Bible

Old Testament Struggles

031095097XOur church is “doing” The Story, a resource that helps churches to experience the overarching themes of the Bible together within the span of a year. It’s an abridgement that puts the Bible into chronological order and divides it into 31 chapters. I have mixed feelings about it in some ways, but we are off and running at this point with Sunday school classes at all levels working through it together.

This week we’re up to chapter 6, which covers a big chunk of the Israelites’ wanderings in Numbers and Deuteronomy. I’m actually teaching an adult Sunday school class, and one issue that has come up is the violence and divine anger that keep showing up in these stories. This is something I was struggling with myself, even before the class; in fact, one of the reasons I agreed to teach is that it would force me to continue reading my Bible in a season when I’ve been tempted to just avoid it — sort of a “run towards the roar” approach. That’s all well and good, I suppose, but it’s not solving the problem of what to do with these bewildering depictions of God.

I read this week’s chapter over the last two days and decided to keep track of the instances of violence recorded even in our excerpted reading from The Story:

  • God sends a plague on the Israelites for complaining about the food;
  • Miriam gets leprosy for criticizing Moses (Aaron doesn’t, though both of them criticize);
  • God wants to destroy them with plague for lack of faith, but Moses talks him out of it; God settles for refusing to let this generation see the Promised Land;
  • God punishes Moses for striking the rock;
  • God sends poisonous snakes against the Israelites — and then sends a cure (?);
  • God sends plague on the Israelites for getting involved with Moabite women and their gods; it ends when Phinehas skewers an Israelite and a Moabite woman in one swipe. Phinehas is rewarded with a “covenant of peace” and priesthood.
  • There are also two military conquests depicted in which God helps the Israelites invade and conquer other nations, the Amorites and Bashan.

How to make sense of it all? It’s difficult to read of all this in terms of a loving and gracious God, who claims he is slow to anger. It’s hard to reconcile it all under the heading of discipline either, though that’s what Moses does in his final speech to the people. I find myself asking, how accurate is this as an account of God’s behavior? How relevant is all of this to us in the post-Jesus age? How do we determine what still applies?

If the idea of post-exilic authorship I encountered for the first time in The Evolution of Adam applies, then we can assume a degree of exaggeration. The author is engaging the Israelites’ past creatively in an effort to show that they matter to God, that he does think they’re special, that he is a super-strong warrior. This theory suggests that the Old Testament writers are interpreting their history in the light of present concerns and circumstances — just as Paul later interprets the Old Testament in the light of his new knowledge of Christ.

But even so, this picture of God is of someone violent and capricious in his moods. Even the matter of keeping the covenant he has made is depicted as something Moses has to keep talking him into. So I am wondering: is this less a history of a nation than it is a history of a developing God-consciousness? Could it be that God is patiently working to reveal his character to a people meeting him for the first time, and they are misreading and misrepresenting him a lot in the process?

I know I come across differently to someone who first meets me than I do to someone who knows me well. Some of the conclusions you might draw based on surface impressions turn out not to be borne out once you see my heart. Couldn’t it be the same with God? And wouldn’t this help to explain why it takes him such a long time — the entire Old Testament — to lay the groundwork so that his people will recognize him in Jesus? — at least, some of them will. Many of them are still blinded by this very idea of a warrior God, a lens that keeps them from recognizing him when he comes to heal, restore, serve.

Because the God ultimately revealed in Jesus is just night-and-day different than this God. This God is angry; that God is patient. This God is about Law; that God is about grace. This God sends plagues; that God heals. This God sends storms; that God calms the sea and reassures those who fear.

17 Comments

  • Christine

    “Because the God ultimately revealed in Jesus is just night-and-day different than this God. This God is angry; that God is patient. This God is about Law; that God is about grace. This God sends plagues; that God heals. This God sends storms; that God calms the sea and reassures those who fear.”

    Are you sure about this?

    It’s a common assertion, but the fact remains that the love of God is spoken of far more in the Old Testament than the New; and nobody talks more about hell and wrath than Christ.

    (Contrast how God introduces himself in Exodus 34: “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin,” with the depiction of Christ in Rev 19: “With justice he judges and makes war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns… He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. The armies of heaven were following him… He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God almighty.”)

    I’d be interested in your take on this list: http://www.rationalchristianity.net/ot_love.html

  • Janet

    Honestly, I think the coherence suggested in that list comes because it leaves a lot out.

