The bible teaches me that God is
LOVING
MERCIFUL
JUST
But, what else is God's nature, that is very important? Holiness. His justice flows from his holiness, which means we will not be able to understand his justice until we understand just how utterly sinful sin actually is, how much of a cancer it is and spreads if it isn't cut out and eradicated.
As the God of the OT is portrayed IN SOME OF THE STORIES, I have to say that it's not the God I know.
Now, God can be however He wants to be - but if there's a conflict then we have to come to terms with it.
I just hear too many explanations that make no sense to me and I feel like we Christians have God locked away in some box of our making - but maybe there are other explanations?
We must consider that all mankind are “by nature children of wrath” (Eph 2:3),
because God is holy. Such people are already condemned (John 3:28) and we know that in the end, many will perish. We must also understand that the Lord “is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Pet 3:9).
We see echoes of that in the OT as well:
Psa 86:5 For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you.
...
Psa 86:15 But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. (ESV)
Joe 2:13 and rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster. (ESV)
And consider Ninevah.
What else do we see in the OT? We see God dealing with the utter sinfulness of humans:
Deu 9:4 “Do not say in your heart, after the LORD your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the LORD has brought me in to possess this land,’ whereas
it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is driving them out before you.
Deu 9:5 Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but
because of the wickedness of these nations the LORD your God is driving them out from before you, and that he may confirm the word that the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
Deu 9:6 “Know, therefore, that the LORD your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stubborn people. (ESV)
Deu 20:16 But in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes,
Deu 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,
Deu 20:18
that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the LORD your God. (ESV)
And what of Numbers 31, then? We look at Numbers 22-25 for the context and see the attempt at the moral and spiritual destruction of the Israelites, particularly chapter 25 with the Israelites being lead into idol worship and sexual impurity.
Gen 15:13 Then the LORD said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for
four hundred years.
Gen 15:14 But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions.
Gen 15:15 As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age.
Gen 15:16 And they shall come back here in the fourth generation,
for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” (ESV)
Lev 18:1 And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying,
Lev 18:2 “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, I am the LORD your God.
Lev 18:3 You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes.
Lev 18:4 You shall follow my rules and keep my statutes and walk in them. I am the LORD your God.
Lev 18:5 You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them: I am the LORD.
Lev 18:6 “None of you shall approach any one of his close relatives to uncover nakedness. I am the LORD.
Lev 18:7 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father, which is the nakedness of your mother; she is your mother, you shall not uncover her nakedness.
Lev 18:8 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's wife; it is your father's nakedness.
Lev 18:9 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your sister, your father's daughter or your mother's daughter, whether brought up in the family or in another home.
Lev 18:10 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your son's daughter or of your daughter's daughter, for their nakedness is your own nakedness.
Lev 18:11 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's wife's daughter, brought up in your father's family, since she is your sister.
Lev 18:12 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's sister; she is your father's relative.
Lev 18:13 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your mother's sister, for she is your mother's relative.
Lev 18:14 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's brother, that is, you shall not approach his wife; she is your aunt.
Lev 18:15 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your daughter-in-law; she is your son's wife, you shall not uncover her nakedness.
Lev 18:16 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your brother's wife; it is your brother's nakedness.
Lev 18:17 You shall not uncover the nakedness of a woman and of her daughter, and you shall not take her son's daughter or her daughter's daughter to uncover her nakedness; they are relatives; it is depravity.
Lev 18:18 And you shall not take a woman as a rival wife to her sister, uncovering her nakedness while her sister is still alive.
Lev 18:19 “You shall not approach a woman to uncover her nakedness while she is in her menstrual uncleanness.
Lev 18:20 And you shall not lie sexually with your neighbor's wife and so make yourself unclean with her.
Lev 18:21 You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the LORD.
Lev 18:22 You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.
Lev 18:23 And you shall not lie with any animal and so make yourself unclean with it, neither shall any woman give herself to an animal to lie with it: it is perversion.
Lev 18:24 “Do not make yourselves unclean by any of these things, for by all these the nations I am driving out before you have become unclean,
Lev 18:25 and the land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. (ESV)
That is quite the list of moral and spiritual depravity, hence the need for judgement.
Pro 29:1 He who is often reproved, yet stiffens his neck, will suddenly be broken beyond healing. (ESV)
Just as we see that in the time of Noah, God gave those people 120 years of Noah's preaching, God gave the Amorites 400 years. Due to the incredible wickedness of those people, God wanted their sinful practices completely removed so that the Israelites wouldn't follow those practices. But, what happened? Israel ended up following those practices and they
also faced judgement for doing so.