Blood & Guts in the Bible

Last night I covered a Bible study class that my senior pastor usually teaches. He was going to be out of town so I happily agreed to teach the class. Then he told me the class was working through the book of Deuteronomy and that I could pick up where he had left off in chapter 7. I honestly don't know much about Deuteronomy and as I read through this seventh chapter I was slightly alarmed. The following is just a few verses that pretty much sum up the whole chapter:

“When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations… and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.”

Ouch! Nobody wants to teach from a text where God is portrayed as a merciless war monger. Fortunately, this particular text turned out to be a really great teachable moment for the class. A passage like this just goes to show why we need to know the whole biblical narrative and refrain from parceling out certain verses from their larger context. As a class, we talked about how this passage makes more sense considering there was good reason for no treaties to be made with other nations because it was Israel’s kings after all that were lead astray from God because of intermarriage and because they worshiped the God's of other nations. Moreover, we read a passage later on in Deuteronomy where God tells the Israelites to provide care for the alien within the covenant community. Connecting Deuteronomy 7 with the rest of the biblical story brings more to light. Difficult texts like Deuteronomy chapter 7 can be a bitter pill to swallow, but I like how they can also be very helpful in bringing us into a fuller understanding of the biblical story.