Does the Bible Condone Rape?

QUESTION:  Why does the Bible promote rape, in Deuteronomy 22:28-29 by commanding a rape victim to marry her rapist!

RESPONSE:  This is one of those Bible problems where we read back into a passage all of our current cultural sensitivities and run into deep misunderstandings as a result.  Let’s just read the passage in question to begin:

Deut 22:28-29:  When a man comes upon a virgin who has never been engaged and grabs and rapes her and they are found out, the man who raped her has to give her father fifty pieces of silver. He has to marry her because he took advantage of her. And he can never divorce her.

At first glance, this seems to command that a rape victim must marry her abuser! Could anything be more cruel or unfair?  Looked at this way, this passage has been pointed to by many skeptics and atheists as evidence that the Bible is immoral, and misogynist.  How can the law that comes from this ancient Tribe be considered the law of an all-good God?

But wait.  Before we settle on the premise of your question, namely that this passage condones that which is evil, we have to objectively understand it first.  To do that, we have to get out of our own perspective and travel back into a very different world, the world of the ancient near east.

In many ways we might say this world is morally inferior to our own, because it tolerated slavery and patriarchy and polygamy.  People in this strange world aren’t assumed to be equal before the law, and personal liberties aren’t taken to be the most important part of public policy.  Isn't this horrible and wrong?

But these kinds of thoughts lead to an interesting side conversation with three points to make:

First, on what basis do we judge this law as immoral?  The skeptic who rejects the idea of God and objective moral absolutes is in a bit of a conundrum here.  They presume that morals are relative to different times and cultures, built into us by social and chemical evolution, with no objective basis.

But then they look at this sex law of the ancient Israelites and make the bold claim that it’s wrong.  Not just ineffective or inconvenient to us, but actually wrong in an objective sense.  But how can one make such a claim unless they know what good actually is?  And if there is no objective right, then by what standard do we called this rape law backward, regressive or immoral? 

Secondly, the modern, Western critic of Mosaic Law rarely realizes that their basis for critiquing the Bible is the Bible itself.  In other words, the development of Western sensibilities regarding things like personal liberty, sexual boundaries, and individualism are built on premises which would not be self-evident to us, unless the Bible had first paved the way.

Moral developments we take for granted, do not pop into the world out of nothing.  We can thank the work of primitive revelations through figures such as Moses, which lead most today to believe that might does not equal right - an idea which was decidedly not “self-evident” to most people at most times in human history.

Third, the modern critic of Moses usually has no handle on the moral excesses of their own era when they make sport of the excesses of another.  We most recoil at Mosaic Law in the places where that law describes a people bent severely toward honor and chastity and tribal security.  We might see these as “lopsided moral developments” not because they are evil, but because some part of the good objective moral code, which we all acknowledge, has gotten out of whack.

But if we see ourselves as truly objective, we ought to be able to see similar lopsided moral developments inside our own culture – developments which might also stem from some piece of the objective moral law.  Yet, out of whack, they lead us into all kinds of evil as well – evil which people in Moses time would spot easily and criticize us for.

Turning now to those cultural moral excesses of Moses time, we must realize they put a high value on virginity. This is in contrast to our own age, whose commitment to sexual restraint hovers somewhere near zero.  Also, their culture believed women needed to be protected under the oversight of a leading male (their husband or father), in part because the world was filled with rapacious and predatory men whose power is only checked by other powerful men.

Once you understand that context, you can begin to understand why the rule above could be considered fair and just - benevolent even!  When considering Mosaic Law, the modern believer (or skeptic) never has to accept the temporal conditions as ideal or good.  We don’t have to love patriarchy or polygamy or slavery.  No!  We are however, trying to discern whether, given the non-ideal temporal cultural conditions, the law’s transcendent principles can legitimately be considered good.

The evidence says yes. 

First, note that the woman raped does not have to marry the man, the man has to marry the woman.  You might think this is mere semantics – they are married in either case, the victim and the abuser!  Yes, but the way the law puts its demand helps us realize that the consequence is a punishment to the abuser and a grace to the victim.

This is further spelled out by the following rule: he cannot divorce her.  This means the rape exempts the man from being able to make use of the divorce permission Moses would give later (Deut 24:1).  Marriage in this culture was not a romantic institution (though marriages could be very loving) so much as one of economic and social stability.  And women had very few tools to sustain themselves economically on their own, unlike today.  

So to be forced to marry the woman he violates, the man is forced by law to take on the responsibility of providing care for her – forever.  He can’t even make use of the “out clause” which Moses gave for “impurity”.  The rape means he is on the hook to provide for her, no matter the state of her future fidelity to him!

Again, given the high value of virginity, the man has not only violated her physically, but he has taken away from her a primary “dowry” she brings to any marriage union. Having stripped her of that, if he doesn’t marry her, it is likely no one else would.  And thus a raped woman is left to a life of poverty and likely prostitution or slavery to survive.

Interestingly, we have an example of just how in that cultural context, it would be the rape victims who might covet such a law, as a benevolent provision for justice.  In the time of King David, his daughter Tamar is raped by her half-brother Amnon.  In 2 Samuel 13:13 she very much seems to have wanted Amnon to marry her after the rape!  Why?  Because she knows that in that culture it would be very difficult to find someone to marry her and she would rather be married to Amnon and have lifelong security than to be desolate and single.

In fact, this is exactly what happens to Tamar because Amnon – to add to the enormity of his crimes – disgustedly rejects the very woman he, seconds ago, could not live without (2 Sam 13:15).  So she lived without marrying the rest of her life (2 Sam 13:20). 

But one may still protest, even if she gains a lifetime of security in compensation for her honor being violated, surely that is a life sentence of awkwardness and bitterness, even if she is cared for.  We must understand another piece of accompanying Mosaic legislation that mitigates this concern.  For in Exodus 22:16-17 we read:

“If a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed and lies with her, he shall give the bride price for her and make her his wife. If her father utterly refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money equal to the bride price for virgins."

If we put the laws together, this addendum clearly states that the woman does not have to marry her rapist if her father refuses to give her to him.  And even in that culture, as in ours, it is difficult to imagine a dad granting permission for her to marry a man that she utterly hated.  Even under the absolute jurisdiction of their fathers, women in the Ancient Near East could have some say in their own marriage decisions (Gen 24:57).  If the father then refused to grant permission, the rapist would still have to pay the bride price (since he had stolen her marriageability by his action) and not get a bride.

So in fact, the Bible does not condone rape, since it clearly commands the death penalty for a man who rapes a married or betrothed woman (Deut 22:22-27).  And as for young virgins so violated, God’s law actually spared them the double cruelty of a lifetime of destitution, sold into slavery or prostitution.

Why Is Moses' Life Saved by His Wife Circumcising His Son?

QUESTION: Why is Moses saved by Zipporah circumcising his son in Ex 4:24-26?

On the trip, at an overnight campsite, it happened that the Lord confronted him and sought to put him to death. 25 So Zipporah took a flint, cut off her son’s foreskin, and threw it at Moses’ feet. Then she said, “You are a bridegroom of blood to me!” 26 So He let him alone. At that time she said, “You are a bridegroom of blood,” referring to the circumcision. (HB)

ANSWER: No matter how you slice it, this passage is a little strange!  We seem to be plunged into some kind of weird spat that lacks any description of prior context, and without detail of important preceding action that might tell us what this is all about.  So even the best scholars are left with a fair amount of speculation to fill in those blanks.  This answer will therefore have plenty of speculation, but a core lesson is still very clear.

We begin to make sense of it, if we consider a few of the bare facts of the story:  Moses has had two sons.  They are clearly several years old by this point, and yet they have never been circumcised.  Why not?  This is a critical question but it's never answered in the text.

Moses is a Hebrew, and circumcision is what they do – it was a command given to their forefather Abraham and all his descendants (Gen 17:9).  Some have speculated that the Jews, living under Egyptian oppression, weren't allowed to for hundreds of year, so Moses also didn't do it.  But this cannot be true since there is no mention of a society wide neglect of this sign of the Abrahamic covenant for hundreds of years.  In fact, we do know the Hebrews neglected this rite when the freed slaves lived through the desert wanderings for forty years (Joshua 5:5).  But that very verse also notes that the previous generation that first came out of slavery were all circumcised.

