Violence in the Old Testament
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
There are a lot of really disturbing things in the Old Testament. Genocide, infanticide, slavery, polygamy, objectification of women... all not only occurred but often appear to be sanctioned by God, even commanded. Consider this example:
In the historical novel "Silence", Shusaku Endo tells the story of a Jesuit missionary in seventeenth-century Japan who is faced with the dilemma of being forced between watching as his peasant flock was tortured and killed before his eyes, or to trample upon an image of Christ placed at his feet as a sign that he had denied Christ. The priest is torn in two between the love for his flock, and faithfulness to his Lord. His foot aches, when he hears Jesus speak to him,
It is a good thing for us to seek to understand the difficult parts of Scripture and to struggle with them. But when we find ourselves justifying atrocities in our attempt to defend God, then something has gone terribly wrong. God does not need us to defend his honor and reputation, he calls us to follow Jesus in his way of loving so radically that he was accused of blasphemy and unjustly condemned. God came into the world not to defend his honor, but to be trampled for the sake of the lost and sinners. If we wish to follow him up to Golgotha, we must trample. So I will say, with my foot trembling over the image of Christ, that these accounts of genocide, of the slaughter of "children and infants", were not commanded by God and that this account in the Bible when it claims it is wrong. God have mercy, here I stand, trampling.
This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys. (1st Sam 15:2-3)Most likely you have heard sermons where the pastor would attempt to explain why God would command the slaughter of every "man and women, child and infant". One explanation often given is that God is holy and so could tolerate no "tainting" of Israel. But this begs the question: how is that any different from what the Nazi's said? The website rational Christianity says that the demonstrations of God's faithfulness and justice to Israel "gave them reason to trust God even when he commanded them to do something they might otherwise refuse to do". Again, this statement strikes me as extremely dangerous. Does that mean that when I sense that something goes against my conscience that I should do it anyway of I feel God telling me to? The potential for abuse here is staggering. But on the other hand, if we simply deny this part of the Bible are we not either saying that either God is unjust or that the Bible is unreliable?
In the historical novel "Silence", Shusaku Endo tells the story of a Jesuit missionary in seventeenth-century Japan who is faced with the dilemma of being forced between watching as his peasant flock was tortured and killed before his eyes, or to trample upon an image of Christ placed at his feet as a sign that he had denied Christ. The priest is torn in two between the love for his flock, and faithfulness to his Lord. His foot aches, when he hears Jesus speak to him,
"Trample, trample! It is to be trampled on by you that I am here."When we are confronted with difficult passages in the Bible like to one above we are placed in a similar situation. On the one hand we are compelled to condemn the horrific idea of genocide. On the other we want to defend God's justice as well as the infallibility of the Bible. If we do not defend God here, are we not admitting that our God is unjust? We need to remember here the scandalous message of the cross: God came into the world and was falsely declared guilty and condemned on a cross for the sake of the ungodly. He did not seek to defend himself, but was condemned for the sake of the unrighteous. Jesus gave his life for his enemies, God died for the Amalekites just as much as he did for sinners like you and me. Would not that same God call us to care not for his reputation but for the lives of those (not innocent but beloved) lives? When we seek to protect an image (as the priest did) or a book, but in the process need to condone the slaughter of human life we forget that Christ is not found in a book or an icon, but in the least. When we defend the foreigner, the poor, the outcast, the enemy we are defending God, as Jesus says "as you have done it unto these...you have done it unto me".
It is a good thing for us to seek to understand the difficult parts of Scripture and to struggle with them. But when we find ourselves justifying atrocities in our attempt to defend God, then something has gone terribly wrong. God does not need us to defend his honor and reputation, he calls us to follow Jesus in his way of loving so radically that he was accused of blasphemy and unjustly condemned. God came into the world not to defend his honor, but to be trampled for the sake of the lost and sinners. If we wish to follow him up to Golgotha, we must trample. So I will say, with my foot trembling over the image of Christ, that these accounts of genocide, of the slaughter of "children and infants", were not commanded by God and that this account in the Bible when it claims it is wrong. God have mercy, here I stand, trampling.
