When God Commands Violence

On Sunday we had some lively interaction around this passage where God commands Moses to kill off a bunch of people:

-Then Moses said to them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’... that day about three thousand of the people died. - Exodus 32:27-28

One way or the other, this is a disturbing text. It reminds us of God commanding the Canaanite genocide in Deuteronomy 7 and so many other violent texts (think: the whole book of Joshua, as God’s people conquer the promised land). What do we do with how scripture portrays God’s violence towards people?

One of the things we talked about Sunday was how having a high view of scripture does not necessarily mean that we think that God actually commanded violence. We can believe (and many of us do) that the scriptures we have are exactly the scriptures God wanted us to have. But part of what God hopes for us is that we would see passages like this one and think, “But wait, that’s not what God is like!”

Then we get to rethink the surface reading of the text… and we find ourselves wondering if perhaps what’s going on here is that Moses (not unlike the people earlier) is prone to self-deception. He feels so disrespected by the people and their golden calf that he attributes his anger to God. So perhaps it’s Moses’s idea to kill the people - but he says it’s God’s idea. If we’re honest with ourselves, we do this all the time - pretending some selfish idea is God’s idea in order to justify acting on it.

What do you think about that approach to scripture - does it seem too freewheeling? Does it square with how you see God? With how you see scripture?

Talk with Jesus about the things that are going on in your head right now.