So it might have come from family pressures, from Zipporah and/or Jethro (his father-in-law).  They were Midianites and thus probably ‘outsiders’ to circumcision.  Zipporah`s harsh reaction in 4:25 seems to indicate that the whole thing is arcane, disgusting, strange or unnecessary to her.  But Moses is not an outsider to circumcision; he must know it's a required sign of his participation in the Abrahamic covenant with Yahweh – the God his mother no doubt taught him about, the God he met personally in Midian at the burning bush.

Therefore, there is an implicit disobedience being exposed in this story.  And that begins to explain the seeming blindside God gives Moses as he travels from Midian to Egypt to challenge Pharaoh.  What if this is no blind side at all?  What if this is the culmination of a long standing tension between Moses and God and perhaps also between Moses and his in-laws?  What if Moses has not circumcised his sons, to please his in-laws ahead of pleasing God?  A God whose character and laws he is going to represent to the world in very short order!  And yet he, the law giver, hasn’t obeyed the first, most simple law!?

It’s like a preacher getting ready to go on a church planting tour and he’s never been baptized himself!  Or he’s never explained the gospel to his own family! 

Now, the weird thing is, Zipporah knows God is about to take his life for this offense.  So Moses' predicament can’t be a private revelation known only to himself.  Somehow, Zipporah knows that Moses is on death’s door.  And she also seems to know immediately what will turn away the curse.  This is interesting because it probably mitigates the horror we feel that God "sought to kill" the very man he, moments ago, chose graciously to be his instrument of liberation.  We should ask, how does she know Moses life is in danger?  How does she know it's God who is threatening that life?  And how does she know what to do about it?

I would suggest, all this implies that God had not made a verbal confrontation with Moses (as he had at the burning bush), but that perhaps Moses had become deathly ill on the journey.  The English says "God confronted him" which sounds like a harsh, physical fight, or a private threat.  But the Hebrew word simply means "came in contact with" - pagash.  So "confront" is not a bad translation, but I think we can put out of mind any kind of physical fight like the one between Jacob and the Angel.  There's no record of any words spoken in this confrontation.

Instead, a circumstance like a deathly illness would clearly be interpreted by them both as the hand of God and not some random event - especially since they were on such a great mission directly from God.  So perhaps Zipporah might have asked Moses why God was seemingly against them.  It might have been that Moses might then have confessed the problem:  “I haven’t done the simplest act of obedience to the Lord and his hand is against me.”

There's a subtle but important difference if we view the events unfolding like this.  To read that God sought to kill Moses, seems like God would off him for what we think of as a minor misdemeanor, meanwhile jeopardizing the much more important mission of liberating the Israelites without a care for either.  But what if the situation was more like Jonah?  The storm is a threat and directly allowed by God, and it was potentially deadly.  And Jonah knows it's deadliness is directed at him (Jonah 1:5).  It looks to Jonah and the men of the boat that God has come to kill the negligent prophet.  But no matter what it looks like in the short term lens, we know God has great plans for Jonah and the deadly storm will not end in death, and killing Jonah was never the point.

So likewise, here in Exodus, if circumstances came about which were potentially deadly, and were interpreted as discipline from God, the ancient author might look at the potential end (death) and speak of it as the end God was seeking.  But in reality it merely would be the threat of death which God wanted, in order to bring about change in Moses, before his great calling could come to pass.  The end of the story proves the threat of death was God's true aim, not to actually kill the man he has just commissioned.

So, if you are Zipporah and the threat of the death of your husband is before you, and he, (or you by some revelation) are told that disobedience in circumcision is the cause, you might feel manipulated!  Especially if it's your resistance to the rite which you know is the reason Moses hasn't performed it on his sons.  "You're going to die unless we do this repulsive thing?  Great!"  But now, what choice does she have?  So in anger she does the deed – is none too happy about it judging by her comment in verse 25!

You might ask why, if Moses knows the problem, can’t he fix it himself?  Well, this is another reason to presume a deathly illness has fallen on him that they interpret as God's death threat: if he’s literally on death's door, he can't do it himself… so she has to.  Then, she brings the evidence and throws it at his feet with her comment about him being a "bridegroom of blood".  In other words, “you have become a husband who required of me a strange, bloody sacrifice to keep you alive.”  The threatening plague (or whatever it was) lifts, Moses is healed, and off he goes to his greater mission, having finally (by force!) taken care of business at home – his first mission.

Now, regarding her phrase, “bridegroom of blood…” one scholar I read had a much softer and more romantic interpretation.  He also speculates that Moses has somehow come under a curse, an illness perhaps… but he says that it is Zipporah alone who is given insight from God as to the reason for this plague or curse of imminent death.  She is therefore heartbroken at the potential of losing her husband, and also that there is a standing offense against God in their home!

So, resolutely, she circumcises their son, and she touches Moses feet with the foreskin to associate the act with the father.  Not in spite or anger (the more natural reading), but rather as a request to God to graciously accept it as coming from Moses whose responsibility it should have been to do it.   All of this is an act of servanthood and love on her part.

But what about her comment, “Bridegroom of blood”?  This interpreter said it was a way of saying, “you were on death’s door, you were lost to me, but now, by this blood, its like you were given to me all over again, my ‘bridegroom of blood’.”  In other words, it's a reference to her gratitude in getting Moses back from the dead, "From Blood (Death), a Groom!".  Or yet another way: her marriage was threatened with termination but it's renewed through blood and she’s relieved and happy to have her husband back.

This second view is a much nicer way to read Zipporah’s attitude, certainly!  She’s a loving wife who hears God, takes action, and saves the day and is thrilled with her husband’s recovery vs. begrudging rescuer not at all thrilled with her man.

But either way, the passage has this to say:  Moses has clearly been disobedient about 'first things first'.  So you can see that this strange little story contains a profound lesson for ministers of the gospel needing to attend to their first ministry before they ever seek to venture into their larger Kingdom callings.  As Paul says to Timothy, when examining potential elders – make sure their "house is in order" first.

Did God Accept Jephthah's Sacrifice of His Daughter?

QUESTION: In the story of Jephthah, chapters 11-12 in Judges, Jephthah vows to God that if God allows him to win the war against the Ammonites, he will sacrifice the first thing to walk through his door to greet him when he comes home as a burnt offering. God does not object, but accepts all of this, never once intervenes to tell Jephthah what a fool he was to make such a promise, he doesn’t spare the girl. He happily accepts the human sacrifice, and she is burnt to death as an offering to God.  Why is this?

ANSWER: Thanks for your question.  First, I should mention that many people believe Jephthah did not actually sacrifice his daughter as a burnt offering.  Instead, they believe that Jephthah gave his daughter in service to the Lord as a lifelong virgin.  This view notes how the text stresses that she remained a virgin, not that she died.  This is possibly what happened, but it relies a bit too heavily on a unique rendering of the Hebrew and is contrary to a straightforward reading of the text.  For a good example of this approach look here.

Rejecting that, we're left with Jephthah actually sacrificing his daughter, tragic and horrifying as that is.  Every time I’ve read this, my heart revolts.  But then I remember that this is in fact, what you are supposed to think as you read the entire book of Judges.  Truly!

The theme verse of Judges is “everyone did what was right in their own eyes” (17:6, 21:25).  During this, post-Moses, pre-King period, the nation of Israel is a loose federation of tribes.  Their religious identity doesn't have a strong unifying tradition and without that, everyone is just acting according to their own lights, doing whatever seems best to them.

So the entire culture of Israel is not really seeking God, not looking to his moral instruction, doesn't yet have a robust priestly tradition or king to enforce that instruction, and so they're just assimilating to the culture's values around them.  Look at the backstory of Jephthah and you see this clearly:  he was a son of a prostitute, from a polygamous home that rejected him and drove him away from the family inheritance, where he became a mob boss!  Which part of this situation looks like it was guided by any of the 10 commandments?

So the real message of Judges is that everyone was doing it their own way, including (in some ways), the Judges!  For more evidence, just keep reading to the story of Sampson.  Sampson was also a Judge, and yet also a liar and fornicator and extremely foolish in trusting wicked people, and he marries outside of Israel - something God explicitly forbade (Deut 7:1-4).  This doesn't discount that he was used by God to protect and save his people, as with Jephthah.