Labels: Bible, nonviolence, violence
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26 Comments:
i have often pondered over and struggled with those types of passages you describe. you've done a good job here of articulating a way forward.
p.s.
have you ever read "god (a biography)" by jack miles? i'm reminded of a passage in that book where he is dealing with the transformation god progressively undergoes in the scripture with regard to his early genocidal tendencies:
"but first there will be a "day of the lord," on which the holy warrior will rage for one last, definitive time over all the earth. only then will men "cast forth their idols of silver and their idols of gold...to the moles and to the bats." (isaiah 2:20) this too is a scarcely believable new departure. even if it must be by warfare that the nations come to the lord, the notion that they can come to him at all is radically new. the deuteronomist warned israel endlessly against worshiping the canaanaites' gods but never entertained the notion that the canaanites would stop worshiping their own gods and start worshiping israel's. the assumption that no such development was possible was precisely what justified genocide: because conversion was impossible, extermination was necessary."
Derek, so are you also saying then that the Hebrew text is an authentic representation of the Hebrew writers' perceptions of God? I find it interesting how many times God is saying/doing something so that the people may "know" Him.
"Are you also saying then that the Hebrew text is an authentic representation of the Hebrew writers' perceptions of God?"
Yes, I would say that the whole Bible is about people who have encountered God and convey that encounter though their own perspective in the hopes that we can encounter God too. I'd also say that the Bible reflects a "progressive revelation" where we see a "dim Christ" in the OT and a clearer revelation in the NT.
Howard Yoder has pointed out that in the OT time that the practice of war was pretty much unquestioned, so the point of these passages is not really about whether war is ok or not (which they were not even asking, but more about God's faithfulness as they perceived it. Maybe its comparable to how I used to watch action films and not even question whether the glorification and trivialization of violence in them was bad.
Thanks for your interesting blog. It inspired me to do some reading. FYI, it is 1st Samuel 15:2-3.
the format of pale letters on orange background is difficult to read.
Wow, thank you for having such tremendous courage as to take such a stance! I just posted your article (with link to original site) on a discussion forum called "Why is the God of the Bible so angry? Also - Adam and Eve... come on?" in the self-help section of the discussion forums at amazon.com. http://www.amazon.com/tag/self-help/forum/ref=cm_cd_et_up_redir?%5Fencoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx3V6J6V0PF1S41&cdPage=1&cdSort=newest&cdThread=Tx2LY2BRO8HZ4JG&displayType=tagsDetail&newContentID=Mx1ECC7DZE5BY81#Mx2IXYSGNDTY6SS
The discussion has been raging for a couple of weeks in this and several other threads in that section. I have been debating the Christians who say God did these things, and I say God is merciful and would not. Thank you - so nice to hear this from a Christian!
Tell you what. I am a born again Christian. I accepted Christ as my savior when I was 13. Now, open your mind and don't bring your ready made for you defenses to bear without thinking about this. I doubt that you can. It's way too disturbing to your comforting beliefs.
If you believe in a loving, all knowing, all powerful God, then answer me this: How can such a God allow an innocent new born baby to die in horrible pain when the house his or her family lives in catches on fire and the infant is consumed into a lump of charred flesh? We cannot know God's plan? Original sin? IF you had the MORAL COURAGE to really think about this, discard the easy answers that the church has seduced you with, then what justification can there possibly be for such a cruel and horrible act?
When I wrote in the above blog post "when we find ourselves justifying atrocities in our attempt to defend God, then something has gone terribly wrong." my point here is that I would never want to try to justify evil and tragic suffering. The death of a child is a terrible thing and I would never want to 'justify' it.
I think the only answer we can give in a time like that is to do what Jesus did when he encountered the death of Lazarus and the grief of his family - he wept. In the book of Job we see someone who is very angry with God for all of the suffering and loss he has endured. It is a frightfully honest book. I think one reason it is in the Bible is that God wants us to be real and not whitewash over our pain and doubt and anger.
We live in a world with a tremendous amount of evil and hurt in it. If God knows and loves each of us then he is touched by that suffering more than anyone. All of the pain and anger at the injustice you have seen God knows first hand. The question is how do we see evil like that and not become broken and destroyed ourselves?
If I could recommend a book to you: In “A Grace Disguised” Gerald Sittser tells how his mother, wife, and daughter were all killed in a car crash by a drunk driver. He speaks honestly about how he faced the devastating loss, rage, disbelief, and pain.
It's been a while since this what posted...but I'll comment nonetheless.
The position you take is certainly unorthodox. The only thing I can really gather from your interpretation is that, if God did not in fact command these atrocities. Then it seems like the writers of these passages simply used their authoring to mold their "God" into what they wanted in order to legitimize their behavior. They basically put words and actions in God's mouth in order to justify what they did. To me, that seems to leave the Bible on an incredibly shaky foundation. But I guess it's either that, or accepting that God is an abortionist. The latter does seem to be the greater of the evils.
