For three years now, I’ve been trying to get my arms around God’s violence in the Old Testament in order to understand it well enough to write about it. It has been no easy task.
After reading several books on God’s violence, I simply didn’t learn enough from them, so I decided to read through the Old Testament myself. But reading through it once wasn’t enough either, as there was a lot I still didn’t understand. As of now, I’ve read most of the Old Testament four times, and it’s finally coming together.
The problem with this topic is that, on the surface, God really does appear to be more angry and violent in the Old Testament than we would expect or want Him to be. And, in too many instances He seems to inflict punishments that are harsh or extreme for the crime, and that stem from emotional anger and outrage without mercy or forgiveness. As a result, one has to “dig and dig” to understand why God acted the way He did – taking into account the context, culture and the use of figurative language by many authors – and then reconcile this with a number of factors, including how God describes Himself, what He wants from His creation, and His many blessings upon others, etc.
Can we make sense of God’s violence in the Old Testament? Yes. Can we still view Him in a positive light and be willing to love and serve and worship Him? Yes. But it’s a complicated topic for sure, without short and easy explanations.
Below is the outline I plan to use over the next three posts.
- Big Picture of the Old Testament
- The Bad (verses showing God’s violence)
- Need to Understand Context and Culture
- People were rash
- People were wicked
- People were violent
- Other nations were more violent than Israel
- Need to understand the Use of Figures of Speech by many Authors (especially the major and minor prophets)
- Just because an author describes God as angry doesn’t mean He is
- An author’s use of hyperbole can make God appear to be more angry and violent than He is
- Anthropopathism (this is important to understand God’s violence yet most people have never heard of it)
- Things are not always what they seem
- There are some actions (by God) that we don’t and won’t understand
- God’s Initial Response to Man’s Evil, Wicked and Violent Behavior, and the Significance of the Covenant in Leviticus and Deuteronomy (this is a key to understanding much of the violence in the OT)
- Need to take sin seriously (God is a holy God)
- Harsh deterrents proved ineffective to curb Israel’s wickedness
- Capital punishment proved ineffective to deter Israel’s wickedness
- Blessings and curses proved ineffective to limit Israel’s wickedness
- We need to understand God’s Divine Anger
- God’s Reasons for Violence
- To punish wrongdoing
- To punish to correct bad behavior
- To avenge
- To prevent wickedness from spreading
- To protect Israel from its enemies
- As ultimate judgment for the unrighteous who would not change
- Need to Reconcile God’s Violence with
- His kindness toward others
- His blessings upon others
- Who God says He is; how He describes Himself
- How other authors describe Him
- What God wants from His creation
- What God does not like/detests
- The God of the New Testament
- How Ezra viewed God’s violence
- Job’s encounter with God (Who are we to question Him and His ways?)
- Summary
Salvation Summaries 
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