We have previously considered how Joshua led what could justifiably be called a genocide when conquering the promised land. But the violence of the Old Testament is not confined to Joshua's time. Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel and Hosea all celebrate violence in God's name. Genocide, infanticide, cannibalism and rape are all seemingly sanctioned by God in the relevant Old Testament passages. Over a hundred passages in the Old Testament have God commanding humans to kill. Over a thousand passages in the Old Testament describe violence done in God's name.
And this supposedly God sanctioned violence has been continued by down through history. So we discover Christian crusades slaughtering Muslims 'in Jesus name', Oliver Cromwell slaughtering Roman Catholics while calling them 'Canaanites', and British settlers in North America murdering indigenous indian tribespeople calling them 'Canaanites'.
As recently as 1994 during the Rwandan Genocide, the Tutsi's referred to the Hutu's as 'Canaanites'.
So now we come to the question - how can we accurately handle the word of truth? How can the Bible, the scriptures, be the word of God to us when it contains so much conflicting morality. Maybe we understand that the writers were influenced by the culture in which they lived - and they surely were - but we are also told that all scripture is God breathed.
However, let us not forget that Adam also was God-breathed - and Adam lost his way and humanity no longer faithfully conforms to the image of God. And neither does scripture. Both Jesus and Paul made that clear. And yet God has caused it to be written and preserved it so that we not only learn about him, but that we meet him in relationship. And it works.
So perhaps it would help if we could understand by what technique or criteria Jesus is using when he creatively reinterprets scripture. Let's consider this passage from ...
Here we see Jesus fulfilling the law of God. To onlookers he was disobeying the written law of Moses by not encouraging the religious authorities to execute the woman.
Do not imagine that Jesus is soft on adultery. It destroys trust, wrecks families, plants seeds of hatred and bitterness, and the punishment was execution. No mitigating circumstances could be brought. The law was crystal clear. The people were together instructed to pick up stones and throw them at the offender until he or she died. And the law did not require the stone throwers to be sinless!
And it may seem that Jesus is saying, first become sinless, then you can throw stones. But of course, he was sinless. Morally perfect. And he explicitely said, "I don't condemn you". He just said, "Go and sin no more".
Jesus did not consider scripture as a single crystal-clear coherent explanation of God and his will. Instead, he reads it as a record of many voices, disputing, debating, arguing over what God wants, over what God is like. That record is one, not only of a struggle to understand the way life under God should be lived, but also a struggle to understand who God is, and what he wants.
And you too, once you begin to read it like this, can for example clearly see the debates between the 'slavish obedience to the letter of the law' enforced by the priesthood, and the 'challenging search for the spirit of the law' by the prophets. The clash between the establishment and the radical if you like. (That, by the way, is not to say the prophets always got it right!)
In the bronze age, many cultures were into child sacrifice to suck up to angry gods. We can see that as God brings Abraham out of that culture into something new, he rejects child sacrifice. Abraham put down the knife. Isaac does not die on the altar. The Old Testament law absolutely demanded sacrifices, but animals were substituted, and they were slaughtered in a compassionate way, and often the meat used for food afterwards. God is recorded as spelling out in minute detail in the law, all the procedures to do with sacrifices. And God is establishing a new meaning for sacrifice, which will be fulfilled by Jesus Christ. So the law is stated.
Yet later in scripture, the prophet Isaiah is asking God what is happening because the nation is suffering. And God instructs him to tell the people...
There is the clash between slavish obedience and faithful humble challenge. The clash between the letter and the spirit.
As you know, the Deuteronomy law in chapter 28 can be summed up as 14 verses of "if you obey you will be blessed and have a happy life" followed by 54 verses of "if you disobey you'll be cursed and be utterly miserable." That's the way, says the law, that life is going to work!
But then we find in the Psalms, King David or Asaph or whoever complaining to God that the wicked are living it up, and we, who are trying to follow you, are getting slaughtered. What are you doing, God? Have you foresaken us?
There's the clash between slavish acceptance of the text, and faithful humble questioning before God.
When Job gets into a whole load of trouble, his so-called friends come along and lay down the law. "You're suffering Job, so you must have sinned. Actually you're really suffering, so you must have done something real bad. Come on, Job - repent and maybe you'll be forgiven". Job's friends have the 'unquestioning acceptance' attitude to the law.
Job on the other hand is quite happy to challenge God - "Come on God, what are you doing? Why is all this going on? You know I've been faithful?"
And at the end of the book, God rebukes the friends saying, "You haven't spoken the truth about me."
There's the clash between slavish acceptance of the written letter of the law, and faithful humble questioning before God.
So in the Old Testament, we constantly see this clash between the established voice of authority, and the questioning voices from the sidelines.
It is to the great credit of the Old Testament, that the voice of questioning, from the minority sidelines makes it into the record. Usually the powers that be control the narrative so that only the authoritative establishment voice is heard.
So when Jesus comes, it is no surprise that he is not slavishly following the law, but he is questioning it, and happily challenging and constantly amending it, to the fury of the religious leaders.
They stand in little circle watching, muttering ...
"Who does he think he is? Standing there on the mountain feeding this huge crowd with all this nonsense!
"Love your enemies?? No!! The scriptures tell us eye for eye! Tooth for tooth! God treads down his enemies by his mighty power. They should be trodden down.
"Don't take oaths? Just say Yes and No? Anything more comes from sin? What!!! Oaths indicate sin?? All the patriarchs took oaths. The scriptures say that even God took oaths. What nonsense!
"This man cannot represent God. He abuses the sabbath. He claims God is always working .. on the Sabbath. He refuses the law of execution of criminals. Now what is he saying?? What is he saying now?"
Jesus' voice rings out loud and clear.
