Violence in the Old Testament

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Hi,

What is all the violence in the Old Testament about? This is something that a lot of people question me about and I don’t know what to tell them. The OT turns a lot of people off because of it’s seeming endorsement of a lot of violence to solve your problems. Can anyone help me understand this dilemma?

Joshua
 
Can you be more specific. Are you talking about the wars fought under the leadership of Joshua after the Exodus? Or the penal methods of the Israelites (eg, stoning)? Or something else?
 
Goldrock said:
Can you be more specific. Are you talking about the wars fought under the leadership of Joshua after the Exodus? Or the penal methods of the Israelites (eg, stoning)? Or something else?
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The wars. Capital punishment for crimes. Killing of innocent children. That sort of thing. This is something atheists use to criticize us. So I want to understand what the meaning of these aspects of salvation history is.
 
My understanding of it is that God has the right to any life, since he created everything from nothing. He commanded the Israelites to annihilate the nations in the land of Canaan because the Canaanites were extremely wicked. Through this divinely mandated annihilation, God expressed his hatred for sin. Unfortunately, even the children of the Canaanites suffered for the sinfulness of the adults of their nation.
 
Goldrock said:
My understanding of it is that God has the right to any life, since he created everything from nothing. He commanded the Israelites to annihilate the nations in the land of Canaan because the Canaanites were extremely wicked. Through this divinely mandated annihilation, God expressed his hatred for sin. Unfortunately, even the children of the Canaanites suffered for the sinfulness of the adults of their nation.
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What do you think happened to the people who were killed? Can the innocent children and infants be held responsible for their parents sins? Do you think those infants will be compensated after death for their undeserved suffering?
 
The genocide in the Old Testament is outrageous, and I simply don’t believe that it was the will of God. Such violence often is blamed on the Lord. Hitler, a baptized Catholic, waged a war against the Soviet Union (he said) to destroy atheistic Communism and save western civilization. Tyrants throughout history have tried to exploit religion. Frankly, I could not believe in a god who called for mass murder, This stands in total contrast to the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount and such verses as I Cor. 13:13.
Code: 
**Three examples of that genocide immediately come to mind**. God ordered Joshua to slay everybody in Jericho. Then God commanded Saul to exterminate every remaining Amalekite. Then, check out the last verses in Ii Kings 2, how Elisha was teased about his bald head, he called down a curse of the Lord on those mocking him, and two she-bears then tore 42 children apart. 

**And these are only three examples of many others. And don't tell me that those victims all were evil or that we're not to question the actions of god.** I don't capitalize that god because my God would never sanction such vicious terrorism. It always amazes me how some people will rant and rail against abortion but are ready to believe that God deliberately demanded the killing of countless babies and others still in the womb. Aren't we supposed to reflect the love of God? Tell me where love was when such atrocities were committed!
** I’ve often wondered if such stories as these have contributed to violence by and among Christians**.Think back to the shameless and vile religious wars, Christians killing fellow Christians in the name of the Prince of Peace! I am not a Mennonite or Quaker but have enormous appreciation for those and other fellow Christians who simply won’t kill others whom they don’t even know and have never met. How much better our world would be if we all adopted that philosophy.
**What a scandal that 'religion' has so often promoted hatred and warfare when true religion should be a bridge and not a barrier**. So frequently it has been (and still is) exploited to promote bigotry instead of harmony. Part of the problem stems from the arrogance of insisting that my faith is the one and only true faith, That is at the root of Islamic terrorism, but it is too often reflected in the attitude of those Christians who claim every other religion is in serious error except theirs. God must be greatly pained by such pride, pomposity, conceit, and haughtiness when the Lord would urge humility, mutual respect, reconciliation, and peace.
 
I think the violence is there in the historical books because of what is remembered. A The turning point in a civilization or a life is a time of struggle. These times are recorded, talked about, and remembered. During peaceful times, no big changes come about.

