lord disciplines him whom he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?

 

[SilentKnight]

I don’t think that the withdrawing of the hand works, although it is an interesting idea, because we know for example that God sends angels in some part of the old testament who wipe out massive numbers of people, and we are assuming that the angels are only doing this because God has instructed them to do so.

Yes. But…Are we to interpret these stories completely literally? Or, rather, is the message, again, that ultimately God is in control.

The Chaldeans were worse sinners than the Israelites, and they would be punished in their own time, but God could still use them here to punish His people when they needed to be punished.

Yes. The question, obviously, is in what manner does God “make use” of these (and any) individuals to punish others? I myself am uncomfortable with ascribing direct causation (suggesting that God “forces” people to attack and kill other people) not because I do not believe in His sovereignty, but because - to me - this tends to cloud the issue of human morality. What of the woman that we perceive as insane, for example, who drowned her four kids, saying that “God told her to do it”?

If it really was God, who are we to question this and put her in jail for it? How are we to know?

See what I’m getting at?

Peace,

SK

 

[D_M]

Yes. But…Are we to interpret these stories completely literally? Or, rather, is the message, again, that ultimately God is in control.

Yes. The question, obviously, is in what manner does God “make use” of these (and any) individuals to punish others? I myself am uncomfortable with ascribing direct causation (suggesting that God “forces” people to attack and kill other people) not because I do not believe in His sovereignty, but because - to me - this tends to cloud the issue of human morality. What of the woman that we perceive as insane, for example, who drowned her four kids, saying that “God told her to do it”?

If it really was God, who are we to question this and put her in jail for it? How are we to know?

See what I’m getting at?

Peace,

SK

How would you interpet it non-literally?

If an angel kills thousands of people as the story says, is there a way in which we can interpret it in such a manner that God did not kill them?

In terms of the Chaldeans, their conquest of Israel was itself a sin that they in turn would be punished for, even though it was doing God’s will, but they did not conquer Israel in order to enforce God’s will but only because they wanted plunder, slaves and booty.

[what is written below is in reference to the Chaldeans]

Habbakuk 1:12-13 Art thou not from everlasting, O Lord my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. O Lord, thou hast ordained them as a judgment; and thou, O Rock, hast established them for chastisement. Thou who are of purer eyes than to behold evil and canst not look on wrong, why dost thou look on faithless men, and art silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?

Habbakuk 2:6-8 Shall not all these take up their taunt against him, in scoffing derision of him, and say, “Woe to him who heaps up what is not his own- for how long? - and loads himself with pledges!” Will not your debtors suddenly arise, and those who awake who will make you tremble? Then you will be booty for them. Because you have plundered many nations, all the remnant of the peoples shall plunder you, for the blood of men and violence to the earth, to cities and all who dwell therein.

[The second verse refers to the punishment that would come to the Chaldeans for their conquests, which even if they had done God’s will, to them was still sinful, because unlike Israel conquering the Canaanites, they were not doing it because they were commanded]

I think God can do both direct causation (eg. the angels who come down and smite themselves, or the plagues in Egypt, or Jesus chastising those in the temple as a lesser example of the same) as well as the indirect causation (eg. God arranging it such that the chaldeans should conquer Israel), but it nevertheless still true that it was God’s will that they/we should be punished in such fashion.

Consider the story of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5), or when Uzzah touches the ark and God kills him on the spot (2 Samuel 6) as examples of what looks like direct causation.

I do see what you’re saying.

For the woman who claims that God told her to kill someone, if she is telling the truth, then my answer is no she should not be punished, although if she did not hear God and killed her children because she was a psychopath and made up this lie afterwards then yes she is quite guilty.

How are we to know?

In Israel such judgment was given to the authority of the levitical priests who made such decisions, and this was instituted by God. We do not have this, but instead we have lawful authorities of states which God has also instituted over us in order to conduct such justice… admittedly they can make error, but that is the nature of human justice.

I think especially of Dr. Karadzic in the Hague right now, the man is accused of being responsible for the killings of thousands of people under his rule, and yet how many politicians in western countries that have legalized abortion are really so different? Unless a person seriously thinks that bombs should be going off in North American cities because of abortion, then I don’t see how one could possibly justify the bombing of Yugoslavia for the killings of innocents that existed there… but I’m going on a tangent… what I am trying to express is there is something flawed about the logic of human justice in general, and I would not expect perfection although it is something that God instituted over us.

