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Hallo Father Angelo,
and thank you for your kindness in reading this letter of mine.
I am writing to you because when I am asked about the violence present in the Old Testament and God’s role with it, I never know exactly what to answer.
How should we interpret the laws and orders attributed to God that not only allow the use of ferocious violence and justice based more on an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth rather than on forgiveness and compassion, but even encourage atrocities and barbarism against the enemies of Israel, even talking about extermination? How do we followers of Christ make this description of God coexist with that of love and mercy revealed to us by His Son?

Can we say that perhaps the Israelites exploited their privileged relationship with God to justify violence and atrocities, allowing themselves to attribute them to Him, or all of this, even in its harshness, is part of a divine plan aimed at achieving our good also through means unknown to us?
And what might God’s plan have been for all the victims?

Thank you again for your attention and may God always keep you,

Riccardo

Priest’s answer

Dear Riccardo,
1. when reading the Old Testament it is necessary to remember two things above all.

The first: God’s revelation is progressive.

The second: very often anthropomorphic language is used whereby when speaking of God he is presented in a human way: a God who gets angry, a God who changes his mind and repents, a God who commands the extermination of entire populations, including women and children .

2. regarding the progressiveness of revelation it must be kept in mind that God addresses himself in such a way as to make himself understood by those populations who are still quite primitive.

Very often completely immoral facts are narrated as if they were the most logical thing in the world. While the deeper meaning demonstrates that when man distances himself from God he degrades to the point of mistaking evil for good.

God bends over this humanity and gradually (here is the progressive revelation) leads it to salvation.

3. furthermore we need to consider the literary genre of Old Testament writings,in particular the so-called anthropomorphic language.

So for example regarding original sin we read that “The Lord God then called to the man and asked him, “Where are you?” (Gn 3,9). Could it be that he did not know?
By the same token: “Who told you that you were naked? You have eaten, then, from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat!” (Gn 3,11).
In reference to the construction of the Tower of Babel we read that the ‘’Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men had built.’’ (Gn 11,5).
The same thing happens for the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah equally:“I must go down and see whether or not their actions fully correspond to the cry against them that comes to me. I mean to find out!” (Gn 18,21).
We know that God is omniscient, but in these texts he is presented as one who asks to make man aware of the evil he has done. The same thing must also be said for wars. The command of war and his desire to exterminate the entire population are put in the mouth of God.

4. It should also be remembered that in those days the law of retaliation which sounds like this was in force: “Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, and foot for foot!” (Dt 19,21).
This law of retaliation, which is horrendous for us, instead constituted a mitigation towards the previous barbarity, when the evil suffered was avenged seven times as much and even more, as emerges from these statements: “If anyone kills Cain, Cain shall be avenged sevenfold” (Gn 4,15). And: “If Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-sevenfold” (Gn 4,24).
The law of retaliation was applied not only to individuals but also to communities.

5. In Ezekiel we even read that God said: “Therefore I gave them statutes that were not good, and ordinances through which they could not live.” (Ez 20,25).
Here the Jerusalem Bible notes: “Primitive theology attributes to Jawhé the institutions and deformations for which men are actually responsible. Ezekiel seems to be referring here to the prescription to offer the firstborn (Ez 22:28-29), which the Israelites often interpreted with outrageous materialism.”(t.ed.)

6. But then a word must also be said about narratives that are historical only in appearance.
At the beginning of the last century, it was submitted to the judgment of the Pontifical Biblical Commission whether there were historical narratives in the Holy Scriptures only in appearance. The answer was given on 23 June 1905.
Here is how E. Galbiati and A. Piazza present it in a nutshell: “Naturally the Commission replied that this supposition cannot be accepted as a general principle, to be applied indiscriminately to the historical books of the Bible. And in this the answer is fully justified also from a strictly scientific and methodological point of view.

The disapproved principle would in fact have resolved any historical difficulties right from the start, dispensing with an in-depth investigation of the issue.
However, in its prudence, the Commission did not exclude that there may be some rare cases in which “the hagiographer did not want to present a real story, but intended to propose under the guise and form of a story a parable or allegory or a meaning however different from the strictly literal or historical meaning of the words”. It only required that this intention of the inspired author, perhaps demonstrated, consolidate arguments’’. (Pagine difficili dell’Antico Testamento, pp.53-54, t.n).

7. Jesus Christ overcame the law of retaliation, especially in the Sermon on the Mount with his famous: ‘’You have heard that it was said…. But I say to you’’.
Therefore many realities of the Old Testament must be read remembering what Saint Augustine said about Genesis: “It is the book of God’s patience towards men”.
And it is the same thing as what the Lord is doing with each of us. Our whole life is the story of God’s patience towards us.

I bless you, I wish you all the best and I remember you in prayer.
Father Angelo