Why Is God So Angry In The Old Testament?
Why is God angry in the Old Testament?
Can we just be honest for a moment? This is a (mostly) safe place. Reading the New Testament is so much easier than reading the Old Testament. The New Testament just feels so different.
In the Old Testament there’s death, jealously, genocide (often commanded by God), a whole lot of sex, misogyny, constant warnings of doom, extreme punishment for seemingly small sins, laws that don’t make a whole lot of sense, and sacrifices of animals to pay for it all.
But in the New Testament it’s a different story. The sick and the blind are healed, the “bullies” get put in their place, the outcasts are restored, the screw ups are forgiven, the broken are offered healing, and everyone is welcome. It just makes a whole lot more sense, except for Revelation, we don’t talk about that book…
At first glance it seems like we are dealing with two different Gods here right? Or maybe a severely bipolar God. Calm down, I’m not saying that’s actually true. Rather that there’s something happening here that we need to take notice of.
It’s not just Christians that have noted this difference. Richard Dawkins in his book The God Delusion, says, “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
While what Dawkins says might seem a bit harsh, he raises some valid questions. What do we do with this Old Testament God? How can we justify such an angry God? What do we do with the first two-thirds of the Bible? How do we read it? Should we read it? And what about all those laws?
Here’s the quick answers: The Old Testament and the New Testament God are the same. We should read it. We don’t need to justify God; he can defend himself. And the laws, well we’ll talk about this in a bit.
Alright, let’s tackle some of these issues in a little more detail. Here’s a few things you should remember when reading the Old Testament.
A Tale of Two God’s?
When you first see the contrast between the Old Testament and the New Testament it’s easy to conclude that there must be two gods. But that’s an oversimplification and doesn’t take into account everything that’s going on. The Bible makes clear there is only one true God (Verses here: One God Passages).
While God’s actions are perceived to be different, what he says about himself stays the same. The issue isn’t in difference of who God is compared to the Old vs New. Rather in how he acts. In other words his character is the same. But his actions are different.
We aren’t reading a story of two different God’s, but rather a story of the same God in different circumstances.
The Old Covenant and the New Covenant
Why would God act so differently? In short, because he’s operating under different covenants. I’m not going to go into detail here, that’s a topic for another post. But when we read the Old Testament we need to recognize that God is operating under a different set of rules. When Jesus entered the picture he changed everything, but that hasn’t happened yet.
God spoke to Abraham in Abraham’s day and in Abraham’s way. God spoke to Paul in Paul’s day and in Paul’s way. And God speaks to us in our day and in our way. The point is God speaks in a way that the people he is speaking to understands. Thus when we read the Old Testament we need to understand the people God was talking to before we can understand how it applies to us today.
What About the Law?
Whenever we read about the Law in the Old Testament it is often followed by the question, What should Christian’s do with this? I’m not going to break this down too far, but if you want to read more check out my article: What’s the Point of the Old Testament Law
The Torah contains 613 laws. These laws stemmed from the promise God gave Abraham that He would bless him and his descendants. The law worked like this:
Follow The Law = God’s Blessing
Disobey The Law = Removal of God’s Blessing
God knew that His people could not do this perfectly so He made a way to atone for their sins: sacrifice. When you broke a law, something, an animal, had to die to pay the price for your sin.
This is an oversimplification, but it gives you an idea. The problem was the Nation of Israel just couldn’t live up to the demands of The Law. Their story is very cyclical. They follow God, things are good. They abandon God, things get bad. They repent, God brings them back and things are good again. Repeat, over and over again.
Then Jesus enters the picture. In Matthew 5:17-20 Jesus claims that He came to fulfill the law, a curious statement to the listening Jews. To fulfill the law was impossible. It wasn’t something you could fulfill, it was something you follow. Later in this passage He makes an outlandish claim, that for the Law to save you, you would have to follow it better than the Pharisees. There ain’t nobody that could do that. Well except Jesus. And he did, he fulfilled the law perfectly.
Why does any of this matter? To understand the Bible we need to understand how the law worked. If we don’t we can’t fully understand what Jesus did.
