Truth Unites - Is the Old Testament Bloodthirsty? With Dr. Matthew Lynch

Episode Date: December 30, 2024

Dr. Matthew Lynch and Gavin Ortlund discuss a Christian response to the challenge of violence in the Old Testament. Dr. Lynch's Flood and Fury: https://www.amazon.com/Flood-Fury-Testament-Violence-Shalom/dp/1514004291 Dr. Lynch's Portraying Violence in the Hebrew Bible: https://www.amazon.com/Portraying-Violence-Hebrew-Bible-Matthew/dp/1108714471/ Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

One of the most difficult areas for Christians who are trying to promote the gospel right now is violence in the Old Testament. If you listen to Deconversion stories, you will hear these issues coming up a lot, and they're not simple. They're tough issues. I'd go so far as to say, I think every Christian should be prepared to give answers to these kinds of topics that come up. Does the God of the Bible command genocide? Why didn't God outlaw slavery and Old Testament Israel and so on and so forth? And I've done various videos on these, but I'm committed to, for Truth Unites, to continue to address, issues in this area. I just think this is an area I feel called to. I want to try to promote what is

helpful, good scholarship in this area, just serve and equip and provide answers that promote gospel assurance. So hopefully the videos I've done, hopefully are addressing some things, but in this video, I'm kind of going a level deeper. I wanted to talk to an Old Testament scholar and someone who has a lot of expertise in this area, Dr. Matthew Lynch, whom I'll introduce in the actual interview more. Also links to his books in the video description. But I hope this will help. You know, we work through a lot of issues like, are Christians so biased by believing the Bible is the word of God that we can't really see what's there? That's the first thing we talk through. Then we get into the Nephalim and giants. We probably don't spend as much time on that as some of you want. We talk about what does

it mean that God has wrath? And is that consistent with his goodness? We talk about the conquest of Canaan a lot. We talk about Numbers 31, one of the most difficult passages for many of us. So I hope this video will be helpful for you. If Truth Unites has been a blessing to you, would you consider supporting on the website or even just check out the website, see what some of the things that we're up to there. And as always, just praying for the ministry is the main thing. Honestly, thank you for that. I'm committed to trying to do everything I can to promote the gospel in our day and just pray that I'd be faithful to that. All right, here's the video. Hope you enjoy. Hey, everyone. Welcome or welcome back to Truth Unites. I'm here with Dr. Matthew

Lynch, who is Associate Professor of Old Testament at Regent College in Vancouver. He has multiple degrees from Regent College and a PhD from Emory University. He also did postdoctoral research at the University of Gertingen. Why can't I say that word, Beth? Well, how do you say it? Do you teach me how to do the umlaut? Gertingen. Thank you, that one, what he said. And then he's got some of these great books of Flood and Fury, Old Testament Violence and the Shalom of God. This came out from IVP Academic, I think in 2003, and then an older book from Cambridge University Press called Portraying Violence in the Hebrew Bible, a literary and cultural study. He's the founder and co-host of the Onscript podcast, and we're going to talk about the challenge of violence in the Old

Testament, not questions of historicity so much, these moral and ethical questions that come up with passages portraying violence. This has been one of my study projects. that I focus on here at Truth Unites as I'm trying to promote gospel assurance. So if you struggle with these issues or if you know someone else who does, hopefully our discussion will be clarifying and useful for people. So Matt, thanks for taking the time. How are you doing today? I'm doing well.

Thanks, Gavin. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, I'm looking forward to the conversation. These issues are tough. We were just talking about them. And so we'll try to work through this. And tell us a little bit about your training and your background. and then from there, how did you personally get interested in this topic?

Was it your own curiosity? Was it responding to others? Or how did it come up for you? Yeah, thanks. I grew up in a Christian context. And in many ways, the Bible was the water I swam in from a young age. And so it was in my family and my parents taught Bible in various capacities. My grandmother even did.

When I was a kid, my grandmother challenged us to read, through the Bible when we were 12, and we did that with her. So in many ways, like the violence of the Bible, because I was, you could say, inculturated into it from a young age, it didn't strike me. And I think it's often one of those subjects where it takes some disruption to put that in front of you, either by coming into the faith as an adult or teen or something like that or something else. And so for me, it was more when I into my undergraduate studies when I went to Israel and was confronted with sort of questions around Palestinian-Israeli conflict and how the Bible bears, you know, plays a role in that or is appealed to in that. And then my first day of

grad school was September 11th, 2001. And so 9-11 was playing in the background of my whole graduate studies where I was focusing, eventually in Old Testament and the Iraq invasion. And simultaneously, I was taking a class on Joshua, so you can't ignore the violence in the text and what's going on politically in the world. Not that that sort of shapes it entirely, but those conversations are live in a way that they weren't for me before. And so, and then as I went on into teaching, PhD work, I remember once a pastor at a church asked me if I could substitute for her in a adult Bible study. I said, sure. And she said, well, the topic is genocide in the Bible. So I want you to speak on that. And so that forced me to think through the book of Joshua.

And that was really the germ in the beginning of what ended up being flood and fury. And then as I got into teaching, just students are constantly wondering about this and asking about it. Like you, I see a lot of people asking about this. And like you, I sense impatience for simplistic answers as well. And so I think what we want to do is try to kind of acknowledge and just work through this with like patience and openheartedness and so forth. And then what we want to do is pastor people as well. Sometimes people have a concern that those who are, if we're Christians, and we have a committed Christian faith, then we are biased in the way we're approaching these questions because we want to defend the Bible. And so the concern is, well, you guys are just, you can't see it.

