God's Problem (9 page)

Illustration: Some Familiar Stories from the Beginning

In some ways the major themes of the Pentateuch are encapsulated in the story of Adam and Eve told at its beginning. The Pentateuch is about God’s relation to the human race he created and the people (of Israel) he specifically chose: he made them his people and gave them his laws; they broke his laws and so he punished them. History “works” for the authors of the Pentateuch in relationship to God: the experiences of the people of Israel on earth are determined by their relationship to the God who called them from heaven. Those who obey God are blessed (Abraham); those who disobey him are cursed (the people of Sodom and Gomorrah). Suffering comes not because of the vicissitudes of history but because of the will of God.

The entire account—all five books—is prefaced with the familiar story of Adam and Eve. Adam is created first and told that he can eat the fruit of any tree in the Garden of Eden except the tree “of the knowledge of good and evil”—if he eats from that tree, he “shall die” (Gen. 2:17). Eve is then formed from the rib of Adam, and they start life together in the utopian garden.

But, we’re told, the serpent in the garden was “more crafty than any animal” and tempted Eve, telling her that eating the forbidden fruit (it is not said to be an apple) would not lead to death but would allow human beings to “be like God.” The woman succumbs to the serpent’s temptation. (The serpent is not said to be Satan, by the way: that’s a later interpretation. This is a real snake. With legs.) She eats the fruit and gives some to Adam, who eats as well. Big mistake.

When God appears (walking through the garden in the cool evening breeze), he realizes what they have done and calls down punishment on all three of them: serpent, Eve, and Adam (3:14–19). The serpent will from now on slither on the ground (his legs are removed). More significant, Eve will now experience excruciating pain in childbirth as the result of her sin.

By all accounts (I base this on hearsay), childbirth is about the most painful experience a human can have; they tell me that passing a kidney stone is comparable, but frankly, as one who has never had that little pleasure (and who will certainly never have the other), I have to say that I have trouble believing it. In any event, it may be hard for us to imagine how childbirth would be possible
without
pain, but in this story the pain is the result of disobedience, come as punishment from God.

So too Adam is cursed. Instead of simply collecting fruit from trees in the garden, he will have to work the soil with the sweat of his brow. From now on, life will be hard and survival iffy. This is a permanent form of suffering, incurred as the price of disobedience. The tone of the rest of the Bible has now been set.

One way to read Genesis is to see a connection between this first act of disobedience and the rotten results that follow: the entire human race, sprung from disobedient parents, is filled with sin. It gets so bad that God decides to destroy the world and start over. And so we have the account of Noah’s ark and the flood: “The L
ORD
saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that the inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually” (6:5). And so he decides to judge the lot of them, and to “blot out from the earth the human beings I have created” (6:6), along with all the animals, “for I am sorry that I have made them.” It’s not clear what the animals have done to deserve death, but human beings at least are being punished for their wickedness. Only Noah and his family are miraculously saved; everyone else was drowned by the divine flood that God sent.

Most of us know someone who has drowned, and we have thought with agony about their final moments. It is not a pleasant way to go. But an entire world drowned? Why? Because God was angry. Disobedience needs to be punished and so God killed off nearly the entire human race. Predictors of Armageddon think he will do it again—not with water (God promised not to do that again; 9:11) but by war. Others, of course, refuse to believe in a God who is determined to exterminate the people he created because he disapproves of how they behave.

One final story, again from Genesis. The world gets repopulated, but again almost everyone is wicked. So God chooses one man, Abraham, to be in a special relationship with him. Abraham has a nephew named Lot who lives in the city of Sodom, which is otherwise filled with truly nasty people. God decides to destroy the place; Abraham argues with him and gets him to agree that if there are just ten righteous people who live there he won’t destroy it. In this back-and-forth with his chosen one, God has an ace up his sleeve: he knows full well there aren’t ten righteous people in the city: just Lot, his wife, and two daughters. And so God sends his two avenging angels into town. The townsfolk, showing their unrestrained depravity, think that these are human visitors and come to Lot’s house at night demanding that he release the strangers to them so that they can gang-rape them. Lot, in a curious move, driven by ancient codes of hospitality, offers his two virgin daughters instead. Luckily, the two angels intervene. The next day the family flees the city and God destroys it with fire and brimstone. Lot’s wife does not obey the angels’ instruction, though; she looks back to see the destruction and is turned into a pillar of salt (19:24–26). On every level, disobedience brings punishment.