We Don’t Need to Justify God’s Actions
There’s a temptation when we read the Old Testament to justify or explain why God acted the way he did. We don’t need to do that. God can defend himself. I’m not saying we shouldn’t address and talk about why/what God did. We should, especially when someone has the wrong picture of what is happening. However at some point in our finite capability we will run into a wall. At that point I think it’s important that we say I don’t know.
So many Christians have come up with some crazy ideas and rationalizations that are way beyond their comprehension. There’s a point where we just have to say God is God, and I am not. We cannot fully understand what is going on. And that’s okay. We don’t need to justify God’s actions.
BUT What About the REALLY Bad Parts?
If I’m honest there are a few things in the Bible that just really make me cringe. Like when God orders the genocide of entire groups of people: men, women, and children. It just doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve read many explanations, but still it doesn’t fully add up.
The most common explanation for the indiscriminate killing is that they had sin therefore they must pay for that sin. I guess that’s true, but it still doesn’t seem to jive with the character of God. Another explanation I’ve seen is that God never actually commanded the Israelites to kill everyone. Rather they used God as an excuse to do what they wanted to do. In other words those passages are written with an inherent bias. While that offers an explanation, it’s not really founded on anything solid. There’s many more explanations, but I think you get the picture. At some point they fall apart.
So what do we do? I don’t know. I don’t know what to do, there’s nothing that really makes sense to me. I believe this is where faith comes in. I believe God is good, just, and most of all love.
Here’s how I handle difficult passages. If what I believe makes God look like a jerk, I’m going to assume I’m wrong. If what I believe or how I explain something makes God look like the bad guy there’s probably something going on that I don’t see or don’t understand. That’s faith; when things don’t make sense, I’m going to choose to trust God.
That might not work for everyone, but it does for me. I will never stop searching for answers. But I will never have all the answers. That’s where faith comes in. I choose to believe even though I don’t know things for sure. And be honest, NOBODY knows for sure. We all have faith in something. I choose to place mine in God.
We Should Read it, Don’t Ignore it
We live in the New Testament, under the New Covenant. But we should still read the Old Testament, it still has value. Through the stories, the laws, the poetry and the history we can see God interacting with his creation. We can get insight into God’s character. Through the struggles, failures, and triumphs of God’s people we can learn about the human experience. We can see the relationship between God and his people develop.
Reading the Old Testament can bring us to a deeper understanding of who God is. So read it. But keep these things in mind. The Old Testament is still valuable for us today. But it doesn’t hold the same weight as it did for the Israelites. We have to remember the Old Covenant, the weight of the Law, and acknowledge that there are elements we just won’t understand.
Your turn… What are your thoughts?
I believe everyone God killed on the OT had it coming. I would do the same to this day if I was God.
The people in the Old Testament, apart from God, were constantly doing things God abhorred…like raping women, abusing children, murdering whole groups of whomever they could. Their children, growing up amid this behavior, were heading in the same sinful path (like dandelion seeds become dandelions). God had given them a conscience, but they did not follow it. He then gave them the Law so that they could know how to avoid wrong and do right. He wiped man out in the flood (taking at least the babies and children who had not reached the age of accountability up to Himself). He could not ignore man’s wickedness to each other, and turning their backs on what He asked them to do. When, after the flood, man went back to his evil ways, He sent judges and prophets to warn them. They ignored them. God searched for someone to begin again with to live an example life of what He had created man for. That was Abraham. But that didn’t change man’s hearts either, and sin continued to run rampant all over His creation. He implemented the sacrificial system to show that sin caused death and pain. We didn’t “get it.” Finally, when Jesus is in the garden, asking if it would be possible for the “cup” to be removed from Him, the Father did not remove it. Christ dying to redeem us and pay for all the sins of man so that He could enter man and change us from the inside out, was the only way. Jesus said, if there be any other way but the cup He must drink, He knew, as did the Father, all other ways to save and change man had failed. Salvation came and comes through Christ alone…thank you, Lord!
I appreciate your cander and willingness to talk about such a hard topic. I completely agree; it is good and biblical to search out the heart of God ‘It is God’s glory to hide Himself and a king’s glory to search Him’ (major paraphrase from Proverbs). But like you said, we will never have full clarity and that doesn’t disprove God, it shows His vastness.
