12 Craziest, Most Awful Things God Did in the Old Testament
February 26, 2014
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Before
Jesus arrived and his divine father chilled out, the Old Testament God
was, ironically, kind of a hellraiser. He was not a nice guy.
He really liked killing people. And he may have actually been
insane, if his willingness to randomly murder devout worshippers like
Moses was any indication. Here are the 12 craziest, most awful things
God did in the Old Testament, back before that wacked-out hippie Jesus
softened him up.
1) Sending Bears to Murder Children
So
a guy named Eliseus was traveling to Bethel when a bunch of kids popped
up and made fun of him for being bald. That had to suck, and you can't
blame Eliseus for being pissed and cursing them to God. But God had
Eliseus' back, by which I mean he sent two bears to maul 42 of these
kids to death. For making fun of a bald dude. I have to think Eliseus
was looking for something along the lines of a spanking, or maybe the
poetic justice of having the kids go bald, but nope, God went straight
for the bear murder. But on the plus side, that pile of 40+ children's
corpses never made fun of anybody again. (4 Kings 2:23-24 [3])
2) Turning Lot's Wife to Salt
Most
folks know about the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, two cities of sin God
decided to kill everyone in instead of, you know, making
them not full of sin. But this was a town that, when two
angels were staying at Lot's place, gathered en masse and asked if they
could rape them. I repeat: They wanted to rape angels. So they kind
of had their destruction coming. Lot and his family were sent from the
city before things went down, and Lot's wife looked back, and God turned
her into a pillar of salt. It's generally understood that Lot's wife
was looking back in a wistful kind of way at her angel-raping hometown,
but the fact is there's nothing in the Bible to suggest this. Nor was
Lot's family warned about looking back. Maybe Lot's wife wanted to see
Sodom and Gomorrah get what was coming to it. Maybe she was thinking
wistfully of the things she had to leave behind. Maybe she wondered if
she left the oven on. We'll never know, because God turned her into
seasoning for breaking a rule she didn't know existed. (Genesis 19:26)
3) Hating Ugly People
In
what should be good news for intolerant religious conservatives, God
really does hate people who are different from the norm. Of course, God
isn't as worried about skin color or sexual orientation as he is about
whether you're ugly or not. Because if you're ugly, you can just go
worship some other god, okay? (Even though God will punish you if you do
and also they don't exist.) Here's the people God does not want coming
into his churches: People with blemishes, blind people, the lame, those
with flat noses, dwarves, people with scurvy, people with bad eyes,
people with bad skin, and those that "hath their stones broken." Given
that God is technically responsible for giving people all of these
afflictions in the first place, this is an enormous dick move.
(Leviticus 21:17-24)
4) Trying to Kill Moses
In
terms of people who God likes, you'd think Moses would be pretty high
up on the list, right? I mean, God appointed him to lead the Jews out of
Egypt, parted the Red Sea for him, and even picked him to receive the
10 Commandments, right? Yet this didn't stop God from trying to kill
Moses when he ran into him at "a lodging place." There is literally no
explanation given in the Bible for God's decision to murder one of his
chief supporters. The line is "At a lodging place on the way, the Lord
met Moses and was about to kill him." The only sensible explanation for
this is that God was drunk out of his mind and looking for a bar fight,
and you better hope that's correct because the alternative is that God's
a psychopath. How was God stopped from murdering his #1 fan? "But
[Moses' wife] Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son's foreskin
and touched Moses' feet with it ... So the Lord let him alone." Either
the sight of a very unexpected circumcision sobered God up quickly, or
he didn't want to touch a dude who just touched a severed foreskin.
Still, it's Moses' son who's the real victim here. (Exodus 4:24-26)
5) Committing So Much Genocide
God
has killed so many people, you guys. Okay, I mean technically, God has
killed everyone if you subscribe to Judeo-Christian thought,
but I'm not talking about indirect methods, I'm talking about God
murdering countless people in horrible ways simply because he's pissed
off. God drowning every single person on the planet besides Noah and his
family is pretty well known, but he also helped the Israelites murder
everyone in Jericho, Heshbon, Bashan and many more, usually killing
women, children and animals at the same time. Hell, God once helped some
Israelites kill 500,000 other Israelites. God's crazy.
6) Ordering His Underlings to Kill Their Own Children
God
is obviously good at big picture dickishness, but he also took the time
to be a dick on a more personal level. Abraham was another devout man
who God decided to fuck with, apparently because he knew he could. God
ordered him to sacrifice his son to God (God was a fan of human
sacrifice at the time). We know Abraham loved his son, so he was
probably kind of upset with this, but hey, God's God, right? So Abraham
tricked his unsuspecting son up a mountain onto a sacrificial altar and
prepared to murder him. This story actually has a happy ending, in that
right before Abraham drove a knife into his son's throat, God yelled
"Psyche!" and told him it was only a test. And then Abraham received
some blessings after that for being willing to kill his own child at
God's whim. And all it took was the dread of being forced to kill his
own child on behalf of his angry deity and, presumably, a shit-ton of
awkward family dinners for the rest of his life. Abraham got off better
than Jephthah, who had to follow through with murdering his daughter
(burning her alive, specifically) in order to get on God's good side
before battling the Ammonites. (Genesis 22:1-12)
7) Killing Egyptian Babies
Let's
be completely up front: The Egyptians and the Jews did not get along.