You can't see the truth because you're committed to this certain ideology. You want to defend it because you believe it's God's word. And so I've been thinking about that concern. And for me, I mean, the thing, the way I approach this, and I'm just curious for you to come in on this as well, is to just kind of say, like, yeah, I do have biases. I am a Christian. Christianity is the deepest thing in my life. My walk with Christ is the center of who I am. It's how I get through the day, you know. But I think everybody has biases. We all come to the text with none of us are neutral in how we approach it. But I think just acknowledging our biases is the best approach. And I will say that I think a lot of the counter-apologists, and those who are coming from another standpoint also can be just as biased in their own way. But how do you think about this? And can you identify any ways where we can sort of check our biases as we're working on the question? Yeah, I agree that we all have biases.

And one of the tasks in this endeavor is to try to lift those to the surface for examination as best we can and check our biases. but also at the same time, recognize that biases can be productive and helpful. I remember reading a book by Nicholas Waltersdorf. He lost his son in a mountain climbing accident. He wrote a book called Lament for a Son. And in that book, he said, I shall look at the world through tears.

Perhaps I will see things that dry-eyed I could not see. And in that way of putting things, it's like the tears that he was experiencing in Greece, were like a focal lens on his eyes, rather than something that just fogged his vision and enabled him to see something about the world, about his relationship with Christ, about the church, about lament and its prevalence in the Bible, all these things that without grief he couldn't see at that time. And so I think there are countless examples of where different biases, whether it be women readers of the Bible, noticing things that men overlooked and hadn't noticed.

And it's not like a man can't see them, but because of, you know, in general, male readers hadn't noticed certain things, it took women readers to say, hey, look at all these characters in the story, look at these dynamics and texts, look at this alternative reading. And that opens up all of our eyes, hopefully, to the truth of the matter. And so in that sense, I think biases have done rightly can help those who aren't carrying that particular bias. to open their eyes as well. And so I think, you know, for someone who is, let's say, an atheist coming to the text, sometimes Christians need to listen to atheists and hear those critiques because maybe their faith filter is so strong that they won't let certain troubling texts in. And they won't look at them.

And they won't be able to, they can't just say, this is a really troubling text. And so sometimes atheists can be helpful to Christians for seeing what's in the, the text. But then what you do with that, I think, is another matter. And so for me, as a Christian, yeah, I do read the text with a Jesus bias, you could say, as a Christian. But that's because of the experience I've had with Scripture, but also the historical fact that the Old Testament was Jesus' curriculum. It was his formative educational environment. And it was, it was, somehow those texts led to a person who lived and taught like he did. And so I want to know why. What is it in these texts that lead to a person like Jesus? Because I think hopefully even an atheist or

most Christians could agree that the person of Christ is compelling. Very well said. You know, maybe a metaphor we could throw out that if someone is, doesn't have any sort of religious faith and they're looking at our discussion, they're saying, they're just trying to defend, therefore they can't see the truth, is your point, a fascinating point you made about how a bias can be like a focus and can help. Some biases can help. Like a metaphor could be if someone's writing, someone is really sympathetic to the civil rights movement and really grateful for it, and then they're writing a biography of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The fact that they're sympathetic and appreciative doesn't mean they couldn't write a good biography. Now, they'll need to be aware of their feelings and lay them on the table, and they need to be aware, there could be a temptation to overlook some of his flaws, you know. But it's not like you can't do the work if you're coming from that angle. And I would encourage for, you know, atheist critics to recognize the fact that you're defending something is one kind of bias. But there's other kinds of biases. Like if you're set against something. Go ahead.

I think that's a great point with, you know, an MLK biography. There's, you could imagine a sympathetic, like someone who's sympathetic to MLK. they could write a just utter black and white hagiography, right, where he's just an absolute saint, perfect, and only did good things. So a sympathetic biographer will note, like, flaws in his character along the way, but will also recognize rightly all the good, the important things that came out of the civil rights movement, the recognition of a human race movement, the recognition of a human, and dignity and the need to address race, all these things that maybe a skeptic of MLK would write the worst biography in that sense.

And that's just by historiographical standards, not just in terms of what outcome I want. Yeah. Another, as I've been engaging these conversations, another one of the things I will hear sometimes come up is that you have to have a PhD in biblical studies and specifically the Old Testament and sometimes even one particular field of the Old Testament in order to say anything whatever about this topic. And I feel about this. Now, on the one hand, I have great respect for scholarly expertise in a certain niche field.

There is real, I don't want to downplay that. There's real value in that. But it seems to me that these questions are interdisciplinary. For example, they bring up ethical questions. And so we need philosophers to weigh in. And I actually think, coming from a little bit more where I do publishing and stuff, church history and the voice of previous generations can be one relevant ingredient in the quest for truth here. How do you think about this? Do you see these questions as benefiting from kind of interdisciplinary work like this?

Yeah, absolutely. I think the idea that you have to have domain expertise in the thing you're talking about is would actually hinder the scholarly endeavor. So I'm speaking as an Old Testament scholar here on this question. Any scholar in a field that wants to address a question deeply has to constantly move laterally into fields in which they do not have domain expertise. And they have to think about how to navigate that field and how to bring it to bear on their own field of interest or how to move into that field in a way where they recognize the limits of their knowledge. they check with experts in the fields to make sure they're not misrepresenting things. But part of the scholarly endeavor is interdisciplinarity, and that means regular movement into fields where you're not an expert.

