# Violence in the Old Testament



## Javilo (Mar 7, 2009)

I find the violence in the Old Testament disturbing and unecessary to
accomplish God's plan. Please help me to understand this without making
excuses for God. Especially hard is where he commands the slaughter of
entire nations. To keep Israel pure? What about the infants? Don't
tell me they will grow up to corrupt Israel. It is just hard to accept that 
this is the same God as Jesus Christ. I have never gotten a good 
explanation for the bloodshed and murder in the Old Testament. And it is
never really brought up in any churches I've been to. It is not good to 
just sweep it under the rug like it has been. Read about it in different
places but nothing I've read or heard makes it acceptable.


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## the particular baptist (Mar 7, 2009)

Javilo said:


> I find the violence in the Old Testament disturbing and unecessary to
> accomplish God's plan. Please help me to understand this without making
> excuses for God. Especially hard is where he commands the slaughter of
> entire nations. To keep Israel pure? What about the infants? Don't
> ...



Your operation assumption is that everyone is innocent. Scripture teaches that all mankind are monsters of iniquity rightfully deserving the full wrath of God.


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## toddpedlar (Mar 7, 2009)

I don't have a lot of insight to offer on this at this hour, but I will say this - and perhaps you'll take this as 'sweeping it under the rug' - but our Sovereign Lord clearly found it necessary to command Israel to destroy the pagan nations. The Word is clear that God commanded this, and it is just as clear that Jesus Christ is God Almighty. 

No human being has an absolute right NOT to be slaughtered - none is innocent, and all deserve far worse than to be destroyed in the face of an invading army. The pagan nations living in Canaan worshipped falsely, and had no redeemer. They were deserving of death (just as I am, and as my 8, 6, 4 and 2 year old girls are) through the sin of Adam as well as their own sin. There is nothing I could raise in their defense - and that God commanded their destruction is evidence of that fact. He used Israel to carry out His temporal vengeance on those who stood against Him. When I think about the evil of sin, and the broken relationship that men have with God from conception, it is less difficult for me to accept that God commanded those nations' destruction. 

Again, I'm sure more erudite scholars than I will comment - but these are my first thoughts upon hearing your question.


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## Hamalas (Mar 7, 2009)

There is a lot that could be said about this, but just to begin if you believe that all men are sinful, then why does God's punishment strike you as unjust? What seems strange to me is the fact that God restricts his judgment to certain nations and not the whole world! Why does he strike the Egyptians and not the Israelites? They were both sinful and depraved were they not? Does this make any sense? I'm not sure if I'm stating it well.


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## Solus Christus (Mar 7, 2009)

While it is a disturbing act, and we may _think_ it was unnecessary, clearly God doesn't. To presume that sending out His nation of Israel as a weapon of judgment on the surrounding nations was unnecessary, also means to question the very way God acts out his plan. We are His creatures after all.


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## toddpedlar (Mar 7, 2009)

Hamalas said:


> There is a lot that could be said about this, but just to begin if you believe that all men are sinful, then why does God's punishment strike you as unjust? What seems strange to me is the fact that God restricts his judgment to certain nations and not the whole world! Why does he strike the Egyptians and not the Israelites? They were both sinful and depraved were they not? Does this make any sense? I'm not sure if I'm stating it well.



Indeed! The grace and mercy of God is overwhelming! The fact that God saves ANY from their just punishment, but metes out that punishment on His perfect Son boggles the mind. 

The illustration of God's wrath being poured out on Egypt and not on the Israelites is a good one. Yes, both were sinful. Yes, both depraved. Yes, both deserving of eternal death in the lake of fire. Yet God, in His mercy, preserved the line of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, so that He might raise up from the loins of Abraham a Son, Christ our Lord. He acted to fulfill His will - and that, apparently, from historical witness, was acted out in time through the preservation of His people and the destruction of others. 

Why did God choose some and not others? This is a question we cannot answer in any other way but to say that God so decreed it for His purposes. That is the mystery of God's sovereign grace. He has mercy on whom He will have mercy, and He hardens whom He will harden. God's lesson for Moses needs to be something we willingly embrace.


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## py3ak (Mar 7, 2009)

I think the fundamental point is to realize that we have no right to question God: we can't call him to account. We can only reason, with Paul, that since God will judge the world it is absurd that there should be unrighteousness with Him. And really it's not that hard: can we really believe, given how foolish we are, and how often wrong and mistaken, that our ideas are to bind God? No, if God does something, it is right for Him to do so. If that troubles me, the problem is with me, not with God.

Sometimes people are more bothered by the fact that God commanded His people to be His agents in carrying out this judgment than the mere fact of the judgment itself (after all, a lot of babies died in the Flood as well). But if you can accept (and it's not like there's a choice) that God does judge all mankind, does it really matter what instruments He uses in the execution of that judgment?


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## Dearly Bought (Mar 7, 2009)

I don't have much to add to the wise words that many have already stated. My one observation is this: If you think the Old Testament is violent, have you read Revelation? The judgments poured in the Old Testament point to the much greater Day of the Judgment that is coming.


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## charliejunfan (Mar 8, 2009)

God is perfect, Holy, and Just, we on the other hand are wicked warped and sinful. God has every right at any given time to kill us all and have us consumed in eternal fire, Thank you Father for Grace! If you really think about it everyone who ever lived was treated the same by God, it comes down to justice, either God has justice by throwing a person in hell forever, or by throwing a persons sin on Christ and punishing Him. God has every right to justice, and is perfect and holy in anything He choses to do


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## Hippo (Mar 8, 2009)

Dearly Bought said:


> I don't have much to add to the wise words that many have already stated. My one observation is this: If you think the Old Testament is violent, have you read Revelation? The judgments poured in the Old Testament point to the much greater Day of the Judgment that is coming.



This is the key, we know that there will be a final judgment, and we know that it will be terrible yet Jesus spoke about this "weeping and gnashing of teeth" time after time.

The Old Testament does not stand sperately from the new in its revelation of God and pretty much everything in the Old Testament prefigures the New Covenenant in a very real way. The Church is Israel and anyone not in the Church will suffer a very terrible fate, this is the message of the Cananite exterminations.

This thread is quite interesting.

http://www.puritanboard.com/f15/gods-command-exterminate-canaanites-44046/

You are quite right that this matter cannot be ignored or swept under the carpet, it is part of God's revealtion to man and if it does not fit in with our undrstanding of Jesus then that understanding is defficient. You are not alone in finding this a difficult point but that is probbaly becuase the theological basis of the Old Testament is often ignored in this day and age. The Old testament is not a standalone revelation, its whole point is to announce the Saviour and God's redemptive plan.


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## Knoxienne (Mar 8, 2009)

Actually the most violent part of the Bible is in the New Testament when God put his own Son who was without sin to death for the sins of His people. Dearly Bought is also correct about the book of Revelation.


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