There are many more examples in Judges, but the writer is clearly wanting you to get a feel for the depravity of that time where there is no king, no overarching authority in the land, and while God was supposed to be the King, people had installed themselves as King in God’s place.  This is what is being taught. And that gets to a very important rule for correct bible interpretation:  you must discern the difference between what is being PREscribed, and what is being DEscribed.  

Do you actually think God is prescribing child sacrifice in this story? It's OK to kill your kid 'if you promised to' - do you really think that the Jews took that as the lesson?  So perhaps the problem is simply that God doesn’t say explicitly to Jephthah, “hey dude, if you sacrifice 'whoever comes out of your house', it might be, like, a human, and I uh, believe I was very clear about the whole, don't kill people thing..."  We all want God to step in and be more clear with Jephthah that it's wrong to kill your children... but how could God have been any clearer than this:

Lev 18:21-22: “You are not to make any of your children pass through the fire to Molech. Do not profane the name of your God; I am the Lord.” ?

If you think God should have repeated himself, there's this:

Deut 12:31-32: “You must not do the same to the Lord your God, because they practice for their gods every detestable thing the Lord hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods.” 

Jephthah knows all this, since he seems to be very familiar with Mosaic history (Judges 11:12-28).  Yet he still kills his own grown child to fulfill a very foolish vow he made.  You have to dig a little to realize just how foolish it was.  Even if you assume Jephthah assumed an animal would come greet him, what if it was an unclean animal?  It would have been unacceptable!  Also, God says that one should never make a vow that will violate our conscience to carry it out (Prov 20:25).  He says never make an impulsive vow (Eccl 5:2-5).  Also, if Jephthah was so grieved by his vow, he should have known Moses allowed for a sin offering if a man had to void a impulsive oath (Lev 5:4,5).  It's no wonder there's no mention of God instigating this vow, there's nothing godly about it.

So here's how you should understand this:  Jephthah had heard the laws, probably knew them, but was influenced by the Canaanites (for whom child sacrifice was normal) and so felt more obligated by his vow, no matter how immoral or rash, than by the explicit law of God.

This ought to change the assumptions you've made about how God feels about Jephthah.  You assume, “God accepts this”, you even say “God happily accepts all this.”  What in the text gives you the impression that God happily accepts all this?  If you read the entire book (and remember no Bible author assumed people read only cut out verses without getting the whole picture), you see the author is saying the exact opposite.

Now, you might push back on that and say, but Jephthah is “anointed by the Spirit of the Lord”, so shouldn't we understand that everything he does has the sanction of God?  Actually, no.  In fact, back to Sampson, the idea of him being God's instrument as a Judge is directly tied to his disobedience to God's Law!!  He takes a wife from the Philistines, something God expressly forbade (Deut 7:3-4) yet this was "from the Lord" (Judges 14:4) as the means God would use to engage the Philistines to throw off their oppressive rule.

We simply have no biblical warrant for assuming that any person said to be used or anointed by God had God's approval for all he/she did.  David was said to be a man led by God’s Spirit, and yet he did several things that were explicitly horrible.  Same with Saul.  The only difference in those accounts is that their sinful actions are specifically condemned by a prophetic voice, which gives the reader God’s explicit feelings on the sinful action.

Yes, we lack such explicit condemnation here, but we would be very presumptuous to argue from that silence that “God happily” accepts child sacrifice – especially when we know very well how God feels about child sacrifice over and over again: Jer 32:35: “I have never commanded such a horrible deed; it never even crossed my mind to command such a thing. What an incredible evil…”  So much for “happily”.

Furthermore, it is a Jewish writing style to be frustratingly coy about such things.  I’ll give you an example.  Read the entire account of Solomon’s greatness in 1 Kings 4-11.  At first you are led to think, this author believes Solomon can do no wrong!  But if you know the backdrop of Moses (and all the writings of the Old Testament should be read with that knowledge), you realize that the author is not, in fact, praising Solomon, but condemning him!  For in acquiring all his wealth and power and foreign alliances and women, Solomon is breaking almost every single command Moses had laid out for kings in Deuteronomy 17!  

This is how the ancient Jews wrote.  They assumed you, the reader, knew some things; like, God’s hatred for child sacrifice, for example.  If you get that, then you know the author could not be whitewashing a Judge, he’s showing how bad it is that even the Judges had fallen to Canaanite practices.  The community wide sorrow at the end of the story does nothing to diminish this impression.

Now that anguish felt by Jephthah and his daughter is expected given the tragedy, but it also shows how they both seem to think that fulfilling the vow is the only viable moral course of action.  Basically his daughter says, "you have to do it" (Judges 11:36).  What an interestingly lopsided moral development – to believe God would value honoring of a vow (no matter how foolish) over the value of a human life.  As mistaken as he is, it does show a stunning commitment to promise keeping!  And that is what is behind all lopsided moral developments.  They are usually not driven by purely amoral lawlessness.  No, they are driven by putting one good value (in this case, honor) over all others (the sanctity of life, love, compassion etc).  And based on what?  What is "right in our own eyes".

So, speaking of lopsided moral developments, perhaps we've done the opposite today.  Our culture puts the value of honor so extremely low that, rather than put up with great personal cost to fulfill our responsibilities, we would prefer to treat literally millions of babies as badly as this one man did his grown daughter.  Is our moral moment, when people today also do “whatever is right in their own eyes” any better; We who dismember the bodies of fetuses who have done no wrong?  I think not.  If we were to write the moral history of our time, just the last 100 years or so, when the peoples in charge have explicitly rejected the ways of Israel’s God to do what is right in their own eyes, it would be a ghastlier read than Judges, by a landslide.

Don't The Conquest Passages Mean Non-Combatants (Women & Children) Were Slaughtered?

QUESTION:  Hi Rick.  In your recent message you said that there were no woman and children killed when the Jews defeated a city.  How do you explain then in Joshua 10 and 11 for example when scripture states in several places that "everything that had breath" and "every person in the city" was destroyed?  Looking forward to hearing back from you. 

RESPONSE: I'm so glad you came to AC3 this weekend!  Also grateful for your question, let me see if I can clarify.

My research leaned on Paul Copan, in his book, "Is God a Moral Monster?" and the work of Old Testament scholar Richard Hess and Philosopher William Lane Craig.  Copan makes the claim that the specific and repeated phrases used to recount the conquest, for example in Josh 10:39, "He destroyed everyone in it, leaving no survivors" is not unique to the Bible.  He suggests this is indicative of Ancient Near East hyperbolic ways of speaking effusively about military victory.  Related, Hess talks about what archaeology shows regarding the nature of the cities like Jericho and Ai, that they in fact were military garrisons, and not centers with large civilian populations.

So based on that work, I suggested the possibility that while the commands are to destroy everything in the Land, this amounted to destroying everything that remained in the land, as the Israelites "drove them out".  And it is a striking note of the conquest narratives over some 20 chapters that there is not one mention of women or children being killed.  So Copan doesn't argue with the descriptors in Joshua 10 and 11, "there were no survivors" and "he completely destroyed everyone in the land" - he just makes the point that we are not bound to believe that those who were destroyed MUST have included non-combatants.

Something I didn't include was that in Joshua 11:19 the author says that no one "made peace with Israel" except Gibeon, which suggests that while they were to "make no covenant" with the inhabitants, terms of expulsion were nevertheless offered and in most cases not received.  Given Israel's success, Gibeon's fear and desperate attempt to save their own necks shows that any who remained to stand against this onslaught were only those fully prepared to stay and fight to the death.  Remember I said the phrase "drive them out" outnumbers the phrase "destroy totally" by 3 to 1 in the conquest narratives.

The bible further confirms some kind of treaty was possible, when it says God hardened them against such possible peaceful expulsion, so that he might execute judgement against them, Judges 11:20.  Also, confirming the suspicion that non-combatants fled and hid and were not part of the destruction is the fact that when you open the book of Judges, directly after the conquest, there are Canaanites everywhere!  (Judges 2:2-23).

While acknowledging these factors, I also said we still have to deal with the commands to kill "ALL", whether or not they entailed the actual killing of non-combatants.  So I endeavored to also cover that much harder problem when I discussed the "divine command" theory of moral duty.  It was not wrong to destroy all in the land because God commanded it but would have been, if he did not.  The question then is, are these commands consistent with God's love and justice?  And there I said they were, given the eternal stakes involved.

