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The God of the Old Testament

Richard Dawkins describes the God of the Old Testament as "arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unkind, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser." This is polemic, not scholarship — but the passages Dawkins is pointing to are real passages that cause genuine difficulty for Christians who take the Bible seriously.

The commands to destroy the Canaanites (Deuteronomy 7, 20). The killing of Egyptian firstborn children in the Exodus. The execution of Uzzah for touching the Ark of the Covenant (2 Samuel 6). The slaughter of the Midianites. The instructions for slavery in the Mosaic law. These are not peripheral passages — they are in the narrative of Israel's history that the New Testament presupposes and builds on.

This section does not pretend these passages are comfortable. It engages them honestly.

The canon of Scripture as a developing narrative

The most important hermeneutical principle for reading the difficult passages of the Old Testament is the recognition that the Bible is a developing narrative — not a collection of equally applicable timeless rules delivered in a vacuum, but the record of God's progressive self-revelation to a specific people over approximately 1,500 years, culminating in Jesus Christ.

Jesus himself articulates this principle in Matthew 5: "You have heard that it was said to those of old... but I say to you..." He takes the Old Testament commands — about divorce, oaths, retaliation, loving neighbors — and deepens or reframes them. He is not contradicting Scripture. He is claiming to be the fulfilment toward which it was moving: "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them" (Matthew 5:17).

The pattern this establishes is crucial: what God permitted or commanded in the earlier stages of Israel's history — in the context of a particular people, a particular cultural moment, a particular stage of covenant relationship — is not necessarily what God commands for all people at all times. Mosaic law accommodated practices (like divorce — Matthew 19:8 — and certain aspects of slavery) that Jesus corrected or superseded. The question for each difficult Old Testament passage is not "does this represent eternal divine policy?" but "what is happening in this particular moment in the narrative, and how does it relate to the trajectory the narrative is on?"

The Canaanite commands — the hardest case

The hardest case is the command to destroy the Canaanite peoples — men, women, and children. Deuteronomy 20:17: "But you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the LORD your God has commanded."

Several responses are available, and they are not mutually exclusive:

The hyperbole argument. Scholars of ancient Near Eastern warfare texts note that the language of "total destruction" was standard rhetorical hyperbole in military accounts of the ancient world — language that did not mean literal annihilation of every person, as the subsequent narrative of Joshua itself confirms: the Canaanites remain in the land after the "conquest" in large numbers (Judges 1). The genre conventions of ancient military literature may mean these commands are describing a different kind of event than a literal genocide.

The judgment argument. The Canaanite practices described in the surrounding texts — child sacrifice (Molech worship), ritual prostitution, incest — were condemned by every moral standard available in the ancient world. God's command comes explicitly in the context of these practices, and after a period of patience: "For the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete" (Genesis 15:16 — said to Abraham, implying God waited for centuries before acting). The judgment of Canaan is presented in the text as the response to specific practices that destroyed human beings, not arbitrary violence.

The Christological transformation argument. Whatever God permitted or commanded in the Canaanite context, Jesus definitively closed the door on violence as a legitimate expression of divine judgment carried out by human agents. The Crusade model — Christians using military violence in God's name — is not authorizable from the New Testament. Jesus's command is "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (Matthew 5:44). The Old Testament narrative does not override this — it points toward it as the trajectory of the whole story.

The honest acknowledgment argument. Some passages remain genuinely difficult even after these frameworks are applied. Paul Copan's book Is God a Moral Monster? is the most rigorous scholarly engagement with these texts. Christopher Wright's The God I Don't Understand is the most honest account from an evangelical perspective that takes seriously both the difficulty and the broader narrative context. Reading those books is more productive than either pretending the problem doesn't exist or concluding from it that God is evil.

The honest position for a faithful Christian is: these passages are genuinely difficult; the responses available (hyperbole, moral judgment on specific practices, Christological supersession) have genuine force but do not entirely resolve every question; we hold the difficulty honestly within the larger narrative that culminates in Jesus, who is the clearest picture of what God is like.

The progressive nature of revelation

The key to living with the difficult passages of the Old Testament is understanding the progressive nature of divine revelation without treating that progression as an internal contradiction.

God's revelation of himself was appropriate to each stage of Israel's development — a semi-nomadic people, then a nation-state, then a dispersed community, then the early church — and each stage built on the previous one without simply replacing it. The Mosaic law was not the final word on morality. It was the appropriate word for a people at a particular stage of their history, pointing toward a fuller picture that would only become clear in Jesus.

The clearest way to see this is to read the Old Testament and New Testament alongside each other on the same topic. Slavery: the Old Testament regulates it; Paul writes "there is neither slave nor free" (Galatians 3:28) and tells Philemon that the slave Onesimus is returning not as a slave but as "a dear brother" (Philemon 1:16). Divorce: Moses permits it for hardness of heart; Jesus says from the beginning it was not so. Retribution: the law says "an eye for an eye"; Jesus says to turn the other cheek. The trajectory is unmistakably consistent — the direction of the whole narrative is toward greater love, greater inclusion, greater mercy.

This is not a contradiction. It is what progressive revelation looks like.

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The God of the Old Testament

The Bible is a progressive narrative. Jesus said he came to fulfill the law, not abolish it — and consistently deepened and reframed Old Testament commands. The direction of the whole story is toward greater love and mercy. The difficult passages require engagement, not either dismissal or Dawkins's caricature.

Key claims

—Jesus: "You have heard it was said... but I say to you" — he consistently deepened and reframed OT commands
—Matthew 19:8: Moses permitted divorce "because of your hardness of heart" — Moses's command was accommodation, not eternal policy
—The Canaanite commands: hyperbole argument (ANE military rhetoric), judgment argument (specific practices), Christological supersession argument
—Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster? and Christopher Wright, The God I Don't Understand — the most serious scholarly engagements
—Jesus definitively closed the door on violence as an expression of divine judgment carried out by human agents

Scholars cited

Paul CopanPhilosopher / apologist
Christopher WrightOT scholar

Other foundations

Why Christianity

Why Not Islam

Why Not Atheism

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