The morality of the Old Testament God is justified by his holiness

Most people appreciate the good character of Jesus to one degree or another. He healed people, was as receptive to sinners as to saints – if not more so – preached love to one’s enemies and charity toward the poor, the fatherless, widows, and those who are suffering. It may explain why Muslims are also eager to laud Jesus. Even Hindus and Buddhists, political parties and activists, claim him as one of their own.

This is not, however, the case with the God of the Old Testament. It is often claimed that this God is trigger-happy in his eagerness to “smite” as he shows anger toward the slightest misdeed. Examples might include when God strikes priests down for using the wrong kind of fire, allows Satan to kill Job’s entire family just to test him, or sends a “lying spirit” to deceive King Ahab into pursuing a fatal war.

Does the OT God exist?

To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, it is foolish to say that the actions or commands of God within the Old Testament somehow serve as evidence against his existence. This does not work as an argument for two reasons. The first is that if the events recorded in the Old Testament really happened, God must exist by necessity. If we conclude that, because of these events, God does not exist, then the events themselves are fictional, and no longer serve as evidence against God.

It is entirely possible that a God exists who does and says things one finds unlikeable. It is also possible that the events recorded in the Old Testament do not reflect historical reality, and God continues to exist. It is not, however, possible for the events in the Old Testament to be historical and also for God to not exist. This is a poor line of argument.

Nevertheless, the argument continues to have persuasive power to those who have been taught that the Bible must be completely accurate in order for God to exist, and that God must be a very likeable, grandfatherly character composed of pure love and wanting everyone to have their every desire fulfilled.

All too frequently, defenders of the Bible try to take these stories and dress them up to be friendly and cosy. This is likely in response to the sceptic’s attempt to take the least charitable read possible on these stories. I argue that it is possible – even likely – that God’s commands and decisions are

not always comfortable or even likeable. But if likeability was the benchmark for existence, most things in life would be disliked out of existence.

Is the Old Testament moral?

Moral objections to the Old Testament, which are separate from historical or scientific objections to the Old Testament, fall under a variety of categories. We are not, here, interested in the despicable deeds of Old Testament characters, including Lot’s incestuous relationship with his daughters, David’s murderous affair with his neighbour’s wife, or the dismemberment and public display of a concubine in the book of Judges. Stomach-turning and rage-inducing as these deeds may be, the Bible does not endorse or recommend these behaviours to its readers. Instead, they are just descriptive of human behaviour throughout history, and are not significantly different than the sort of unpleasant stories which lead the nightly news. In other words, they are descriptive rather than prescriptive.

Here we intend to address the commands, deeds, and descriptions of God which have been framed in a way that is poorly received by modern audiences in terms of their moral ramifications.

Cultural context

Atheist commentators occasionally suggest that, if God had been the author of the Bible, he would have inserted some quantum physics or advanced medical knowledge in order to prove it wasn’t written by Bronze Age shepherds. Yet God acted as was appropriate to his audience. As important as it has been to generations since, the Bible was revealed to and written by a particular audience at a particular time in history. God related to his audience in a way that they would understand and respect. The many shepherd metaphors one finds in Old Testament poetry, for instance, were very appropriate for the audience whose knowledge was almost exclusively concerned with animal husbandry. Moral commands in the Levitical law concerning fencing around the roof of one’s house were very appropriate for a time and place when houses were cubes made from mud brick and people spent a good deal of time relaxing or sleeping on the roof.

God frequently asked prophets to make bizarre life choices, such as intentionally marrying a harlot, or act out bizarre pantomimes, such as burrowing a hole through the wall of their house. Such acts make little sense to the modern reader. To the people at the time and in the culture to which it was written, they would have been very meaningful. The 21st Century reader is disadvantaged by a certain self-centeredness and chronological snobbery which suggests that all other people groups in all other times in history were ignorant and inferior.

However, the modern reader is also blessed by a wealth of resources which allow him or her to learn about the history of the ancient Semitic people. Once the modern reader familiarises him or herself with these ancient cultures, a good deal of the Old Testament becomes less confusing, offensive, or bizarre. In fact, it begins to make a great deal more sense.

To take an example, consider the case of poor Tamar in Genesis 38. The story begins with God putting her husband to death for some wickedness. The story isn’t specific as to what her husband did to deserve death, so objections to this instance of lethal punishment cannot be addressed.