Just throwing this out for dialogue. I haven’t thought through this topic really but I would love to gain more clarity. When I think about the “angry” God and kind God, I view everything in the Old Testament (all the laws and a good portion of his case-by-case commands) merely as tools to drive people towards God’s grace. Here is why: it is clear that God did not want the Law to hurt people-He encouraged people to “work” on the sabbath to save their animal, He validated David’s decision to eat consecrated bread, He essentially made people unable to purchase a sacrifice when he tipped over the tables (I suspect it is because Jesus would rather people not bring any sacrifice than feed the greed of the sellers), I think of the bargaining to spare a town for the sake of 10 righteous men, I think of God telling Abraham to sacrifice Isaac but that He never intended him to sacrifice him. Instead, God provided the sacrifice. What I am trying to get at, albeit slowly, is that the Law and a good portion of his case-by-case prescriptions may have always been God’s tool to lead people to grace and were not intended to be prescriptive. Could some of God’s commands to kill entire people groups been actually in place to provoke the Jewish people to contend with God/ask God for an exception? The Law was never intended to be the end goal-practicing it perfectly was never expected nor required for God was still accepting people based on their faith and not their performance of the Law. How many parents performed the Law when it required stoning their child to death? As a parent, if I loved God and also loved my child, I would plead with God to spare my child. And I strongly suspect God would have released me from that obligation to kill my child just as He spared Abraham. So, were His laws and commandments steadfast every time? David ate the consecrated bread, Jesus validated the “breaking” of the Sabbath, Jesus prevented people from bringing sacrifices, etc. We see so many examples of people and God bartering if you will. My question is: how do we know if those prescriptions were His actual expectations/necessary for His people to live in peace? And this whole train of thought is birthed out of Romans where it describes the Law as a tutor to lead us to Christ
Interestingly useful info
Hello, everybody! Because Satan is disguising himself as god. Read Zechariah 3:1-2 and read again Exodus 3-4. And compare 2 Samuel 24:1 & 1 Chronicles 21:1.
I was looking online for understanding to help me with this issue. A part of my problem is that my father was extremely violent. When I see God of the O/T, I see such a vengeful, angry, smiting God who turns people into pillars of salt, gets angry again and again. Violence, anger, temper, just like my dad, lashing out and hurting people. I do not see the compassionate Jesus in the God of the O/T. They are two different personalities.
What makes me upset is how so many try to convince you that the God of the O/T is the same person as Jesus in the N/T. I know what our faith say that “I AM” that God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Yet the two are distinctly different. It is so hard to reconcile. Honestly, reading the O/T causes my faith to wane a lot.
I think I fall into the same position as many: I terms of me in the vastness of the power of God, I am nothing. I am not a microbe on the flea on the tail of a dog. Just so insignificant.
I guess I just wish that the God of the O/T was loving as Jesus shows. It scares me in my faith to think that I would spend the rest of my life with such an angry God.
But then again, I am a sinner, though grace has given me hope and a new spirit. I do not have the intellect to fathom why the O/T was portrayed as such. I’m sure it was written by design and intention through the guidance of God that way. Just as I am sure the N/T was reflected in it’s loving and compassionate way.
The beatitudes and compassion of Jesus give me hope to be loved by someone caring and loving. The O/T scares me very much, so much so that I struggle with even reading it.
BUt I will cling to my hope in Christ, understanding that I am simply lost without Him. I put my trust and hope in Him.
according to the Bible Jesus says we need the old law it was never done away with
“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 5:17-20 KJV
Many would consider this “I don’t know” approach to be a cop-out, but I am on your side. Love this sentence: “We all have faith in something. I choose to place mine in God.”
I think it can be a cop-out sometimes, hopefully not in this case! But at the end of the day we will all run into a wall at some point in our understanding.
We tend to forget we are all stained by Adam’s sin and so must all physically die. Dawkins blames the “fictional” God of the Old Testament for causing “premature” deaths. But if we are all walking dead people why should our deaths, and other miseries, not serve God’s purposes. Purposes that are for the ultimate good of those who repent, believe, and obey God the Father in Old Testament times and who now worship his risen Son.
I loved this. I loved all the comments and definitely want more. Thanks for liking my blog.
