2. Violence of God in the Old Testament: Exposing the Problem

4. “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
Most famous atheist in the world
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006, p. 51.

7. Old Testament Portrayals of violence:
Humans behave violently—
Sometimes the text frowns on this: Cain killing Abel
Virtuous violence is celebrated and praised in the text
Jael slaying King Sisera with a tent peg through his temple (Judges 4-5). This is celebrated by the text—Deborah’s song. Jael’s actions are praised.
David/Goliath (1 Samuel 17). Not only were David’s actions portrayed as virtuous but as empowered by God.
Such violence, though may be critiqued by readers, attributing both the action and praise to human sin.
Old Testament Portrayals of violence:

8. Virtuous Violence? God behaves violently in mass killings
Flood narrative in which God “depopulates the planet” (Seibert, Violence of Scripture, 33) Gen
“The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.” (Gen 6.5)
Sodom & Gomorrah—Gen
“The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous…” (Gen 18.20)
Exodus: God destroys plants, animals, kills every firstborn, and annihilates the entire Egyptian army (Exod ; )
Egyptians had enslaved and oppressed Israelites
God’s violence is explicitly praised—Exodus 15
Virtuous Violence?

9. Virtuous Violence? God behaves violently in individual killings
Er and Onan (Gen )
Nadab and Abihu (Lev )
Uzzah (2 Sam [8-9])
God sanctions violence
Laws to enforce the death penalty for the following:
Kidnapping (Exod 21.16)
Adultery (Lev 20.10)
Cursing a parent (Exod 21.17)
Working on the Sabbath (Exod 31.15)
God sanctions war on Midianites (Num 31.2), Amalekites (1 Sam 15.2)—divine judgment d/t their transgressions
Virtuous Violence?
Blasphemy, sorcery, murder …

10. God Sanctions Genocide
Command to total annihilate 6 Canaanites nations
Directives: Deut 7.1-5, 17-26; 9.1-6; ;
Implementation: (ḥerem)Joshua 6.17, 21; 10.1; 11.11, 12, 20, 21-22; 1 Sam 15.3
“No psalms were composed celebrating the extermination of the Canaanites. No hymns extol the slaughter of the Amalekites. No holidays remember the Conquest. Jewish and Christian parents hide their children’s eyes from ḥerem passages. Pastors avoid it in preaching. Bible teachers dance around its intractable theological and moral problem. Canaanite genocide is a huge embarrassment to sensitive believers and an outrage to unbelievers.“
Cowles, Show Them No Mercy,

11. God Behaves Violently against Israel
Setting: Moab, just prior to entering the land of Canaan.
Context: Some Israelites begin having sex with Moabite women and worshiping their gods (Num 25.2)
The Lord said to Moses, “Take all the leaders of these people, kill them and expose them in broad daylight before the Lord, so that the Lord’s fierce anger may turn away from Israel.”
 So Moses said to Israel’s judges, “Each of you must put to death those of your people who have yoked themselves to the Baal of Peor. (Num )
Deut 13: 12 If you hear it said about one of the towns the Lord your God is giving you to live in 13 that troublemakers have arisen among you and have led the people of their town astray, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods you have not known), 14 then you must inquire, probe and investigate it thoroughly. And if it is true and it has been proved that this detestable thing has been done among you, 15 you must certainly put to the sword all who live in that town. You must destroy it completely,[b]both its people and its livestock.

12. What does this “virtuous” Divine violence DO?
Does it lead to violence?
Has been used to justify our own violent behavior (war, colonialism, slavery, violence against women and children …)
It creates difficulty for those who look to the Bible for moral guidance, crossing purposes with Christian values as it emphasizes:
Retribution rather than forgiveness
Bigotry rather than religious tolerance
Domination rather than servanthood
It raises serious ethical and moral questions about the character of God: How do we harmonize the warrior God of Israel with the God of love incarnate in Jesus?
What does this “virtuous” Divine violence DO?

13. Approaches to Interpreting Divine Violence
Two categories of responses:
The Bible precisely reflects God’s true nature, and God actually did what the Bible claims.
Images of a violent God are either non- literal or not accurate.
Approaches to Interpreting Divine Violence
1. God exterminated the inhabitants of S/G, drowned the Egyptian army, and commanded the Israelites to kill Canaanites.

