Reconciling God in the OT with God inn the NT

[holy_wood]

“When the LORD your God brings you into the land where you are entering to possess it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and stronger than you. And when the LORD your God delivers them before you and you defeat them, then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them and show no favor to them. (Deutronomy 7:1-2)

“When you approach a city to fight against it, you shall offer it terms of peace. If it agrees to make peace with you and opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall become your forced labor and shall serve you. However, if it does not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. When the LORD your God gives it into your hand, you shall strike all the men in it with the edge of the sword. Only the women and the children and the animals and all that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourself; and you shall use the spoil of your enemies which the LORD your God has given you… Only in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes (Deuteronomy 20:10-17)

Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately. But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves. (Numbers 31:17-18)

NOW COMPARE THESE STATEMENT TO THE nEW NEW TESTAMENT.

Anyone want to explain these versus and others like them. It seems to me that God is gas set up a contradictory moral system here.

He even orders the death of children in Jericho.

Can someone explain this to me.

 

[An_Agnostic]

I don’t suppose it is in our power to question His judgment.

God is love? Must be a love beyond our understanding.

 

[Booklover]

“When the LORD your God brings you into the land where you are entering to possess it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and stronger than you. And when the LORD your God delivers them before you and you defeat them, then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them and show no favor to them. (Deutronomy 7:1-2)

“When you approach a city to fight against it, you shall offer it terms of peace. If it agrees to make peace with you and opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall become your forced labor and shall serve you. However, if it does not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. When the LORD your God gives it into your hand, you shall strike all the men in it with the edge of the sword. Only the women and the children and the animals and all that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourself; and you shall use the spoil of your enemies which the LORD your God has given you… Only in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes (Deuteronomy 20:10-17)

Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately. But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves. (Numbers 31:17-18)

NOW COMPARE THESE STATEMENT TO THE nEW NEW TESTAMENT.

Anyone want to explain these versus and others like them. It seems to me that God is gas set up a contradictory moral system here.

He even orders the death of children in Jericho.

Can someone explain this to me.

Hope this helps with God in the OT.

In the Old Testament, sometimes (1) God commands all inhabitants of a region or town to be wiped out entirely, like Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 18:16—19:29). That is the big lesson of Genesis. If God had found even only five righteous in those two cities, then he would not have destroyed them. No region or town that had a hope of repentance is ever wiped out. [1] But when it is, then we can be sure that God is acting wisely and justly, even if our modern emotions do not like this aspect of God’s character.

(2) God is very specific about who should be wiped out entirely, and who should live. He was not feeling His way, moving against one tribe in Canaan to the next in an ad—hoc way. He did not offer progressive revelations of letting some live and others die, as circumstance dictated. Rather, we can trust that since God knows the heart, if the Canaanites had to be wiped out entirely, then they were so degenerate that they were beyond hope—all of them, even the women and children.

1. Also, God in the Old Testament was not interested in converting these pagans or at least influencing them for righteousness, but only because they were too far gone. Reading their hearts, He commands, rather, that they should be eliminated—an extreme measure to be sure, but for those who trust God it is a necessary extreme, because the pagans’ corrupting influence was so great that they had to be taken out. If peaceful co—existence were possible, then God would have ordained that; He did not purpose to kill them just for the sake of bloodshed or in a confused, ad—hoc way. Peace was always the better goal.

Vickie