Why Is the Old Testament So Violent?

The short answer: It’s right to be troubled by the wars in the Old Testament, and you shouldn’t pretend otherwise. But these passages describe God’s judgment on particular nations for terrible evil, after centuries of patience, at one point in history. They are never a command for anyone to follow today, and they point forward to Jesus, who took judgment on Himself.

Read through Joshua or Judges and you’ll hit passages that make you wince. Cities destroyed. Whole peoples driven out. God commanding Israel to go to war. Atheist writers point to these chapters and say, “How can you call that God loving?” And honestly, plenty of Christians have felt the same unease.

This is one of the hardest questions in this book, and you shouldn’t expect a neat answer that makes it all feel comfortable. But there’s a lot more to the story than the critics usually tell.

Look at what was going on

The nations in Canaan weren’t innocent people minding their own business. Their religion included burning their own children alive as offerings to their gods. God told Israel, “They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods” (Deuteronomy 12:31). When God judged them, He was judging a culture that had sacrificed children for generations.

And He waited. Hundreds of years earlier, God told Abraham his descendants would not receive the land yet, “for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Genesis 15:16). God gave those nations about four hundred years to turn around. That’s not the behaviour of a God who loves violence. It’s the behaviour of a patient Judge who finally acts.

Israel wasn’t the hero

This wasn’t about Israel being better than everyone else. God told them bluntly: “It is not because of your righteousness or uprightness of heart that you are going in to possess their land, but it is because of their wickedness” (Deuteronomy 9:5). And when Israel later did the same evil things, God judged Israel too, sending them into exile. God wasn’t playing favourites. He was judging evil wherever He found it.

Mercy in the middle of judgment

Even in Jericho, the first city to fall, there’s a surprise. Rahab, a Canaanite woman, turned to Israel’s God: “the LORD your God is God in the heavens above and on the earth below” (Joshua 2:11). She and her whole family were spared (Joshua 6:25). More than that, she became an ancestor of King David, and of Jesus Himself. Anyone who turned to God could be saved. God says through Ezekiel, “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked should turn from their ways and live” (Ezekiel 33:11).

Reading carefully

Two more things help. First, these battles were specific events at one moment in history, tied to God’s plan to bring a Saviour through Israel. They are never given as a pattern for anyone today. No Christian has any warrant to use them to justify violence. Jesus’ command to His followers is the opposite: “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44).

Second, many Bible scholars point out that ancient war reports often used sweeping language, a bit like a football fan saying “We totally destroyed them.” Joshua says some peoples were wiped out, yet a few chapters later the same peoples are still living in the land (Joshua 23:13). Christians differ on how much weight to put on this, but it’s a reminder to read these accounts as the ancient writing they are.

The cross changes the picture

Still, the hardest part of the question remains: God does judge. The Bible doesn’t hide that. Paul speaks of “the kindness and severity of God” (Romans 11:22). We don’t like the idea of judgment, until we see real evil, like children being sacrificed or people being trafficked or bombed, and then we desperately want someone to put things right. A God who never judged evil wouldn’t be good.

And here’s the heart of it. The whole Bible is heading towards a hill outside Jerusalem where God’s judgment on sin fell, not on a guilty nation, but on His own innocent Son. “God proves His love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). The God of the Old Testament and the God of the cross are the same God, holy and merciful at once.

Think about it: Why do you think we want God to be loving but also want Him to do something about evil? Can He be both?

Go deeper: He Holds My Tomorrows by Gareth Evans — Evans tells the story of the fall of Jericho through the eyes of Rahab, and shows how God’s mercy reached a Canaanite woman in the middle of judgment and wrote her into the family tree of Jesus. Start with chapter 17, “Rahab”.