14. Christopher Wright, The God I Don’t Understand, 86
Ignore offensive violent texts in Scripture
Trust God While Acknowledging Unanswered Questions
Defend God’s Violent Behaviour
Divine violence is justified by the moral depravity of certain people or groups
Violence (e.g. annihilation of Canaanites)was for the greater good of maintaining Israel’s religious purity
Divine violence reflects progressive revelation (God’s accommodation to the limitations of finite and fallen humans)
The Bible is engaged in a conversation about the nature of God. It contains different—and sometimes mutually exclusive—ideas about the character of God.
1. The Bible precisely reflects God’s true nature, and God actually did what the Bible claims.
(Majority response) Its an OT problem which the NT sets right (at least with the exception of eternal judgment). Ignore texts in which God perpetrates, legitimates, and even mandates violence. Preach from the New Testament and carefully selected portions of the OT.
Christian’s still claim the OT as part of the Christian Bible. (Despite Marcion’s attempts in the 2nd Century to eliminate the Old Testament and troublesome portions of the NT, they remain in our canon and we have refused his argument that this is a different God)
2. “I have wrestled with this problem for many years as a teacher of the Old Testament and I am coming to the view that no such ‘solution’ will be forthcoming. There is something about this part of our Bible that I have to include in my basket of things I don’t understand about God and his ways”
Christopher Wright, The God I Don’t Understand, 86
This many be where we all have to stand at the end of the day, but we cannot begin here. This is a believer’s response but with the increased violence in our world in the name of religion or perceptions of divine leading, we have to recognize that these texts may hinder people from believing in God and may undermine Christianity’s credibility. So our faith must continually seek understanding.
The Bible is true and all God’s behavior is virtuous
“Yahweh used violence only to punish the wicked or to protect the weak,” David Lamb, God Behaving Badly, p. 112
“Just as a surgeon does not hesitate to amputate a gangrenous limb, even if he cannot help cutting off some healthy flesh,” Walter Kaiser, Hard Sayings of the Old Testament
ANE accepted holy war as the way to deal with national enemies. It was standard practice for victors to devote people and things to their gods, even through practices of total destruction. This argument may help us understand God’s tolerance of Israel’s practices but not divine commands or acts of violence. NT is not free from temporal violence (vs. eschatological). See notes from Copan and Flannagan.
This response does not fit perfectly here. I remind us of other OT voices that says that God is merciful and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. Show how some passages are not xenophobic or exclusivistic. Some welcome foreigners, protect aliens, remind us of Israel’s God given mission to be a blessing to all nations. We see how the book of Chronicles rewrites Israel’s history with no mention of a military takeover of the land of Canaan. The problem is that violent images are not neutralized with the positive ones (unless we are willing to argue, as some do, that God grew and changed and became less violent).

15. OT stories portraying violence may have a spiritual rather than literal meaning
Joshua uses ancient conventional warfare rhetoric depicting total devastation in the exaggerated manner of the Ancient Near East. Hearers from that cultural context knew this was massive hyperbole and not literally true.
Stories about the genocidal conquest and other portraits of divine violence were written long after the events that they portray. They served a polemical function:
In their earliest form in King Josiah’s time they may have served as a dramatic narrative portrait of what it meant to be exclusively devoted to God.
In their final form, completed in the defeat and humiliation of exile, and in the time that followed as people dominated by various world empires, these texts may have been a subversive against empire
2. Images of a violent God are either non- literal or not accurate. God is not Violent
The OT must be read non-violently.
This was the understanding of Origin and the early church up to the time of the Reformation. Late biblical scholar Duane Christensen, for example, sees the battle scenes recounted in Joshua as a metaphor of spiritual warfare. “It is this spiritual battle to which the text speaks. To enter the promised land one must trust God to defeat the forces of evil…As we engage the foe in spiritual battle, we must constantly be aware of the fact that it is God who fights in our behalf.” (Christensen, Deuteronomy, WBC, 32). -

16. Humans had a progressive understanding of God
Humans had a progressive understanding of God. Their interpretations in the OT were true as they understood them, but their understanding was flawed; they spiritualized war, suffering, and natural disasters and wrongly attributed them to God. Therefore, not every violent image of God in the Bible portrays God accurately.
2. Images of a violent God are either non- literal or not accurate. God is not Violent (cont.)
Late C.S. Cowles of NNU, Point Loma, and Indiana Wesleyan. OT scholar Terence Fretheim. Compare 2 Samuel 24.1 to 1 Chronicles 21.1 (who commanded census Satan/God)
“Attributing the command to annihilate Canaanites to God can be partly explained by the fact that the Israelites had no concept of Satan prior to the Babylonian exile. Thus all things—life and death, sickness and health, blessing and curing—were seen as coming directly from the hand of the Sovereign Lord. In addition, the Israelites believed the Canaanites to be under and ancient curse originating with Noah (see Gen ). Given the fact that the Canaanites were an idolatrous and morally degenerate people and were squatters on land long before promised to the patriarchs, it is understandable how the Israelites could have interpreted God’s command to occupy the land in violent and even genocidal ways. Thus, in good faith they acted on what they believed to be God’s will.” (Cowles, Show Them No Mercy, 40-41). Boyd (The Crucifixion of the Warrior God): adds to this view saying that this kind of flawed portrayal can be redeemed by reinterpreting violent texts as a kind of literary crucifixion. In these texts, God stoops in non-coercive and non violent love and bears the sin of the people by allowing them to portray him in a sinful, culturally conditioned, and violent manner. In this way, Boyd contends, even the Old Testament’s violent divine portraits bear witness to the nonviolent character of God exhibited on the cross.
Problem—no where in the OT or the NT do we find any correction to the mistaken thinking (as we do for example in Job)