I'll give an example in archaeology. So you could say, well, you can't speak about the conquest unless you're an archaeologist because that's where the truth of the matter lies. Well, then I'd say, well, archaeology itself is an interdisciplinary endeavor. So if you go to an archaeological site, there's going to be someone with expertise in ancient food matter. They're going to analyze the seeds and any food remains

that are on the site. Someone else is going to be an expert in the ground penetrating radar and know how to read that. And someone else on the historical context of the period in which you're studying. And you know, ceramic analysis or, or there's all kinds of sub-expertises that are part of the archaeological endeavor such that no one can say they have a sort of expertise in all of that, but they're constantly having to speak to all of that. So that's just part of scholarship is movement into those fields.

And it's a question more of whether you're listening well, whether you're doing your best to represent well, whether you're admitting when you don't know something where the limits of your knowledge are. I think that's really what counts as good scholarship in these questions. Yeah, and hopefully we can all sort of, in the best case, we can all sort of help each other toward the truth as we talk. And that's why I'm so grateful to be talking to you, who you are an Old Testament scholar, and you'll be so helpful to me and to my viewers as well. So let's move into some of these difficult passages. One of the things we've already said is we want to be careful not to just deflect or minimize. So let's talk about this. I mean, what are some of the challenging passages for you personally in the Old Testament that have been most vexing?

Yeah, I mean, you know, two of the most challenging that I wrote about my book were the flood narrative where God wipes out 99.999% of living beings in the flood. And it's, you know, difficult to square in terms of a, sense of justice, divine justice, and the conquest as well, and the commands to leave nothing alive that breathes, including men, women, children, and animals, you know, into categories where, you know, moral responsibility is not applicable, even if you're going to use that as a grounds for destruction. And I find Numbers 31, which maybe we'll talk about later, particularly challenging treatment of women there. Some of the prophetic books I find challenging, Ezekiel 16 and 23, thinking about the depiction of judgment in terms of sexual humiliation.

So some of those, you know, I have thoughts on, and some of those are in the pile of texts where I'm not sure what to do with. And I think it's important for anyone to recognize that even someone with a committed faith and who cares deeply, about the integrity of Scripture and about discipleship and who loves Scripture and finds life in it. There are quite a few texts where I'm not sure what to do with them. And I have maybe some preliminary thoughts, but I remain hopeful about what deep study will bring because I've found that time and again it is life-giving. but that doesn't mean that I've got a kind of quick answer to any of these. Yeah, I'll share for me personally.

You mentioned Numbers 31. That's a tough passage for me. As someone who has a high view of Scripture and thinks Scripture is revelation from God, the words of God. I read that narrative and I find it bracing and I say, and I love your point that we don't need to feel like we have to have the answer to every question quickly and immediately and so forth. So we'll come to Numbers 31. I think the conquest of Canaan in the book of Joshua is another one that is challenging for me, and we'll talk about that right now.

But first, let me put up. So I'm going to put this up on the screen. So in flood and fury, you quote from Turtallian, I'd never actually come across this passage before, but he's talking with Marcy, and this is maybe a helpful starting point. And he's speaking sarcastically to Marcian about the concerns about God's judgment. And he says, a better God has been discovered who never takes offense, is never angry, never inflicts punishment, who has prepared no fire in hell, no gnashing of teeth in the outer darkness. He is pure and simply good.

You allow that God is a judge, but at the same time, destroy those operations and dispositions by which he discharges his judicial functions. Now, on the one hand, I want to acknowledge, like, I'm not trying to just put this quote up to, therefore, sweep away all the particulars, as though this just answers every question, because we're going to get into the particulars of how God judges as we go through here. Nonetheless, to me, it helps to have this as a starting framework and to put this out as a challenge or a question for viewers to say, you know, what are our expectations about how God should be functioning,

and do we allow God to really be God? And this is something that comes out of my own heart, I would say, seems to me that the ultimate issue that we kind of come to with these passages is God. God's judgment, and can that coexist with God's goodness? And we'll talk about how brutal the ancient world could be at times, which is a factor here. But maybe I could just let you reflect upon this a little bit. And I'm going to be sharing my own thoughts as we go here, and you're welcome to push back on anything I say. But just for you, why do you think it's important to reflect upon

this idea of God's judgment and to consider that this may actually be completely, consistent with his goodness. Yeah, I think this is a great example of where checking our biases can be useful. It's pretty easy for those of us living in a North American context to abstract some of these subjects. So we could look at God's anger, God's wrath, God's judgment, lift them out of their historical context, out of their textual context, and say, you know, on their own, someone who gets angry, who enacts violent judgment, they're not going to come out looking very good

if you just sort of pull out those qualities and look at them on their own, especially when you're, again, in a North American context, if you're living in relative peace domestically in your home, then these are troubling by any measure. However, I think we have to remember the Old Testament is written by a people

that were often brutalized. and and brutalized by the giant nations prowling around them, brutalized sometimes by their neighbors. And they were a small player in the world scene that constantly getting overrun. And so the idea that God was judge, that God was wrathful, was good news. And in fact, I think there's a good case to be made that in many ways, the Old Testament is wrestling as much with God's slowness. to anger as they do with the fact that God is wrathful because the fact that God is slow

to anger that he extends mercy creates all kinds of problems when you're wanting God to intervene in history you know if you're the Ukrainians and and longing for God to do something about the Russians invading it's not good news to hear that God is slow to anger right I'm not saying that that's applying there I'm just saying that that you could imagine that scenario. And so, you know, there's a whole book dedicated to this. The book of Jonah is wrestling with the fact that God extends mercy to the nation that had brutalized Judah. And so you can imagine a Judah-Judite reader reading Jonah and just empathizing with Jonah's anger at God because he extended mercy.