We hear a lot about David (40 years, good king, wars, battles, God leading His people to a new place)
We don’t hear anything about the reign of Amaziah (29 years, good king, peace).

Look at U.S. history. What do we remember:

Revolutionary war. George Washington. Led us to war and formed a new country.
We do celebrate James Madison in such esteem because he led in a time of peace and no big changes took place.

Civil war. Bloodiest war ever. Abraham Lincoln. Led us to war and ended legal slavery in the US.

History is usually a listing of wars, so you are going to see the bloody times, not the peaceful times. This is not a reflection on God, but a reflection of what marks our memory, where we see change, and how we understand major upsets in our time.

The bible also includes the Song of Songs, does anyone complain the God is too lovey dovey in the OT?
Or the book of Isaiah, is God to motherly and comforting in the OT?
Or the book of Amos, does God care too much about the poor and destitute?
Or the book of proverbs, does God give too much good advice?
Or the book of Psalms, does God spend too much of his time enjoying good music when He could be smiting somebody?
 
Dear Josh, we cannot know the eternal destiny of the children killed in the Old Testament (eg, the children of Canaan, the first borns of the Egyptians). My speculation is that they were consigned to Limbo or through God’s mercy, were admitted to heaven after the Christ opened the gates of heaven). But God owes heaven to no human being so it would not be unjust if they are still in Limbo.

To the person who believes that the Old Testament does not faithfully teach us about God, you follow the teachings of the heretic Marcion. Referring to the God of the OT with a lower case “g” is blasphemous and referring to the god of your imagination with an upper case “G” is idolatry. Christ and his Apostles certainly believed in the OT, and Christ himself referred to such events as the Flood and He destruction of Sodom and Gommorah, in which God decided to destroy whole groups of people. The fact is God can do whatever he wishes with his creation. Everything belongs to him.
 
I don’t care that much about Marcion. I do know that I cannot equate any god who commits wholesale murder with the God of love that I worship. If this is heresy, then I’m a heretic. I am shocked that those who claim to be Christians accept evil because it is attributed to God. My Lord is perfect. Those atrocity stories are far from that.
Code: 
**My own view tends to be that the ancient Israelites were vicious killers, as were many other tribes in those times.** Not only those times. How about the regimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Franco, Saddam, Ghaddafi and numerous others? The way our forefathers treated Native Americans wasn't that different, either. 

** Much of the Old Testament reflected an earlier understanding - and misunderstanding - of God. The Israelites believed they were the chosen people, that they could go into another land given them by God, and kill off its inhabitants.** Sadly, this tragic misunderstanding is at the root of much of today's mess in the Middle East. Read Gen. 15:18-19 and you will see that God promised Abraham and his descendants all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates. I guess that means we should go to war to make sure that modern Israel expands from the Nile to the Euphrates. Ridiculous! Biblical literalists continue to cause enormous problems in the world by their myopic view of the world. The core message of Christ was love, kindness, mercy, and justice. God is not in the real estate business, he has no favorite race, and what a pity so many people are so heavily influenced by such false precepts.
** Whenever I read that “Saul has killed his thousands but David has killed his ten thousands” I wonder how we can honor David**. He wanted another man’s wife, then had her husband murdered so he could have her. Great guy! Then their son Solomon, that wise king, had 700 wives and 300 concubines. Terrific examples for our modern society, right? Of course, he went whoring after false gods.
** This view of the Old Testament as the infallible word of God is so obviously erroneous because it stands in such contrast to the real Word of God as revealed in the person and message of Christ.** We either accept the genocide and other crimes of the god in the Old Testament or the love and mercy of the God Christ revealed to us. This effort to reconcile the two has been at the root of so many of our problems over the centuries.
 
Dear Roy, you have admitted that you are a heretic. At least you are honest. True Christians (viz, Catholics) believe that both the Old and New Testaments are the inspired and inerrant Word of God. Christ and the Apostles believed likewise.

