God in the OT

[Tilly]

Hi everyone,
I am currently struggling with how God is portrayed in the Old Testament. How come in Joshua 7, because of Achan's sin, thousands of men die in battle and he has to be stoned along with his whole family? How come God doesn't just punish Achan? And how come David's son has to die because of his parent's sin? Why does God allow other people to be hurt from one person's sin? Couldn't God just punish the person who sinned?
Also when the Israelites go to the Promised Land, so many cities are ruined. Why can't the Israelites just take the land they need? Because that way, these people could have a chance to repent and believe in God. It just seems like some of the death in the Old Testament is a bit too much and unnecessary.
I know God has a reason for everything and He is a good God. But I'm just struggling to process why He does this the way He does.
Just want to know what other people think about this...

 

[Who Me]

I am currently struggling with how God is portrayed in the Old Testament

The first thing to note is that the gracious and loving creator God found in the O T is the same as the judgemental God found in the N T.

2nd. The old testament deals with communities, not individuals.
We read of laws and covenants being given to the people of Israel for the whole of them to follow.
The promise of blessings or of curses are if all the people obey/disobey.
There was not then and still is no concept of individual responsibility.
It was all a collective responsibility.
Today in third world culture, it is collective family honour that counts and collective obedience.

God commanded the zisraelites to drive out the inhabitants of cannon, for the reason he supplied.
They would lead the Israelites into idol worship etc etc.

Would they change? Read what the prostitute Rahab said to the two spies.
The people of Jericho knew they were coming, that God had given the land to the Israelites and they were terrified.
So what did those people do?

 

[WIP]

Hi everyone,
I am currently struggling with how God is portrayed in the Old Testament. How come in Joshua 7, because of Achan's sin, thousands of men die in battle and he has to be stoned along with his whole family? How come God doesn't just punish Achan? And how come David's son has to die because of his parent's sin? Why does God allow other people to be hurt from one person's sin? Couldn't God just punish the person who sinned?
Also when the Israelites go to the Promised Land, so many cities are ruined. Why can't the Israelites just take the land they need? Because that way, these people could have a chance to repent and believe in God. It just seems like some of the death in the Old Testament is a bit too much and unnecessary.
I know God has a reason for everything and He is a good God. But I'm just struggling to process why He does this the way He does.
Just want to know what other people think about this...

It's best not to fret about such things. They will only serve to introduce doubt. God knows the end from the beginning and we are to trust Him in all things. It is not our place to question God's sovereignty so when you ask this of Him, don't be surprised if you don't get a satisfactory answer.

6 Seek the Lord while He may be found,
Call upon Him while He is near.
7 Let the wicked forsake his way,
And the unrighteous man his thoughts;
Let him return to the Lord,
And He will have mercy on him;
And to our God,
For He will abundantly pardon.
8 “For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord.
9 “For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways,
And My thoughts than your thoughts.
Isaiah 55:6-9 NKJV

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’
44 But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you,
45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
46 For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
47 And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so?
48 Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect."
Matthew 5:43-48 NKJV

4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up;
5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;
6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth;
7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away.
9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part.
10 But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.
11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.
1 Corinthians 13:4-12 NKJV

Quick thought...You mentioned David's son dying. What makes you so sure he suffered? It was David that suffered by his child's death but the child...maybe not.

In Matthew 6:25-34 Jesus talks about not spending our time worrying and then ends with, "Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."

Hope this is helpful.

 

[Tilly]

The first thing to note is that the gracious and loving creator God found in the O T is the same as the judgemental God found in the N T.

2nd. The old testament deals with communities, not individuals.
We read of laws and covenants being given to the people of Israel for the whole of them to follow.
The promise of blessings or of curses are if all the people obey/disobey.
There was not then and still is no concept of individual responsibility.
It was all a collective responsibility.
Today in third world culture, it is collective family honour that counts and collective obedience.

God commanded the zisraelites to drive out the inhabitants of cannon, for the reason he supplied.
They would lead the Israelites into idol worship etc etc.

Would they change? Read what the prostitute Rahab said to the two spies.
The people of Jericho knew they were coming, that God had given the land to the Israelites and they were terrified.
So what did those people do?

Thanks for your response. I think remembering how important community was in the OT is definitely helpful.

 

[electedbyHim]

Hi everyone,
I am currently struggling with how God is portrayed in the Old Testament. How come in Joshua 7, because of Achan's sin, thousands of men die in battle and he has to be stoned along with his whole family? How come God doesn't just punish Achan? And how come David's son has to die because of his parent's sin? Why does God allow other people to be hurt from one person's sin? Couldn't God just punish the person who sinned?
Also when the Israelites go to the Promised Land, so many cities are ruined. Why can't the Israelites just take the land they need? Because that way, these people could have a chance to repent and believe in God. It just seems like some of the death in the Old Testament is a bit too much and unnecessary.
I know God has a reason for everything and He is a good God. But I'm just struggling to process why He does this the way He does.
Just want to know what other people think about this...

I have struggled with some of the same issues from time to time.

WIP has an excellent point about doubt.

I suggest a book that Free has suggested in another thread about our God of the O.T.

It is extremely informative and breaks down many of the barriers that we do not understand.

To me, the book is written apologetically refuting claims of certain atheistic apologists.

If you like to read, I highly reccomend this book.

Link below.

Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God

Grace and peace to you.

 

[for_his_glory]

Hi Tilly

Try reading Deuteronomy chapter 32 as this is God speaking about those who have turned away from Him and God has hid His face from them. Hopefully this chapter will answer some of your question. God has His reasons that we might never understand His ways other then His ways are not our ways and He knows who are His own.