God could have prevented. this from happening or an Israelite reader I should say because it's addressing the north. So, so there, I think our vantage point is a big thing. And then also with individuals, not just the nation, but the fact that God is a judge is good news if you are one of the weaker members of society. So in the law, God says to Israel, if you take someone's cloak in pledge for a loan so like collateral for a loan and they owe you money so you're like oh I can take their cloak if you can you have to give it back to them before nightfall because if you don't and they cry out to me I will respond and so and it's not going to look pretty basically so so god

getting angry on behalf of those who are weak or disadvantaged or suffering in some way is a is a pervasive motif in the Bible. And so that's what I think Tertullian is saying to Marcian who wants to simplistically do away with divine wrath and judgment. And I think Tertullian would concede, yeah, there are some challenging issues here. But Marcian, you want a God who is simplistically good. God is good, but he's not simplistically good. There's a complex goodness to God that Scripture invites into, and that's where we need to read deeply, because the sort of surface read will pull us toward a very black and white simplistic picture one way or another, either in critique or in empathy. And I think scripture wants us to wrestle more deeply with these realities.

Suppose someone's watching this and they say, okay, I can allow for that, I can allow that a good God will have wrath and will execute judgment. But some of these stories in the Old Testament, I struggle to see how that's a good expression of wrath. And let's start with the conquest of Canaan in the book of Joshua and talk about this. One of the things that you talk about a lot in the Flood and Fury book is the presence of rhetoric in the language. So especially this phrase, show them no mercy. and the idea of harem warfare and how that functions and what that means for them. Talk us through that, the rhetoric that's in the biblical language,

and help us think that, you know, help us think about the implications. Does this, would we say that the book of Joshua is talking about genocide? Part of ancient warfare was rhetoric that spoke in totalizing terms but was enacted in far less than totalizing terms. And it was, people had made analogies of various sorts to trash talking and in sports or different things like that. I remember one time I spoke with a guy who was a chaplain in for the military during, after the Iraq invasion.

And he, he talked about, he had caught wind that this one Iraqi man was bragging that he had utterly annihilated another town. And, and so, you know, he was pretty shocked by this and he had to open up an event, like he had to sort of report it and they opened up an investigation because he, like, at least when things go well, they're supposed to be reported. And they went to this town that was supposedly annihilated and people were going to shops, people were walking around. Like, how did he annihilate this town? Well, it turns out he had. humiliated the the like the the governor of the the town or the the mayor of the town verbally and in so doing had sort of socially shamed them but they were still alive and breathing

and it sort of highlights this idea that rhetoric like this can be very contextual and we need to think about what's meant in context and it seems like from the book of joshua and the places where this rhetoric is used so for instance hebron is um It said in Joshua chapter 10 that he left nothing alive remaining. He devoted it to destruction, totally destroyed all who breathed. Then we open up the latter part of Joshua. There are people running around in Hebron. Canaanites running around there, open up the book of judges.

There are people in Hebron. It was not utterly annihilated. And so the book itself recognizes the fact that this is rhetorical. And there are other examples like in Joshua 10 with a five Southern Canaanite kings who were it said that Joshua and Israelites defeated them completely and then it talks about the survivors so so once again there's literary matters that play a rhetorical matters that have to be taken into account now it's still violent so we can't just say therefore it's you know a pacifist text but at least should give us pause before using words like genocide to describe what happens here

Yeah. Now, some people, when I make this, I've unfolded this case and I tried to give like five different pillars to the argumentation here. I feel a sincere response from some that they're feeling like, come on, you're playing fast and loose. It's not you're not really reading, you're not really honoring what's really there in the text. And I would like to push back against that concern that some have and say, no, honestly, before God, this is my best effort to honor. the text and really read it carefully. And one of the things you just pointed out about Hebron is an example. You just find this repeatedly a particular city, none is left alive, then a bunch of people left alive. That's one of like five different pieces I look at. Let's talk about some others that can help people help maybe allay this concern. This isn't just failing to really look at the text. It's

actually the result of a careful look. What else in the text makes it really impossible to read this utterly destroy, leave none alive in the most literalistic manner. Can we point to any other things here? One is the rhetorical point, but the other one is like what the book is doing with these Canaanite nations and how it's depicting them. If you read through what most modern rears would consider the boring part of the book where they apportion property to all the different tribes in chapters 13 to 21, As you read through that, you realize that there are huge swaths of the land that are still in the hands of Canaanites.

And this is after statements that say not one of God's promises failed to come to fruition and that they were totally successful in their campaigns. And so then it makes you wonder, well, what was the objective in the conquest itself? Maybe it wasn't just to make sure that there are no human beings alive in the region that would eventually become Israel. Maybe that wasn't the point of this. It wasn't a kind of sort of final solution-type approach to the Canaanites. Because at the end of Joshua, we're told by the narrator that Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua. And so the sort of general assessment of Israel in that time was that they were more or less obedient to God. And so the persistence of Canaanites is not chalked up to some failure on Israel's part, at least in this portion of the book.