 

[SilentKnight]

How would you interpet it non-literally?

If an angel kills thousands of people as the story says, is there a way in which we can interpret it in such a manner that God did not kill them?

I do not have chapter and verse on hand a the moment but there are, I believe, two different references in the NT to angels essentialy giving Moses the 10 commandments. If you go back to Exodus and read the 10 commandments account, there are no references to angels. So…What does this mean? Is the Bible contradicting itself? Or are the stories told in it not always 100% literal “newspaper style” accounts of events that had taken place sometimes hundreds of years prior to be written down?

When the OT speaks of “angels” going and slaughtering 7,000 Canaanites, for example, (7,000 representing both “a multitude” and “completion”), are we to understand that, literal angels went at God’s direction and slaughtered 7,000 Canaanites? Or are we, rather to perceive that the fact that, say, more than half of the Canaanite people (let’s say 13,427 at that time out of a total of 21,894 people) dying of starvation more or less simultaneously because they traveled into a desolate region where they weren’t able to feed themselves was not a random event, but one “directly” guided by the hand of God. (Not “directly” as in God pushed them out the door and into this desolate region necessarily, but as in they became an irrevokably immoral people and God did not want them walking the earth any more so He withdrew His hand of protection from them, allowing them to wander into this deadly area and then natural consequences took over…)?

Sometimes the Bible uses images to symbolize things, rather than to describe fully literal realities.

Gotta run. Back in a bit…

SK

 

[juliamajor]

I do not have chapter and verse on hand a the moment but there are, I believe, two different references in the NT to angels essentialy giving Moses the 10 commandments. If you go back to Exodus and read the 10 commandments account, there are no references to angels. So…What does this mean? Is the Bible contradicting itself? Or are the stories told in it not always 100% literal “newspaper style” accounts of events that had taken place sometimes hundreds of years prior to be written down?

When the OT speaks of “angels” going and slaughtering 7,000 Canaanites, for example, (7,000 representing both “a multitude” and “completion”), are we to understand that, literal angels went at God’s direction and slaughtered 7,000 Canaanites? Or are we, rather to perceive that the fact that, say, more than half of the Canaanite people (let’s say 13,427 at that time out of a total of 21,894 people) dying of starvation more or less simultaneously because they traveled into a desolate region where they weren’t able to feed themselves was not a random event, but one “directly” guided by the hand of God. (Not “directly” as in God pushed them out the door and into this desolate region necessarily, but as in they became an irrevokably immoral people and God did not want them walking the earth any more so He withdrew His hand of protection from them, allowing them to wander into this deadly area and then natural consequences took over…)?

Sometimes the Bible uses images to symbolize things, rather than to describe fully literal realities.

Gotta run. Back in a bit…

SK

No- they are not to be taken literally.
Numbers in battles in anyplace in the ancient world are usually incredibly over the top and exaggerated- usually to show the greatest of the people of leader or general in charge-"we were out number 100 to one but Xerxes beat th **** out of them.Show what a wise , wonderful and favored by the gods he was. Not too different.with the bible. Just the mere fact that for most of it’s existence Israel and Judah were bedeviled by their neighbors insinuation of their pagan ways into Israelite culture shows that the pagans weren’t annihilated. Could be a way to justify their conquest(though there are disputes about a conquest) and why and how the Israelites took over…In the Bible God’s plan for salvation is inerrant and the bible accurately expresses these truths.So what is NOT important for salvation and God’s plan for it are not in inerrant. See northforest.org/catholicapologetics/inerrancy.html- catholics view of inerrancy is vastly different than Fundie/ evangelical/protestant view- they believe in the dictation theory. God chastises- no doubt but literally it’s not. Don’t fall for the Tim Lahayification or the Fundamentalization of Catholic Biblical thought.It’s become rampant the american Church-its what we get for being in a Protestant/Fundie atmosphere for all these years. It’s osmosis-we picked up without even knowing we’ve been indoctrinated

 

[D_M]

I do not have chapter and verse on hand a the moment but there are, I believe, two different references in the NT to angels essentialy giving Moses the 10 commandments. If you go back to Exodus and read the 10 commandments account, there are no references to angels. So…What does this mean? Is the Bible contradicting itself? Or are the stories told in it not always 100% literal “newspaper style” accounts of events that had taken place sometimes hundreds of years prior to be written down?