 

[LeviR]

Why would God give laws to condemn His people who were already condemned?

 

[Vinny37]

Hi everyone,
I am currently struggling with how God is portrayed in the Old Testament. How come in Joshua 7, because of Achan's sin, thousands of men die in battle and he has to be stoned along with his whole family? How come God doesn't just punish Achan? And how come David's son has to die because of his parent's sin? Why does God allow other people to be hurt from one person's sin? Couldn't God just punish the person who sinned?
Also when the Israelites go to the Promised Land, so many cities are ruined. Why can't the Israelites just take the land they need? Because that way, these people could have a chance to repent and believe in God. It just seems like some of the death in the Old Testament is a bit too much and unnecessary.
I know God has a reason for everything and He is a good God. But I'm just struggling to process why He does this the way He does.
Just want to know what other people think about this...

I would deem it a fundamental problem if human life only existed on the mortal plane. “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances.” Perhaps Shakespeare underplayed us, but our mortality is us on a transient and earthly stage: the immortal and universal stage is yet to come. Sometimes we pull our plug (eg suicide; neglect; carelessness), or others pull our plug (eg abortion; commercial termination; murder). Sometimes God pulls our plug (indirectly by nature; commanding war; directly as with Sapphira). Our curtain comes down and our veil is lifted and we see God.

You allow Achan’s death more readily than his household’s. I agree. But removing from the mortal stage simply removed them into his next level of judgement: those who desired him he would allow into his heaven; those who desired to live away from him he would allow into their hell. How long folk live on Earth and how they die are varying factors. In Achan’s days, culturally—and not merely for Hebrews—the idea of solidarity was far more than the individualism of the C21 West, and perhaps built better community spirit: but there is no paradise on Earth. A downside was that households could pay for the sins of their members—and their members knew it, so were more likely to exercise self-control.

Later Ezekiel taught about individualism (eg Ezk.18), like school class levels build on prior insights, factoring in other principles. Household payment was a relatively painful death for many, though some might otherwise have faced even more painful deaths in the natural course of withering and dying. Their premature deaths could be salutary warnings to the larger community (eg Jos.22:19-20). With Achan’s household, we do not know as to what extent they were part of the problem, thus shared personal responsibility for a sin which undermined the teaching programme of Sinai and thus Yahweh’s empowerment of his people (for global blessing even beyond the grave), and thus had caused many needless deaths in their community, which would feel the justice of their deaths, even ending their posterity (name)—to their mindset a calamity.

Vis-à-vis Canaan, very few cities were ruined (like the Commanchie empire burned forts), and for over a generation the smaller Israelite population were confined to the mountains, with the Canaanites overmatching them about two to one and with better weapons. Joshua left the job incomplete. The Canaanites were a morally corrupt network of peoples. They sometimes defeated the invaders, and could choose to exodus out or to fight. For their part the Israelites were to remove such folk from their God-given borders, then to confine their military to defend those borders and not to expand (it was not jihad). That was to allow them to develop as the kind of people that Yahweh wished them to be. They were never gonna be that perfect, but they achieved a sufficient approximation to be a key player in global blessing, and became the husk to the true global harvest.

I would not say that God “is a good God”, for that implies that he is a god among others. The Israelites would mainly have said that he was such, a good god, their god, but teaching has moved on and revelation can be better phrased. God is goodness and acts according to what he is. He is the very source of universal goodness, and the measurement by which all such goodness can be measured: C S Lewis put that well in Mere Christianity (ch.1). Divining God’s purposes takes far more than a mortal human lifetime, but we can begin to make sense of them.

 

[Josef]

Hi everyone,
I am currently struggling with how God is portrayed in the Old Testament. How come in Joshua 7, because of Achan's sin, thousands of men die in battle and he has to be stoned along with his whole family? How come God doesn't just punish Achan? And how come David's son has to die because of his parent's sin? Why does God allow other people to be hurt from one person's sin? Couldn't God just punish the person who sinned?
Also when the Israelites go to the Promised Land, so many cities are ruined. Why can't the Israelites just take the land they need? Because that way, these people could have a chance to repent and believe in God. It just seems like some of the death in the Old Testament is a bit too much and unnecessary.
I know God has a reason for everything and He is a good God. But I'm just struggling to process why He does this the way He does.
Just want to know what other people think about this...

Hey All,
Let's look at it from God's perspective. (Well as much as we can being human.)
God commanded the children of Israel to not plunder the accursed thing. (Probably an idol )
Achen took it anyway, and hid it.

Think about this from a parent/child perspective.
As the adult, because you know more than the child, you say don't take that or there will be consequences.
Your child defies you and takes the object anyway.
The child has forced your hand, hasn't he/she?
If you don't keep your word, your child learns that dad or mom doesn't mean what he/she says.
The child will defy you again to further test what the actual limits are.
Plus, the child loses respect for your word, as you you don't really mean what you say.

Now apply that to Joshua 7.
God commands them to not take the accursed thing in chapter 6.
Achen ignores the will of the Lord, and takes the accursed thing anyway.
God has to keep His Word.
He warned them.
So He had to do what He said.
Also, think about this; if you, as God, allow Achen to live, how is that fair to those who did listen, and who obeyed?

God keeps His Word.
That is the message of Joshua 7.

Keep walking everybody.
May God bless,
Taz

 

[Who Me]

Thanks for your response. I think remembering how important community was in the OT is definitely helpful.

You also need to remember that the God portrayed in the old testament is the God portrayed in the new testament.

God Love is not something soft and fluffy, it is tough, determined that we experience the best of life.