So there are those complexities. There's also the book's attention to the inclusion of Canaanites. And I don't know if we should get into that now, but that's a major, I don't even want to call it a sub-theme. It's a major theme in Joshua is the fact that we need to. to not only think about how to couch these laws like utterly destroy and lead nothing alive that breathes, we have to consider ways that real life presents exceptions that are notable to that law that should make us rethink what that law is even on about. And so in Joshua Chapter 2, for instance, you're confronted with the character of Rahab, who is a Canaanite,

prostitute who in many ways embodies a lot of what poses a threat to Israel. So the way the story is told is to sort of turn up the volume on all the ways that Rahab on the surface looks like a good candidate for applying the Deuteronomy 7 law that says to wipe them out because she could lead them into idolatry. But it turns out she's the most Yahweh centric figure in the book. maybe besides Joshua. And so she presents this challenge to a surface reading of the law right there at the gateway of the conquest. And so I want to know as a reader, what is this book doing by putting her front and center? She's not tucked away in the latter chapter of the book. It's the first event in the land of Canaan. And we have an exception to the rule, her and all her household, which would have included a sort of wider extended family. So, the book is that suggests to me along with other texts like the gibbonites in joshua nine and some of the inclusion of foreigner texts in joshua eight that the book is messing with our categories of who's in and who's out and and i think that's an important thing the book wants to invite us into what what god wants to invite us

into as we read it, that would again sort of challenge that that simplistic view of warfare rhetoric that we see taken up by some readers of the book. Yeah. And a few other things people could give consideration to, because I'll have people who quote the marisms of man and woman, old and young, this kind of stuff, is just to look at the other passages where those marisms are used like for the Babylonian exile and other places where it'll say the same thing where we know that it wasn't literally every person being killed. And another thing you draw attention to in the book is the majority report, minority report tension, where on the one hand, there's the destruction language, but then you also have the expelling language, propel them out

of the land, and don't intermarry with them and this kind of stuff, which just doesn't make sense if the destruction language is absolutely literal. And the point here is not to say that there's not an issue of violence. It's just to help us understand what exactly we're talking about. And just to be accurate here, I don't think we need to read this as a kind of wanton destruction of non-combatants. It looks like it's more targeted and more specific than that. It doesn't answer every question, but we're just trying to be honest about what a sensitive reading of the text yields. Yeah, exactly. If you look at the cities that were taken, it's primarily walled cities. And And these are, if you look historically, Lawson Stone has done some really good work on this.

If you look historically at the cities that were actually attacked and were targeted, and they're primarily cities that were occupied by these Canaanite warlords who were backed by Egyptian power. And so one of the things that it's often missed because the story itself doesn't raise, to the surface, but it's historically the case, is that at the time Israel went into the land of Canaan, it was by and large still controlled by Egypt via proxy Canaanite warlords. And so if you think about that and consider Israel's military campaigns, which focused in the north and south, the areas where Egyptian control was the greatest. And they focused on walled cities, the cities where Egyptians exercised their control through these Canaanite warlords, it becomes pretty clear

that what Israel is doing in the conquest is breaking the hold of Egypt on the land of Canaan. And I think that changes our picture as well of the sort of colonizers and colonized. If you think about the land of Canaan as an already colonized by Egypt place, with Israel, small Israel, going in and guerrilla style taking on these cities and dismantling or at least limiting the power of Egypt in that region and then settling in the highlands which is more or less between those two areas in the north and south i think it changes our picture of power in the book yeah let's phone in on that where you mentioned small Israel at one point in the book you you talk about the Israelites versus the Canaanites as kind of a David versus Goliath kind of dynamic.

We shouldn't read this book as a stronger nation bullying, the weaker nation, motivated by greed to steal from them or by xenophobia or something like this. And you see this theme of they have to be courageous and brave to go and attack these people because they're so strong and so forth. If we have a vision of God, if we have a big vision of God who is allowed to judge evil and sometimes uses an instrument like a people to bring about judgment upon evil, then we could look at this as God's judgment, and we're seeing it in kind of a David-Goliath-type dynamic.

Well, actually, talk more about giants and Goliath in a minute, but first, just what do you see in the text that encourages this kind of David versus Goliath framework? Yeah, if Israel wanted to press its advantage, the greatest, they would not have gone about things the way that Joshua described. So just a key example of how God is, I think, almost using weakness or amping up Israel's weakness in order to show his power in the book. When they go into the land, it transpires in Chapter 5 that Israel is not circumcised. And if you read back in Genesis, circumcision was the mark of the covenant. And anyone who was not circumcised was to be cut off from the community. So already you've got problems.

What is Israel doing? They don't even, they're not even, you know, bearing the covenant sign, all that. So they do what you should never do when you're in enemy territory, which is circumcise every male in the community. And render themselves weak and vulnerable on the east. eve of battle. And so it's a horrible military strategy, not recommend it. And so the first use of the, even the Hebrew term sword is used. They turn the sword on themselves in that sense. And I think, I think there's something important about weakening before battle that God wants to show in Israel, that this is not about might and Israel's superior power. These Canaanite cities were these huge,

like the um some of them were small but there were some sort of old middle bronze walls probably still around at the time the late bronze age um it would have been intimidating now again you've got egyptian backed powers there that were admittedly sort of these powers are crumbling but there's they're still they still have a foothold um and and then there's a an interesting case in chapter 11 where Israel defeats some Canaanite kings and then they're told to hamstring the horses and burn all the chariots. Now apart from the animal violence there which is an issue, that would be the equivalent of capturing the enemy's fighter jets and tanks, you know, by sort of a guerrilla-style group and they want to win military victories and then blowing them all

even though they could have used those to their advantage. You're taking all of those the most powerful weapons and destroying them. And I think it's in part because God wants to show his power and weakness. And that's what constantly happens in this book. And we're told in Deuteron, that Israel is numerically small. They were not, we'd have to have a separate discussion about the large numbers in the book of numbers and Exodus. But I think it's very very, clear that Israel is militarily technologically weaker than the Canaanites. And that gets emphasized at various points such that it's at least a David and Goliath scenario, perhaps worse. Earlier it came up how we're approaching this from a sort of North American context and or people in other parts of the world today.

