Myth, Propaganda or Reality? (Part 2)

From Part 1: "Thus, I could no longer hide behind "God's ways are unfathomable" or "It will all makes sense in eternity" or worse (from my perspective) yet, "Those people deserved to wiped off the face of the world."

So...I decided that there must be another way to understand all this. There must be an explanation of why these accounts are rampant through the Hebrew Bible."

Part 2...

If these accounts of violence, commanded and/or condoned by God, are, in any respect, historical accounts of real events, then the next thing I had to do, but did not want to do, was to humanize these events. By that I mean that these were real people--fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, children or neighbours. Whether idolatrous or not, whether extremely sinful by biblical standards or not so much, what if these were my parents, my spouse, my children, my kin, my friends and neighbours?

Let me put it this way. There isn't much in the Gospels about the childhood of Jesus, but there is one scene that abhors us all. It is where Herod, in order to protect his position of power, having heard that a king was born in Bethlehem, commands the slaughter of all of Bethlehem's children who are two years old and under. We have no record of this particular slaughter outside of the Gospels, however, historians indicate that it would not be beyond Herod to have done something like this. Add to that fact is the reality that Bethlehem was a small village in a tiny and politically insignificant nation. As horrific as it is, this would not have made front page news. But if we take that act of violence as reasonably accurate, we're horrified! And so we should be!

Yet, according to the Hebrew Bible, God had the conquering Israelites, wipe out entire villages--men, women, children and even the animals. How can that be justified? Even if we buy into the idea that it was punishment for ongoing idolatry and unrepentant and extreme sin, what about the children? What about the women who were pregnant and without power in their patriarchal societies, often treated much more as possessions or slaves than as free individuals who could make their own choices? And what about the slaves/servants who had not opportunity to express, let alone live out, their own choices in life? Were the children and other innocents simply guilty by association? Was the evil so rampant that even the innocents were infected with the virus and the only choice was to wipe all those contaminated with idolatry and its associated evils from the face of the earth?

In the Hebrew Bible we can read that the prophets taught the Israelites that people are not guilty by association. The one who sins is the one who will die. The father shall not suffer for the guilt of the son, nor the son for the guilt of the father. If you have not read Ezekiel 18 lately (the whole chapter), then I would encourage you to do so now.

"A child shall not suffer for the iniquity of a parent, nor a parent suffer for the iniquity of a child; the righteousness of the righteous shall be his own, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be his own." (Ezekiel 18:20)

God does not delight in the death of even the wicked. If the wicked turn from their ways, they shall be considered righteous. If a child sees the wickedness of his/her parents and takes a different path, he/she will not die. Now, this is more the heart and actions of the God whom Jesus came to make known. Yet, this seems inconsistent with the God who commanded the annihilation of whole communities of people, especially those who were "guilty" by association and had little control over their own lives -- i.e., children, slaves, women, the poor, etc.

So, are there other ways to understand the violence as portrayed in the Hebrew Bible? My explanations and justifications of the past have not worked for me, but have created obvious cognitive dissonance to the point that I still am having trouble reading these accounts...and there are so many. While I do not need every question raised by my reading of the Hebrew Bible satisfactorily answered, to me (and, I think to many people, Christian or not), this is a big one. My journey is ongoing and will soon consider alternative explanations for why the Hebrew Bible portrays Yahweh commanding and/or condoning violence. But first I want to remind myself and any of my fellow "travellers" of some historical and literary contexts that, I believe, must be taken into account.