I think you might be helped by a deep dive into the topic.  William Lane Craig, despite evidence that non-combatants were not involved, sees full justification for the conquest even if all the verbiage of "men and woman", "everything that breathes" was literally carried out.  He does that in this Q & A post:

https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/the-slaughter-of-the-canaanites-re-visited/

If you go there, please click on the other link embedded, where he gives a longer answer to the question of God's justification to command to slaughter of innocents.

To read a summary of Copan’s paper on this, go here:

http://www.epsociety.org/library/articles.asp?pid=63&ap=3

Here is a video of Dr Richard Hess on this topic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI4d-6oqmNc

Is the God of the Old Testament different than the God of the New?

QUESTION: How do you reconcile the Old Testament to the New Testament picture of God? Specifically I'm reading Deuteronomy 28 and the God of this book just does not seem anything like Jesus. In verse 63 it even says he will get pleasure from it... It just seems so different than Jesus and everything he was about.

RESPONSE: This is a very common issue when reading the Bible.  There’s this seeming difference in God's character between the two covenantal periods.  Specifically, the Old Covenant God of Moses is full of wrath, the New Covenant God revealed in Jesus is full of grace.

There are two main things to say about this apparent discrepancy.

1. When we look more deeply, the differences are not as glaring as they first appear.  In other words, when we look inside, everything that is revealed about God's character in the Old Testament is still seen in the New, (and vice versa) even if there's a different emphasis.
2. The different emphasis in God's attributes fits with a well-established pattern of "progressive revelation".  Which is to say that God does not reveal all of himself or his plans at the earliest stages of his interactions with the chosen people.  God's revelations progress in content and depth over time, so we should never, from our position here in the "last days," consider the earliest revelations to be complete or interpret them in isolation from the later stuff.

In dealing with Deut. 28 specifically and this list of blessings and curses, we are getting insight into God that consistently runs across both Old and New testaments.  The holiness of God is revealed inside this moral order: obey and be blessed, disobey and be cursed.  As in physics, so in ethics:  for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  The message is simple:  attune your life to moral reality, just as you do to physical reality.

You might think that outlining (repeatedly) the specific consequences reveals a harshness in God, but would we think a parachuting instructor was harsh if he detailed the graphic results of failure to obey his instructions?  Would we think his lengthy, redundant, legal waiver meant that he was being mean?  No, once we understand the stakes involved, the graphic warnings are actually seen as a kind of mercy.

This teaches us that not only is God a merciful parent (laying out consequences up front), but also God is just, and holy for he follows through with discipline (every curse mentioned here ACTUALLY HAPPENED!).  Also, the stark warnings reveal that God is fair, because God is treating them the same as the nations they would be displacing in the Land.

The point is, what the Jews are learning about God here is not diminished by the arrival of Jesus Christ.  This is Jesus' Father:

• no respecter of persons or nations, impartial and fair (Deut. 10:17).  
• whose rules are not arbitrary but based in his good, fair, and loving character.  So his law is built on love, forbidding unfettered self-interest, protecting the weak, foreigners, children, orphans, widows (10:18-11:1).  
• who chooses his children not based on their pedigree but because of His love! (7:13).  
• How is this inconsistent with the God revealed in Jesus' gospel which teaches us that God adopted us out of no goodness in us, but purely by unmerited favor (Eph 1:3-6)?

Christians did not stop believing in this Lawfulness, and Holiness of God just because Jesus revealed God's grace in a supreme way.  Look at Galatians 6:9 - "do not be fooled, God is not mocked, a man reaps what he sows."  In fact, the Cross makes no sense apart from these characteristics of justice and holiness revealed in the Law.  As much as the Cross shows off God's grace, the pain of it also reflected the terrible, ultimate punishment for sin.   No, the cross is God's grace AND justice together (Rom 3:26).

So to my first point:  there is justifiable wrath in the New Testament (Romans 1:18, 2:5, 5:9) and in the teaching and actions of Jesus (Matt 3:7, Luke 21:23, John 2:15), which is consistent with the picture of God we get from Moses.  Also there is amazing tenderness and grace in the God of the Old Testament which is consistent with Jesus (Hosea 2:14).

The consistent picture of God is simply that God is completely "other" - holy and perfect and hating sin.  Also there is one consistent picture of sin separating people from people and people from God and ultimately diminishing human life and leading to terrible outcomes; in the Old and New Testament.

To underline this, remember that the picture Jesus paints of the sinner apart from his Grace, is probably worse than the picture Moses paints of his People who are disobedient!  The Old Testament warned of people being pillaged and suffering greatly for disobedience, and yes death for many... but for Jesus, the disobedient will suffer eternal death (Luke 12:5)!

And look at the curses of Deut. 28, and how it paints the disobedient as groping, blind, oppressed, robbed, hungry, and powerless.  This isn't a contradiction of the New Testament, rather, it sets it up beautifully!  For how can we see the sacrifice of Jesus as a Rescue unless we can see in our own disobedience, the same kinds of helplessness God predicts for disobedient Israel?  We too were disobedient and wrecked and helpless when Christ came into our lives.  This is painting one consistent picture of human nature, and God's nature.

But perhaps you still struggle with the language Moses uses - in the language of Deuteronomy, it looks like God is sort of deliberately inflicting suffering on them (and gleefully!).  Yet who is the one who ACTUALLY decides to invoke the consequences God warned about?  The people do!  See, Moses didn't care to separate the primary cause from the secondary cause in his language, which makes it seem to us like God is more callous than he actually is.

Imagine primary and secondary causes like this:  I set up a booby trap in my home for robbers.  I say to you, don't go in there, you'll get smashed by my trap, it's for robbers.  Then you go in anyhow.  And guess what?  You get smashed!  Who smashed you?  Well, in a sense, I did, I set up a trap to smash - it was MY trap after all, so clearly I caused it.  But truth is, YOU caused yourself to be smashed, because I warned you away, and you went in anyway!

It's just like that here in Deut. 28.  It feels really rough because God says, I'M doing curse X, Y, or Z.  But God's actually simply allowing natural consequences to flow, rather than deliberately inflicting arbitrary terror.  In fact, God is only a secondary cause of the curse, we ourselves are the primary cause of the cursing.  In the New Testament Paul will put it like this, "God hands the disobedient over..." (Romans 1:28) so He releases them to do what ought not to be done, and then they suffer according to their choices.

So God's holiness, and his judgment on sin is consistent throughout the Bible.

Ok, now my second point.  There is progressive revelation here.  Yes, we can see judgment and wrath in the New Testament and even at the heart of Jesus very mission to save because it borrows the same language of God cursing the disobedient sinner to separation... (See John 3:36).  HOWEVER, in Jesus we get no sense of God “delighting” in the judgment which you pointed out (Deut. 28:63).  So do we have reason to think this may be not the whole story on God's attitude?  Yes, because of what ELSE is said about God LATER in revelation history.

For example:

Ezek. 18:23-24: Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked?” This is the declaration of the Lord God. “Instead, don’t I take pleasure when he turns from his ways and lives?

Because of progressive revelations, we can see Deut 28:63 as hyperbole.  We can see this in the context of the sarcastic, dramatic way that the ancient Middle Eastern mind would think and talk, not as proof of God's callousness.

If we take all Scripture as one, we rest assured, God is not happily cursing his people.  We don't interpret one verse in isolation or in violation of another.  So we learn from LATER revelation that God must have been speaking in Deut. 28 like an exasperated parents speaks.

In fact, I have said something similar to my kids - "If you don't put your bike away, I am going to run over it someday and I won't even be sad, I will not shed a single tear, I will just happily take that thing down to the dump!!"  Saying such a thing, doesn't mean I wouldn’t have empathy for my kids or wouldn’t feel their pain at loss - even if it was all due to their choices.  I would have empathy still, and so does God.  We KNOW this, because Deut. 28 isn't the only thing God ever said to us.

Also, when it comes to progressive revelation, how did this all play out AFTER he laid down the law?  In fact subsequent history shows, God laid out these curses, but then rather than invoke them at the first sign of disobedience, tolerated the worse kind of violations of his law for centuries before they finally reaped the harvest they had sown.  And in this demonstration of God’s patience we see yet another consistent insight into God's character which spans from Old to New Testament.  For the God revealed in Jesus also said:

2 Peter 3:9:  The Lord does not delay His promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.

So if you look deeper you will see not only the consistency in the Bible’s picture of God’s character, but also how all Scripture must be interpreted as a whole.

