Sword in the Fire

In response to questions about violence in the OT, here is a continuing series of several thoughts I have compiled.  The title of the posts is taken from  Evangelical Bible professor  Dr. David Lamb's, God Behaving Badly .   Here is  part 1 ,  part 2 , part 3 , and  part 4 8.  Christ died for the Amorite.  Not long after Joshua’s covenant with the Gibeonites, five Canaanite kings conspired to join forces and fight against Gibeon, perhaps to dissuade other tribes from covenanting with Israel or to test Israel’s solidarity with their new found allies.   Gibeon, under attack and facing certain destruction, calls out to Joshua for salvation.  Joshua rallies his men to defend the defenseless and uphold covenant he made Gibeon.  Like the battles before, Joshua engages the enemy, and the God of Israel works wonders to extend the battle, defeating the armies of the five kings.  In the midst of battle, the kings fled into a...

In response to questions about violence in the OT, I have posted several thoughts I have compiled.  The title of the posts is taken from  Evangelical Bible professor  Dr. David Lamb's, God Behaving Badly .   Here is part 1 and part 2 . 4.  Hyperbole:  I am sure you have used hyperbole in your speech this week.  Your football team killed their opponent this past weekend.  Maybe it rained cats and dogs at your house. Or perhaps you almost died laughing at the antics of your six year old, at least you weren’t hopping mad.   Some Bible scholars believe that may be what is going on with some of the extreme sounding language present to us in these OT books.  The phrases “destroy all that breathed” and "they utterly destroyed" have counterparts in other Ancient Near Eastern languages of the same period.  It was common to use this as a figure of speech indicating total victory and conquest of another group.  To defend t...

This is part two of a previous post that seeks to understand the nature of the violence of the OT and how we as Christians should understand these often troubling stories.  Two points were covered and in this post point three regarding the charge of genocide is addressed.   3.  Genocide:   Genocide is the charge pinned upon God and Israel by skeptics.  Genocide is the total destruction of a people group solely based on race, and certainly it feels as if this may be happening in the book of Joshua.  But do we really see people groups completely destroyed in acts of total warfare?  No, we don’t.  As seen in the previous point, justice and mercy were given upon the foreigner again and again throughout the Old Testament.  We find evidence of this at the first battle in the Promised Land.   The important city of Jericho is scouted by spies before a battle plan is drawn.  In order to hide from the authorities the Hebrew spies...

How do you reconcile the longsuffering, loving, faithful, merciful God of the Old Testament with the fire and brimstone God of the New Testament? Did the question cause a double-take? This question is usually thought of in reverse, and is asked by Evangelical Bible professor  Dr. David Lamb, the author of God Behaving Badly , in order to make you rethink your perception of God in the Old Testament.   I stumbled upon this book while doing research for our class on Joshua. A class-member asked about the nature of the violence in the book of Joshua and how we reconcile it with the New Testament. This is an important question, and one being posed by the current crop of aggressive atheists as a wedge designed to shatter and disrupt the faith of modern Christians.   The following are a list of thoughts that have been helpful to me as our class has wrestled with these issues. 1.  This issue would not be a concern prior to the coming of Christ.  This is im...