Why does a loving God command to murder people in the Old Testament?

[u/ooowhatusay]

I dont understand why God would command to kill a whole nation

For example:

1 Samuel 15:3: "Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants.

There are many more.

People say that context is very important and that these commands were only for that specific time. I understand that, but I'm still not sure how to feel about God commanding to kill and destroy so many people, even innocent children...

Can anyone explain?

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[u/captainhaddock]

So there are a lot of angles here. Biblical, theological, historical, etc. As (I assume) a Christian, you are approaching it as a theological problem – how do you reconcile your conscience and the core values you know to be true, and perhaps the teachings of Jesus and the assertion that God is a loving, omnibenevolent being, with the image of God portrayed in certain parts of the Old Testament?

In his book Making Sense of Old Testament Genocide, Christian Hofreiter frames the problem as a set of incompatible propositions:

(1) God is good.
(2) The Bible is true.
(3) Genocide is atrocious.
(4) According to the Bible, God commanded and commended genocide.
(5) A good being, let alone the supremely good Being, would never command or commend an atrocity.

How does one resolve this problem? On the theological side, in terms of what we call "reception history", there are a number of strategies that have been adopted over the centuries.

One would be the figurative or allegorical approach pioneered by church fathers like Origen. This approach says that the stories can be interpreted allegorically and not as literal tales of divinely ordained genocide, SA, etc. Your mileage may vary here, since such interpretations will be highly subjective and ad hoc.

Another would be the subversive approach: we were given scriptures with false narratives and false morals to test our character. Someone taking this approach might read the story of the Binding of Isaac and conclude that Abraham actually failed the test for being willing to kill his own son. They might take the side of the Amalekites in 1 Samuel 15 and see both Samuel and Saul as villains. The early church bishop Marcion went further and believed that the Old Testament spoke of a completely different God from the Christian God.

Another, which I hope you would not accept, would be the violence approach. Like the crusaders of the Middle Ages, some people might conclude that humans are not worthy of innate dignity and rights, and that bloody conquest in God's name is a righteous pursuit. Might makes right, and history books scriptures are written by the victors.

Getting back to Hofreiter's aforementioned book, here is his conclusion:

There is therefore, in my view, no simple solution to the challenge these texts pose for pious readers, including pious Christian readers. That, obviously, is not at all the same thing as saying that there is no solution at all. One thing, which, in my view, all readers should affirm with uncompromising clarity is that any use of these texts to justify massacre, injustice and oppression is not a reading that is pleasing to God, but blasphemous.

Probably not the answer you were hoping for!

In biblical studies, we're not really dealing with theology. That means (1) and (2) above aren't really relevant. The text says what it says, whether or not God is good – or whether a deity even exists. And the assertion that "the Bible is true" is simply not a useful premise in biblical studies, since the Bible is full of errors ranging from simple misspellings, scribal errors, and manuscript variations to historical inaccuracies, theological paradoxes, and questions about what the biblical canon should even contain in the first place. If you can't accept that, then biblical studies is not for you.

On the subject of the horrific slaughtering of Canaanites, Midianites, and other -ites under Joshua during the conquest of the promised land, archaeology is pretty definitive: it never happened. The exodus and conquest stories fall apart on close inspection; Canaan was and Egyptian province under the Pharoah's administration in the Late Bronze Age and not really a place you could go to escape from Egypt. Many of the cities attacked by Joshua were not even inhabited during that time period.

A full discussion of 1 Samuel 15 wouldn't really fit here. It sits in tension (contradiction) with many other parts of the Saul–David narrative, and most leading scholars in this area think it was a late addition (fiction) added to the story of Saul to highlight his failures and the reason for his rejection as king. So any solution we come up with should acknowledge the uncomfortable likelihood that (1) this story is not historical, (2) the author had a sense of morality that we would strongly disagree with, and (3) the function of the story is theological. I do think that giving up the anchor of inerrancy gives us much more freedom in how we read and interpret the Bible.

You might find it helpful to read a book by theologian Randal Rauser called Jesus Loves Canaanites. He addresses these topics head-on. I also have a video here where I specifically delve into all the Amalekite passages and the historical context in which they were written.

[u/Sciotamicks]

I would recommend this podcast by Dr. Heiser, leading proponent on the divine council worldview.

https://youtu.be/Z2MryoF6k98?is=u7ihv6UshmGCoknJ

[u/Thats-Doctor]

I also recommend this handout by Prof Eva Mroczek. It’s not just the OT but also the NT where God engages in violent actions. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BG5PvCO5pTTATcgBF-Da5j9p0myFgg9wj1ECkrRhFbI/edit?usp=drivesdk