Jesus evidently did not read scripture the same way they were taught to read scripture. And sadly, he did not read scripture the same way you and I have been taught to read scripture.
If you don't read scripture like Jesus read scripture, you will have trouble following Him.
Does retribution appeal to you? Do you sometimes think, "Well she got her just desserts". Have you said, "Let's see how he likes a dose of his own medicine". Do you believe justice requires that the punishment fits the crime? You know what that is? Eye for eye. Tooth for tooth. Not Jesus way. Not God's way.
Prison for Lucy Letby might be required for public safety. It may be justifiable as a disincentive to offend in future. Or even as a message to society. But whatever you feel about Lucy Letby, deliberately inflicted suffering in prison as retribution is not God's way.
Jesus fulfills this law of "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth" by saying that the violence can only be properly stopped by not responding violently at all. And to show it can be done, he goes through the horror of Good Friday, without reacting aggressively. He then reminds his followers that he can live in them, and enable them to behave the same way. Moreover he teaches about an entire Kingdom based on such principles which will ultimately overcome the present evil age.
Jesus lived an utterly different life to those around.
He happily contravened the Jewish law of Moses recorded in God's word, by healing on the Sabbath, touching people the law deemed unclean, eating and drinking with those living lives of sin, and even forgiving the destructive sin of adultery. Note none of this is allowed under the law. Yet Jesus did it. Moreover, he saw all these actions as being faithful to God and as fulfilling the law given in the scriptures.
So as a theologian may ask, "What hermaneutics is Jesus using?"
Or as anybody normal would ask, "How did Jesus know what to accept? What to reject? What to emphasize? What to sideline?
Let's consider an occasion where Jesus is actually addressing this very point in his teaching. This time, Jesus is teaching people who really want to know the answer, not someone who is trying to score points! He is sitting with his disciples around him. First he defines how to determine whether a particular teaching is what God wants.
And what do those who are committed to following Jesus wish for? Not to be abused, or belittled, or rejected, neither to be indulged or pampered to the detriment of their spiritual health, but to be treated with love, and compassion, as the truth is shared.
Then he teaches them how to distinguish someone who is teaching truth from someone who is teaching falsehood. So Jesus goes on to say ...
So this is the way Jesus interprets the law and teaches God's way. This is the way the teaching of a particular prophet is to be assessed. By it's results.
Firstly, he is focussed on each individual's needs. And he amends how he applies the law depending on the individual. Amid all the confusion and complexity of Old Testament law, he just assesses what will be the result for this person, the fruit of applying that law to the individual. Because he is focussed on each person's needs. If the result is negative and destructive and unhelpful and if it is not loving and good and character-building, then he says something different.
This is the principle that Jesus consistently uses in all his interactions with people. Because he loves them. Because he wants them to have abundant life. Because he wants them to flourish and grow. Is it positive. Is it encouraging. Is it helpful. And when we read scripture, we need to determine whether we are reading the side of the debate that Jesus would say is helpful and edifying, or whether we are in fact reading the negative destructive side of the debate.
There is an extremely interesting interaction between Jesus and the teachers of the law described in Matthew 15. Picture the scene...
Now you are probably not as well versed with the Hebrew bible as those teachers of the law, so you may not spot the trap that Jesus has set up. So let me just give you an example of the way it was.
Let's say my parents needed some care because they were getting a bit feeble. The law of honouring parents would require me to help them out, either directly or by paying someone else to do it. But the tradition of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said that if I went to my parents and said, "My time is devoted to God and my money is devoted to God, so I am afraid I cannot support you with my time or money.", then I could just leave them to get on with it! That was a Pharisees tradition called 'Korban'. And you could avoid a lot of inconvenient responsibilities that way.
But in reality, this was dishonouring your parents.
I am not aware that there was any formal tradition about executing children, but it was such an awful idea that there were always mitigating circumstances, although the law doesn't actually allow any!
So the bigwigs are in a real bind now. Having heard that Jesus was always preaching about loving enemies and compassion for the poor and taking care of your neighbours, they never expected him to start insisting that they execute children for disrespect!
So when Jesus said, "By your traditions, you completely nullify the word of God", they had nowhere to go.
It is almost certain than none of the disciples understood what Jesus was saying either really, because he had already refused to agree to stoning that woman to death who'd committed adultery, so stoning a rude teenager for being disrespectful didn't fit his usual modus operandi.
But as usual Jesus' message to these legalistic bigwigs was personalised to their need. He knows precisely what they need. They were proud of their law adherance. They need to have their eyes opened so they realise their pride is groundless and sinful. So Jesus used the law to show them they weren't actually following it as faithfully as they thought. In fact, they were allowing their traditions to supersede the law.
The fact is that he deliberately chose the most extreme Deuteronomy law of killing one's own child for the sin of disrespect, he stated that it is God's commandment, and then told them they are failing to keep it!
All the occasions where we see Jesus get really furious, it is prompted by religious leaders applying the law albeit correctly according to the letter, but in a way that repressed or excluded the poor, the weak, the sick, the uneducated. The way that divided society, created enmity, elevated class consciousness, and destroyed relationships.
Always, Jesus watchword in his interpretation of scripture is the word LOVE.
Love which seeks the growth and flourishing of the individual.
The approach of the Pharisees and teachers of the law, and sadly many church leaders today, is to cherry pick the law according to tradition, while insisting they are law-keepers. Authoritarian, controlling and judgemental - they decide. Self-righteous - they rule. And fear based - they exclude.
Jesus approach to the law was to always interpret it by allowing love to overrule. That ingredient of which relationships are built.
When we read scripture, let us remember God has preserved this precious book, and he has ensured that our Lord, the Son of God, has amply demonstrated how we should be interpreting it.
And he has assured us that his Spirit is available to us to explain how any part of scripture applies in any circumstance, if only we remember the watchword of love.