Was Sodom Destroyed In a Natural Disaster Like Pompeii?

QUESTION:  I was watching a documentary the other night on Pompeii and it was interesting because I had just read about the destruction of Sodom and Lot... I was wondering if this was the same story... But then they mentioned that Pompeii happened in 79AD so that's obviously not it... but it seems like the way that Sodom and Gomorrah may have been destroyed even.  Just curious if there was any history on this. Is there a good source to look up artifacts and things that have been found or proven?

RESPONSE:  So as you found out, Pompeii is in Italy and Sodom and Gomorrah in Israel, about 1400 miles apart, and about 2000 years apart in history.  They do sound similar in the apocalyptic destruction that rained down on both cities.  In the case of Pompeii, being much younger and in the shadow of a still active volcano, there hasn't been any debate about what happened or when. 

Sodom and Gomorrah on the other hand, have been debated as mythical cities for a long time.  In part because the modern scholars tended then (as now) to treat the Bible in the case of historical unreliability to be "guilty until proven innocent".  Also, there was no "smoking gun" in the area of Sodom, that is, no volcano present to explain the supernatural description of chaos and annihilation.  There was no obvious natural cause of "fire and brimstone" in the Dead Sea Valley.

But all that would change as the science of archeology progressed.  Digs in the Dead Sea revealed several candidates for Sodom and Gomorrah, called "cities of the Plain".  I've been here, it is one of the lowest places on earth - 1400 feet BELOW sea level, unbearably hot, and yet lush, because the Jordan river runs down a massive fault line in that deep valley watering the otherwise arid place.  So many cities cropped up here during Abraham's time.  Scientists finding all these remains have finally settled on a couple of very probable candidates for Sodom and Gomorrah.

Old cities usually are built on top of older versions of themselves in many strata, like a layered cake.  So when you find a mound and start digging, you are going on a trip through time the farther down you go.  In a strata that relates to about 3000 BC, in a city also named Numeira, they found a bunch of things that make them think this is Biblical Sodom.  Among other bits of evidence, the whole city shows signs of advanced, intense burning.  Skeletons are scattered everywhere, the gates are burned etc.

I'll let you read their case for yourself, it's VERY involved, but also very interesting:  Bible Archaeology Article on Sodom

Now, as to the HOW this happened, I assume as you do, that this judgment of God was likely some natural destruction, the timing of which was seen to be God's hand of judgment.  But what did God use, since there's no volcano?  Well, recall that this is a rift valley.  Earthquakes happen here all the time.  Also, recently (like in the 1970's) they discovered combustible petroleum materials under the valley floor, natural gas, sulfur, bitumen and oils.

So one theory is that a severe earthquake happened, and this unleashed combustibles into the air.  If they were lit by lightning or surface fires, you would have your hellish scene of fire from heaven, as gas was thrown into the air, lit, and burning material fell on the cities consuming them completely.

Now, one other detail you probably noticed.  Lot's wife turns back and is turned into a pillar of salt.  There's no need to insert a magical transformation at this point.  The Dead Sea where Sodom is located, is the SALT sea.  I swam in it, it's so full of salt that you CAN'T sink in it.  That means anything that gets put in it (including a person, if they didn’t decompose first) becomes "saltified".  Check this out:

It would have been a very Hebrew way of speaking metaphorically to say Lot’s wife became a pillar of salt.  But also highly accurate, because if you died in this Dead Sea disaster, your body would have been first covered in debris, and then permanently encased in Salt.  She likely didn’t believe the first tremors were going to ruin everything, didn’t just “look” back but actually turned back and re-entered the city, only to be consumed in the judgment God brought.

Has the Prophecy in Isaiah 19:25 Happened Yet?

QUESTION: 

Isaiah 19:25 The Lord Almighty will bless them, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance.”

Hi Rick, I'm reading the book of Isaiah...in chapter 19:24-25 it sounds like part of this prophecy already occurred but verse 25 in particular - that has never happened? Is what was called Assyria...isn't that now where Iran/Iraq are? 

RESPONSE: 

Great question.  Yes, Assyria then basically covered what is today eastern Syria and Northern Iraq.

Finding the historical location of fulfillment for these prophesies is more difficult than the geographical location, however.  There’s been some general consensus that the judgment part of the prophecy of chapter 19 has some historical fulfillment.  Looking into Isaiah’s context, Egypt at this point (750 BC) was a shell of its glorious former self under the Pharaohs.  It was mostly ruled by Ethiopians, which explains the connection to chapter 18’s prophesy. 

After Isaiah’s time we could say that his vision (19:4) to see them “delivered into the hands of harsh masters, and a strong king to rule” was fulfilled many times over:  in many kings in the succeeding centuries.  

• Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal (Assyrians), 
• Nebuchadnezzar (Babylonian), 
• Cambyses and Alexander the Great (Greek) 
• all these ruled Egypt as fierce tyrants. 

So Egypt’s judgment as described here has definitely been fulfilled.

More context:  the temptation in Isaiah’s day was to see Egypt as a potential ally against Assyria.  So God is saying here DO NOT TRUST Egypt – she will be unreliable, God is going to crush her.  And do not be worried about her either, she will fall and fail you – and eventually adopt OUR ways, not the other way around.  Unfortunately, Israel would struggle all the way through to king Josiah and his sons with trusting Egypt when they shouldn’t.

So the judgement piece really came true, but what about the salvation piece of this prophesy, from 19:16-25?  Were there ever five cities in Egypt that "swore allegiance to Israel’s God"?  Was there ever a "Jewish altar in Egypt" for worship, did God miraculously "send a Savior" to deliver the Egyptians, and was there ever a "highway connecting Jerusalem, Egypt, and Assyria"?

Some suggest that the prophecy was fulfilled after the exile when a group of Hebrews fled to Egypt, settled in four Egyptian cities (Jer 44:1) and later built a temple in Leontopolis around 170 BC.  The problem with locating the salvation parts in that part of history is that all the Jewish settlements in Egypt were mostly by Jewish apostates who rejected the Lord or worshiped Him along with pagan deities.  Also, there was no highway connecting Egypt with Assyria during this period, unless we mean a highway of destruction!  

The prophesy is clearly envisioning a future where Egypt not merely has some outposts of true religion, but rather pervasively KNOWS the Lord in a real way, speaks the same language as God’s people, are faithful to Him and a good ally and fellow worshipers of the One True God (vs 22). This is more than we could say ever happened before Christ.

So another approach sees these words fulfilled after the spread of Christianity to Egypt.  And that makes better sense that Isaiah sees a “savior to rescue them” (vs 20).  This sounds like Messiah, and in the late Roman period and into the Byzantine era, most of Egypt was heavily Christianized.  But honestly, I don't anything that has happened in Egypt in the Christian era comes close to matching the lofty and quite shocking beauty of this vision of the fertile crescent: all One, all adopted as God's people, totally at peace and unified under Israel’s God from the Nile to the Euphrates (Iraq)?  Hasn't happened yet.

So I would settle on a third view:  the salvation part of the prophecy awaits fulfillment during the future period of peace brought in by Christ in the 2nd coming.  Read Isaiah 2:1-4… this is the grand picture of the future peace which the prophet sees coming to ALL the earth.  And Isaiah begins that vision with same words as the prophecies in 19: "in that day".  I think then chp. 19 is supposed to fit into this grander vision as a specific sort of microcosm of the whole picture.  Inside the future where “ALL the nations will come to the mountain of the Lord” and “walk in the paths of the God of Jacob” (2:3), will be this specific peace between Egypt, Israel and Assyria (19:23.24).

To even imagine it in Isaiah’s day was scandalous.  It would be very similar if I said that one day, Jesus Christ will be acknowledged everywhere, but then went on to say, “even in the Levant and Syria Jesus will be claimed as Lord and worshiped as God in the heart of Mecca!”  Christians believe that will happen when Christ comes again - but to non-Christian ears it's shocking to even imagine it!  It feels weird to print it!  That’s how this prophesy likely hit Isaiah’s countrymen’s ears.  A highway of peace between our dreaded enemies to the north to our enemies/unreliable allies to the south?  Co-adoption as God's people with Assyrians and Egyptians?  Unthinkable!  But that’s what’s coming, says Isaiah.