What did King David give us? He gave us most of the Psalms, the most beautiful hymns ever written. Sure he was not perfect, but there was also much in him that was praiseworthy. Plus, he is a direct anscestor of our Lord Jesus Christ and thus worthy of honour in light of that fact alone.

Neither was King Solomon perfect, but he gave us some of the wisest books ever written. God loved Kings David and Solomon in spite of their imperfections just as he loves you and me. I can guarantee you, however, that he hates the heretical blasphemies you adhere to. You place your soul in danger by throwing out more than half the Bible. I will pray for you and I hope that none are scandalized by, or believe in, your Marcionist blasphemies against the God of the Old and New Testaments.
 
Actually, the whole,heresy business has been a heresy itself. Christ hung out with such folks. Who were more despised as heretics back then than the Samaritans? But when Christ was asked how to gain eternal life he answered with the parable of the Good Samaritan.
Code: 
 I treasure my right as a Christian to think for myself and not turn over my brain to any book, church, pope or preacher. Some will dismiss this as egotism. Some like you will judge me as in danger of the fires of hell. I personally believe God approves.

 My goal is to defend the God of love and defend him against those who would paint him as a cruel, heartless, pagan god who orders vicious acts of genocide. 

 I believe that if you study Psalms and various other books you will discover that most scholars don't believe that David wrote the Psalms, etc. It's all very complex and would take several books to discuss in sufficient detail. My main point would be that we should use our brains to think, investigate and question rather than rubber-stamp cherished notions that have been challenged and often disproven over the years. Truth is to be treasured over tradition when the two are in conflict.
 
Christ spent time with sinners to heal them of their sins - not to affirm them in their ways. For this same reason I am spending time speaking with you, and also to publicly dispute your errors so that others do not fall into the pit with you.

It has never been disproved that King David wrote most of the Psalms. I would rather follow the traditions of the Catholic and Apostolic Church than the speculations of humanists and agnostics. If you want to be your own authority that is your perogative. Your blood will not be on my head on Judgement Day and you will have to explain to God why you have maligned him and thrown out more than half of the Bible. I am shaking the dust off my feet and resigning from this debate. May God lead you to the truth in his time.
 
I’m neither a humanist nor an atheist. I’m a devoted Christian who refuses to believe that God who is love )as the Bible states) ordered the massacres reported in parts of the Old Testament. I respect all those who profess a religion even when I disagree with it or them. This notion that all religions are false except one is nonsense. When we get to heaven (yes, I believe in eternal life) I’m sure we will discover that Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Sikhs, Indian Animists, Catholics, Protestants etc etc all are there. We probably will discover that our precious doctrines all are far removed from ultimate truth, which our human brains are too puny to understand in this life.
Code: 
 Take a Bible and check out a few verses and see if you believe them to be Christian. For example, Ex. 22:18 - suffer not a witch to live. Do you approve of killing witches? Some say as many as 50,000 women were murdered during medieval times because of that verse. As I recall, Joan of Arc was among them. What about 22:20 - whoever sacrifices to any other god must be killed. Sounds like radical Islam to me. Or, go back to Ch, 21. Verse 17 - anyone who curses his mother or father must be put to death. Like that idea? Half of our teenagers today would have to be slaughtered. How about verse 7 beginning with the words: "If a man sells his daughter..." Isn't that a great concept? Or just before that: "If you buy a Hebrew servant..."  Read verse 3-4. Agree with that?

 And we could go on and on. 

 It's sad when people insist on believing the unbelievable or the immoral. We need to think for ourselves and not be cookie-cutter Christians. 

 But I know I might as well be shouting at the wind. Millions of people find comfort and a sense of superiority in their 'true' religion, and so be it. And despite these stories of God-demanded genocide, there is much in religion, certainly in the Bible, that can be constructive and positive. It's these Old Testament horror stories that I must reject.

