Was Yahweh a Benevolent Deity or a Dark Lord?

For Christian and Jewish believers who take the Bible seriously, the question is ridiculous. Of course He is benevolent, and there are plenty of narratives in the Old and New Testaments to demonstrate His care for mankind. On the other hand, the many voices on social media who say He is not benevolent can point to some tough scenes in which Yahweh seems to be a bloody, unforgiving despot. Let's probe a couple of examples:

                                

Noah and the Ark

First, Yahweh miraculously transports two of every animal and insect on the planet to Mesopotamia and sets them up on an ark for a year. Lions, tigers, bears from everywhere, apes and monkeys, panthers from South America, eagles, porcupines, elephants, rabbits from Australia, bees from Europe, all the butterflies, etc. Then he drowns every human being on earth and all other animals and every environment or ecosystem on the planet—the rain forests, the deserts, the forests of what is now the U.S., the Siberian steppes, every bird, every diverse ethnic group. Even the fish suffer when salt and fresh water mix. (Yes, I'm being a little sarcastic here.)

Don’t forget that 8 human beings have to feed and shovel the poop from all these critters, or maybe they’re all in a stupor, frozen for a year. Yeah, that’s pretty mean of the Almighty. (How do you feed a butterfly?)

The reason we don’t need to get too incensed about this tale is that it was originally written in cuneiform script in Sumer when the world was small, civilization was new, and literature was still developing. The hero was a Sumerian, and so was his god and his world, so it was a much simpler narrative. Over the centuries, there would be 6 iterations of that story, each with their own ethnic hero and their own deity, each more elaborate than the former, from Babylonia, Assyria, and finally Israel. Genesis 6–9 is a historical/theological adaption of those ancient religious texts which originally honored foreign gods.

The Hebrew version was probably written by captive scribes living in an Assyrian city in what is now northern Iraq, and its purpose was to assure a conquered and displaced people that their own God is the only One in charge of the planet and will not repeat that apocalypse. The Hebrew's part of the deal is that they must reject violence.

My point is that the ark story isn’t world history. It’s not even physically possible for it to be global history. The biggest difference between the Mesopotamian narratives and the Hebrew adaption is that the reason for the Flood was the sin of violence versus the petty reasons given in other Flood stories (Gen. 6:5–7). The Noah story ends with a promise of renewal and forbearance (Gen. 9:5), and it challenges mankind to account human life as sacrosanct, not to be snuffed out for trivial reasons (Gen. 9:5). In spite of the bad rap this tale has gotten, it was light years more progressive and applicable to today than any of the others that came before it.

One of the best explanations of the linguistic overlap and connections between all these stories is in a book written by Robert MacAndrew Best called Noah’s Ark and the Ziusudra Epic. I have written a 4 part series about the topic. You can begin reading the series here.

                      The Golden Calf, Exodus 32

Let’s examine one more story, without rewriting it to suit our own sensibilities, in which violence and negativity play a major part. A dark narrative in the OT/HB that repels many in our culture today is that of the golden calf.

The Israelites had miraculously escaped Egypt, probably through a region of swamps and lakes north of the Red Sea. Recall that in the narrative, God drowned a whole battalion of Egyptian pursuers on behalf of the terrified refugees. Was that mean of Yahweh? Egypt would happily have slaughtered thousands, maybe all of the Israelites if they could have caught them. On the other hand, Moses reminded the people that Yahweh promised their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that their descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky (not the sky we see today…the stars in their sky where the Milky Way flows clearly from horizon to horizon each night) and that they would inherit the land of Canaan.

God promised them special favor, freedom in a land of abundant resources. Think about the gift for untold generations of the Jewish people involved in that promise! The Israelites were just a vast company of ordinary humans at that point, no holier or finer in character than any other (Deuteronomy 26:5). They were accustomed to worshiping all the same gods as the Egyptians and Canaanites worshiped. Yahweh assigned the task to Moses of turning them into a people with a new singular God to worship, a new law code, a new world view, new ethical standards, and new responsibilities—an almost impossible task.

They were a gigantic mob of many tens of thousands camping in a wilderness they were not accustomed to. They weren’t all Hebrews. A mixed crowd of other slaves tagged along (Exodus 12:38). Moses convinced his Midianite in-laws to travel to Canaan with them (Num. 10:29–33). This is important, because I believe that Jethro and his clan brought their own brand of ritualistic religion with them, and influenced what became established in the Law of Moses.

The refugees still weren’t sure what to expect from their new unelected leader. What do they call Moses? Their king, their prophet, their governor? Local tribal leadership was still being sorted out in the three months it took them to reach Mt. Sinai (Exodus 18:24-26).

There are several incidences of miraculous provision in the wilderness…water from a rock, quail blowing in from the Red Sea, and manna from heaven. Nevertheless, there was plenty of grumbling and complaining. In the crowd, there were conservatives and progressives, cowards and heroes, freedom lovers and complainers, and aggressive leader wanna-be’s. Some would happily have turned back. The possibility of mob rebellion was always an immediate threat.

Moses never applied for the job and didn’t actually want it. He was age 40 to 80 when they camped 40 years in the wilderness. When they finally got to Mt. Sinai, their new divine overlord was terrifying. The people were not to touch the mountain upon pain of death. There were thunderings, lightnings, black smoke, and the blaring sound of a trumpet. God was trying to literally scare the hell out of the people. It sure would have worked on me.

Imagine their distress when Moses marched up the scary, smoking mountain alone with no food or water, no tent, no sacrifice to appease the awesome god, and disappeared for over a month? Feeling abandoned, they forgot all the miracles that brought them thus far and reverted to the bull gods that they were accustomed to. It was waaay more fun that listening to crabby old Moses and his improbable promises.

Then Moses came down to see the orgies and carousing. He was so furious he threw the tablets with the Ten Commandments on the ground and broke them. He screamed and yelled at the rebels, hollered at his brother, and ground the golden calf to dust, but the moment was still a flash point in the Program to grant this people their special status. Moses asked for volunteers, and men of the tribe of Levi stepped forward.

Moses told them to strap on their swords and…what do we call it…you can say that they were freedom fighters, because the future of Israel depended on halting the rebellion by executing the leaders, or you can say that they were just bloody avengers to sate the desire for divine retribution. Do you think the three thousand men who died that day just stood there and said, “OK, I’ve been bad, kill me.” Or that only the tribe of Levites had swords? No, there was a probably a fight. Either that or each tribe gave up the perpetrators, the ones that provoked the rest into rebellion. 

If nothing had happened, the whole program could have crashed. There would quite possibly be no state of Israel today, no Jewish people. Chaos would have reigned. The people might have stoned Moses and Aaron, the miracles and divine guidance would have ceased, the most aggressive leaders would have taken over, and the people may have been slaughtered in the wilderness by the warlike tribes that inhabited the region.

This all made perfect sense to the people who first read these newly written lines. There’s a lot of culture in the words of the Bible. The culture is the ore. The golden vein is the treasure one digs deep to seek. There were times when Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago…” There were other times when he quoted the OT/HB and said, “It is written…” 

Not everything the people were told was from God actually came from God. But some of it was. Embedded in the ore of a very different culture in which kings had the power of life and death in their hands, is the revelation of a Creator who chose a people to love, care for, and engage with in order to transform them. His ultimate purpose was to transform mankind.

The Program was never just about Israel.