Yet not through some great negotiator or leader - only through the “Lord Himself” making himself known to the Egyptians (21) so that again implies 2nd coming.

That's why I would say this is for the future, because of its size and scope.

Did Jesus Condone Slavery?

No, Jesus never condoned slavery.  He doesn’t really mention it, except that he talks about slaves in his stories and it’s mentioned as a frequent part of the culture he’s in.  But to not mention it, is not approval.  Such arguments from silence are really flimsy.  We can make Jesus condone child abuse, spousal abuse, and incest, if we insist that what he never commented on, he must have approved.  

But clearly, slavery is a part of his world and the world of the the Law and Apostles who DO comment on slavery. Now, we do well to note the slavery of that time is not what we assume since it was very different from American slavery.  The American slave trade was built on racist premises.  The black man was considered inferior to the white man and so it was his lot, his nature to serve.

Biblical slavery even from Moses time, was mostly economic.  You became a slave if your people were conquered in war, so as an alternative to killing all the conquered who lost the war, a person would often become the property of the victor.  This was considered (by both sides) just “booty”, reward for winning a conflict.  But a much more common form of slavery was indentured servitude which was when you sold yourself into slavery to pay unpayable debts.  As an alternative to death or prison, you could give the only thing you had left – your labor, permanently.

Now, because slavery in Bible times was a tool of economic "justice" mostly, you could buy your way out of it, or a relative could free you.  And in Israel, for Jewish slaves, there was this startling develop:  God said slave status would never last for more than 7 years, because in the Sabbath year all slaves were freed.

For this reason we shouldn’t be too aghast that the Bible doesn’t come forward with stronger condemnations of slavery.

• First, it was not built on the horror of racist ideology.  
• Second it wasn’t a life sentence, as it was for every black in America, who no matter what they gave to their masters, could never be free (laws were instituted that if a slave escaped to the North, they had to be returned, and if a Northern black came to the south, his free status was not honored).  
• Third, slavery was checked by putting an upper limit on the value of slave labor – instead of saying a debtor must sell himself in perpetuity, the Sabbath and Jubilee years said, no debt is worth a lifetime of servitude.  Essentially then, human value got elevated in the Law since a person was too valuable to keep in slave status forever.  No debt was worth that much.

Thus the Mosaic law always seems to be taming slavery, putting limits on masters which essentially gave slaves rights (Ex 21:8-11)!!  That God would even give laws about slavery seems that he’s condoning it.  In actually, he’s beginning the process of ending it!  Slavery isn’t invented in the Law, remember – it pre-exists the Law.  So the law is containing it, limiting its abuses, even if it doesn’t abolish it in one move.

Then, Jesus shows up and he doesn’t teach anything about it specifically, but he declares that his kingdom is for the poor and oppressed to set them free.  This was first understood in a spiritual sense, and slaves flocked to the early church.  There they were taught that while they were someone else’s slave, in Christ they were free.  Their future was the kingdom of heaven.  They were blessed, not cursed.  So they were told to obey their master’s because they worked for God, not men, and the God who loved them would reward them.  If they could get their freedom, they should, of course, but don’t be too anxious if they can’t, God was on their side (1 Cor 7). 

Masters also were in the church and they were told to love their slaves, not treat them harshly but fairly and like brothers.  And to remember that they were Christ's slave.  In fact, in one case, a Master (Philemon) is told to forgive and we may presume also free a runaway slave (Onesimus) because this slave is a brother.  This is incredible!  How could Masters and Slaves be brothers in the same churches?  This teaching forecast that the institution of slavery could not long endure, with such radical ideas like the Gospel at the center of the New Community. 

You could say the apostles should have been more direct in their condemnation of slavery.  But I would say their approach was much shrewder, and therefore more effective.  They attacked the values upon which slavery was based.  So without imposing a ban on slavery from a position of ecclesiastical authority, a ban which may have hopelessly divided a very young church and derailed her from her primary mission in the world, Paul undermines the whole institution with his words, “there is no longer slave nor free, for you are all one in Christ... Masters, serve your slaves as brothers, ETC.” (Gal. 3:28; Eph. 6:7-9, Philemon)

So in fact, slavery did die out first in the Church and then in all of Europe as the Church expanded.  Nowhere else on planet earth did this happen.  Not in China, not in the Middle East under Islam, not in Africa (where blacks enslaved blacks for millennia).  During the so called Dark Ages, slavery became almost unheard of in Europe, except of course, for the millions of slaves the Muslim hordes carried off to Arabia.  In fact, we get our word, "slave" from those millions, mostly Slavs - taken from Slovakia and other places in Eastern Europe.

Not until the other races of Africa and America were discovered, does slavery rise up again in Christendom.  But it was voices in the Church that railed against it.  You hear about Christian military men and governors and explorers who were avid slave traders.  But most of these were as Christian as your very nominal Christian neighbor is today.  EVERYONE in Europe was baptized Christian, but only a percentage were truly devout.  Meanwhile, the really devoted Christians, the Dominican monks, the Jesuits, and the papacy through repeated edicts railed against Slavery.  It advanced in spite of real Christians not because of them.

So the economy of Europe quickly became dependent on the slave trade and all sorts of Christian justifications ensued.  But these reasons were ridiculous.  For example, using the prophesy against Ham in Genesis.  Or the New Testament rules for slaves.  The hypocrisy and deliberate blindness of these lines of reasoning were self-evident, for any who took Scripture sincerely.  If it truly was the Bible, clearly understood and applied, that gave backing and justification for American slavery, why were the Scriptural rules allowing for the freeing of slaves, never invoked for the black man?

There is only one REAL reason, which has been repeatedly exposed in the laws and writings of the time:  It wasn't the Bible, it was the evil of racist ideology.  Black men were assumed inferior.  Whites of the time (even some emancipation fighters from the North) had a hard time believing the African was in any way his equal.  This particularly odious idea could have never come from a Bible which declares repeatedly that humans are all genetically linked to exact same first parents, establishing our fraternity and equality forever.

So finally, it was the church again, by Papal Bull in the South Americas, and under names of devout Christians like Wilberforce and Lincoln in the North, who understood the full force of God’s Word regarding human dignity and value and equality, who lead the way to abolish the slave trade and eventually emancipate all slaves.  Every historian acknowledges the debt the world owes to the Evangelical church in England and the Northern states for leading the way for abolition.

Read again Lincoln’s second inaugural address and see all the Bible verses he quotes and alludes to, and ask if he thought that Jesus (or Scripture overall) condoned slavery.  Not a chance!

What do you Think Behemoth and Leviathan are in Job 40/41?

QUESTION:  What do you think Leviathan is in Job 41... At first I thought crocodile maybe... But the more I read the more it sounded like a dragon, or maybe dinosaur? I’m curious about it and wonder what you think.

RESPONSE:  Yes, most Bibles will say in the footnotes that Leviathan is the crocodile and Behemoth is the hippo.  I've always resisted that description because it doesn't seem to fit the size and majesty of the creatures being described. And in some places the description simply doesn’t fit at all.  For example, what Hippo have you seen with a "tail like a Cedar" (Job 40:17)?  It's a poetic description, granted, but the Hippo's tail is the LEAST impressive thing about it!  Like a tree, really?

I know that the Hippo tail does stand up straight (like a tree) when threatened, and they are very aggressive, so I’m open to this being the animal that God is referring to.  But Behemoth and Leviathan seem to be much bigger and more impressive than that (41:22-34), and when I was a young earth creationist this was especially compelling evidence that maybe people and dinosaurs must have co-existed.  But the problems with that whole creation model are various so I no longer hold to it.

But then I realized that not even young earth creationists believe that Job lived before Noah and YEC doesn't believe dinosaurs lived past the flood.  So almost NO Bible scholar believes Job (who lived around the time of Abraham) ever actually SAW or LIVED WITH dinosaurs.

So I felt forced by the evidence to disbelieve God could be referring to dinosaurs since from neither an old earth perspective OR a young earth perspective did Job see these creatures. 