    Also, the passages I’ve read this week do not portray a God slow to anger. It takes too many mental gymnastics to explain the words and deeds attributed to him in that way — though he identifies himself as slow to anger.

    This is why I am wondering, as I say in this post, whether he is somewhat misrepresented by the biblical writers here. I am not suggesting that God is inconsistent in his nature. I’m saying that the extent to which his human scribes are really hearing him varies. Hence, Jesus: the Incarnate Word, and the lens through whom we are to interpret all the revelation leading up to him.

    It’s true that Jesus is not a softie. But doesn’t his warrior garb testify to his authority in the spiritual realm? Not as a warrior fighting battles on earth, as in the OT.

  • Janet

    I should add that I’m not ready to argue for what I suggest here. Not at all. I’m just seeking a way to think about this. It’s hard to read such an intense dose of divine wrath — God saying, “Want meat? Sure, I’ll provide quail — enough to make you sick!” or “Don’t like the food? I’ll send some poisonous snakes to bite you.” This is very different from, say, Luke 9, where Jesus rebukes James and John for wanting to call down fire from Heaven to punish someone.

  • Barbara H.

    I was going to bring up a couple of the same things Christine did, that God’s grace and lovingkindness is mentioned much in the OT, and Jesus had some pretty harsh words for some folks in the gospels. The epistle writers did as well, and some of the global types of punishments come back in Revelation.

    I’ve always thought God was pretty patient with Israel during its wanderings, considering they complained, fought, resisted and doubted Him at almost every turn.

    I don’t think the grace Jesus shows, say, to the woman taken in adultery, indicates that God doesn’t feel the same way about it as He did in the OT, where it is deemed a capital offense. The fact that He does feel the same way about it is one reason Jesus had to die, so that grace could be extended because He bore God’s wrath.

    I wouldn’t be comfortable saying the OT writers exaggerated, not if they were inspired by the Holy Spirit, but I do think there is a progressive revelation of who He is that culminates in Christ.

    BTW, when I write these things, I’m not meaning to sound harsh or argumentative — just sharing my thoughts on the issue.

  • Janet

    I never feel judged by you and always appreciate your thoughts, Barbara. Thanks for thinking about this with me.

    I just wrote and deleted a super-long response. :-) Maybe another post for another time… though every time I post about this subject, I tell myself I won’t do it again. A face-to-face conversation seems like a much more fitting context for really discussing this stuff. It just has so many related issues that go along with it…

  • Annette

    When Jesus was born in the flesh, a babe in the manger, He did this so that he could die on the cross to redeem sin. Only He could do this. In reading the OT especially in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy we are shown what had to be done as far as old sacrificial system to cover sin. In reading Hebrews Jesus is the perfect High Priest and the old law and way of dealing with sin is over, done. But, even when the old law and sacrificial system was done it did not change peoples hearts (their inner person). The blood that was shed under the old law only covered the sin, it did not change people. And it had to be done again and again. If this old way had never been done, we may not understand the great need of a sacrifice for our sin. The number one attribute of God is His holiness. Without Jesus and our belief by faith in Him we are dead in our sin.
    I think that sometimes we look at the harshness of the OT, not remembering they were harsh people, and stiff-necked. In our current age we are harsh people too, and steeped in sin. None of us are without sin. We are only saved from death by believing by faith in Jesus.
    We have the Holy Spirit that lives in us. Although people in the OT were filled at times with the Holy Spirit, it is not the continuing abiding Holy Spirit that dwells in believer’s.
    Jesus in Revelation is not the suffering servant he was in the Gospel books. I think we have to look at what His mission was in the Gospel as opposed to the OT and even Revelation.

  • JW

    I guess I would say that you are pretty much on target – that the people had to grow up into their conception of God. But you could also look at the whole narrative from GOD’S point of view. What if you had just saved a whole bunch of ungrateful people from the hands of the Egyptians (after hundreds of years of slavery) only to have them turn on you and whine and complain? Besides which, they agreed to the covenant! In addition, how does it look for the God of the universe to save His created ones – only to have them turn on Him? I could say that if he is Father and those are his children, he might have some cause to be angry with them. Maybe that is not much excuse though, but consider that God has to answer to no one and can do as He pleases. Maybe he wants them to know who really is in charge? And to be honest, God never really DOES destroy them all – though He easily could. Maybe it is a time for MOSES to grow in communion with God – to realize that God could be talked to, communicated with, and “persuaded”? Isn’t that what we do when we pray? Do we persuade God to change His mind? Or does He change ours? Maybe it was a lesson for the Israelites – to teach them that God was swift and active – very UNLIKE any other gods of Egypt or surrounding countries. And God could not be tricked or mocked. I don’t know. Lots of questions. Just my thoughts on the matter…

  • Janet

    I appreciate the comments, but I find myself wondering how long it’s been since any of you have read the specifics of these accounts. It’s hard to fit them into these categories.