At the End of the Pentateuch

A similar theme drives the narrative of all five books of the Pentateuch. In some ways it comes to a climax in the final book, Deuter
onomy. The title of this book literally means “second law”; in fact, it is not a second law that is given in the book—instead, the book describes the second time the Law was given to the children of Israel by the prophet Moses. The narrative sequence works like this. In the book of Exodus God saved Israel from its slavery in Egypt and miraculously allowed it to escape the pursuing armies of Pharaoh at the Red Sea (or sea of reeds). He then led the people to Mount Sinai, where he gave them his Law (Exodus and Leviticus). The people were to march north and enter the promised land. When they came to the edge of the land and sent out scouts, however, the spies came back warning that the Israelites would not be able to conquer the land because the inhabitants were too fierce (Numbers 13–14). Because the people refused to believe that God would be behind them to do what he commanded—take the land and destroy its inhabitants—God punished the children of Israel by refusing to allow any of them to enter the promised land (sin brings punishment). As he tells Moses: “None of the people who have seen my glory and the signs that I did in Egypt…and have not obeyed my voice shall see the land that I swore to give to their ancestors” (Num. 14:22–23).

And so God had the people of Israel wander in the wilderness for forty years, until the entire generation (except for the one faithful spy, Caleb, and the new Israelite commander, Joshua, Moses’ successor) died off. After forty years, God ordered Moses to deliver to the people—who had not been there the first time around—the Law he had received on Mount Sinai forty years earlier. The book of Deuteronomy narrates Moses’ regiving of the Law.

Near the end of the book, after Moses has delivered the commandments and ordinances, he tells the people in clear and forthright terms that if they want to succeed and prosper under God’s guiding hand, they will obey the Law. If, however, they disobey, they will be cursed to experience horrible and excruciating suffering. Deuteronomy 28 is key to understanding the entire theology of the book, for here the “blessings and cursings” are set out in graphic terms, as Moses tells the people:

Moses goes on to indicate that if the people obey the Law, they will defeat all their enemies in battle, they will have bounteous crops, they will prosper and thrive. On the other hand, if they disobey, they can expect just the opposite:

And so there it is. Why does disaster strike God’s people? Why do they experience epidemics and disease? Why are there droughts and failed crops, and military defeat and mental illness, and all the
other woes experienced by the people of God? God is punishing them for disobedience. This is the prophetic view of suffering put into a historical narrative.

Other Historical Books of Scripture

The prophetic view is not confined to the book of Deuteronomy; it also dominates the great bulk of the other historical narratives of the Old Testament, most of which were highly influenced by the theology of Deuteronomy. Six large narratives following Deuteronomy—Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, and 2 Kings—are referred to by scholars as the Deuteronomistic History, because it has long been known (or at least thought) that these books were written by an author or authors who accepted the basic perspectives found in Deuteronomy and allowed these perspectives to guide their accounts of the Israelites’ history in the centuries following Moses (roughly 1250 BCE).
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As previously indicated, these books narrate how the people finally conquered the promised land (Joshua), how the tribes of Israel lived as separate communities before a king was appointed over them all (Judges), how the kings Saul, David, and Solomon came to rule over all of Israel (1 and 2 Samuel; 1 Kings), and then how the kingdom was divided after Solomon’s death, up until the destruction of the northern kingdom by the Assyrians in 722
BCE
and the destruction of the southern kingdom by the Babylonians in 586
BCE
(1 and 2 Kings). These six biblical books, then, cover the history of Israel over a seven-hundred-year period. And in them, one perspective dominates the entire narrative. It is the perspective of sin and punishment: when Israel obeys God, follows his will, and keeps his Law, it prospers and thrives; when it disobeys, it is punished. Finally it pays the ultimate price of disobedience: it is destroyed by foreign armies.

This perspective is found in each of the books of the Deuteronomistic History. The book of Joshua records how the ragtag army of the Israelites was able to conquer and take possession of the
promised land. At the very beginning the tone of the account is set. God tells Joshua to go into the land and take it over, and he delivers to him this promise:

This is what in fact happens, as seen in the very first battle scene, the famous battle of Jericho. How are the Israelites to conquer such a well-fortified city? Simply by following God’s instructions. Joshua is ordered to have the warriors of Israel march around the city’s walls once a day for six days. On the seventh day they are to march around seven times, and then have the trumpets blown, and “the walls’ll come a’-tumblin’ down.” They do so and it works. The walls fall, the warriors enter the city—and they murder every man, woman, child, and animal in the city (with the exception of the prostitute Rahab and her family). A complete and resounding victory (Josh. 6).

Anyone interested in the problem of suffering might wonder, of course, about the inhabitants of Jericho. For the God of Israel, these were foreigners who worshiped foreign gods, and so were fit for nothing but destruction. But one might want to think about all the innocents who were murdered. Is this really what God is like, one who orders the slaughter of those who are outside his people? It is not as if the people of Jericho were given the chance to think things over or turn to him. They were all slaughtered, even the infants, in a divinely appointed bloodbath.