When the OT speaks of “angels” going and slaughtering 7,000 Canaanites, for example, (7,000 representing both “a multitude” and “completion”), are we to understand that, literal angels went at God’s direction and slaughtered 7,000 Canaanites? Or are we, rather to perceive that the fact that, say, more than half of the Canaanite people (let’s say 13,427 at that time out of a total of 21,894 people) dying of starvation more or less simultaneously because they traveled into a desolate region where they weren’t able to feed themselves was not a random event, but one “directly” guided by the hand of God. (Not “directly” as in God pushed them out the door and into this desolate region necessarily, but as in they became an irrevokably immoral people and God did not want them walking the earth any more so He withdrew His hand of protection from them, allowing them to wander into this deadly area and then natural consequences took over…)?

Sometimes the Bible uses images to symbolize things, rather than to describe fully literal realities.

Gotta run. Back in a bit…

SK

Ah, now I see…

In Exodus what it says is that God gave the law to Moses, and in the new testament it says that the law was given through angels… this is because the angels are God’s ministers and it is through them that God acts… that is to say God spoke to Moses through His angel

I have a secret that I would like to share… in the bible a talking cloud very often indicated the presence of an ‘angel’… consider this for example:

Matthew 24:30 then will appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory;

Matthew 25:31 "When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne,

I interpret the phrase ‘clouds of heaven’ to mean the same as ‘all the angels’, and I would justify this interpretation when I reference the story of Moses on Sinai in which God spoke to Moses through a cloud, or the ascension into heaven when Jesus disapeared into the clouds (and the angels said he should return ‘in the same manner’), when the cloud comes to Peter and James on the mountain wherein they saw the transfiguration and a voice speaks out of the cloud saying ‘This is my beloved Son…’

it was not a cloud that spoke, but an angel who came in the form of a cloud that spoke, and through whom the Father speaks and acts

So I would say that Exodus is correct when it says that God spoke to Moses, and the new testament was just as correct when it says that God spoke to Moses through an angel who appeared in a cloud, as well as a pillar and in a burning bush

God could punish (and does punish)in the indirect manner that you describe, I would agree… although there really does seem to be a presence of the miraculous in many instances, other than those I mentioned, consider Korah’s rebellion and how the earth opened up and swallowed all of them whole, or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, or the turning of Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt, or the plague that killed every firstborn in Egypt…

God ordered the Israelites to slaughter their enemies in Canaan and to kill adulterers, idolaters, and other sinners that the law calls for capital punishment… I cannot imagine that God would commanded something that would have offended Him or which He did not will, and which He would have refused to have done Himself

 

[juliamajor]

Clouds, thunder ,fire, strong wind, earthquakes- like the 1st readings from Kings today, are all symbols of a theophany. the imagery is from exodus and you have that imagery continue through the OT and NT. That’s why the Transfiguration and Sermon on the Mount are where they are.

 

[SilentKnight]

God ordered the Israelites to slaughter their enemies in Canaan and to kill adulterers, idolaters, and other sinners that the law calls for capital punishment… I cannot imagine that God would commanded something that would have offended Him or which He did not will, and which He would have refused to have done Himself

But that’s just it. What I’m getting at, this particular story aside perhaps, is that when a given story in the OT says something like, “Then God rose up in anger and commanded the armies of Bashan to rise up in anger as well and to slay the whole encampment of the Israelites…”, for example, are we to understand the sacred writer literally? That is to say, does the sacred writer mean to teach us that, literally, “God rose up in anger and commanded the armies of Bashan to rise up in anger as well and to slay the whole encampment of the Israelites…”?

Or, rather, is this mode of expression, the wording that he uses, a linguistic tool that, in reality, is meant to convey a more general truth, not that God literally commanded the army of Bashan to slay the Israelis, but that, for example, the army of Bashan intended to rise up against Israel and God could have prevented this but didn’t for a specific reason. Is the writer simply trying to teach us - with wording that is different from what we are used to in the catechism - that God is in control and that “event X” happened not completely randomly but because of a specific design?

Does that make more sense?

