It
was the Lord himself who hardened their hearts to wage war against In John 14:9 we read the words of Jesus: Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. In times past, some people believed the God of the New Testament (Jesus) must be different from and superior to the god of the Old Testament. Jesus was trying to teach us that what we saw in him was what we got in God - they were one and the same (or three-in-one and the same).
I think most biblical scholars and theologians today would prefer to believe that the Old Testament understanding of God was probably immature, needing development. The biblical concept of herem is that God commanded Joshua to totally destroy the inhabitants of Canaan. Some thinkers are questioning if God would do that.
If you want to read more about this, try Greg Boyd's blog Christus Victor. Search for two specific articles that address the concept of violence in the Old Testament: Shedding Light On the Dark Side of God and The Command to Utterly Destroy. Or go to his blog and type herem in the search window. He dedicated a lot of print space to the subject in 2008.
That 6th Commandment sure throws a wrench in the works, doesn’t it?
Do you ever have difficulty reconciling the violence of the Old Testament with the Jesus of the New Testament?
In Joshua 11, it says The LORD said to Joshua, “Do not be afraid of them, because by this time tomorrow I will hand all of them, slain, over to Israel. You are to hamstring their horses and burn their chariots.”
ReplyDeleteI was wondering why God instructed them to hamstring the horses. If everyone was killed and the chariots were burned, what was the need to handicap the horses? I know in other verses they were to hamstring the horses as well. I just don't understand why they had this practice.