Extremely thought-provoking! Thanks for tackling a hard question.
While I understand the idea that the OT is full of anger and death and the NT is just happy roses, I find this limiting. The NT has just as much sin and death as the OT – Paul is beheaded, Jesus is executed, Stephen is stoned, etc. The OT has grace and love also – It’s Job who is upset that Ninevah isn’t destroyed, not God. It’s God who relents over and over again. Further, while the bible is inspired, there are still human editors. My question has always been, how much of the human editing has made it’s way into the stories. How much of how humanity sees God gets into the stories of genocide? How much of Joshua’s destruction of the people and land is ordered by God and how much is using God as an excuse to do these things. This doesn’t mean that this isn’t the Word of God. It’s looking at the big picture, rather than the details – humanity is sinful and broken in many ways. God loves creation and humanity and continually comes to us to redeem us. We try to fix the brokenness, get it wrong, and screw up again – causing death and destruction. And the story repeats.
One can not understand the “Old” testament as long as one comes at it from the viewpoint that this post comes at it from. That viewpoint is, “how can we understand the ‘old’ testament in light of the ‘new’?” That is backwards. You start off stating the proper perspective, “The Old Testament and New Testament God are the same. We should read it. We don’t need to justify God; he can defend himself,” but then digress partially into the other viewpoint. The “proper” viewpoint is, “how can we understand the Bible?” It is a complete work, meant to be taken as a whole.
God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Even His name says so (the meaning of His name, which appears close to 7000 times in the “old” testament, is basically, “He was, He is, He will be”). That is the first foundation upon which to build a good perspective.
The other thing needed is for Christianity to ‘get over itself’. In other words, this viewpoint of ‘we are better then the Israelites’ is dangerous self delusion. The only real difference between people living in ‘old’ testament times and those in ‘new’ times is that we can put a name on our salvation. That name is Yeshua (Jesus). The sin, idolatry, and ugliness is the same.
Christians must be honest when looking at the ‘new’ testament. It has more rules then the ‘old’ (go ahead and count!), and Yeshua (Jesus) spells out just how deep those rules go. There is violence (example: the book of Revelation, which can not be discounted); harsh justice (remember Ananias and Saphira in the book of Acts? or Paul’s command to put the perverse man out of the congregation?), and ugliness (the stoning of Stephen). God’s definition of righteousness and His dislike of sin has not changed one bit. His revelation of His grace and His salvation are made clearer and deeper through Yeshua (Jesus), but are present throughout.
There is also a wide ranging misunderstanding of the sacrificial system. The sacrificial system is what the writer of the book of Hebrews was referring to when he comments that ‘it’ is passing away. That aside, the sacrificial system was not for ‘all’ sin. Consider King David and his sin with Bathsheba. There was no sacrifice for this. No, rather in this example, and some others, God shows that forgiveness is a gift given by Himself, not somehow ‘earned’ through a sacrifice. Yet the sacrifices are there (and some will return if you view the end of Zachariah as being in the future). Also, a huge portion of the sacrifices had nothing to do with sin, but were for thankfulness, or simply an offering. Of the ones that had to do with sin, many were for “unintentional” or “unknown” sins. In other words, the sacrificial system was also showing that deliberate, premeditated sin was just as bad then as ‘now’, but it was also showing that God does not like all forms of worship, and that true worship and obedience will ‘cost’ us.
To sum up, God shows His grace and mercy starting from the first pages of the Bible and continuing to the end of the book of Revelation. It is one, continuous story, and in a way, as the story progresses, God reveals more of Himself, His plan, and His salvation. Man has not changed. The same sin and idolatry that plagued the Israelites is still rampant today among the churches, and God hates it just as much. His grace remains the same, but eventually His judgement comes. With a careful reading of the stories in the “old” testament, one can see God’s Grace and patience over literally hundreds of years, as He deals with both His people and those of the nations. Sure, there are ‘ugly’ stories recorded. They are there to show the depravity of man, God’s grace, patience and forgiveness, and His judgement.
To somehow try and separate the ‘old’ from the ‘new’ testament times is to ignore much of what is in the ‘new’ testament itself, and a complete rejection of the history of Christianity (which is very violent and ugly).