Hi RedCoat,
I think you sum up my position well. It's not really intended to be a 'solution' so much as it is about living with a dilemma and in that tension. I think this is really the only way to face questions of suffering and injustice and still retain faith. The two other positions would be to
a) retain the integrity of the Bible, but then deny my own humanity, deny love, and ultimately deny who God is
b) to take an atheist position and deny God and the Bible all together, but again in doing so deny my very self, deny hope, and deny love, since to do so is nihilism.
That leaves me with an uncomfortable tension that I have to live in. And I maintain that this is the only way we can live if we believe in love in the middle of a world dominated by injustice and hurt. Faith means being uncomfortable in that world, but not succumbing to it. It also means living with my own helplessness, uncertainty, and lack of sight, but while believing.
Dear Derek,
If we call this order from God wrong, then the judgment on Saul in the same chapter was also wrong, and the slaying of Agag by Samuel was also wrong.
This passage is so critical to the understanding of how David succeeded Saul on the throne that to discount it wipes out vast swaths of the Bible.
I've been thinking about these things lately, and the more I think about it, the more I think that we do not fully understand the holiness of God.
If we truly understood how holy God really is, and always will be, I think we would start to marvel at the realization that we are alive at all.
Even the smallest sin is detestable to God. God cannot tolerate sin as we are so often encouraged to do in today's society. For if God tolerated sin, if he overlooked it as inconsequential, then God would not be good anymore. God cannot be love (as the Bible says in 1 John 4:8) if part of him enjoys hate. I'm talking of the sinful hate here, not the abhorrence of sin.
This is hard for us to comprehend, because all we see, from birth until death, is a sinful world. In order to get through this world, we need to tolerate others, we need to show mercy, we need to love. And this is as it should be, not because sin isn't so bad, but because God has shown us mercy.
But God has no requirement to tolerate sin. From God's perspective, sin absolutely must be dealt with. When we see passages of judgment from God in the Bible, we instinctively recoil. We see how weak we are, and we don't dare to be as judgmental as God can be. For if God can be as judgmental as that, what hope is there for us?
The truth is, there is no hope, except what God provides.
(continued below...)
(continued from "... except what God provides.")
To look at 1 Samuel 15 and criticize God for genocide is to entirely miss the point. Do we really expect God to overlook sin forever? Do we really want to test God and push for even more time before we repent and turn to him? This is what the Amalekites did. I don't want to go down that road.
We get used to our own level of sin. We bend the rules here and there, and we see the rest of the world doing the same thing. We're happy with that. We don't judge others too harshly, because we know we're not perfect. Sure, others are worse than us, but we'll be generous, we think. Certainly it can't be that bad.
Then we turn around and see terrible things going on in the rest of the world, and we cry indignantly to God, asking why he lets these things happen. How can a loving God allow such atrocities, we ask?
But God has to deal with ALL of this sin. There is no sin in God! We forget that in order to purge the atrocities, we ourselves need to be purged. We are all sinful before God.
Yet God is merciful beyond our understanding. He is so merciful, that we look at seemingly uncharacteristic judgment and think it can't possibly be from him. We have gotten so used to his mercy that we've forgotten his wrath.
How can I look at 1 Samuel 15 and claim that God is merciful? I look around. How long has this world been spinning, and sinning, and repenting? Thousands of years. And yet when Adam and Eve sinned, God could have put them to death immediately, before anyone else was even born, and been perfectly justified. That is how holy God is. And yet he lets us all live, for varied lifetimes, and albeit under the Curse, in order to give us a chance to turn to him and repent and be saved.
The sins we have committed are fully paid for in Jesus Christ. God has paid for our sins, and that was his plan before the beginning of the world. How great he is!
What is the remedy for sin? It's always been the same. Repent, believe God, turn to him, and obey. It would have worked for the Amalekites, and it will work for us today if we believe in Jesus Christ, God's son.
God consistently demonstrates in the Bible that he refuses to destroy a nation if there is a remnant of righteous left in it. The link in your original article lists them. From Sodom to Ninevah, God is always looking for those faithful to him.
So I can only understand, from the command in 1 Samuel 15, that there were no righteous men left in the Amalekite camp. Just as wickedness abounded in Noah's time (we haven't even talked about the Flood -- talk about a genocide!) it must have abounded in the Amalekites. I think the clips of history that I can find bear that out.
God is merciful, and God is holy. Please don't focus on the one, to the exclusion of the other.