Yet, I hold out a possible way to retain the dinosaur idea.  Perhaps while Job never saw a dinosaur he did still KNOW ABOUT them.  How?  Well, perhaps in the exact same way we today know about dinosaurs even though we've never seen them – from the rocks.  We tend to think that no one knew about dinosaurs until the 1700's because that's when paleontologists first started cataloging them.  

But these scientists didn’t make the bones!  In some cases the remains of these enormous "monsters" of the past were found right out in the open.  So surely they could have been known about in ancient times. (They could even have been uncovered by deep digging - since Job 28:1-4 shows Job's time is familiar with mining.  This would have easily uncovered dinosaur bones as happens readily today in mining sites around the world.)

If this is true, then perhaps these huge bones became the basis for the relatively common dragon stories that you see in very different, very diverse and completely isolated people groups around the world.  Add to that the common belief in the ancient world that the ocean contained "monsters" (sailors reporting on whales etc.) and these might just be the enormous water and land creatures which Job was familiar with, and to which Behemoth and Leviathan refers.  God of course, might have been referring to extinct beasts which Job had no knowledge of.  Then the descriptions fit AND we aren’t committed to a model that Job coexisted with dinosaurs.  But I assume that Job had to know what these creatures were, since it would make no sense for God to reference them if he didn't.

Brachiosaurus Statue

I say again, it's possible because of the poetic language that these are "merely" a hippo and a crocodile.  The point for Job would still be the same:  God’s creatures represent the fact that His power and purposes are beyond Job's ability to contain or comprehend.  However, because we do know about dinosaurs, we also know that this very point would be so much MORE powerfully made with a Brachiosaurus and a Plesiosaur!

Am I letting that knowledge influence how I look at the text?  Perhaps.  But I think a fair reading does show that Behemoth and Leviathan transcend the size and power of any currently living animals we know (except maybe whales).  And since all the other animals referenced are real animals (the ostrich, the horse) it makes no sense that Behemoth and Leviathan aren’t also real animals – IE these can’t be mythical creatures God invents to make a point.

Without much digging (pun not intended), I can't find a lot of hard evidence that ancient men ever did find dinosaur bones.  Still. I can't believe this never happened, since in recent times, in fossil rich areas (like Montana and Alberta), the bones of very large dinosaurs were found literally staring at us without any excavation in some cases.  And no one has a better explanation for the universality of dragon myths which so closely resemble the basic look of the largest dinosaurs.  It seems at least possible that Job could have had some image of a "thunder lizard" in his head.

So I retain the somewhat whimsical (yet reasonable) notion that God may have been referring to dinosaurs in Job, even though I’ve long ago rejected the Young Earth Creation model that insists humans coexisted with them. Could God not use knowledge of extinct beasts to make the point he's making in his speech to Job?  I think it's possible, and it fits the epic descriptions better than hippos and crocodiles... unless we're talking about this bad boy:

Extinct 40 ft. Crocodile: Sarcosuchus

In Luke 1:10-11, Why Does Gabriel Appear on the Right?

First, let me review the setting.  

Zechariah is a priest, and he’s fulfilling his Temple duty, as chosen by lot.  Basically, they would draw straws, and each eligible priest would get to serve one of many duties in the Temple on a rotation (there being more priests than duties).  This was held to be a great honor.

The Bible says he was  serving during the “hour of incense” which refers to the time of the lighting of the incense in the holy place.  If you look at a diagram of the Temple, 

that was just outside the “MOST” holy place, which no one ever went into except the high priest (only one of those) and that once a year.  So he’s in that outer room, and with the larger crowd being gathered outside when the incense is lit, it means likely a Sabbath day, and they’re all there for service.  The priest goes in to light the incense on the Altar of Incense as a symbol of the prayers of God’s people.

So that's the physical setting.

Zechariah's in there and no one can see him because he’s in the Temple alone in front of the altar.  The bread table is on the right of the altar, and the menorah (the seven branched lamp stand) is on the left.  

Luke then says, Gabriel is revealed, between the altar and the bread table.  Why there, on the right side of the Altar?  Well, the text doesn’t say, but in Jewish thought the right side is always the side of favor; of blessing.  Consider Matthew 25:33, when Jesus separates the human race on Judgment day.  The blessed go on “his right”, the cursed, to the left.  

This is just a carryover from the symbolism of the Psalms that talk about God’s mighty “right hand” (Ps 20:6; 89:13).  In a world where most people are right handed, the right hand came to symbolize power.  As most people favor their right hand, so the right became naturally associated with favor. (They were not politically correct enough to consider how this might offend "other handed" people!)  Gabriel's message is clearly one of blessing and favor not only for Zechariah but for all of Israel, so this fits. 

Now, since the text doesn’t actually say why Gabriel showed up there, this is one of those little details in Scripture that gives it the ring of an eye witness account.  I mean, truly, why exactly IS Gabriel mentioned as appearing on the right of the Altar?  Luke doesn’t answer the question.

Well, it’s likely that this is simply how Zechariah remembers it happening; a little firsthand nugget of detail that Luke found as he researched the story carefully (Luke 1:1-4).  It’s the same way with other weird details that are unexplained, like John 21:11 that mentions the exact number and size of fish caught (153/large) with no explanation why!  The point of such detail may have some symbolic significance, but where one is not explicitly given, the most obvious impact of such details is to tell us:  this really happened because real eye witness memories often contain seemingly minor details of things that hit us.

Doesn't Predestination Mean We Have No Free Will?

QUESTION:  There are many verses that indicate there is no free will, however I was raised to believe in free will. Now I am at a loss to explain why I believe. The doctrine of predestination seems so contrary to free will.

RESPONSE:  First of all, I don’t think it would be fair to characterize the doctrine of predestination as contrary to free will –  not even for those who hold to Reformed Theology.  Even for very strict Calvinists, the idea that God predestines some to heaven and others to hell is not mutually exclusive of the idea that people choose to go to heaven or to hell freely.  They would hold that somehow, people are choosing exactly what they really want, while at the same time, God has predestined and chosen that fate for them from before the creation of the world.

So also no person who believes in free will denies the doctrine of predestination.  As you said, many verses talk about this concept, to deny it would seem obviously heretical.  So all Christians hold two ideas in tension, free will and predestination… and a perennial debate for centuries has been, how to put them together without violating Scripture, logic or both. 

Some verses (ones I’m guessing you are referring to) seem to affirm a kind of predestination that violates free will.  But do they really?  Read in context we begin to understand what predestination means – specifically what it does NOT mean:  predestination in Scripture is not a default affirmation of DETERMINISM, which DOES undermine freewill.   That is, Determinism is essentially the same as Fate, the idea that all things play out according to a pre-written script and real freedom is illusory.

Let's deal with 3 of the texts that deal with predestination and I think you'll see we have reasons to doubt that these passages really do "indicate there is no free will" as you fear.  Let's begin with:

Ephesians 1:4, “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.”  

Here it looks like God chooses everything ahead of time.  But some have read this verse with deterministic lenses for so long that they miss what exactly it is that God has chosen ahead of time.   Paul doesn’t say, “God chose who will be in Christ.”   Rather he says, “God chose us in Christ to be holy and blameless in his sight.”  The thing God has predetermined from before all time, is the end state for all the elect who are in Christ.  That thing which he has predetermined is that we be perfect and set apart.

To help understand this, imagine if I give a sermon and showed a movie clip to illustrate my point.  You could say I predestined that people who came to church that day would see the clip.  Let’s say 4 months ago I planned and chose the clip.  But the showing up in the building, was a matter of someone else’s choice, not mine.  Or maybe it was a joint effort.  Let's say I asked people to come, advertised the event, and influenced them to be there.  But they decided to agree with that call, or not.  But once here, it is MY choice and unalterable purpose that all who are in the building, will experience that clip.

Now it should be pointed out that a few verses later (11) Paul seems to come back to freedom-denying predestination when he says the elect are chosen by God ahead of time, "We were also chosen to belong to him. God decided to choose us long ago in keeping with his plan...".  Does he mean some are chosen and by implication, others are "unchosen"?  Well, all over Scripture the "Elect" refers to God's chosen people.  But at some of the places where it sounds like God chooses these Elect, it also sounds as though the Elect are those who choose God. (2 Thessalonians 2:13).