17. Problem OT texts characterize God as violent.
The attempts to portray God non-violently raise critical questions regarding the “truthfulness” and inspiration of the OT.
Problem
In every book of the OT except Ruth
“The idea that the Bible declares the Word of God only when it speaks historically is one which must be abandoned, especially in the Christian Church.” (Western idea not a biblical one). Karl Bath, Church Dogmatics, vol. 3, pt. 1.82

18. Where Do We Go From Here? Some principles for interpretation:
Read with God’s purposes of creation in mind:
Genesis a is normative for our interpretation of violence in the Old Testament because of its position at the beginning of the biblical canon.
Read with a sense of God’s overall mission in mind—to restore creation to life-giving right-relationships
Read with a hermeneutic of love. Love is central to who the God of the OT is and who God calls his people to be:
“compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (OT mantra)
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength (Deut 6.4-5)
“Love your neighbour as yourself (Lev 19.18)
Where Do We Go From Here?
Israel’s creation story is written in the context of the ancient Near East (ANE). Israel’s story tellers would have known of the Babylonian creation story Enuma Elish in which the god Marduk creates the world by engaging in combat with other deities. In Israel’s creation story, YHWH creates in the same identical order. But there appears to be an intentional distinction. Israel’s God does not create through violence but simply by speaking. Creation is characterized by harmonious relationships. Violence appears later as a human intrusion into the created order.

19. Where Do We Go From Here? Some principles for interpretation:
When our interpretation of a text is inconsistent with the principles above, for example in these portrayals of God sanctioning or perpetrating violence, we need to see if there is another non-violent interpretation
Look for internal critiques of violence
Where Do We Go From Here?

20. Example 1: Internal Critique of Violence
1 Kings 18—19 Elijah’s slaughter of the prophets of Baal (18.40)
When Elijah flees in response to what he has done, God questions him (19.9ff).
The text also portrays an alternate, peaceful method of dealing with an unjust regime in the story of Obadiah (18.4).
Hosea 1.4 explicitly condemns this massacre (Jehu, king of Israel, and his house would be punished)

21. Example 2: Internal Critique of Violence
Esther: after the plot to kill the Jews was exposed, an edict was issued:
The king’s edict granted the Jews in every city the right to assemble and protect themselves; to destroy, kill and annihilate the armed men of any nationality or province who might attack them and their women and children, and to plunder the property of their enemies. (Esther 8.11)
So when the fateful day arrived:
The Jews struck down all their enemies with the sword, killing and destroying them, and they did what they pleased to those who hated them.  In the citadel of Susa, the Jews killed and destroyed five hundred men. (Esther 9:5-6)
Then, at Esther’s request, the killing was extended another day, resulting in an additional 300 casualties (Esther ). This was followed by “a day of feasting and joy” (Esther 9.18)

22. Where Do We Go From Here? Some principles for interpretation:
When our interpretation of a text is inconsistent with the principles above, for example in these portrayals of God sanctioning or perpetrating violence, we need to see if there is another non-violent interpretation
Look for internal critiques of violence (see examples)
Look for dissonant (non-violent) voices in the text (example)
Where Do We Go From Here?

23. Example: dissonant (non-violent) voices in the text
“I will send my terror ahead of you and throw into confusion every nation you encounter. I will make all your enemies turn their backs and run.  I will send the hornet ahead of you to drive the Hivites, Canaanites and Hittites out of your way.  But I will not drive them out in a single year, because the land would become desolate and the wild animals too numerous for you.  Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land. I will establish your borders from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea,  and from the desert to the Euphrates River. I will give into your hands the people who live in the land, and you will drive them out before you.  Do not make a covenant with them or with their gods.  Do not let them live in your land or they will cause you to sin against me, because the worship of their gods will certainly be a snare to you.”
Exodus 23:27-33

24. Faith Seeking Understanding
Trust God while acknowledging unanswered questions
Where Do We Go From Here?
Transcend the violence—look for themes and ideas that move beyond the violent dimensions in the text
Re-examine theological positions. Look at what others have said.