In Christian love,
- Chris
But Chris, you are not describing holiness. You are describing a monster, a tyrant, a beast. I know who God is, both because I have experienced his transforming grace and love first hand, and be cause I see his character perfectly reflected in jesus in the pages of the New Testament. And so I can say with absolute confidence: God is not like that. And looking at Jesus this is not what holiness is either. It is a lie about holiness. Holiness looks like Jesus. Look at Jesus among sinners, loving them, healing them, forgiving them - that is what holiness looks like. Holiness is not a contradiction of love.
Dear Derek,
Does your vision of Jesus include the Jesus in Revelations 19:11-16? Yes, the Jesus in the gospels is kind, loving, forgiving, and meek. But those are not the only attributes of God.
When Jesus returns, it will not be quietly in a manger. It will be obvious, like lightning in the sky. (Matt. 24:27) And it will be with power and great glory. (Matt. 24:30)
I don't know why God decided to let humans deal with justice on earth, but it is clear from Romans 13 that the job of government was ordained by God: justice, punishment for wrongdoing, etc.
If this authority is given to mankind, is it beyond the realm of logic to think that God can and does use the nations themselves to mete out His justice? I think it is very possible, and considering that Israel is God's chosen nation, it would make sense that His decisions would be told to them directly, instead of how He often works through the nations beyond our view.
We as Christians are not called to this kind of nationalistic justice (thankfully!). We are called to the much more difficult task of loving our enemies and doing good to them that hurt us. But I think it is dangerous to ignore some of God's attributes just because they may be inconvenient or they don't match our viewpoint.
Taking only half of the truth turns the truth into a lie. Accepting only half of the Bible is also a lie. We need to balance the entire Word of God, otherwise we set ourselves up in judgment over God and His Word.
In Christian love,
- Chris
Chris,
I agree that we need to take all of the Bible into account, but I would propose that in addition to that there is another thing we need to take into account as well: our firsthand experience of knowing what love is in a personal transforming relationship with Jesus Christ. The things I am objecting to in my original blog post are not coming from my own personal discomfort, but from knowing who Jesus is, and having his heart move my own, learning through the Spirit to see people as he does, learning to think as he does, "not being conformed to the world but transformed by the renewing of my mind".
So it is not simply a matter of taking all of the Bible into account (which I agree we should) but also a matter of making sure that our interpretation of the Bible is in line with what we know first hand from God in a living relationship to be good, loving, and just. Otherwise we risk bowing before a god who is evil, and calling that "good", effectively justifying atrocities. Our understanding of Scripture must always always always be done through the eyes of Jesus. Or to state it differently, ethics must be the guide of exegesis.
Very simply put: no one in the world would ever think that mass slaughter of infants is in any way an example of "justice". It would be clearly seen as an atrocity, as horrific, as profoundly evil. If you heard about this happening anywhere in the world today - in Germany, in Afghanistan, and Darfur - this is exactly what you would think too. And yet here you are explaining why it would be okay, making an argument for the justice of genocide. Why is that? What's going on? I'll tell you: It's because you are turning off your moral conscience as you read the Bible, and thus saying that whatever it says must be good no matter how ghastly. As I have said above, ethics must guide our exegesis. When we turn off our conscience in order to read the Bible, we kill something in our souls, and we end up making statements that seem morally absurd, that sound, quite frankly, horrifying.
I just can't emphasize enough how important this is, because we turn off our conscience in an attempt to defend God we open ourselves up to the potential of all sorts of abuse and toxic faith. So I want to really encourage you to face this with your moral conscience intact, with what you know of Jesus and his love as you have experienced it in your own life intact, and to join me in struggling and wrestling with it.
Dear Derek,
I do wrestle with it. I struggle to understand the seemingly wild breadth of the Bible.
If I only look at the attributes of Jesus, then I risk discounting a large part of the Old Testament. But Jesus said that he came to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, not abolish them. (Matt. 5:17-20). If Jesus is incompatible with the God of the Old Testament, then who is the Father?
Thankfully, Jesus fulfilled the Law so that I don't have to. Which is good, because I can't. He also called us to a higher standard than the Law. Where the Law demands revenge, Jesus calls us to forgive.
But I think that setting ethics and my personal experience over the Bible is also risky... it lets my deceitful heart lead me down a path that may not be in line with God's Word.
Abraham would never have sacrificed his son Isaac if he had let ethics trump his obedience. But he had faith in God's goodness, even though the command seemed insane. And God stopped him just in time.
