Are All of God’s Commands in the Old Testament Moral?

A Recommended Book

Two Main Parts of the Lesson Important principles when dealing with difficult Old Testament Texts A brief analysis of a few of the toughest texts – Is God Sexist? – Does God promote slavery? – What about texts that command violence?

Essential Preliminaries We believe on the basis of what we understand and accept that we will not grasp everything (John 9:25).

John 9:25 He answered, “Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”

Essential Preliminaries We believe on the basis of what we understand and accept that we will not grasp everything (John 9:25). The horrible consequences of rejecting the moral standard that has served our culture for thousands of years. The law of Moses was never meant to reflect God’s ideals (Matthew 19:8).

Matthew 19:3,4 3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?” 4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female,

Matthew 19:5,6 5 and said, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Matthew 19:7 7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?”

Matthew 19:8 8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.”

Hebrews 8:13 In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.

Is the Old Testament “Sexist”? Genesis 1:27 - God created male and female. “Honor your father and your mother” (Gen. 2:24; Ex. 20:12; Lev. 19:3; Prov. 6:20; Prov. 18:22; 19:26; 23:22; 23:25, etc.) Song of Solomon 6:3 – "I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine."

Tough Texts - Deuteronomy 5:11-31 What made the test effective? Was it “Sexist”? - Designed to protect the innocent - The psychological effect - Divine intervention? - The context deals with both men and women (5:2, 5:6; 6:2) - Many texts (like Matthew 19) mention only one sex, but we rightly assume they apply to the other.

Tough Texts - Deuteronomy 21: If a man has two wives, the one loved and the other unloved, and both the loved and the unloved have borne him children, and if the firstborn son belongs to the unloved 16 then on the day when he assigns his possessions as an inheritance to his sons, he may not treat the son of the loved as the firstborn in preference to the son of the unloved, who is the firstborn,

Tough texts - Deuteronomy 21: When you go out to war against your enemies, and the Lord your God gives them into your hand and you take them captive, 11 and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you desire to take her to be your wife, 12 and you bring her home to your house, she shall shave her head and pare her nails.

Tough texts - Deuteronomy 21:13,14 13 And she shall take off the clothes in which she was captured and shall remain in your house and lament her father and her mother a full month. After that you may go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. 14 But if you no longer delight in her, you shall let her go where she wants. But you shall not sell her for money, nor shall you treat her as a slave, since you have humiliated her.

Does the O.T. Promote Slavery? Exodus 21:16 - “ Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death.” Deut. 23:15, 16 “ You shall not give up to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you. He shall dwell with you, in your midst, in the place that he shall choose within one of your towns, wherever it suits him. You shall not wrong him.

How were foreign slaves treated in the Old Testament? A number of texts require kind treatment to foreigners (Deut. 10:19; EX. 23:9; Lev. 19:10, etc.) Naomi and Ruth “acquired” by Boaz. Then he married Ruth! A descendant of Caleb, Shesha, gave his daughter to a foreign servant, Jartha (1 Chronicles. 2:34,35).

Does the N.T. promote slavery? Luke 4:19 - Jesus came to free captives Gal. 3:28, Col. 3:11- Slaves equal with free 1 Tim. 1:10 - Paul condemns “slave trading” (NIV) or “kidnapping.” Rev. 18:13 condemns "Babylon" for trading in "the bodies and souls of men.” The New Testament eroded slavery incrementally, not by social revolution.

“Ethnic Cleansing” in the Conquest? Genesis 15:16 - Conquest delayed until the “iniquity of the Amorite” was full. Some Canaanites spared Paul Copan - “It was unique to Israel at a particular point in time and was not to be repeated in later history by Israel or by other nations. Without God's explicit command (and thus his morally sufficient reasons), attacking the Canaanites would not have been justified.”

Tough Texts - 1 Samuel 15:3 A military operation against a military camp? “Destroy beasts, men, women and children,” an idiomatic expression meaning destroy all? Can some societies reach a point of degradation where the merciful thing is for offspring is to die and go to heaven? Same points can be made regarding Jericho, Ai and other Canaanite cities. (These were obviously military garrisons.)

Tough Texts - Numbers 31:17, 18 The Midianites tried to destroy the Israelites with pagan sex rituals. All males were potential military threats All non virgin women could be moral threats Younger virgins could be integrated into Israelite society (Deut. 21:10-14)

Concluding points All these texts must be interpreted in the light of the fact that God was dealing with a very primitive, violent culture. He was trying to keep them them separate from even worse cultures and move them incrementally towards his ideal. The world is evil and there is a place for wrath against that evil.