 Common sense and any concept of morality would view these 'commandments from God' as ridiculous, primitive, cruel and perverse. Personally, I don't believe for a moment that God delivered them as part of his divine law!

 But, thank God we live in America, where our Founding Fathers provided for freedom of religion. It's interesting that 55 of thr 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence were Protestants. Egads! Heretics founded this nation! What a travesty!
 
Roy5 - The pride you express in your independence of thought is in fact a rejection of GOD.

GOD organized religion with Abraham, Moses and Peter to provide HIS creations with an avenue to build a personal relationship with HIM.

It is not GOD WHO teaches us “to each his own”, but rather “walk in faith” and “be not afraid” and it is GOD who provides HIS creations with the leadership, sheperding and guidance of the “Pope” you reject as well as the teaching and lessons of the “book” you reject.

Yes, heaven will be filled with many people of many faiths, but all who have accepted and come to believe in GOD and follow HIS ways, not their own. All roads do not lead to heaven, but everyone can get off the road they are on and find the true path home.
 
Roy5 said:
I’m neither a humanist nor an atheist. I’m a devoted Christian who refuses to believe that God who is love )as the Bible states) ordered the massacres reported in parts of the Old Testament. I respect all those who profess a religion even when I disagree with it or them. This notion that all religions are false except one is nonsense. When we get to heaven (yes, I believe in eternal life) I’m sure we will discover that Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Sikhs, Indian Animists, Catholics, Protestants etc etc all are there. We probably will discover that our precious doctrines all are far removed from ultimate truth, which our human brains are too puny to understand in this life.
Code: 
 Take a Bible and check out a few verses and see if you believe them to be Christian. For example, Ex. 22:18 - suffer not a witch to live. Do you approve of killing witches? Some say as many as 50,000 women were murdered during medieval times because of that verse. As I recall, Joan of Arc was among them. What about 22:20 - whoever sacrifices to any other god must be killed. Sounds like radical Islam to me. Or, go back to Ch, 21. Verse 17 - anyone who curses his mother or father must be put to death. Like that idea? Half of our teenagers today would have to be slaughtered. How about verse 7 beginning with the words: "If a man sells his daughter..." Isn't that a great concept? Or just before that: "If you buy a Hebrew servant..."  Read verse 3-4. Agree with that?

 And we could go on and on. 

 It's sad when people insist on believing the unbelievable or the immoral. We need to think for ourselves and not be cookie-cutter Christians. 

 But I know I might as well be shouting at the wind. Millions of people find comfort and a sense of superiority in their 'true' religion, and so be it. And despite these stories of God-demanded genocide, there is much in religion, certainly in the Bible, that can be constructive and positive. It's these Old Testament horror stories that I must reject.

 Common sense and any concept of morality would view these 'commandments from God' as ridiculous, primitive, cruel and perverse. Personally, I don't believe for a moment that God delivered them as part of his divine law!

 But, thank God we live in America, where our Founding Fathers provided for freedom of religion. It's interesting that 55 of thr 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence were Protestants. Egads! Heretics founded this nation! What a travesty!
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So, help me out here, Roy.

You reject the entire OT? Certain books? Only those passages where God commands death? Do you think Jesus rejected the OT? Is that rejection found it the NT? Or does He actually read from it, and use it to strengthen and support His teachings?

I’m just trying to grasp your selectivity, your rationale for the type of Christianity that you cling to which allows you pick and choose which parts of the scriptures to disregard.

By the way, I don’t buy it for a minute that you don’t also “listen to humans” and subscribe to what they’ve taught you. You didn’t come up with this Marcionism-lite by yourself, Roy. If you are Lutheran, it makes perfect sense, since there are existing branches that still subscribe to Luther’s tendency to sway towards Marcion. Your theories here are essentially human interpretations that you now also subcribe to.