    I question whether God wants us to defend what the narrative tells us he says and does in these accounts, however well-intentioned the impulse is. I think we get into trouble when we feel like we have to defend every detail in the Bible, and I don’t see it as essential to believing in the Bible’s inspiration or authority.

    I read this excerpt today in ‘Letters from a Skeptic: A Son Wrestles with his Father’s Questions about Christianity,’ by Greg Boyd. It seems relevant:

    “Though I believe the Bible is inspired, and even infallible, it also clearly is a collection of books written by humans in the same fashion other books are written. When I say that the Bible is ‘inspired,’ I’m expressing my conviction that God worked through — not above — the historical process which brought the Bible into being. I thus don’t see any incompatibility in believing the Bible is God’s Word and also analyzing it in the same historical fashion I’d analyze any other work of history.

    I have many reasons for believing the Bible to be inspired… But believing the Bible to be inspired is, in my mind, not as central to what Christianity is about as is believing that Jesus Christ was God Incarnate and can be the Lord and Savior of your life. Salvation is a matter of being related to Christ, not the Bible. In fact, believing the Bible to be inspired is, for me, simply a consequence (not the basis) of confessing Christ to be the Lord of my life.” (Greg Boyd)

  • Annette

    What does “the specifics of these accounts” mean. I just finished reading Genesis and Exodus and am now reading Leviticus. I’ve also just finished reading Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Mark, Luke, John. I’ve read Revelation twice so far this year and have began it again. I plan to read Revelation 12 times this year. All Scripture readings read since January 1.
    I think that we disagree on our interpretation of what Scripture is?

  • Janet

    The specifics I’m referring to in this particular chapter are listed in my post. Only the episode where the Israelites worship with the Moabites fits under the heading of a violation of law. Most of the examples are of the Israelites complaining — which is perhaps annoying, but not defined as sin according to God’s law and thus the punishments — and the tone assigned to God — don’t fit under the heading of punishment for sin or the sacrificial system.

  • Janet

    Let me try to respond more sensibly now that it’s morning, and I’m awake. (I turn into a pumpkin very early most evenings…)

    My comment about how recently commenters had read these episodes may have come across as superior or critical. I’m sorry if it did. It wasn’t intended that way. If anything it was a comment on my own thick head.

    Here is where I was coming from: I’ve been hearing these stories read my whole life (I am 46, by the way), and reading them myself for half my life, but I have tended to skim over the violence. Mostly when I’ve read these passages, I’ve seen the doctrines and traditions we use to explain them, rather than the details in the stories themselves. This time I’m noticing the violence, and even the cruelty, attributed to God. His actions don’t always fit the mold of just discipline very well.

    The God I worship — revealed in Christ, in numerous places in Scripture, and in my own experience — is not violent and cruel. He doesn’t command murder (Phinehas) or war (in this section of Scripture, the Amorites). He doesn’t smite people with plague because they complain; in every instance, Jesus heals sickness.

    He is holy, yes, and he is just. But I don’t see how the reactions attributed to him in these stories line up very well with that. If these stories were all we had, it might be enough to change my view of God. But because we have the rest of Scripture’s progressive revelation, and because we have Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit, I tend rather to question my assumptions about Scripture — and to allow for the possibility of a greater degree of human shaping of the material (enculturation and legendary accretion) in the view of God presented in these stories than I have previously.

    I would not argue that anyone else should see it this way. This post is a personal reflection, not an argument for a point of view.

  • Barbara H.

    One problem I have with looking at the OT as maybe more influenced by human flaws or less than fully inspired by God is that the NT doesn’t refer back to it that way. Just this morning in “The Quiet Place” by Nancy Leigh DeMoss, she quoted from I Corinthians 10: 1-13, which refers back to the children of Israel in the wilderness, and murmuring was listed right along with idolatry and fornication as sins for which “God was not well pleased” and “overthrew them in the wilderness.” I don’t remember if murmuring or complaining or discontent was spelled out specifically in the law, unless it falls under “Thou shalt not covet,” but it was obviously a sin He felt they should have known better about. And He didn’t zap them about it right out of the gates — by that time they had seen His miracles and deliverance and power and provision many times over, complaining all the way except for a few instances of praise. His actions are seen as justified in this passage and a warning to us not to fall into the same sins they did.

