The Old Testament contains many passages that depict God commanding the Israelites to destroy entire cities and nations, killing every man, woman, and child, and their animals. These divine commands include burning people alive, stoning them, drowning them, and other brutal methods of annihilation. For example, in Deuteronomy 20:16-18, God commands the Israelites to “save alive nothing that breathes” and to utterly destroy the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. In 1 Samuel 15:2-3, God tells King Saul to attack the Amalekites and “kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.”
These commands are extremely difficult for modern readers to reconcile with a God of love, compassion and mercy. How can a supposedly good deity order such wholesale slaughter, genocide and cruelty? Isn’t the God of the Bible supposed to be the embodiment of all that is good and just? The apparent contradiction between these violent Old Testament passages and the New Testament depiction of God as a loving Father is jarring.
Some attempt to justify these acts as necessary for the Israelites to conquer the Promised Land and avoid idolatry and moral corruption from the pagan inhabitants. In times past, when sat in church, I myself heard ministers present such arguments, demonising long dead people, in their biased mind-boggling attempts to justify unjustifiable levels of cruelty. But the scale and totality of the destruction ordered goes far beyond what would be required for this. If God wanted to simply remove the temptation of idolatry, surely assimilation or exile would suffice, not out-and-out slaughter and extermination.
Others claim these accounts are accurate historical records of Israelite battles, but not necessarily divinely commanded. However, the text itself attributes these orders directly to Yahweh, with the destruction always said to be at “the Lord’s command.” This was seen as an integral part of holy war and salvation.
Still, the sheer brutality of these acts is staggering and seems to violate basic ethics and human rights. Deliberately killing children and infants is especially abhorrent. The dehumanisation and demonisation of the victims is also worrying.
The Old Testament God appears to be a very different, far more violent deity than the New Testament God. The OT God is depicted as genocidal, militaristic, vengeful, and morally flawed. In contrast, Jesus taught us to “love your enemies” and “turn the other cheek.” The OT promotes holy war while the NT promotes a gospel of peace and compassion. The OT God commands the assassination of children and infants while Jesus welcomes and blesses little ones. Isa 45:7 says God “creates evil” while Jesus says God is good only (Mark 10:18).
So how can Christians justify these atrocities supposedly committed in God’s name? Many struggle with these passages and honestly admit they find them disturbing and difficult to align with a God who is all-loving. But most try to find ways to rationalise them. Some point to the supposed sinful, depraved nature of the nations destroyed (maybe they were just different, worshipping other gods, to the violent OT ‘God’?), with even their children bearing future guilt. The OT was seen as a time of law and retribution while the NT is an age of grace.
But still the sheer violence and brutality is hard to stomach. For many today, it is a barrier to embracing biblical authority. A deity who orders men, women and children to be slaughtered cannot be fully good in their view. The best they can say is that apparently their God worked in culturally-contextual ways, even if we cannot fully understand. There is a deep tension that may have to be lived with.
Ultimately, the harsh commands of the OT, while challenging, are a part of the biblical record and Israel’s history with their God. We must grapple with them honestly, even if we find them abhorrent by today’s standards. The OT presents a complex, multifaceted God who is both loving and severe, merciful and vengeful. Christians today can affirm that these records are in the Bible, even while rejecting such violence for themselves.
The ancient Cathars and Gnostics also wrestled with this disparity, claiming that the ‘God’ described in many parts of the Old Testament was not really God, at all. They believed that they had knowledge of a higher God, a truly Good God. This God WAS a God of Love. They also taught that it was our destiny to become One with this God, by embracing the way of gnosis and living in a heart centered way.
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