After Tamar’s husband dies, her father-in-law commands her husband’s brother to “perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her.” Her brother-in-law, Onan, went to Tamar and the two had relations, but Onan famously “spilled his seed on the ground,” and God killed him for this crime. The story continues in this fashion, and ends with Tamar disguising herself as a prostitute, deceiving her father-in-law into having relations, and bearing a son as a result of the deed. For this, she is commended by her humbled father-in-law as being more righteous than he.

The story seems so bizarre and morally suspect to modern eyes that it is frequently shown as an example of immoral Old Testament shenanigans. Yet a familiarity with the historical and cultural context makes the story more sensible.

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Consider a time, place, and culture wherein legacy was everything. Life spans were short, and one’s land, possessions, honour, and accomplishments were carried on by one’s sons. This was true not only of the men, but of women as well. With no 401Ks or retirement homes, one had to rely on the generosity of one’s offspring to be cared for in one’s old age.

With women having so little in the way of rights or privileges in this time and culture, being childless was a mark of shame, and having sons was the only way of having both honour and legacy.

At this point alone, the modern reader is likely to pause and condemn the Bible for all manner of sexism, discrimination, and degradation of women. However, this is an instance in which the Bible is describing rather than prescribing a way in which ancient cultures operated, and history will bear out that this description is accurate.

When poor Tamar’s husband died, he left her as a childless widow, which was almost a death sentence for a woman in that time and culture. Fortunately, the culture had a solution to this exact problem. The brother of the deceased would wed the widow and give her children. This would carry on her original husband’s legacy, so she would be well-provided for.

In this story, Onan took advantage of his sister-in-law, but intentionally avoided getting her pregnant because he didn’t want to provide his brother offspring and legacy out of sheer pride. God, lover of the orphan and the widow, was angered at this.

Tamar’s father-in-law was duty-bound to care for her interests for the sake of his son, but did not do so. Tamar was left no recourse but duplicity as a means of gaining offspring from her father-in-law. In deceiving her father-in-law and getting pregnant by way of deception, she was provided for, and God blessed this deed for her benefit.

Explaining this story in the context of the culture and challenges for women at that time may do nothing to make it more palatable to a modern reader, but this likely has more to do with a distaste for the way in which women were treated at that time and place. The modern reader would prefer God snap his fingers and create an equitable society all at once rather than work within the existing social structure to care for poor Tamar. And this brings us into our next point.

Progressive Moral Knowledge

Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg famously observed that people tend to gradually develop and deepen their understanding of morality over their lives. A very young child, for instance, only understands “right” and “wrong” in terms of punishment and reward. The child asks for a biscuit rather than simply taking it, because asking gets her a biscuit, whereas taking it gets her hand smacked.

It is fascinating to note, then, that God frames the very first rule to the innocent Adam and Eve in terms of punishment and reward: “you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die” (Genesis 2:17, NIV). This was the only concept a couple of innocent babes in the woods could understand. Much later, the Apostle Paul would write a lengthy theological dissertation on the crushing responsibility that comes with the knowledge of moral law, but Adam and Eve were nowhere near sophisticated enough in their moral knowledge to understand such things.

Beyond Adam and Eve, the God of scripture seems to construct his laws and frame his commands in the format that best suits his audience’s growing understanding of morality and consequences. In the New Testament, as Jesus and the apostles look back on the Old Testament Law, they explain how this Law was tailored to its audience so that, although God’s law is permanent and unchanging, it was broken down over time to a format that human beings of the time could understand.

Jesus, for instance, explains to his audience how God compromised on some laws because his audience was not yet mature enough to handle morality in a purer form:

“And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.” (Matthew 19:3-9 ESV)

What follows is even more telling. The disciples say to Jesus, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” Jesus does not disagree, but rather responds with: “Not everyone can

receive this saying, but only those to whom it has been given.” The disciples seem to have stumbled upon yet another moral law which is too sophisticated for the current audience.

Kohlberg’s stages of moral development progress from the very innocent “wrong is what gets me punished,” to the slightly more sophisticated “right is whatever doesn’t get me in trouble,” to “right is whatever other people expect of me,” to “right is what benefits the people around me,” to “right is whatever makes others feel good,” to “there are universal principles that transcend individuals and society.”

Moral obligations

As one studies the development of moral principles through the pages of scripture, it is clear that God is sensitive to the maturity of his audience, and expresses the moral law in terms that may be understood by his audience. When the audience only understands right and wrong in terms of reward and punishment (as is the case through much of the Old Testament), these are the terms in which God deals. As scripture progresses, so does the depth of the moral understanding until, at the end, the audience is instructed to internalise the principles and values of Christ.