Hey, it’s OK. We all do that. It’s human nature, and it’s the nature of passing along tradition and teaching, even of Christianity. The million dollar question is which humans were sent by Christ and continue to be?
 
** Yes, I presume I am a ‘selective Christian’. I do not for a moment accept stories that depict God as ordering the deliberate murder of little children and babies in the womb. **That starts with the fable of Noah. God repented (yes, that’s what the Bible says) that he made man (God apparently made a mistake?) and decided to drown everybody but one family. He instructed Noah on how to build an ark, which according to the instructions could not possibly have held two of some animals (7 pairs of others, as I recall), and the rain was on the face of the earth for 150 days! Give me a break! To begin with, what about all the youngsters and babies in the womb that were drowned. How guilty were they?

** Okay, there is much in the Old Testament that I find inspiring.** I memorized, for example, Psalm 23 and 100 - and repeat them when under duress, There are some troubling verses even there. Check out Psalm 137, for example. Verse 9. “Happy are they who take your little ones and dash them against the rocks!” What do you think of that example of a love for one another?

** There is some wisdom in the Proverbs, though here and there some nonsense, too.** Someone has said that Solomon was so wise because his 700 wives and 300 concubines advised him. Do you believe that? Job is rather fascinating. I like certain verses from Eccl. 3. There is much meat in some of the prophets, mixed in with some obvious and bitter racial and religious prejudice. I wonder how the book of Esther got in the Bible. God isn;t mentioned even once, and as I recall revenge was a major theme. Was it 75,000 who were slaughtered? I really should recheck some of these details.
Code: 
 **Christians are too ready to declare the Bible as God word without knowing or giving thought to all this mean-spirited violence that supposedly was the will of the Lord. **Not me. That is slander against my God whom the Bible identifies as love. I go with the gospel of Christ, which is love God and one another. Remember how Christ kept saying: "Ye have heard it said, and eye for an eye....but I say unto you, love your enemies...." etc. How does one reconcile the two? I chose the message of Jesus, not the so-called Mosaic law, much of it not fit for humane society. 

 **Three points.**  1, Ex. 20:4 seems to forbid making graven images. Protestants, of course, cite this when they defend their policy of not having statues in their churches.
  1. The Protestant version of the Old Testament (39 books) is identical with the OT you will find in your neigborhood synagogue. Protestants, incidentally, don’t reject the Apocrypha, but do not include it in the canon. 3. Yes, I know that when one takes an independent position on these matters, one is quickly accused of egotism, etc. Which is more egotistical: to confess that I don’t understand this mammoth, magnificent, mysterious and miraculous universe and to respect other opinions - or to claim to belong to the only true church in the world?

    But God bless everybody. My slogan: ‘think and let think’. Wesley said something like this: “if you love God as I love God, let us join hands and walk forward together”. Amen.
 
Goldrock said:
My understanding of it is that God has the right to any life, since he created everything from nothing. He commanded the Israelites to annihilate the nations in the land of Canaan because the Canaanites were extremely wicked. Through this divinely mandated annihilation, God expressed his hatred for sin. Unfortunately, even the children of the Canaanites suffered for the sinfulness of the adults of their nation.
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God’s people moved in to the promise land and the Canaanites had some stragglers who wouldn’t leave the land God had given them. The problem is the people of Israel were too sinful and out of contact with God to try and convert them and they couldn’t convince them to leave. If they let them stay they are going to end up marrying Israelite’s and bring their religious beliefs and further hinder the faith of God’s people. Killing the Canaanites is obviously not what God would like but because of the Israelite’s weakness Moses tells them to kill them rather than risk them polluting the Israelite’s faith further. Lack of faith equals less than perfect outcomes.
 
@Roy
Psalm 137… It’s referring to the Edomite’s being happy when they seized the Jewish infants and dashed them against a rock. This is anything is a foreshadowing concerning the Edomite King Herod who ends up killing all those new born Jewish babies in his quest to kill the baby Jesus.
 
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