According to the Bible, the Egyptians enslaved the Jews, but the Jews
had God on their side, if you kind of ignore God letting his people be
enslaved in the first place. Rather getting his worshippers the hell out
of there, God wanted to show those damned Egyptians what for, releasing
10 plagues that began with turning the river Nile into pure blood, and
ending with the slaughter of the first-born of every single Egyptian man
and animal. Now, I suppose it's possible that some, or even most of
these first-born were adults who were shitty to the Israelites. But some
of them had to be babies who didn't even have
the time to persecute the Jews yet. And what the hell did the
animals do to the Jews to get caught up in this nightmare? Were there
proto-Nazi cows running around who needed to be punished for their
transgressions against the chosen people? And you realize there were
cats in Egypt, right? Cats who had first-born? God killed kittens.
(Numbers 16:41-49)
8) Killing a Dude for Not Making More Babies
So
you're a dude named Onan and you have a brother named Er. God does not
care for Er, and kills him. Standard God operating procedure. Then
things gets weird. Onan's dad orders Onan to have sex with Er's wife —
not marry, by the way, just have sex with. This is actually pretty
awkward for Onan, sleeping with his sister-in-law, and rather than give
her any more kids (she had two with Er already) he pulls out. God is so
infuriated that Onan did not fuck his sister-in-law to completion that
he kills him, too. Now, you could argue that God demands that
intercourse be used specifically for procreation, but given how much God
loves killing babies and children, I don't think his motives here are
exceptionally pure. (Genesis 38:1-10)
9) Helping Samson Murder People to Pay Off a Bet
More
evidence that God is possibly a low-level mobster: When his pal Samson
got married, he was given 30 friends, and he posed them (a completely
insane) riddle. Then he made a bet that if they could solve it in a
week, Samson would give them all new clothes, but if they couldn't they
would give Samson 30 pairs of new clothes. Well, Samson's wife wheedled
the answer out of him and then told these dudes, at which point an angry
Samson had to pay up. And here's where God comes in — literally, into
Samson, giving him the power to murder 30 random people for their
clothes. Only a true friend would help you commit mass murder to settle a
completely stupid bet. (Judges 14:1-19)
10) Trying to Wrestle a Guy, Cheating, and Still Losing
And
here's more evidence that God is a drunk maniac: Jacob was traveling
with his two wives, his 11 kids, and all his earthly possessions and had
sent them across a river. At that moment, a guy essentially leapt out
of the bushes and started wrestling. It's God! They wrestle all night,
and God cannot beat Jacob, so he uses his magic God powers to wrench
Jacob's hip out of its socket. But Jacob still won't let him
out of a headlock until God blesses him, because Jacob has figured out
who this bizarre man is. God blesses him and wanders off, presumably to
go get in a bar fight somewhere. (Genesis 32: 22-31)
11) Killing People for Complaining About God Killing Them
To
be fair, after God freed the Israelites from Egyptian slavery, they
were extraordinarily bitchy about not instantly being in a land of milk
and honey. It got so bad that God was ready to kill all of them and let
Moses start the Jews over, although Moses managed to talk him out of it.
But one of their more sensible complaints was that Moses was lording
himself over the rest of them, which was probably true, seeing as God
had given him the 10 Commandments and all that. So Moses summoned the
three tribal elders who had made the complaint to a Monday morning staff
meeting, but two of them didn't come. Neither Moses nor God cared for
that, and God opened up the grounds beneath their people's tents,
killing both tribes (God also set fire to 250 Israelite princes who'd
made the same complaint). Having been well admonished that Moses was
putting himself above the rest of the people with God's permission, a
number of surviving Israelites were kind of pissed that Moses and God
had killed so many of their fellow people to prove a point. God
responded by killing another 14,700 of them with a plague. The
complaints stopped. (Numbers 16:1-49)
12) Everything He Did to Job
Oh,
Job. Other than a shit-ton of babies, no one had it worse in the Bible
than Job, who was a righteous, good-hearted man who believed in God with
every fiber in his being — which is when God decides to see how
miserable he can make this dude before he gets upset. Note: This is a
result of a bet between God and Satan. Also note: The bet is God's idea.
He's literally just hanging out with Satan — which is kinda weird when
you think about it — when he starting bragging about how awesome Job is.
Satan points out that Job's pretty blessed — he's rich, he's got a lot
of kids, etc., and he probably wouldn't be quite so thrilled with God if
he didn't have that stuff. God downs his bourbon, presumably, and tells
Satan he can fuck with Job all he wants. Satan does. He kills all of
Job's children and animals, burns down his house, destroys his wealth,
and then covers him in boils. Job doesn't not curse God, but he does
wish he'd never been born (literally) and begs God to kill him, but no
dice. This lasts a long time until finally Job wonders why a just God
would be so shitty. This is when God pops up and basically tells
him."Shut up, I don't have to explain anything to you." Job, having
finally done something wrong, pleads for mercy, and God eventually gives
him back animals and children — new ones, because the old ones are
still dead. Because of a bet. That God made with Satan. For kicks. (Job
1)
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