Whilst many of the commandments of the Old Testament have been mocked and satirised by questions such as: “Why would God condemn eating the fruit of knowledge? Is he afraid of people knowing things? Why would God punish building a tower? Why is wearing mixed fabrics and eating shellfish on the same level of moral evil as murder?” – there are plenty of moral commandments upon which folks generally agree. God doesn’t like arrogance, and neither do we. “Thou shalt not murder” seems relatively uncontroversial. And while exceptions can always be found, we generally agree that dishonesty, theft, and disloyalty are less than optimal behaviour.

Yet here an inconsistency appears to arise. The God who says “I resist the proud but give grace to the humble” seems to be quite arrogant himself in claiming that heaven is his throne and the earth is his footstool, and his ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts than our thoughts, or that King David ought to be punished for trusting in the strength of his armies rather than the strength of his God.

The same God who condemns murder floods the world and wipes out its inhabitants, pours out fire and brimstone on cities he doesn’t like, and commands Israel’s armies to annihilate its enemies.

In other words, God doesn’t always seem to abide by his own moral laws. And this seems to form the core of the objections to the Old Testament God. Our New Testament Jesus humbly bowed to wash feet, rebuked his disciples for daring to suggest that he should pour fire down on the towns that rejected him, healed crowds of invalids, and welcomed little children to sit upon his lap. Why could the Old Testament God not be a bit more like the New Testament Jesus?

To understand how God could be both morally good and also not behave towards humans the way that he insists they behave towards one another, it is important to understand differences in moral obligations.

God is a different kind of thing than human beings.

When a mother snake eats one of her hatchling babies, one does not become outraged at the moral wrong performed by that snake. However a human mother who did the same thing would be judged as both morally monstrous and mentally unsound. This is because humans are different kinds of things than are serpents, and are held to different standards of behaviour.

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Even within human society, moral duties and obligations have a great deal to do with relationships. If a child is throwing a tantrum in a store, and a stranger grabs the child and scolds her, this is very likely to get the stranger in legal trouble. However society takes a dim view of a mother who allows her child to act out in public without some kind of effort to correct her.

A doctor who fails to treat a man suffering a terminal illness is being irresponsible. A conspiracy theorist on the internet who offers treatment for the dying man is being irresponsible as well.

And so we see that the actions and responsibilities that are considered to be moral duties differ depending on the nature, relationship, and knowledge of the person in question.

God, being greater than humans just as humans are greater than insects, does not owe humans anything, as is repeatedly stated throughout the Bible. Consequently, when God does good things for humans, it is an act of superfluous generosity, not obligation.

The reason that Jesus acted a great deal more like the moral commands would insist that we act is that Jesus, whatever else he may have been, was a human being. While God is not held accountable to the same moral laws as humans, Jesus was. And as such, he kept the moral law more diligently than any other human in history.

The purity of God

God’s holiness is the essence of his being. It describes at once his purity and his inherent power. This combination is perhaps best symbolised when Isaiah describes his encounter with God in the temple. He, like many prophets before him, falls down and moans that he will surely die, seeing God. Why would seeing God kill him? Because he is impure, he says. To cure him of this handicap, angels burn his impurities with fire. And this is the essence of holiness: God’s purity cannot endure any impurity.

This is not an instance of God being overly harsh: holiness is his very nature. The goodness of God cannot endure evil or impurity of any sort. As an example, priests with the slightest impurity –

soiled hands, missing fingers, skin lesions, and the like – were not permitted by Old Testament Law to enter the Most Holy Place to bring sacrifices to God.

This is likely why God frequently operates through proxies: angels and prophets – rather than directly interacting with people in most scriptures.

Given that God precedes all things, created all things, is pure and perfect, and is greater than all things by his very perfection, it is not too much for him to destroy all things which offend his purity. The fact that God allows the very obviously imperfect people and nations to run about doing bad things for so long before bringing judgement upon them throughout scripture merely confirms his name as he described it to Moses in the cleft of Mount Sinai:

“The Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” (Exodus 34:6-7 ESV)

Eagle-eyed readers will note the apparent contradiction here: God simultaneously announces he is full of love and forgiveness, and that he does not clear the guilty and punishes them for generations.

This is the conflict which appears to exist between God’s holiness and his love. This conflict was ultimately resolved in the work of Christ. In his death and resurrection, Christ absorbed the guilt and punishment of humans – satisfying God’s holiness – and created a means by which God could both punish and also forgive without contradiction.

Joel Furches is an apologist, journalist and researcher on conversion and deconversion, based in the USA.