There Is No One Old Testament God

There Is No One Old Testament God

June 22, 2020

We’ve all heard it, haven’t we? The God of the New Testament is loving, gracious, forgiving, and peaceful. The God of the Old Testament is judgmental, vengeful, condemning, and violent. Many Christians say they want nothing to do with the Old Testament God. All that God does is condemn and punish. There certainly are passages in the Old Testament where God does judge, condemn, and punish God’s people. I’ll get to some of them anon. Yet the truth of the matter is that there is no one Old Testament God. The Old Testament has many different views of God in it. After we’ve seen some of the places in the Old Testament where the stereotypical Old Testament God does appear we’ll take a look at just a few Old Testament Passages that give us a very different image of God.

One of the Old Testament’s conceptions is indeed of God as angry, judgmental, vengeful, and violent. Consider for example Amos 4:1-3:

Hear this word, you cows

               of Bashan

       who are on Mount Samaria,

who oppress the poor, who crush

               the needy,

       who say to their husbands,

               ‘Bring something to

               drink!’

The Lord God has sworn by

               his holiness;

       The time is surely coming

               upon you,

when they shall take you away

               with hooks,

       even the last of you with

               fishhooks.

Through breaches in the wall you

               shall leave,

       each one straight ahead;

and you shall be flung out into

               Harmon.

Scholars don’t know what “Harmon” was, but clearly Amos intended it as a place you don’t want to go. In this passage from the eighth century BCE Amos has God cosmically mad at the women of Israel, called here Mount Samaria. Amos calls them “cows of Bashan,” Bashan having been a place famous for having fine cattle. God is angry because these wealthy women oppress the poor. So Amos presents an angry God who is going to punish them severely for their misdeeds.

Here’s another example of the stereotypical Old Testament God. The book of Deuteronomy revels in listing curses that God will lay upon the people if they do not strictly obey God’s law. At Deuteronomy 28:15 we read: “But if you will not obey the Lord your God by diligently observing all his commandments and decrees, which I [Moses] am commanding you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you.” There follows a long list of calamities the people will suffer if they don’t do as God says. The calamities include among others:

1.     The fruit of their womb and their ground along with the increase of their cattle and the increase of their flock shall be cursed. Deuteronomy 28:18.

2.     The Lord will send upon them disaster, panic, and frustration in everything they attempt to do until they are destroyed and perish. Deuteronomy 28:20.

3.     The Lord will inflict them with consumption, fever, inflammation, heat, drought, blight and mildew. Deuteronomy 28:22.

4.     The Lord will change their rain to powder, and only dust will come down from the sky until they are destroyed.

5.     The Lord will cause them to be defeated by their enemies.

6.     They shall become an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. Deuteronomy 28:25c.

7.     All their crops will fail. Deuteronomy 28:38-40.

8.     Their sons and daughters will go off into captivity. Deuteronomy 28:41

These are but a few of the curses Deuteronomy says will come upon the people if they don’t do what God wants. For the full list see Deuteronomy 28:15-46. Deuteronomy gives us an angry God who has no qualms about making God’s people suffer horribly for not being perfect in their observance of all of God’s laws.

Here’s another example of that sort of God that may be more familiar. In the Ten Commandments we read:

You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me. Exodus 20:4-6.

This God is perfectly willing to punish people in subsequent generations for the sins of some ancestor though the ones being punished had nothing to do with it.

Here’s just one more example. At Genesis 6:11-13 we read: “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence; for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth. And God said to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them….’” We know the rest of the story. Noah builds an ark, fills it with animals and his family, God sends rains that cover the whole earth and kill every thing living on the land that isn’t in the ark. Talk about vengeance! There’s that stereotypical Old Testament God at work. So yes, the Old Testament has passages that have given rise to the stereotype of the judgmental, angry, vengeful, violent Old Testament God.

What some people don’t know is that the Old Testament also gives us pictures of a very different God. There is for example a saying versions of which run like a mantra through the Old Testament: “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” Psalm 145:8. See also Psalm 103:8 and Exodus 34:6. Slightly varied version of the saying appear at Nehemiah 9:31, Numbers 14:18, and Psalm 86:15. This view of God could hardly be more different from the God of Deuteronomy. These voices from ancient Israel see God as a God of grace, mercy, patient forbearance, and unwavering love.

Some of the voices of Israel also knew that God is a God of forgiveness. For example at Micah 7:18-20 we read:

Who is a God like you, pardoning

               iniquity

       and passing over the

               transgression

       of the remnant of your

               possession?

He does not retain his anger

               forever,

       because he delights in showing

               clemency.

He will again have compassion

               upon us;

       he will tread our iniquities

               under foot.

You will show faithfulness to

               Jacob

       and unswerving loyalty to

               Abraham,

as you have sworn to our

               ancestors

       from days of old.

Hardly sounds like an angry, judgmental, violent God at all, does it.

Finally there’s everyone’s favorite Psalm, Psalm 23. To know that in the Old Testament there is also a God tender and caring all we have to do is read that Psalm. Here it is in its NRSV translation:

The Lord is my shepherd, I

               shall not want.

       He makes me lie down in

               green pastures;

he leads me beside still

               waters;

       he restores my soul.

He leads me in right paths

       for his name’s sake.

Even though I walk through the

               darkest valley,

       I fear no evil;

for you are with me;

       your rod and your staff—

        they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me

       in the presence of my

               enemies;

you anoint my head with oil;

       my cup overflows.

Surely goodness and mercy

               shall follow me

       all the days of my life,

and I shall dwell in the house of

               the Lord

       my whole life long.

So let’s be done with the idea that the Old Testament gives us only one image of God and that that image is one we can all do without. Let’s not assume that the stereotypical Old Testament God is the only God we find in the Old Testament. It just isn’t so. There are voices from ancient Israel that assure us that God isn’t like the stereotypical Old Testament God at all. In the Old Testament we can find these and other passages that speak of God’s love and God’s care for us and for all creation. For those voices I for one will say thanks be to God.