The God of the Old Testament
Is the God who commands the conquest of Canaan a "moral monster"? The hardest texts in Scripture deserve an honest look — neither explained away nor used to caricature a God whose self-revelation climaxes in Christ.
Overview
This is the objection Richard Dawkins made famous, and it should not be dodged: the conquest of Canaan, certain laws, and scenes of judgment are genuinely disturbing, and a faith that pretends otherwise isn''t worth trusting. Several things, taken together, reframe them — without pretending every difficulty vanishes.
First, context. The Canaanite practices the texts describe — including child sacrifice — were real and horrific; the conquest is presented as judgment on entrenched, centuries-long evil ("the iniquity of the Amorites," patiently borne for 400 years, Gen 15:16), not ethnic hatred. Israel is explicitly told it is not more righteous and will face the same judgment if it does the same things (Deut 9:4-5) — this is moral, not tribal. Second, genre and rhetoric. Much conquest language ("utterly destroy," "leave nothing alive") is now widely recognized as the stock hyperbole of ancient Near-Eastern war reports — the same texts that say a people was "utterly destroyed" go on to describe them very much alive, signaling decisive defeat rather than literal extermination. Third, accommodation: many troubling laws regulated and restrained brutal ancient practices (slavery, warfare, vengeance) rather than endorsing them, moving a violent culture step by step toward something better, a trajectory that doesn''t stop at Sinai.
And that trajectory is the deepest point. Christians read the whole Bible as a story going somewhere, with Jesus as its interpretive center and climax. The God revealed fully in Christ loves his enemies and dies for them; he tells Peter to put the sword away. The hard texts are real and must be wrestled with, not waved off — but they are early chapters in a story whose author has now shown his face, and that face is the crucified one praying "Father, forgive them."
Wrestling with this
The honest objections — stated fairly, then answered. Doubt isn’t the enemy of faith; it’s often the road into a deeper one. Take these at whatever depth you need today.
How is commanding the slaughter of the Canaanites not just genocide?Honest start
It's the right question to be disturbed by, and three things reframe it without dissolving every difficulty. First, it's framed as judgment on entrenched evil (including child sacrifice) after centuries of patience, not ethnic cleansing — and Israel is warned it will face the same judgment for the same sins, so it's explicitly not about racial superiority (Deut 9:4-5). Second, much of the "utterly destroy / leave nothing alive" language is now widely recognized as the standard hyperbole of ancient war reporting — the same texts then describe the supposedly "destroyed" peoples as still very much present, signaling decisive victory rather than literal extermination. Third, these are real, hard texts embedded in a story moving somewhere: its climax is a Messiah who tells his followers to sheathe the sword and love their enemies. We don't read the conquest as God's last word; we read it in light of his clearest word, the cross.
Genesis 15:16; Deuteronomy 9:4-5; cf. ANE war rhetoric (Hess, Copan)
Doesn't the Bible endorse slavery and the oppression of women?Going deeper
Read carefully, the Bible regulates and humanizes harsh ancient institutions it inherited, and plants seeds that later uproot them — rather than holding them up as God's ideal. Old Testament "slavery" was largely indentured debt-servitude with release laws, rest days, and protections radically more humane than the surrounding cultures (and kidnapping people to sell them is a capital crime, Exod 21:16 — which would condemn the transatlantic slave trade outright). On women: against its patriarchal backdrop, Scripture is startlingly elevating — women as image-bearers, as prophets and leaders (Deborah, Huldah), and a Messiah who treats women with a dignity that scandalized his culture and chose them as the first resurrection witnesses. The trajectory runs toward "there is neither slave nor free... male nor female, for you are all one in Christ" (Gal 3:28) — the very seed that Christians later used to fight slavery. The Bible meets cultures where they are and bends them toward justice; mistaking its starting point for its destination misreads the whole story.
Exodus 21:16; Galatians 3:28; Judges 4-5; John 20:11-18
Where it appears
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Resources, by level
Pastoral
The go-to scholarly-but-readable response to the New Atheist charge against the Old Testament God — slavery, the conquest, and the hard laws, handled head-on.