Abraham didn't have the Bible as his guide... he had to rely on his personal experience and his faith. We do have the Bible. So today, if "God" told me to commit genocide, I would know that it was not the true voice of God, because I have the Bible to check with, and God does not contradict Himself.
The command to Saul was specific. It was a one time command. It was also before the New Testament. The command we now have is general: to forgive and let God take care of the vengeance side of things (Romans 12:19). Some would even go so far as to believe that Christians should not join the army.
I guess I look at it similar to how Jesus looked at divorce. (Matt. 19:8) Jesus said that divorce was permitted in the law because the hearts of the Israelites were hard. That seems to me that divorce was ok from the point of view of justice, but it wasn't the ideal that God wanted. Similarly, the justice and "revenge" in the Law isn't ideal either. God would much rather we show mercy to one another. So the mercy of the New Testament is better than the judgment of the Old Testament, even though both are good and necessary. "Mercy triumphs over judgment!" (James 2:13)
But somehow I can't let the mercy of the New Testament erase the history of the Old either. There's a reason we should fear God, while loving Him at the same time. Just because we are not supposed to implement the wrath of God today doesn't mean that God won't someday. (Heb. 10:31)
I think I've said my piece, though. Thank you very much for your thoughtful replies. It is definitely a hard passage to handle.
God bless.
In Christian love,
- Chris
It's been good talking with you too. Grace to you my brother. Here are some parting thoughts. You write:
"So today, if "God" told me to commit genocide, I would know that it was not the true voice of God, because I have the Bible to check with, and God does not contradict Himself."
Now I don't see how you can make this conclusion since the Bible tells us that God commanded genocide (for example in 1 Sam 15 in the original blog post above). So if we were to go strictly by the precepts laid out in the Bible, we could claim that genocide is justified in God's name based on the Bible. And historically people have done exactly that. It's not just a hypothetical.
The difficulty here is that just as our sinfulness can cloud our own moral judgment, it can also cloud how we read the Bible. The Bible itself may be infallible, but I am not infallible, and my interpretation of it is not infallible. So it is a guide for us, along with personal experience of the holy Spirit, but both must be approached with humility and caution because of the reality of our own fallenness and blinders.
"That seems to me that divorce was ok from the point of view of justice, but it wasn't the ideal that God wanted. Similarly, the justice and "revenge" in the Law isn't ideal either. God would much rather we show mercy to one another. So the mercy of the New Testament is better than the judgment of the Old Testament, even though both are good and necessary. "Mercy triumphs over judgment!" (James 2:13)"
Here I think you hit the nail on the head. What I would like to challenge you to contemplate is that exactly that kind of superior healing, life-giving, regenerating, restorative justice is not only what we are to practice, but also what God will demonstrate when he returns in glory.
If there is a god, the OT is slander against him, it. He/she should sue.
I feel ya
Have you considered the idea that YHWH is not the Father of Jesus? That the OT describes the demiurge and not the transcendent God. This is the view of many of the so called "gnostic sects" as well as the Marcionites.
yes, I'm familair with that view. I does not seem to be the view Jesus took however.
It's the same old problem. Why is there evil in the world? If God is sovereign, (and HE is), then He could stop it anytime He wanted. Some say that He approves since He does not prevent it.
In the Old Testament, the Jews had no problem with a jealous and vengeful God. Many people are attracted to the kindness of Jesus. They have difficulty reconciling the Son and the Father.
It is an offense to some and a stumbling block to some.
Dear everyone,
This is a very interesting blog. All my life I have been given an abusive image of God which resulted in severe full-blown panic attacks for 2 years. That is certainly not: "HE CAME TO GIVE US LIFE AND LIFE TO THE FULL". I am so grateful for people who seek the honest lifegiving truth. Would you like someone you love to suffer from panic attacks? How would it make you feel if your theology damaged someones spirit?
I agree. I think it boils down here to who we want to defend. Do we feel the need to defend God's honor by explaining why such things would be justified? Or do we care for those whose faith may be damaged and broken by such a hurtful picture of God. I'd say looking at the example of Jesus, his priority was clearly on caring for the least and the wounded, even at the expense of his own reputation. So if Jesus is God (and I think he is) then we have a model of God not caring about defending himself, but instead of caring about those who are hurt and alienated from religion. In our theology we need to have that same priority of Jesus.
Thank you so much for your comments, I,ve been struggling with this very same passage for days now and the only conclusion I,ve drawn from it that we have to "work out our salvation with fear", not to take the love of God for granted. Although I would hope to bielive that God is merciful and loves us unconditionally, hence Jesus dieing on the cross for us.
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