This point could apply to them as well, various places. where we really need to appreciate the differences of historical context from our life today to where the text is at. Maybe you could talk about this a little bit. I'll say for me, I can't remember whether you said this or I just thought of it while I was reading your book, but I thought of the movie Mad Max

and just the sort of the jungle-like feel of the world in that movie and just how brutal it is. And there's not police. Like, might makes right is how it's going. and in some ways that might establish some emotional categories for us as we're thinking about the ancient near east it was a jungle it was a brutal place there was true evil why is that important to understand yeah i you know i hadn't really thought um in detail about that analogy but i think it's it's really apt here um it reminded me too like your comment reminds me of um timothy schneider wrote a book called bloodlands i don't know if you've ever seen that but it's on it's on world war two and So he was asking about, he was asking the question, why is it that the majority of the killing, the Holocaust, the, you know, the sort of shootings that wanton shootings that happen in World War II happen in the region between Russia and Germany. And he calls that the bloodlands. And his thesis is that when states collapse, the political and judicial infrastructure,

that holds back the tide of violence, even in corrupt nations, it holds back the tide of violence, gives way and you have this sort of utterly chaotic violent reality. Along with, he's not simplifying it to that explanation alone. And I think it's notable that the late Bronze period, when Israel's going into the land, was a time of state collapse. and Eric Klein talks about this in several of his books, and he likens the late bronze age. So this is around sort of 1150 BC-ish to something as big as the collapse of the Roman Empire. And so Egypt's losing its hold in Canaan.

You have the Hittites receding. You have the movement of the sea peoples coming. That's the arrival of the Philistines on the coast of Israel. Geopolitical shifts in Greece, in Mesopotamia, down in Egypt, things are in flux, absolutely chaotic, and violent is very prevalent. And so that really does capture this time period. And so when we think about some of the laws in the Pentateuch and so on, And realize they're trying to restrain violence. They're not representing ideals by any means.

It's pretty remarkable that there's not more. And that Israel would opt for a strategy of weakness in that context is absolutely astounding to me. Tell us a little bit about your perception of the Canaanites. And I want to unfold into this question the issue of the giants. You have a whole chapter on the idea of giants. Goliath came up a moment ago. Is it, you know, who are these giants? How does that factor in?

So I guess I've got two questions here. One is, can you tell us a little bit about what were the Canaanites like? Is it fair to say that they were a brutally violent and evil people? And second of all, tell us a little bit more about what you get into in Chapter 12 with the giants. Yeah, sure. With regard to the Canaanites, I think it's a complex. picture. I think sometimes people overplay the, try to overplay the wickedness of the candidates in order to justify what Israel does, at least a surface reading of what Israel does,

because they're trying to answer the question, why was Israel justified in committing genocide? And I think that's starting sometimes with the wrong question. Undoubtedly, Deuteronomy and over the way back in Genesis highlights the wickedness of the people in the land. And so that's, that is a factor in the text, their injustice, their morality, all these things are, are featured. But notably, the book of Joshua doesn't go there. It doesn't really feature those dynamics. That's not to say they're not present in canon anymore, but it doesn't use that as its rationale. And I think it's because it's highlighting other factors at play, like Israel, dismantling some of the political realities in the land of Canaan.

So yes, I think the Canaanites were wicked in many ways. They were unjust. There were real problems there. But those problems were also present in Israel. And one of the things that Joshua wants to do is turn the spotlight on problems in the Israel-like community as well that needs need address. like Israel's own idolatry at the end of the book, which is a real surprise in Joshua 24. And then, yeah, so for the giants in the land, I would say it's a curious subplot that I'm,

in a way in the book I was exploring, but I don't think it's the main plot in the story, but it's an interesting subplot. So you have reference to Anakites in the book of Joshua, who are all, mentioned in Deuteronomy as as these powerful giant beings in the land who descend from the Nephilim back in Genesis who have like demigod status so it's a really strange reality there are all kinds of other group giant groups who were mentioned they're in the Pentateuch so you have the Refaim the Zamzumim the emem these Anokites the Nephilim you know all these groups

that the text just alludes to or mentions in passing, almost assuming that we know what we're talking about. And, you know, those of us reading it now are like, I'd like to know the backstory there. But I guess the things we can say is that it was a way of representing the demigod status of kings and warriors in the ancient world. and they were the very beings that Israel is said to be attacking or some of the beings Israel is said to be attacking when they go into the land. One of the things I did in the book, I talk about ancient artwork

and how they tend to depict kings and rulers as super giants. So even their iconography has this idea that royal power renders someone a giant. Now, whether they thought of that in literal terms or metaphorical is another matter, but that's what they imagined. And if you look in Israel's story, when they wanted a king like the nations, they got Saul, who was head and shoulders taller than any Israelite. So this idea that a king should be a big dude who's really strong is kind of the ideal. And the book of Joshua, again, as part of, I think, this dismantling of imperial population. power in the land shows Joshua successfully ousting and destroying these giants up in the hill

country. And there's some interesting ancient connections as well, but I think the fact that they're connected in the text back to Genesis 6 suggests, I don't want to push this too far, but suggests that there's some spiritual reality being dismantled in the different. defeat of the giants as well because these Nephilim from Genesis 6 are connected to the sons of God who rape human women and then it's they who were linked to the warrior class from of old that these men who go around raping and pillaging and and making war and the fact that that they're singled out for targeting is I think maybe a interesting subplot with regard to what Israel is doing in the conquest.