SK

 

[D_M]

But that’s just it. What I’m getting at, this particular story aside perhaps, is that when a given story in the OT says something like, “Then God rose up in anger and commanded the armies of Bashan to rise up in anger as well and to slay the whole encampment of the Israelites…”, for example, are we to understand the sacred writer literally? That is to say, does the sacred writer mean to teach us that, literally, “God rose up in anger and commanded the armies of Bashan to rise up in anger as well and to slay the whole encampment of the Israelites…”?

Or, rather, is this mode of expression, the wording that he uses, a linguistic tool that, in reality, is meant to convey a more general truth, not that God literally commanded the army of Bashan to slay the Israelis, but that, for example, the army of Bashan intended to rise up against Israel and God could have prevented this but didn’t for a specific reason. Is the writer simply trying to teach us - with wording that is different from what we are used to in the catechism - that God is in control and that “event X” happened not completely randomly but because of a specific design?

Does that make more sense?

SK

I think I do understand what is you are trying to imply:

You mean that God never punishes directly but his chastisment is simply leaving those He wishes to be chastised to other forces that He will not protect them from because they have departed from Him, and perhaps therefore cannot be protected by Him…

But I don’t think this is correct…
God sent the Chaldeans to destroy His people is what is written in scripture:

Habbakuk 1:5-6 Look among the nations, and see; wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told. For lo, I am rousing the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, who march through the breadth of the earth, to seize habitations not their own.

What I understand from reading this is not that the Chaldeans were obeying God when they went out to plunder (which is what you correctly interpret in what it is which the text does not mean), but rather that they are doing this by their own greedy will, but at the very same time God is using them as an instrument to chastise to people.

Jeremiah 27:5-7 "It is I who by my great power and my outstretched arm have made the earth, with the men and animals that are on the earth, and I give it to whomever it seems right to me. Now I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant, and I have given him also the beasts of the field to serve him. All the nations shall serve him and his son and his grandson, until the time of his own land comes; then many nations and great kings shall make him their slave.

Consider what it says about Nebuchadnezzar, whom Jeremiah calls God’s servant even though this same prophet writes that this king and his people are going to be punished for doing this very act in God’s service one line afterwards (as I quoted in a few posts above, God would send other nations to plunder the Chaldeans as their own punishment).

When the prophet writes therefore that Nebuchadnezzar is God’s servant, we don’t understand that Nebuchadnezzar/the Chaldeans is/are willingly obedient to God, for if he/they were he/they would not be punished for such obedience in his/their own turn, but rather we understand that Nebuchadnezzar is doing God’s will unwittingly and therefore he is called God’s servant. If Nebuchadnezzar consciously himself chose to plunder Israel in order to serve God, as opposed to consciously chosing to plunder Israel in order to serve himself, it would not have been a sin to be punished and it would have been just as the Israelites had destroyed the Canaanites (ie. something which itself was not sinful because it was done in true faith… the Israelites were never punished for destroying Canaan, because they were doing God’s will and they were doing it for that reason and not for greed).

I understand that God wants them to destroy His people, it is not that He is indirectly leaving them to be chastised, but in fact that God wants them to be destroyed in order to reprove their pride and bring them to repent and turn back to Him.

I think many people find this to be somewhat harsh perhaps, and I try to look it at this way: if you are going to have someone punish you, what more loving, what more compassionate or what better judge could we possibly have than Him?

This is what David said to the prophet who offered him the three choices of how Israel should be punished (by 3 year famine, by 3 month conquest or by 3 day pestilence):

2 Samuel 24:14 Then David said to Gad, “I am in great distress; let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into the hands of man.”*

 

[SilentKnight]

DM,

I think we’re on the same side of the street, just talking past each other.

SK

 

[D_M]

DM,

I think we’re on the same side of the street, just talking past each other.

SK

Hi,

Are you sure?

I would understand that God can kill people directly through a miracle just as through the indirect method of an invading army

Example: Korah’s rebellion

Numbers 16:31-33 And as he finished speaking all these words, the ground under them split asunder; and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, with their households and all the men that belonged to Korah and all their goods. So they and all that belonged to them went down alive into Sheol; and the earth closed over them, and they perished from the midst of the assembly.

This isn’t something that happens in nature, the earth doesn’t open in one spot and then close again, in this instance I would think that the Lord literally killed Korah, although in other cases he indirectly killed His enemies.

[Although if you would like to end the discussion, that’s perfectly fine too]

God Bless,