We need to repent of all idolatrous ways and accept the salvation and forgiveness given through Yeshua (Jesus). God loves all people, as made clear in the Bible, but His dislike of sin in all its forms has not changed. I know my post comes off a bit harsh, and it has a very ‘scatter gun’ approach to a deep, broad, wonderful topic. It is time, however, for us to realize that God never changes, nor has His plan or the way He operates. And it is a great sign of His grace, which Yeshua (Jesus) so wonderfully made plain, that even when we may disagree, we can all still remain ‘one in the Messiah (Christ).’
There is good in this post, and thank you for putting it up. It forces people to consider what they believe.
– Yosef
Hi, love your topic and post. The Old Testament is one of the most beautiful books in the world. it
Thanks for this post. I appreciate you’re honesty in saying “I don’t know”, yet you have the faith to believe that God is good regardless of you being able to explain how or why He is good during certain instances. I’d encourage you to check out some apologists as they give pretty detailed and rational responses, but regardless, your honesty is REFRESHING. God bless you.
One comment on the Old Testament Sacrificial system. Sin is messy, Christ came to clean up the mess created by sin. The simple rule of sin is something must die and that death is permanent separation from God. Therefore to teach the plan of redemption the sacrificial system was established. It all pointed to Christ as the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. As the head of family brought before the priest a lamb to be sacrificed, the sins of the family where placed upon the lamb. This was symbolic in that our sins were placed upon the Lamb of God before His crucifixion on Calvary. All the yearly feasts and celebrations given to the Israelites at Mount Sinai pointed toward the coming of Christ as the Messiah. In these feasts and sacrifices, there was no saving power, but they were instituted to show us how the plan of salvation was to work. How sin causes death and who Christ, who died for our sin, gave us life.
One other thought, perhaps an over simplification of the Old Testament is that it shows how depraved mankind had and has become since the fall of Adam and Eve. As stated earlier, dealing with the sin problem is messy, But throughout all of the Old Testament is the story of hope and redemption. It shows a God pleading with his people and all mankind to follow him. It also shows the contrast between those that follow Him and those that of their own free will decide not to follow Him.
Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah and others were certainly not perfect. There imperfections often shown through. Yet through them we can see a God of love dealing justly and fairly with each of them. God offered them forgiveness and because they accepted His forgiveness, they were blessed among man to become an example to others of what God can do. The blessings given to them were to be a witness of God’s love for all mankind. The blessings were designed to attacked others to wanting to form a relationship with God, not for the blessings received but because of the promise of forgiveness and redemption. The strange practice of animal sacrifice was to show how messy sin was and to explain the plan of salvation to a world that was dying because of sin and to give that world hope something better to come. The Messiah.
Sorry for the length
Blessings,
Pastor Lester
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Excellent overview! Regarding what you said about faith when we don’t understand, my favorite passage is Peter’s response after Jesus has said some difficult/offensive stuff and disciples are leaving right and left: “‘You do not want to leave too, do you?’ Jesus asked the Twelve.
Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.’” (John 6:67-69) Basically: I might not understand you, but I’ve put all my eggs in one basket and I’m trusting you”
I have always loved that passage and tried to live my life in a similar manor. When I’ve wanted to walk away I realize I really have no place to go. I think I’ve written about that somewhere on this site.
Thanks for reading!
My atheist friends are always trying to use this argument but it is such a gross oversimplification that it just doesn’t fly. Throughout the OT God shows himself to be merciful, healing and loving, even comparing himself to a man so in love with a wanton whore he will keep taking her back and clean her up after she goes off on spree after spree. In the NT Jesus is not just a sweet loving guy, he says things like “let the dead bury their dead” and “if you even look at a woman with lust” and “get behind me satan” and “I didnt come to bring peace but a sword.” Scripture is full of Religious Truths (not scientific or historical truths), it is Salvation History. So what does the warring and slaughter in the OT teach us? You have to get rid of sin, you can’t become its neighbor, let it live with you, because you will be corrupted by it. That’s a religious truth my day to day experience confirms. You are right, anytime I read the Bible and think God is looking like a Devil I have to know I’m into something I don’t understand, its my defect, not God’s.
Thank you for pouring all this beautiful wisdom? God bless!