So, yeah, I don't want to push it too far, but those are a few details. Yeah, yeah. People will probably be upset in the comments if I don't, just the issue of the Nephilim, do you have a take on that or if not, if you don't want to get into that too detailed? Can you direct someone who's curious about that

for how they might make some progress and conceptualizing, who are the Nephilim? What is going on there? Yeah, I would say, We can only know so much. So if you want a real detailed history on them, you're in the realm of speculation. But I think it's more like what does the text emphasize about them? And you also have to answer related questions about how you think about the history of Genesis 1 to 11, whether that's literal history or whether it's giving us a kind of picture of the world that then becomes more historical as you move on in Genesis.

how the Nephilim survived the flood. Another question. But I think what these stories want to say is that there's something to the conquest that's not just about humans and the human political realm. There's something spiritual at work in these Canaanite warlords that's being addressed in the conquest. And I think maybe that's as far as I think we can push it. I've got all kinds of questions too. And in fact, early Jewish interpreters had all kinds of questions and wrote entire books speculating about them because the story is so opaque regarding their lineage and history. It's a fascinating subplot. But I think we can only know so much.

And we in some ways have to be comfortable with that tension. Yeah, okay, fair enough. That's all helpful, and I love all these subversive features of the text that you're highlighting are so helpful. And as I was just listening to you talk about that, this idea of just the value of patiently listening to the text is being, I'm sort of experiencing that afresh. I've thought about that before, but what a wonderful thing to really listen. I think, you know, the truth is that if imagine a Christian over here and their only goal with the text is to do. defend it from criticism. And then an atheist over here, and their only goal is to attack it and portraying the worst

possible light, neither of these postures is the best, is the ideal engagement with the text, even though I think it is appropriate to do apologetics, to offer defense in various ways at times, but this sense of listening and all these subversive, surprising elements that are there when you do that, that are different than what you expect is fascinating. Yeah, I keep finding that. And I think, you know, I think that's in a sense like where that bias can be helpful. What we talked about earlier is when you come at the text with faith and ask, how is it that these texts are part of the curriculum of Jesus?

Then you're prepared to be surprised and you're not sort of telling the text what it's going to say. Instead of coming to Joshua and saying, I know what the conquest is about. It's about genocide. Now I have to figure out whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. you're we listen carefully and sometimes people have asked me like what's your method for addressing the problem of violence and in my method is really listen carefully read slowly and prepared to be surprised and and I think that sort of stance really pays dividends yeah yeah yeah fantastic well let's uh this is we we could probably talk on and on about all these

things let's talk a little bit about numbers 31 in the final portions here because this is a passage that is, I think, particularly difficult, particularly challenging for the treatment of women. So let me just introduce it. What you have here is Moses in verses 16 to 17 to 18 confronting some of the officers. Correct me if I get any of this wrong. Confronting some of the officers among the Israelites for keeping alive. uh, the women of the Midianites that they have, uh, attacked and against whom judgment is being enacted. And verse 17 says, now therefore kill every male among you, among the little ones,

and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. Verse 18, but all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves. This would be an example of a passage where you're reading it and, um, you know, it's like, it's challenging. It's like, boy, this is the, I won't avoid a simplistic answer here. I am aware, as I've mentioned this passage, I have

had people say that there's an ancient, and I cannot verify whether this is right or wrong. I've not been able to track this down, but I've had people say that there's an ancient Jewish tradition that regards Moses as going beyond God's commandment here.

So that that is one thing that we need to be aware of, need to explore, if there's any truth to that. Because what Moses is saying here is a little different from what the Lord initially said. I think the general thing here is there is this judgment that is in response to what's happened previously in the book of numbers. And so we need to kind of be aware of that and read this passage in the light of that. And then we need to maybe think through about what's going on here with the women and how do we

understand that? So give us some of your thoughts on this passage. you think through a passage like this. Yeah. You know, so after sort of scratching my head and looking at it and thinking, my goodness, this is, this is a tough one. I guess I want to, again, take that posture of careful listening. And I have not thought through this nearly as much as I have the book of Joshua. So these are just preliminary sketches, let's say, not my, where I'm wanting to land necessarily. it's interesting that, you know, this is against the Midianites. And we're told in Exodus that Moses has a Midianite father-in-law.

He married a Midianite woman. And so, you know, surely Jethro and Jethro's descendants and family are not in view here. I wouldn't think. So unless Moses has just gone off the rails completely. and turned on his family. That's a bit a bit harsh. So, so, so you know, the Midianites, someone argue they're really a loose confederation of tribes. And so the idea that Israel in this in this event actually managed to wipe out the Midianites is a challenge. They show up later in Israel's history and judges and so on. So the idea that Israel successfully

defeated and wiped out all the Midianites as the story suggests again we're in the realm of hyperbolic language and then with regard to the the killing of children and women who are not virgins I think there is something to that idea of Moses going beyond the command of the Lord it's the text is not absolutely clear on this so I don't want to say definitively, but it is notable that the beginning of Numbers 31, the Lord said to Moses, take vengeance on the Midianites for the Israelites, and leaves it at that. So the Midianites had seduced Israel into idolatry back in Numbers 25 and had led to the death of that event had led to the outpouring of of God's wrath and 24,000 Israelites die.

