Violence in the Old Testament

The Old Testament contains orders of genocide attributed to God. How can we read this in the light of Jesus, who commanded us to love our enemies?

The Concept of Herem (The Extermination)

The Hebrew word herem is often translated as 'utterly destroy'. The concept is firmly embedded in a cultic context - connected with admonitions to abstain from non-Yahwist cults and destroy non-Yahwist cultic objects. The main objective of the expulsion of the Canaanites is the destruction of their cult and the protection of Israelite identity.

Four Academic Approaches

Scholar Charlie Trimm, in The Destruction of the Canaanites: God, Genocide, and Biblical Interpretation (Eerdmans), identifies four main approaches:

1. •Reevaluate God: Conclude that God is not good.
2. •Reevaluate the OT: Conclude that the OT is not a faithful record of God's actions.
3. •Reevaluate the Interpretation: Conclude that the OT does not actually describe something like genocide.
4. •Reevaluate the Nature of Violence: Conclude that mass killing was permitted at that specific time in history.

The Hyperbolic Language

John H. Walton observes: 'The rhetoric of conquest accounts of the Ancient Near East often employed hyperbolic language to describe the complete annihilation of enemies, but this was not to be taken literally.'

##Christocentric Reading

Jesus is the final and perfect revelation of God (Hebrews 1:1-3). If an OT image of God contradicts Jesus, Jesus has the final say. 'You have heard that it was said... But I tell you.'

Pedagogical Accommodation

God revealed Himself progressively, meeting humanity where they were (in tribal and violent cultures) and slowly guiding them to the full truth of non-violent love.

Historical Answers

Marciao was most disturbed by this dilemma, but his proposed resolution - denying that the OT God was the same as the Christian God - was soon condemned as heretical. Origen argued both that the texts were metaphorical and that they represented a different stage of development. Augustine suggested resolving the perceived contradiction through divine command theory.

Eric Seibert's Proposal: The Textual God versus the Real God

Biblical scholar Eric Seibert, in his work Disturbing Divine Behavior (Fortress Press), proposes a hermeneutical distinction of growing academic influence: the difference between the 'textual God' — the divinity portrayed in specific and violent passages of Scripture — and the 'real God', revealed fully and definitively in the person and teachings of Jesus Christ. According to Seibert, the descriptions of genocide and ethnic cleansing in the Old Testament reflect the cultural and sociopolitical conditioning of its writers, immersed in the militaristic brutalities typical of the Ancient Near East. These authors, intertwined in tribal and national conflicts, retroactively projected their murderous categories onto divine oracles. The proposed hermeneutical solution is not to discard the OT, but to apply a mature Christocentric reading: where a textual portrait of God radically contradicts the character of Jesus — who commanded to love his enemies, forgave his tormentors and rejected violence — it is Jesus who has the final word, according to Hebrews 1:1-3. This approach avoids both Marcionism (rejecting the OT altogether) and naive literalism (taking extermination edicts as eternally valid commandments).

Academic Sources

• •Trimm, Charlie. The Destruction of the Canaanites. Eerdmans, 2022.
• •Britannica - Herem
• •Britannica - Biblical Literature: Critical Issues
• •Eerdmans - Show Them No Mercy