An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 33: Is God an abuser, or simply clueless about humans? (Deuteronomy 6-10)

Deuteronomy 6-10
Is God an abuser, or simply clueless about humans?

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.
For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT
For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Deuteronomy 6
“Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it; that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily, as the LORD God of thy fathers hath promised thee, in the land that floweth with milk and honey.”

There’s not a lot to this chapter, it’s basically a re-iteration of the covenant between God and the Israelites, setting out what the Israelites will get in return for diligently keeping their side of the covenant, with some reminders and warnings about what happened the last few times that they wavered. That said, there’s some good rhetoric employed here that really hammers home how all-pervading the covenant is meant to be, thought of all the time.

Deuteronomy 7

“And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them:”

The Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Jebusites, Canaanites, Perrizites and Hivites are doomed. God exhorts the Israelites to destroy them, bit by bit, to melt down their idols and not to intermarry, and there is some re-iteration of the liberation from Egypt as proof that He can do these things (conveniently omitting the bit between the rise of Joseph and the enslavement of the Israelites where God seemed to forget about them…).

This is one of those concepts where me and the OT part company, for two reasons. One is the genocide of these people for no good reason; they aren’t even depicted as especially wicked or sinful, and if they worship the “wrong” gods then can they not be converted? Which leads to the second problem for me – if the God of the Israelites is so powerful, and not only that, the only true god, why be “jealous” of empty idols? Why fear cultural contamination with these nations which will, according this chapter, lead to the Israelites worshipping other gods? If Yahweh is such a great and good god, why would they? Why would it not work the other way around? Should God not be exhorting the Israelites to proselytise to the heathens? But of course, at this stage in the proceedings God has hitched himself to the Israelites and death to all who stand in the way; we’ve a long way to go before Paul preaching to the Gentiles.

Deuteronomy 8

“And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldst keep his commandments, or no.”

This chapter is God reminding the Israelites of their sojourn in the wilderness, and pointing out that it was to humble them and remind them that all their success and survival was entirely due to God’s will. It closes with a warning for the Israelites not to lose sight of this once they enter the promised lands and begin to prosper and live in ease. A pretty straightforward moral warning here, if somewhat disturbingly controlling. Of note is the appearance of "man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live” – so that’s where that saying comes from.

Deuteronomy 9
“Speak not thou in thine heart, after that the LORD thy God hath cast them out from before thee, saying, For my righteousness the LORD hath brought me in to possess this land: but for the wickedness of these nations the LORD doth drive them out from before thee.”

Okay, so what I said before for Chapter 7 comes back to me here. God is not granting the land to the Israelites because they are good, but he is taking it from the other nations because they are wicked. And in fact all the various infractions of the Israelites are thrown back at them again – doubting in Hebron when they feared the wilderness compared to Egyptian slavery, the incident with the Golden Calf (where Moses had to starve for forty days and nights twice because he broke his stone tablets he was so angry) and then being faint-hearted on the edge of the promised land (even though this chapter begins with a reminder of how fearsome the Anakim are). It’s a strange message and not for the first time I wonder why God has chosen the Israelites and stuck with them. I suppose it could be argued that that is the point,  that God believes in you even if you are a pain in the neck; but in which case what did the Hivites and the Amorites etc. do to deserve being wiped out, as it is hardly their fault if God has not chosen them.

Deuteronomy 10

“At that time the LORD said unto me, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first, and come up unto me into the mount, and make thee an ark of wood.”

Okay, this chapter kind of answers my question from the end of the last. It would seem that it was because God loved Abraham, and Isaac and Jacob, that their descendants were chosen. Why that was I’m still not sure, but at least there’s an answer of sorts. This chapter partly revises the creation of the ark of the covenant and the separation of the Levites but also, for almost the first time, portrays God in a protective light, offering succor to widows and orphans, and urging kindness to strangers, in return for keeping the covenant. An interesting line “circumcise the foreskin of your heart”, which almost seems to be that spiritual allegiance is preferable to a physical act without meaning it in your heart, but then perhaps I’m misreading. Quite New Testament-y this last bit. Some quite nice rhetoric here, as has been the case in Deuteronomy “He is thy praise, and he is thy God, that hath done for thee these great and terrible things, which thine eyes have seen.”

Some of it still strikes me, I’m afraid, as fairly classical abuser tactics, telling the victim “I can be nice, if you’d only behave”, but I also had a thought on considering this, that a god can’t fully comprehend human thought. It’s all very well for an eternal immortal to tell people it’s in their best interests to wander out into a desert with no source of food or water, but it’s hardly surprising that the Israelites should complain. Which is one reason I suppose the New Testament God is a bit less quick to anger and judge, having experienced humanity first-hand He has a better idea of hunger and thirst and fear and pain. Just a thought.