And twice when the Bible mentions God's choosing us, it also mentions his "foreknowing us" - giving us indication that the choosing is in concert with His omniscience - his seeing us in advance (1 Peter 1:2; Rom 8:29).  This suggests some kind of concert between our choosing and God's choosing.  And again, in Romans 8:29, we see the foreknowing and the choosing in advance are towards a purpose or end state (conformity into the image of Christ), not a choosing of some and an "un-choosing" of others, without regard for their faith.

When talking about what it means to be chosen, Jesus himself gives a parable to understand how God's choosing  works.  In Matt 22 Jesus says the Gospel banquet invitation goes out to everyone.  Not just to the expected or worthy, but to the outsiders and the unworthy too.  Everyone.  And in the parable, it's the response to the invitation that determines if one becomes one of the chosen or one of those cast out.  Jesus’ own conclusion is this: 

"many are invited, few are chosen." (Matt 22:14).

This is in keeping with the overwhelming theme in Scripture that God in some sense "chooses" everyone.  That is, He calls and woos all, and His love is universal, his love is impartial, and his love desires all to be saved (e.g. I Jn 4:8; Duet 10:17-19; 2 Chron 19:7; Ezek 18:25; Mk 12:14; Jn 3:16; Acts 10:34; Acts 17: 27; Rom. 2:10-11; Eph 6:9; I Tim 2:4; I Pet 1:17; 2 Pet. 3:9).  To take Eph 1 texts about God's choosing us to imply that God predestines some to salvation others for damnation without regard for their faith forces you to radically bend these other texts or ignore them altogether.

Another key text used by Determinists is John 6:44

"No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him,"

It is of course, obvious biblically to say that for a person to choose Christ, God must be involved in their broken will, to enlighten and to draw.  But this doesn’t violate their free will, nor does it affirm a Fatalistic universe.  Nor does it assume that if a person DOESN’T come to Christ that the Father never loved them or drew them.  It simply means that God is among the free wills operating in the world, and one of the things he freely does is draw people and gift them with the ability to respond to his offer, and without his help, none would respond.

But does this verse mean (as Determinists would argue) that God will never "draw" or woo or call people to reach out for him, who do not ultimately choose grace?  In fact, we're told Jesus has “mercy” on the rich young ruler and calls him specifically to discipleship and salvation.  But that man turned away.  Jesus also looks at Jerusalem in a stirring lament and says, 

“how I longed to gather you… but you were not willing.”  (Matt 23:37)

In the Determinist world, God never really drew the rich young ruler nor all the lost in Jerusalem and they were destined for hell from before all time.   Well, this doesn’t jive with the text.  Jesus is clearly drawing Jerusalem – but they are freely rejecting the gift of God’s offer.  If this rejection was not just seen, but PLANNED by Jesus from before all time, why is He crying over their damnation?  In the Determinist view, it is Jesus after all, who MADE them to reject him!  This again doesn’t fit the facts of the text.

A final key verse used to under-gird Determinism is Romans 9:14-15

What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! 15 For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion."

 The entire chapter of Romans 9 is seen by many as a blueprint for understanding God’s Sovereignty in salvation.  God chooses unilaterally who is saved and who is not.  And if you happen to raise the issue of logic (“how can God rightly condemn a person whom he predestines from all eternity past to be hardened?”) then you are simply told God has mercy on whomever he wants.  If you press the matter further and say, “but that’s not fair”, you are slapped on the hand and told, “who are you talk back to God?” (vs. 19).

At first this all seems to be persuasive for a Deterministic view.  But then we step back and see Paul’s overarching argument from Romans 9 thru 11, and that argument is not about individual salvation, but about God’s faithfulness to the nation of Israel, and their role in salvation history.  The question being answered in Romans is, why have the Jews by and large rejected their Messiah?  This is a disturbing question that caused many Jewish Christians to wonder if God’s Promises to Israel had failed.

Paul's argument then is to establish that the Jewish rejection of Messiah, and God's subsequent picking of a covenant people from among the Gentiles is not unfair or a failure or out of pattern.  Paul is reminding his Jewish audience in Romans 9 that God has always chosen nations for service based on his own choice and not on inherent goodness in them or their pedigree.

He proves this by reminding them that God did not choose ALL Abraham's descendants as his covenant people, but only those of "the promise"; sons of Isaac.  And then afterwards, God chooses Jacob and not Esau.  But this is not referring to individuals for salvation, but nations for service.  The quote from Malachi "Jacob I love and Esau I hated" is specifically about the nation of Edom, not one man, Esau.  So Paul is arguing that God has a right to pick any people he wants for such service.  In both Isaac and Jacob, God picks them unexpectedly, out of birth order, and both are rascals, which shows God's mercy and lack of concern for human works or family background.

What he's saying is simply that the Jews should not be shocked that God is now including Gentiles into his covenant people.  Why not?  He delights in showing mercy to whomever he wants, and this is his established pattern of upside-down grace.  But this is about broad people groups, not individuals.  If it were about individuals, we have to imagine that God is saying here that every Edomite and every Moabite and Ishmaelite was eternally condemned because God didn't choose them when he chose Isaac and Jacob.  No, it simply means that they were not chosen or preferred for service as Israel was.

The strong reprimand then, "who are you talk back to God..." is reserved for those who question God's right to pick Gentiles based on their faith (he makes that clear in a second), and who are upset that God is not (as he never was) impressed with Israel's works or her genetics.

What should cement this case is simply that Paul concludes his own complex reasoning with a simple thought.  So we should let him speak for himself and not impose Determinism on his thinking, when he is very clear that that's not what's driving this argument.  He wraps by saying,

"What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but the people of Israel, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness, have not attained their goal..."

This is incredibly important.  If the Deterministic view was right, here we should expect Paul to summarize by saying, "so then we see that God sovereignly chooses who is saved and who is damned randomly and mysteriously and don't question him."  Instead, Paul says God's picking and granting righteousness is not arbitrary or condition-less at all.  It is based on the condition of faith which God has always been looking for, and not on a genetic pedigree from Abraham, or even meticulous law observance.   In other words, in the end, Paul appeals to free will, not Determinism.

The charge of God being arbitrary or unfair is in fact the root of Romans 9-11 - but not unfair because he picks who is saved and no one can talk back to him.  Ironically, the Jews would probably like that line of thinking, assuming God has always picked them and anyone who questions that favoritism should be corrected!  

However, Paul clearly doesn't want to play into that hand.  Rather the charge he's dealing with from a Jewish faction is that God is unfair because he allows the Gentiles into the Kingdom and he at the same time has hardened (some of) the Jews.  See, the Jews would see God's hardening of them, the law keepers, and the granting of mercy to the Gentiles, the sinners, as very arbitrary.  Paul is arguing the point in Romans 9 that this is perfectly consistent with what God has always done.  This is why Pharaoh is brought into the argument.  Now, you Jews, Paul is saying, have taken Pharaoh's role.  God hardened him BECAUSE OF HIS UNBELIEF (Ex 8:15).  He hardens those who harden themselves.

So just as Paul concludes that the picking of the Gentiles was NOT arbitrary, so the hardening of the Jews was also not arbitrary.  They pursued righteous by works instead of by faith (9:32).  So this hardening was perfectly consistent with the criteria of faith which God has always worked with. He gives mercy in response to faith and he hardens in response to unbelief.  It’s not the other way around.  People don’t have faith as a result of God having mercy on them, and people don’t have unbelief as a result of God hardening them.

We we doubt this is Paul's point, we just have to note his Isaiah quote, 

"see, I have placed in Zion ... a rock that makes them fall, and the one who believes in him [not the one whom I predetermine prior to their belief] will never be put to shame."

And later we’ll find out that even God’s hardening in response to unbelief is not determinative because all they have to do is stop their unbelief, and God will change his plans for them (11:32).

So predestination is agreed to by all Christians, but what does that idea mean?  We’ve seen that it doesn’t have to mean that God has fatalistically planned all things out and removed free will in the process.  It’s more likely that it means God sees us in advance, and sees those who would believe in him, and since God calls all to reach out for him (Acts 17:27), and desires all to be saved (2 Peter 3:9), we can say that those who respond in faith, complete his salvation offer and BECOME the chosen.  

God has predestined, and planned for this Chosen People to be holy and like Christ, and nothing will stop that plan from being executed.