God and my Neighbour Part 9

The Injustice of Jehovah

I have already instanced Jahweh's injustice in cursing the seed of Adam for Adam's sin, and in destroying the whole animal creation, except a selected few, because he was angry with mankind. In the Book of Samuel we are told that Jahweh sent three years' famine upon the whole nation because of the sins of Saul, and that his wrath was only appeased by the hanging in cold blood of seven of Saul's sons for the evil committed by their father.

In the Book of Joshua is the story of how Achan, having stolen some gold, was ordered to be burnt; and how Joshua and the Israelites took "Achan, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his a.s.ses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had," and stoned them to death, and "burnt them with fire."

In the First Book of Chronicles the devil persuades David to take a census of Israel. And again Jahweh acted in blind wrath and injustice, for he sent a pestilence, which slew seventy thousand of the people for David's fault. _But David he allowed to live._ In Samuel we learn how Jahweh, because of an attack upon the Israelites four hundred years before the time of speaking, ordered Saul to destroy the Amalekites, "man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and a.s.s." And Saul did as he was directed; but because he spared King Agag, the Lord deprived him of the crown and made David king in his stead.

The Immorality Of Jehovah

In the Second Book of Chronicles Jehovah gets Ahab, King of Israel, killed by putting lies into the mouths of the prophets:

And the Lord said, Who shall entice Ahab, king of Israel, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead? And one spake, saying after this manner, and another saying after that manner.

Then there came out a spirit, and stood before the Lord, and said, I will entice him. And the Lord said unto him, Wherewith?

And he said, I will go out, and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And the Lord said, Thou shalt entice him, and thou shalt also prevail: go out, and do even so.

In Deuteronomy are the following orders as to conduct in war:

When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the Lord thy G.o.d hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them captive.

And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldest have her to thy wife; Then thou shalt bring her home to thine house; and she shall shave her head, and pare her nails;

And she shall put the raiment of her captivity from off her, and shall remain in thine house, and bewail her father and her mother a full month: and after that thou shalt go in unto her, and be her husband, and she shall be thy wife.

And it shall be, if thou have no delight in her, then thou shall let her go whither she will; but thou shalt not sell her at all for money, thou shalt not make merchandise of her, because thou hast humbled her.

The children of Israel, having been sent out by Jahweh to punish the Midianites, "slew all the males." But Moses was wrath, because they had spared the women, and he ordered them to kill all the married women, and to take the single women "for themselves." The Lord allowed this brutal act--which included the murder of all the male children--to be consummated. There were sixteen thousand females spared, of which we are told that "the Lord's tribute was thirty and two."

The Cruelty Of Jehovah

I could find in the Bible more instances of Jahweh's cruelty and barbarity and lack of mercy than I can find room for.

In Deuteronomy, the Lord hardens the heart of Sihon, King of Hesbon, to resist the Jews, and then "utterly destroyed the men, women, and little ones of every city."

In Leviticus, Jahweh threatens that if the Israelites will not reform he will "walk contrary to them in fury, _and they shall eat the flesh of their own sons and daughters_."

In Deuteronomy is an account of how Bashan was utterly destroyed, men, women, and children being slain.

In the same book occur the following pa.s.sages:

When the Lord thy G.o.d shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hitt.i.tes, and the Girgas.h.i.+tes, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou;

And when the Lord thy G.o.d shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, or show mercy unto them.

That is from chapter vii. In chapter xx. there are further instructions of a like horrible kind:

Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations.

But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy G.o.d doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:

But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hitt.i.tes, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, as the Lord thy G.o.d hath commanded thee.

And here, in a long quotation, is an example of the mercy of Jahweh, and his faculty for cursing:

The Lord shall make the pestilence cleave unto thee, until he have consumed thee from off the land, whither thou goest to possess it.

The Lord shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and with the sword, and with blasting, and with mildew; and they shall pursue thee until thou perish.

And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be bra.s.s, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron.

The Lord shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed.

The Lord shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies: thou shalt go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before them: and shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth.

And thy carcase shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth, and no man shall fray them away.

The Lord will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed.

The Lord shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart:...

And he shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls come down, wherein thou trustedst, throughout all thy land: and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates throughout all thy land, which the Lord thy G.o.d hath given thee.

And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the Lord thy G.o.d hath given thee, in the siege, and in the straightness wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee:

So that the man that is tender among you, and very delicate, his eyes shall be evil toward his brother, and toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the remnant of his children which he shall leave....

For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn into the lowest h.e.l.l, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.

I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon them.

They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust.

The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of grey hairs.

I think I have quoted enough to show that what I say of the Jewish G.o.d Jehovah is based on fact. But I could, if needful, heap proof on proof, for the books of the Old Testament reek with blood, and are horrible with atrocities.

Now, consider, is the G.o.d of whom we have been reading a G.o.d of love?

Is He the Father of Christ? Is He not rather the savage idol of a savage tribe?

Man and his G.o.ds: what a tragi-comedy it is. Man has never seen one of his G.o.ds, never heard the voice of one of his G.o.ds, does not know the shape, expression, or bearing of one of his G.o.ds. Yet man has cursed man, hated man, hunted man, tortured man, and murdered man, for the sake of shadows and fantasies of his own terror, or vanity, or desire. We tiny, vain feeblenesses, we fussy ephemera; we sting each other, hate each other, hiss at each other, for the sake of the monster G.o.ds of our own delirium. As we are whirled upon our spinning, glowing planet through the unfathomable s.p.a.ces, where myriads of suns, like golden bees, gleam through the awful mystery of "the vast void night," what are the phantom G.o.ds to us? They are no more than the waterspouts on the ocean, or the fleeting shadows on the hills. But the man, and the woman, and the child, and the dog with its wistful eyes; these know us, touch us, appeal to us, love us, serve us, grieve us.

Shall we kill these, or revile them, or desert them, for the sake of the lurid ghost in the cloud, or the fetish in his box?

Do you think the bloodthirsty vindictive Jahweh, who prized nothing but his own aggrandis.e.m.e.nt, and slew or cursed all who offended him, is the Creator, the same who made the jewels of the Pleiades, and the resplendent mystery of the Milky Way?