Vengeance in the Bible usually means sort of proportionate judgment. And proportionate judgment would have been, I guess, addressing the issue of idolatry that the Midianites had seduce them into. I don't know what proportionate judgment was supposed to look like, but Moses interprets it in this particular way that doesn't. receive overt divine sanctioning in the in the story itself later god does show up again and says divide up the spoils but it doesn't it doesn't it's not addressing this matter of the killing of children and women and then the taking of virgins as captives of war so i think it's very possible

that what's happening here is moses is at the very least succeeding the boundaries of what constitutes vengeance and he's enacting something closer to what in other texts is called heara warfare or total destruction warfare with the exception to taking female captives so he's so in Hebrew that niquemah the vengeance is being interpreted by moses as herram or total destruction and i think that's an exceeding now some people might say well the text doesn't say that to a us. The narrator doesn't tell us that what Moses did was bad. And here, I think we have to grapple with the way that biblical storytellers tell stories. The narrator is very reticent to give moral evaluation. They like to show, not tell. And so one of the challenges then for modern

readers is to discern what the story is showing and not just what the narrative. And not just what the comment on. So that that's like one little detail that I would suggest is at least possible. There's there's even some suggestions that the very beginning what the Lord said to Moses was maybe more properly rendered. This is Ken Brown's argument. He says that maybe we should render it as vindicate the Israelites from the May Day Knights and that Moses then initially enacts vengeance, which is different than that vindication, and then it eventually becomes harem or total destruction. So what you see is this descent of Moses into a disobedience of God's command, which fits with the latter half of the book of numbers, whereas in the early

part of the book, Moses is portrayed as more aligned with God. You know, he laments before God and brings the people's case before God, but he's aligned. with God. But then after the striking the rock incident, there are two cases in numbers like 20 and 27 where Moses is depicted as rebelling against God. And so it wouldn't be utterly surprising if this is being cast as a rebellion. But I'll add the footnote that this is an inference from the text. I think it's a good reading of the text, but I can't say it's a knock. down argument. Yeah, yeah, okay.

Well, that's helpful. Let's conclude by talking about Jesus and how do you, you know, this came up at the beginning, but let's finish this at the end in this way. If we read the book of Joshua and the book of numbers in light of the whole biblical canon, and that includes the kind of climactic revelation of God that comes with Jesus in the New Testament, how does that shine light back and help us think about these? challenging Old Testament passages. Yeah, one of the things I think is important is to

to both look carefully at the details of troubling texts, but also pan out. And think about the question, like, what's the sort of end of the matter from the vantage point of the writers of these stories? How would they sort of encapsulate God's character? And here's where I think it connects to Jesus, is that when, You have, I'll give a kind of core example from the book of Exodus where God appears to Moses on the mountain after Israel had rebelled and worshipped the golden calf and through a series of events.

He eventually comes to declare his character to Moses who wants to see God's glory. And part of the point of this text in Exodus 34 is that God's glory is found in his character. And the description of God's character there in Exodus 34, 6, and 7 is that the Lord, the Lord is a God gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding and steadfast love and faithfulness, forgiving sins and iniquities and trespasses, but not leaving the guilty unpunished, punishing to the third and fourth generation. So he's depicted as showing loyalty to thousands of generations, but judgment to the third and fourth. And I don't think the point of that declaration is the math, but rather the disproportionate nature of his mercy to judgment. And that text gets quoted at least 13 or 14 times in the Old Testament itself, and it's alluded to countless times. So when Israel's, when the people of the Old Testament, when the Israelites are reflecting on God's character, they say at the end of the day, God's mercy triumphs over judgment 500 times to every one time his judgment triumphs. And I think we should take seriously the testimony of those who lived with the God of the Old Testament.

what was their experience of him how did they how would they portray his character how would they sum it up and and to me then when i look at christ and the person of christ i see that embodied in his life and ministry and how he lived that he is one who yes he takes sin seriously but he is a profound embodiment of the mercy of god enacted um and climactically self-giving of himself on the cross And and so there's there's actually quite a bit of, let's say, macro harmony on this matter of the character of God in the Old Testament and the character of God revealed in Christ. And I don't say that to sort of turn our attention away from any challenging issues. But instead to ask a question of like, where does the center of gravity lie in the Old Testament when they thought about God's character? and then does that comport with Christ.

And I think there's profound continuity on that question. Thank you, Matt. I will put a link to your book in the video description so people can check it out if they want as a great point for further research. If someone's watching this and they want to keep thinking about these topics, are there any other resources that you think of that would be an encouragement to them or help to them?

Sure. I think they should check. out well Gavin Ortland has made some video. Yeah, your videos for sure. Also, Helen Painter has written several books on violence. And she's also thinking about issues around violence in the text, but also domestic violence today, violence against women. So her center for the study of Bible and violence, I think would be a good resource for people to look into. And that would kind of link you to a set of other resources that would be valuable and helpful on this topic. Awesome. Well, thanks, Matt, for taking the time to talk. Really grateful for your work.

I'm grateful to talk with you. And thanks everybody for watching and let us know what you think in the comments below.