    Too, everything that Jesus was all about was not revealed in the three and a half years He was on Earth. At that time He came “not to judge the world, but to save the world” (John 12:44-48), but He also says that they will eventually be judged (v. 48).

  • Janet

    Barbara, there are actually lots of examples of human coloring in the Old Testament. The belief in “Sheol” (very different from Jesus’ teachings about Hell); the belief that barrenness was always the woman’s fault; the belief that every illness or meteorological event were of divine origin; etc. In Exodus the Israelites are coming out of a polytheistic culture of quarreling gods; Moses himself was reared in that culture. They don’t really have any other conceptual framework for understanding our very different God. Divine inspiration doesn’t totally override its human vehicles. I believe part of the reason it takes so long for “the fullness of time” (Luke 2) to come is that God has to work patiently with the developing human concepts and experiences of his people.

    ‘The Evolution of Adam’ contained enough close study of Paul’s use of the Old Testament in the New to demonstrate how creatively he often uses it. It doesn’t discredit Paul, to whom we’re all greatly indebted! But it does help me to understand how he reinterprets the past through the lens of his Christology — and how he too is very much steeped in both a historical context and a religious culture.

    More central, to me, is Jesus’ own use of the Old Testament. It’s not something I take lightly. Jesus doesn’t anywhere dismiss the Law and the prophets, and he doesn’t say anywhere that that the old stories got God wrong. He does, however, spend a lot of energy reinterpreting the Law and giving the spirit behind it — something no one had done before. The example that comes to mind is divorce — not prescribed, Jesus says, but allowed in deference to human hard-heartedness. The Israelites had utterly missed this (among many other things!). It doesn’t make me have a lot of faith in their ability to flawlessly discern God’s character and personality in their very first encounters with him. (I’m sure I would do no better, of course.)

    I’m not discrediting it. I’m just trying to put it into perspective in what you and I agree is God’s progressive revelation of himself in Scripture.

  • JW

    I had another thought, which probably does not add in any way to the discussion, but it might have a bearing on the progressiveness of the experiences of God’s people and their understanding of Him. It came to me that up until the point of the Exodus and the resulting covenant at Sinai, God had made agreements only with INDIVIDUALS. He is called the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob (and could be argued Joseph). But NOW, he is a God of a people – a whole horde. How does He have a relationship with a group? Does that change the rules, so to speak, of His interaction with them. And if so, does it mean that He gets angry all of a sudden? When in the historical past he tried to deal with a group (up until Noah), He got so fed up that he destroyed everyone – well almost. I guess in my view, it does not bother me so much that God is violent or cruel. Something from C. S. Lewis seems apropos:
    “We have two bits of evidence about [God]. One is the universe He has made. If we used that as our only clue, than I think we should have to conclude that He was a great artist (for the universe is a very beautiful place), but also that He is quite merciless and no friend to man (for the universe is a very dangeorus and terrifying place). The other bit of evidence is that Moral Law which He has put into our minds. And this is a better bit of evidence than the other, because it is inside information. You find out more about God from the Moral Law than from the universe in general, just as you find out more about a man by listening to his conversation than by looking at a house he has built.” from Mere Christianity

    I was going to say that God is not capricious and that is more important. He is not inconsistent either. Being only a human though, I am sure that I don’t have the complete picture of who He is or what He is all about. Certainly I see only through a glass darkly at the moment. Isaiah 52:5-12 is proclaiming God’s salvation of the people, by the might of His Holy arm. Frightening and joyful all at the same time. What follows in Isaiah is that he will send His servant and he will suffer.

    Not trying to sway anyone in any direction, but I am personally intrigued by your initial comments. I too struggle with some of the stories in the Bible and wonder where they came from and how they came out like they did. I too have many questions with no easy answers.

    • Janet

      Thanks for the comment, JW! Wish we could talk in person!

      You’ve packed a lot in there, lots to think about. But if I could just respond to one small part of it: if we are going to talk about the moral law or a moral universe, we can’t very well say we don’t care if God is cruel or violent. If there is a moral universe testifying to a moral creator, we have to expect him to meet his own standards.

      For the record, I don’t think God is violent and capricious. I have not only the New Testament, but my own experience of his grace and faithfulness and love to settle that score. But the manner in which he is depicted in the OT sometimes makes him sound that way.