Along with six others, I set a goal to read through the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament in 2018. In order to stay on track throughout the entire year, and to get the most out of our reading, we all agreed to meet twice a month online to share, ask questions and discuss. Now, almost four months in, we are through the second book of Kings. I decided that I was going to do this reading from a more academic perspective; i.e., a critical reading of the text. The other people in the group have their own reasons and goals for reading the entire texts of the Bible in a year.
Regardless of our individual reasons, very early into the book of Exodus, a question arose, for all of us: How are we supposed to understand all of the incredible violence recorded in Israel's origin story? Of special concern to us are those acts of violence that were reputedly commanded and/or approved by Yahweh, the God of Israel. Families, clans, villages and whole regions of people (men, women and children), were wiped out. In order to bring the Hebrews into the Promised Land, Yahweh commanded a complete extermination of the Canaanites. That is, Yahweh commanded genocide. According to the accounts of Joshua and Judges, with hints in Samuel and Kings, the Israelites did not completely succeed in this ethnic cleansing. Yet, in the process, according to the accounts, countless thousands of military men were killed in battle and then countless thousands more civilians (men, women and children) were either executed or taken into slavery/forced labour by the conquering Israelite tribes.
How does someone who believes that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God reconcile this picture of an angry, vengeful and vindictive God with the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? Most of the time we just ignore, rationalize or justify these violent acts of judgment. Yet, our children grow up, and the sanitized Bible stories they heard in Sunday School or from their parents at bedtime, seem like lies as they read and reflect on the actual details of the stories in the Hebrew Scriptures. This could precipitate a real crisis of faith that will result in our loved ones joining the ranks of the skeptics/critics of the Bible, rather than the ranks of the faithful followers of Jesus.
I confess, as a full-time minister of the gospel for more than thirty-five years, I chose to ignore or rationalize the most violent actions of the Israelites and hoped no one would ask me to explain how a God who is love could condone, much less command, such atrocities. The reality is, I could not explain these actions satisfactorily even for myself. The "pat" answers that involved believing that God was exercising his right as Judge, using the Hebrews/Israelites as his instrument, never did sit well with me. Later, Yahweh used other nations' armies as his instrument to bring judgment upon the nations of Israel (via the Assyrians in 722 BCE) and then Judah (via the Babylonians in 586 BCE). According to the biblical accounts, countless thousands of his own people were killed, executed, tortured and/or taken away into captivity. The prophets make it very clear, that these atrocities were the result of Israel's and Judah's sin of idolatry and their unwillingness to repent.
So, I'm on a spiritual journey. I want to come to a place of understanding for myself, and thus a way to explain to others, how to read these atrocities of planned violence in the context of faith in a God who is righteous and loving - "slow to anger and abounding in love." In this effort, not only am I reading through these unpleasant and even painful accounts, but I am reading some secondary sources that are focused on trying to make sense of it all. Two books that are providing a different perspective for my consideration are listed below. At various points along this journey, I will offer my own pertinent and persistence reflections, via future blog posts, for anyone who is interested in delving into, and personally resolving, this most difficult topic.
Enns, Peter. The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It.
Flood, Derek. Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did.
I appreciate your desire to harmonize God's "harsh" punishments in the OT with His "slow to anger" character/amazing and lavish grace revealed in Jesus. The following is not meant to be a "simple answer" but only part of a discussion. One of the things that has helped me some in this journey of understanding God and the OT is this: The new nation of Israel was an infant spiritually. In our current day(although this is changing rapidly) a loving, spiritual parent would discipline their 4 year old for lying(or stealing, or hitting, etc.) often by physical means(spanking, time-out, withdrawal of treat,etc.). One does not discipline a 20 year old for lying in the same physical ways. Toddlers need something "physical" to make the connection between right and wrong. It helps their understanding, and helps them curb their hearts and behavior. Extensive reasoning without discipline of a three or four year old is ineffective and unloving. While Israel was a young child spiritually, God authored these very physical punishments. He most strongly relented in doing so, however! No loving parent enjoys spanking their child. It is horrifying that the harsh punishments God commanded were, apparenly, needed to curb Israel's inclination to sin, but that does speak to how strong and horrifying the sinful nature must have been amongst the Israelites as spiritual infants. God certainly is not a hypocrite-- becoming an ordinary man in order to receive, by his own orders, the worst spiritual beating known to man- the gruesome laying of all mankind's sin on his own Son's flesh and soul. I love how God was able to finally reveal his "true heart" in Jesus' teachings. These things were said and implemented because "their hearts were hard", but now Jesus tells us how God "really feels" about divorce, vengeance, love for enemies, etc. Apparently God needed to develop Israel's and mankinds' "spiritual senses" through these very harsh judgements in order to reveal, eventually, how he "really feels" about grace and mercy. Try teaching "grace and mercy" to a four year old, with no physical consequences ever, and we will have quite a rascal on our hands. The toughest battle, of course, is to trust that things like the ordering of the death of a disobedient teenager is in the overall best interest, spiritually, to the nation of Israel and to the world. I can only imagine how tough giving such an order must have been for God; who would much rather die for that person than kill them. We only find out later in the story, that God, in fact, did die for them(since the Cross applies to mankind forward and backwards in time, the Cross being a timeless event spiritually). Exactly how that grace will be applied to people in that time is a whole other matter.
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